Apple Lossless vs Tidal
 

I like how Darko points out all of the “Gotcha’s”. Going back to Apple lossless ALAC, someone please chime in but I was always told that it is still a compressed format even though they say CD quality. To me compression means that something is lost. Darko also pointed out something that is very important about the Apple MIDI system in that Apple does NOT automatically switch the sample rate based upon what is being sent to Apple. You must have software like Roon that will do this for you otherwise Apple is re-sampling the music to whatever the MIDI setting was last set to on your Mac.

Apple Lossless vs Tidal
 

Compression does not necessarily mean data loss. There are both lossy and lossless compression. The predominant lossless codecs are ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) and FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec.)

But doesn’t something have to be removed to compress the audio file when streaming compressed audio files?

No, compressed files can be lossless, as antonmb noted. It can be a way to simply more efficiently encode the data.

I didn’t know it worked that way so it makes sense now.

Ryan....PM sent

I stream high-res from Apple Music via an M1 iPad Pro into a Holo Audio KTE May DAC USB input and it sounds very, very good! It is at least as good, and at times better, sounding than my Lumin A1 playing high-res files from a Synology NAS. This is independent on whether I use the Lumin's built-in DAC or the May DAC.