The most advanced streaming player available today. HyperFi turns your iPad or Mac into a hi-fi player and your iPhone into the most complete remote you've ever used. Pick the music, tune the sound and switch the visualizer without leaving the couch.
Your iPhone only sends the commands: the sound goes from the iPad or Mac to the DAC by cable, without Bluetooth compression, which turns even the best file into something close to an MP3.
Sending music from your iPhone over Bluetooth re-encodes every track to lossy AAC, even when it's Lossless. With HyperFi, the iPhone sends only commands over Wi-Fi; the sound leaves the iPad or Mac by cable, straight to the DAC.
| Bluetooth (iPhone) | HyperFi | |
|---|---|---|
| Codec to the DAC | AAC, lossy | Lossless PCM (FLAC, ALAC, WAV) or DSD |
| Data per second | ~256 kbps | 1,411 to 9,216 kbps |
| Resolution | 16 bits | up to 24 bits |
| Sample rate | 44.1 or 48 kHz | the file's own, up to 192 kHz |
| What turns it into sound | the chip in the headphones or speaker | your DAC |
| Bit-intact signal | no | yes, in Mac exclusive mode |
Theoretical values for each format. The iPhone uses AAC over Bluetooth: it has no LDAC or aptX, and even those codecs are lossy. The audible gain depends on the DAC, speakers, headphones and recording.
Use an old iPad as a hi-fi display on the shelf, or a Mac connected to your amplifier. HyperFi Remote finds them both, Apple Watch controls from your wrist and Apple TV brings the screens to the living room.
Real screens from the apps: the iPad or Mac handles the sound and the big screen, the iPhone controls everything.
Your iPad or Mac stays by the system, connected to the DAC and speakers. You run everything from your iPhone, from anywhere in the house.
Open the app and it finds the player. If the Wi-Fi drops, it reconnects without you noticing.
Scroll your library on the iPhone and the big screen scrolls along, with covers at showcase size.
The side buttons control the player's volume, even with the screen locked.
What's playing shows up on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island, with controls at hand.
The sound still goes from the iPad or Mac to the DAC. The watch becomes a remote and the TV becomes a showcase for the visualizations.
The iPad or Mac keeps playing bit-perfect to the DAC. The TV just shows the screens, in sync with the music.
Included with HyperFi Remote. For when the iPhone stays in your pocket.
Illustration. In development.
Walls, corners and furniture boost some bass notes and hide others. HyperFi measures the room with the iPhone's microphone and corrects the sound in the player, only where it's needed.
The same features on iPhone, iPad and Mac. And each one can be turned on or off in Settings, with an explanation of what it does.
Over 40 screens: covers and art, meters, analog gear, clocks, scenes and audiophile instruments. Real HyperFi Player screens, identical on iPad and Mac.
Click a screen to see the details.
Two classic studio-standard VU meters, one per channel, scaled from −20 to +3 VU. The needle shows the average intensity of the sound, the way the ear perceives it, not just the peaks.
The cover at full size with the title, artist, album, file format and track progress. The classic "now playing" screen.
The cover floating over a background tinted with the album's colors. The whole room takes on the mood of the record that's playing.
The cover framed under art-gallery lighting. It turns the iPad on your shelf, or your Mac's screen, into a picture that changes with every album.
The cover at the center, surrounded by rays that pulse to the beat and golden particles. Made for parties, with the iPad or Mac screen facing the room.
The album as a Swiss-style typographic poster: a strict grid, color blocks drawn from the cover itself and the track title in huge letters. The shapes breathe with the bass, and every new song recomposes the poster.
Strokes of gold ink on black paper. Every beat starts a new stroke, and the music’s energy sets its speed and thickness. The strokes fade slowly, leaving a composition on screen.
The cover becomes some eight thousand colored particles. The bass flings them outward in a 3D swirl, and they return to form the image; the treble makes everything sparkle.
An LED peak meter for each channel, with readings in dBFS, and a block spectrum right below. The front panel of a digital hi-fi component.
Bars for each frequency band: bass on the left, treble on the right. It shows instantly where the music's energy lies, from kick drum to cymbals.
A history of the frequencies: time runs horizontally and color shows intensity. A file that started as MP3 shows a flat cutoff near 16 kHz, even when sold as hi-res.
Perceived loudness measured the way studios and streaming platforms do: momentary, short-term and integrated loudness in LUFS, plus true peak in dBTP.
A turntable with the record spinning in time with the track and the cover alongside. The record label uses the album's own artwork.
A luxury turntable seen from above on a black acrylic plinth: machined platter with a strobe ring lit by a neon lamp, S-shaped tonearm with counterweight and the record sleeve alongside.
A 1950s-style jukebox glowing in a dark room. Light tubes in the cover’s colors rise up the sides with the music, and through the curved window you see the carousel: the chosen record stands upright, with the cover on its label.
The panel of a reel-to-reel recorder: two machined aluminum reels whose tape packs change size as the song plays, the tape running past the guides and heads, and two VU meters.
A tape deck seen from the front: the cassette behind a smoked window with spinning hubs, a mechanical roller counter and fluorescent peak meters.
A vintage tube radio: walnut cabinet, grille cloth and a large illuminated glass dial, with the title printed on the glass and the pointer moving with the music. The magic eye follows the sound level.
A close-up of a tube amplifier’s top plate: power and preamp tubes on polished chrome, transformers behind and filaments that warm up and cool down with the music. An engraved plate shows the track.
The black glass front of a power amplifier, with two large backlit blue meters, one for each channel.
A row of ten small needle meters, one per octave, from 31.5 Hz to 16 kHz, on a dark brushed panel. Bass, mids and treble each move their own needle.
A vintage tube oscilloscope: the green beam draws the music as a waveform or as a Lissajous figure that shows the stereo, with the phosphor trail fading slowly.
Track time in large orange-neon Nixie tubes, time remaining in the small tubes, and neon bars showing level and spectrum.
A dress-watch case on a dark background: charcoal sunburst dial, gold indices and faceted hands. The seconds hand breathes with the bass, and the minute track fills with the music.
Flipping number cards for hours and minutes, a smaller card for seconds and, below, an airport-style board with the title and artist.
A grid of letters where the words that tell the time light up in gold; the rest stay nearly dark. Four corner dots count the minutes between one five-minute step and the next.
A white railway-station dial on a dark wall. The red seconds hand sweeps around in 58.5 s, waits at 12 and releases the minute hand with a small jump.
Like a premium lock screen: the cover fills the screen, blurred and darkened, with the large, thin time and the date on top. A small card shows the cover, the song and a gold progress line.
A black marble fireplace in a dark room: tall flames that grow with the music and flare on the bass, logs with glowing cracks and firelight flickering on the bricks and floor. The cover hangs framed above the mantel.
A window on a rainy night. Beyond the glass, the cover glows like a lit sign on the wet street, among blurred lights. The drops on the glass are tiny lenses that slide down in fits and starts, carving trails.
A long-exposure photo of a night over the sea: the Milky Way rising behind the hills, thousands of stars and the moon with the cover faintly drawn in its maria, reflected in the water.
A large analog console in a control room: one channel per frequency band, motorized faders replaying the spectrum automation, LEDs and two master VU meters on the meter bridge.
A 19-inch rack in a walnut cabinet: timecode unit with dot-matrix display, vintage compressor with gain-reduction VU, parametric EQ with its curve lit up, LED spectrum analyzer and phase meter.
With files and NAS, they measure the real signal. With streaming, the measurement is simulated and the app says so on screen.
A reference spectrum analyzer that shows frequencies as a 3D waterfall: the newest line in front, older ones fading into darkness. A 20 Hz to 20 kHz axis, with level shown as height and color.
A dynamic range meter in the spirit of DR measurement: a large score for the track, from 1 to 20 (red is crushed music, green is dynamic), the score of each 3 s section and a live peak-versus-RMS bar.
A resolution analyzer: the file format, which of the 24 bits are actually in use now and over the last few seconds, and the spectrum up to the Nyquist frequency, with the measured band.
A radio and TV studio instrument with two peak programme meters (PPM), left and right. Each standard brings its own scale and ballistics.
A stereo image analyzer: a polar half-moon goniometer (mono pointing up, L and R at ±45°) plots each sample pair in amber phosphor. Beside it, four meters: phase correlation, stereo width, L/R balance and M/S levels.
A mastering-room true peak meter: per-channel LED bars compare the highest sample (dBFS) with the true peak reconstructed between samples (dBTP, with 4× oversampling).
Also: karaoke-style lyrics and goniometer. With Apple Music, the audio is protected, so the meters are simulated and the app says so on screen.
In Cover Flow, covers turn in 3D as you swipe on your iPhone, and the big screen follows along. Tap a cover to flip the record and see the tracks on the back.
Try it: drag the covers, swipe on the trackpad or use the arrow keys. Click the centre cover to see the tracks.
Tracks Click or tap again to return to the coverTap the artist or album name, on your iPhone or the big screen, and its page opens right beside what's playing.
Sources: Wikipedia, Wikidata, MusicBrainz, TheAudioDB and Apple Music. The illustration alongside features a fictional band.
For people who read the whole liner notes: who played, who recorded it, which edition. And a collection that is always in order.
The features are the same on both: EQ, room correction, visualizers, lyrics. What changes is the audio path to the DAC.
Simplicity and Apple Music
Bit-perfect for your library
EQ, room correction, ReplayGain and crossfeed alter the signal on purpose. For true bit-perfect playback, leave them off.
HyperFi Remote for iPhone and Apple Watch. HyperFi Player for iPad, Mac and Apple TV.
Free 7-day trial · then HyperFi Premium: one-time purchase, no subscription.
