Plex no longer cares about releasing quality software or acknowledging the loyalty of their fans. Just waiting for a viable alternative.
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This is a HUGE bummer! This used to work great and Plex has worked as a nice front end to my audio system.
Further, I love the new Plex Amp application, but I could tell right away something wasn’t right.
I moved away from Kodi a long time ago and became a Plex fan. There are still so many things I love about Plex, but this is a bit of a deal-breaker for me. 
Plex team, please re-consider.
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I’m really struggling with PLEX’s strategy on this topic. Now I see they are pushing TIDAL within the plex app (instead of having a standalone tidal subscription).
WHY ON EARTH WOULD ANYONE DO THAT WHEN PLEX LIMITS AUDIO TO 48KHZ??
The whole selling point of TIDAL is the master audio quality, 24bit, 192KHZ studio sampled master tracks. There’s no way I’d cancel my regular tidal subscription to subscribe thru PLEX if plex is going to cap the quality of output at 48khz. Not to mention all the other perks like android auto’s tidal app, etc.
Seriously PLEX, step up your game…
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Any updates on this. I bought a shield to play my Hi-res music and my regular music in shuffle and everything is 16 bit. WTF? Not happy. Has anyone found a work around?
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I’ve just found that there is Tidal via Plex which started to make sense for me to look back to Plex as music playing solution -> mix of my local music files + Tidal sounds really tempting and make me think about Plex Pass.
Then first test and such a disappointment - all music is played with 16bit 48kHz :o
Unfortunately this defeated whole sense of switching Tidal account to Plex and using plex…
There is other solution targeting Hi-Res music streaming on the market and there my next step is leading.
I hope Plex team would understand importance of Hi-Res music which becoming so popular this days becoming a real business case
and maybe someday I can consider returning to Plex once again.
Couldn’t agree with you more. The entire selling point of tidal is the master audio quality output, but then for plex to nerf it to 48khz is just a giant kick to the nuts!
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Just purchased Shield TV Pro and experienced this unpleasant surprise. 24 / 96 FLAC served from Plex is playing out at 48k. My receiver reports the sampling rate but not the bitrate. At least, for this format / test.
Mac Mini running PMS
Shield TV Pro, native Plex app
Yamaha RX-A700
TL;DR - But I found a goofy workaround. Using Plex app on iPhone, cue up same 24/96 FLAC. Then use Shield’s built-in Chromecast feature to cast from iPhone Plex to the Shield. Receiver reports 96k. Note - there will be two Shield cast options. I used the first one - the second one [I believe it had (TV) noted in parentheses] simply allowed the iPhone to control the Shield’s native Plex app. Thus yielding downsampled audio. Hope that helps others.
^ Update - nah. That “trick” doesn’t work any more.
Chiming in - Plex team please note one more user desperately wanting this feature back. I chased this bug for so long, only to find this thread and I find out it’s because the feature has been removed?! 
I noticed that Plex is transcodes FLAC 5.1 surround MKVs to AC3.
I can understand the beauty of cross-fading etc. But please allow us with high res and multi channel music libraries to fully enjoy that quality too. That worked before and is also expected from your product. If we can’t have both at the same time, then give us a switch.
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Yeah, why is Plex converting my DTS audio to stereo flac, DTS is supported by Plex, Roku and my AVR so why mess
Also for me, random flac files play in 5.1 and others are converted to stereo, I haven’t found any correlating factors yet
are you kidding is it doing this, ugh I hadn’t noticed (yet)
I think the only direct play option for shield at this point is kodi plex connect
Yeah it’s basically one of the only things I switch my Xbox on for, it’s gotten so bad I obsessively check Tautulli everytime I play a file
Add me to the list of users who WANT this feature back - c’mon Plex!
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What a crap. Was considering to start with “Plex Pass”. Doesn’t have any sense anymore.
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I’ have noticed that the USB output on the shield will send 24/192 however I feel this may be upscaling everything regardless to 24/192. I don’t have a usb dac that will accept multi channel so I can only test 2ch. If only we could have unmolested bit-prefect multitrack audio like with Jriver MC.
The last good Plex player can output up to 24/192 is
kepler-armv7a-googlePlay-stdExo-7.7.2.7700-be95bda6(2018-11-02).apk
After that release i lost the hi-res audio playback.
You can update your server but not your player if you want to keep the hi-res audio playback.
Download link with plex pass:
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Thanks for this 
Have you managed to get it working?
What USB dac do you use?
Its the USB input on my Emotiva XMC-2 Pre/pro
I’m also having this issue on an Nvidia Shield Pro 2019. Using latest Plex beta build on the Shield. And, yes, like many mentioned, it used to work correctly.
