Audiophile nerd + plex. How to get the best sound / bit-perfect to my hifi?

Plex Players Desktop Players
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Server Version#: 1.19.4.2935
Player Version#:Any

I have lovely music library on my plex server mainly in 192KHz/24bit. I have decent enough hifi kit for my tastes at present. Lucky boy. Ha! :slightly_smiling_face:

The question I have is therefore how to best to play my lossless library bit-perfect? I tried via a mini fanless pc running windows 10, plex windows player, to an expensive DAC but that failed miserably because the plex app doesn’t support DAC’s properly. But it did allow me to remotely control the plex media player on the mini pc using my android tablet
 So I could sit on my sofa, turn tv off, and still control the music playing on the mini pc. So from that side it was great. Just a shame the audio quality sucked.

Then I tried an optical cable out from the PC to my DAC
 But plex media player still seems to do transcoding on all of the files - I can tell the quality is reduced (detail goes, openness and smoothness of the sound just disappears). So much so, what’s the point of having Hi-Res music if plex is transcoding it to a reduced bit rate anyway. Shame.

So I tried plexamp, that’s much better - looks like it passes the audio directly out without transcoding. BUT
 that doesn’t have the ability to be controlled headlessly and remotely via a plex app on my android tablet or phone. So in order to play tracks I have to switch on the tv, and use mouse and keyboard
 )-: Not what I want really. Sometimes the joy of listening to music is not having to have visual stimulus.

So I gave up on plex player apps, and switched on Plex’s DNLA server, and tried using my Marantz HEOS built in Network Player to stream files from the plex server acting as a DNLA server. But
 the plot thickens, because for some reason it looks like there’s an incompatibility between plex and Denon / Marantz’s HEOS as it won’t play WAV files from Plex, yet other DNLA servers are fine. (Have another open thread asking about that on here).

So honestly, is my only option to ditch Plex as a server in order to play my files losslessly to my hifi, without having to use my tv and a mouse and keyboard?

Is there any other way to have plex serve media losslessly without transcoding?

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I use a Roku Ultra to play FLAC-encoded music and it works just fine. No transcoding happens.

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If you can forget this, there are a few ways to play without transcoding happening.
Few ppl know what “bit-perfect” entails, and for normal listeners (yes, even hifi enthusiasts) it doesn’t matter in the slightest.

My way is to:

  • set the DAC to a fixed, high sample rate of 96 or 192 kHz (depending on what sounds better to your ears)
  • use a client which supports the file format without transcoding (PMP or Plexamp)

Most optical connections are limited to 48 kHz at 20 bit. Don’t expect more.

If you go to
Settings - Server - DLNA - ‘Show Advanced’ - “DLNA default protocol info”
you could edit the default content

http-get:*:video/mpeg:*,http-get:*:video/mp4:*,http-get:*:video/vnd.dlna.mpeg-tts:*,http-get:*:video/avi:*,http-get:*:video/x-matroska:*,http-get:*:video/x-ms-wmv:*,http-get:*:video/wtv:*,http-get:*:audio/mpeg:*,http-get:*:audio/mp3:*,http-get:*:audio/mp4:*,http-get:*:audio/x-ms-wma*,http-get:*:audio/wav:*,http-get:*:audio/L16:*,http-get:*image/jpeg:*,http-get:*image/png:*,http-get:*image/gif:*,http-get:*image/tiff:*

And replace the default http-get:*:audio/wav:*,http-get:*:audio/L16:*,
with http-get:*:audio/x-wav:*,
You might also try and add http-get:*:audio/flac:*, or http-get:*:audio/x-flac:*,
See if that changes anything after a server restart.

1 Like
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Hey thanks OttoKerner. Will try this and will report back.

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I tried replacing the default DNLA protocol info with what you suggested, then rebooted the server. But sadly made no difference. Still wont play WAV files.

This is very peculiar, because the HEOS will play the same WAV from a different DNLA server on the same physical NAS.

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