It is to bad that plexamp has no option to play bitperfect with asio drivers. Now I only can use the windows driver. With is software conversion.
Most DAC’s come with an Asio driver so please my suggestion is to support that.
Solution: I installed VB asio bridge to get access the usb asio driver. It is not bit perfect but it is best solution.
Surely if foobar offers bit perfect playback on our expensive DAC/AMPs, PlexAMP should?
Makes you rethink using plexamp if you have decent gear…
EDIT: Have been comparing plexamp to musicbee in wasapi exclusive mode for bit perfect audio (eg Saint-Saens at 24/96) , and it may be my brain hearing things, though the music bee/bit perfect sounds crisper, more alive, whilst the plexamp version sounds slightly muffled (as I’ve read elsewhere).
It’s noticeable (and my gear isn’t super expensive - $800 headphones and $600 headphone amp).
That’s not good. Wondering if I should be using musicbee for listening on my headphone amp and plexamp when away from it, which would be very annoying.
For me, an application that claims to be specialized in music, especially since with the name that the application bears “Amp”, it’s incomprehensible that the PlexAmp application cannot do bitperfect.
It absolutely needs support for ASIO or Wasapi, at least on Windows (Linux is a whole other topic).
Otherwise, it is nothing to me but a useless application with lots of color…
It’s a shame to use Foobar2000 (that I’m using) when you have Plex which should be able to do everything (film, tv, music).
I understand that Hi-Fi is a complicated subject, but I don’t think adding ASIO or Wasapi support should be that complicated.
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old stuff, Windows users don’t need it 
Lol. That post is amazing -_-'.
Be careful, however, because Plex and Plexamp have very little in common, as has been said many times and therefore justifying shortcomings on both sides: Plex has exclusive audio and this is great for films but for music it is unusable as it does not have gapless.
Plexamp is great in the car but certainly not for audiophile listening, unlike foobar, a player that cares about substance and has an ultra-tested engine that has improved over the years.
On iOS side it’s bit-perfect; on recent Android it is as well. So not sure what sort of hardware you have in the car?
In car I have a good system, Plexamp allows me to listen lossless but I don’t claim bit-perfect, at home I do.
I’m not sure what you mean by this.
As far as I’m concerned, Plexamp does a great job in the car, where bit-perfect is the least of the problems.
However, in this thread we are all Windows users and, I’m sorry, but at the moment there are much better solutions for serious home listening.
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We are planning to add better audio support to Windows. In the meantime, Linux, Raspberry Pi, and macOS provide high quality bit-perfect solutions with Plexamp.
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OK, great news. I hope it comes soon!
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ASIO and DSD keeps coming up all the time over the years - nice to see it finally acknowledged in a way
To clarify, I’ve acknowledged neither of those two things—no plans to add ASIO support, and no plays to provide DSD passthrough.
I’ll go back in the corner and cry. I look forward to whatever “better audio support to Windows” you had in mind. Until then, back to f2k and asio plug-in.
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Wouldn’t WASAPI in exclusive mode be just as good as ASIO?
Yes, but it is WASAPI (Exclusive Mode) that needs to be implemented.
That would be great!
The advantage of WASAPI (Exclusive Mode) is that it doesn’t require installing any drivers. However, ASIO is a bit of a step up when it comes to playing very high-definition files.
Sorry, the site is in French, but it explains things very well: https://www.qobuz.com/fr-fr/magazine/story/Qobuz-Vous/Les-modes-de-lecture-du-Desktop179381/
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Hi @elan – I think there are some small things Plex could consider to present Plexamp more confidently to people who are concerned about high-res audio quality, and without going down a path of building audiophile-specific capabilities.
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Allow the user to set a fixed sampling rate to resample all audio to, up to the highest their DAC supports. I think this would be an easy change, would enable Sweet Fades with a consistent sample rate, avoid transcoding higher resolution media to a lower rate, avoid noisy/disruptive DAC settings changes with strict sample rates, and enable Plexamp to perform consistently in all situations (output not determined by what music is played first).
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Use a high-quality sample rate converter for both up-sampling and down-sampling. Two free (with permissive licensing) sample rate converters used in audiophile applications are SoX and r8brain. I am not sure what the Plexamp app uses, but the server-side Plex Transcoder looks like an ffmpeg command and does not look to include advanced resampling. ffmpeg can be easily linked with SoX resampler (libsoxr) with --enable-libsoxr, and SoX very high-quality (VHQ) settings are well-defined, making this an easy change. This avoids perception of low-quality sample rate conversions being applied by Plexamp.
I think #1 and #2 are very important psychologically at least, because it is very easy to see that under the current Plexamp approach high-res audio is most likely being downsampled, and it is also easy to suspect the quality of that downsampling is not the same as other audiophile products – both easily addressed.
- DSD uses noise shaping to move noise into high frequencies. This noise needs to be filtered with a low-pass filter during playback. Differences in, or absence of, filtering could cause DSD from Plex to not sound as good as with other audiophile products. I am not sure about the Plexamp app, but I do not see ffmpeg-style filtering commands in Plex Transcoder executions for DSD transcoding. The ffmpeg SoX module also includes high-quality filters, and good filtering for different DSD rates is well-established, making this also an easy change. Audiophile products tend to allow some control of filtering, at least between minimum & linear phase, which people have differing views on, and either is just a simple filter setting for ffmpeg.
Thank you.
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so yet another manipulation of sound to “psychologically” forget bit-perfect… is a joke?
