Can I stream FLAC to Apple TV losslessly?

General Discussions
1

I have Drobo 5D and Apple TV. I’ve selected “original” quality and streaming 24 bit FLAC. But when I check in the status tab, it says “transcoding FLAC to AAC”. How come please?

2

@breakphreak@gmail.com said:
I have Drobo 5D and Apple TV. I’ve selected “original” quality and streaming 24 bit FLAC. But when I check in the status tab, it says “transcoding FLAC to AAC”. How come please?

Basically, the reason this is happening is mainly because of the client. Apple TV is the client for you and therefore, must be transcoded to achieve the audio for the device. Your files are FLAC. The Apple TV doesn’t support FLAC, but it does support Apple Lossless, WAV, and AIFF. Plex really needs to address Plex Music and in this case, transcoding Lossless to Lossless based on what the client is capable of playing.

If you have access to a Roku, try playing the same content through there, you’ll be able to achieve the FLAC sound because FLAC is a format Roku recognizes. As for Apple TV with Plex, it’s Plex that must work on transcoding Lossless to Lossless. This can only be done if they work on a way to give users the ability to transcode. I hope this helps.

3

Thanks! Just wrote a feature request. It should make a perfect sense to support that transcoding from Plex side. It could be a paid feature for audiophiles like me.

4

@breakphreak@gmail.com said:
Thanks! Just wrote a feature request. It should make a perfect sense to support that transcoding from Plex side. It could be a paid feature for audiophiles like me.

You’re welcome. It’s definitely a feature that would tighten Plex on the backend. I do agree with your comments. A Paid feature would be better to differentiate client support.

5

I’ve just checked the plex web interface while playing a FLAC from my QNAP NAS and got “direct play” mode. WOW! Did it actually happened? I’ve never seen any announcement.

6

That was added quite some time ago. Just a little after your last comment. It’s a feature of Plex Web. Not dependent on your server.

April 13, 2017
3.4.0

NEW:

Added support for direct play of FLAC tracks in Chrome and Firefox