Is PlexAmp really “Bit Perfect” as claimed?

Plex Labs
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I’ve always found PlexAmp to sound dull, muffled, and quiet on my iOS and MacOS devices, however Plex claims it’s “Bit Perfect”, so I decided to test it. Please check out this video if you want to see for yourself, but something isn’t right. PlexAmp is objectively quieter by about 6db compared to several other popular players. Not shown in the video because it’s subjective, but even with matched volumes, PlexAmp just sounds flatter and more muffled to me. So which apps are the “bit perfect” apps, and which are the pretenders?

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FWIW I performed the same experiment on my Mac and the same SPL meter and for me Plexamp and Finder were exactly the same.

If you can reproduce, please upload the Plexamp logs right after so we can see what’s going on.

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If that’s the iOS version of Plexamp running on the Mac, worth trying the desktop version as well, that’s what I was using.

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Not sure why his reply was marked as spam, but he said:

Alright so I rebooted the computer and performed the test again and this time all the players sounded the same…I think your guess about the track being cued up was correct. I even closed PlexAmp and restarted it. When it restarted the same track was already cued up and paused at the same time stamp. Perhaps this fooled me into thinking it was refreshed when it wasn’t really?

Anyway, thank you for guiding me to clarity on this. I’m gonna delete the YouTube video so no one else is misled by “scientific” observations! Cheers Elan!

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Where?

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https://www.plex.tv/blog/free-bird-plexamp-spreads-its-wings-for-every-music-lover/

Pro Audio
Bit-perfect playback on iOS, macOS, and Linux with automatic sample rate matching.

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