It seems that, without warning, the Plex player now only supports 48kHz transcoded audio - BY DESIGN. Is this true? Please confirm so I know whether or not to cancel my subscription and warn others that may be considering this platform for music listening.
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Which player are you referring to?
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Thanks much for chiming in. I’m referring to the Plex player for Android etc. The one referred to here
Word is that there is no longer support for direct play/un-transcoded audio at 96k, 192k or multichannel. I’d just like to confirm if this is true or not. If Plex not longer supports hi-res or multichannel audio-only files it’s very important to my particular use case and I’ll actively (and regrettably) look for more suitable options and stop bugging everyone 
FWIW Qobuz plays 96k and 192k FLAC audio perfectly on the SHIELD. Time to cancel my Tidal membership maybe…
Very interested in this too. Plex server says my flac 5.1 96k/24b files are “direct play” but the output from my nVidia shield or roku running the plex client is only 2.0 pcm 48khz. The problem doesn’t appear to be on the server side, but with the plex app / plex player itself.
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We’ll be looking to resolve that issue in the future and play multi-channel and higher bitrate/sample rate files properly.
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Many thanks Elan. It helps to know that this is indeed a known situation and that the Plex team are looking into it. Please know that to some of your customers, this is their primary usage for Plex, and the reason they first bought into the platform and the reason they have maintained membership over teh years. 48k stereo playback of all audio is simply not acceptable, as I’m sure you can imagine. I’m assuming it’s asking too much for a timeline, but do you have a (rough) timeline?
Again, thank you kindly for taking the time to let us know you are looking to resolve this. Please keep us posted if you can. Take care and have a nice weekend.
I’m not positive on this, but I believe from previous discussions on this topic that the issue is Android only supports outputting upto 48kHz. It can read higher sampling rates, but it gets reduced when it actually come out. An external DAC connected to the USB port of a Shield may not have this same limitation. AFAIK, this is not an artificial limit that Plex has implemented.
My Shield outputs 96 kHz DTS stereo to my AVR just fine, while FLAC and PCM audio are limited to 48kHz. Why are those being singled out?
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No this is not true. I am playing 192k 24-bit via Qobuz as I write this. My receiver shows the proper sample rate and switches accordingly (88.2, 96, 192, 48). Tidal will do 96k. Plex for Kodi will do 192 and multichannel etc. I’ve had a Shield and Plex since early 2017 and for the bulk of that time it worked just fine. It seems that at some point the app was altered, removing this capability for other reasons as Elan refers to.
But we should all get one the same page about this, as I hear this often…that all Android devices are limited to 48kHz. It’s absolutely not true. It has worked. It can work. Which is why I find it so disappointing that it doesn’t work.
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Are you talking about the audio portion of a video or music files? These are different things and handled differently. Audio within a video file can use passthrough to send the audio as-is to a receiver. AFAIK, passthrough cannot be used for FLAC.
The limit I was referring to is for the audio player that comes included with Android. That is the music player Plex was using. Plex is slowly switching over to a newer/better music player. I don’t know the details, but this can open up the music abilities.
If you can provide me the XML for something along with the Android logs while trying to play that file, I can check what the app is doing.
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The 96 kHz DTS, 96 kHz DTS-MA and 96 kHz PCM tracks are within music videos, or rips from audio blu rays (mkv container). The 96 kHz DTS, & DTS-MA audio tracks passthrough the Shield to my Denon AVR at 96kHz. However, the 96 kHz PCM audio tracks within music videos are sent to my AVR at 48kHz. In this case why does it downsample the PCM tracks?
The FLAC audio tracks (88kHz,96kHz & 192kHz) are in flac containers, and are received by my AVR at 48kHz when played through Plex.
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It would be phenomenal if this would get fixed. My music library is filled with high-resolution audio that I’ve spent a lot of money collecting.
This is not documented anywhere, and is especially noteworthy:
HERE (limitations when running PMS on Shield)
and HERE (Audio Configuration Guide)
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Wow thanks elan! This is really great to hear that multi channel hires is on the radar again. If you need any help testing just say the word! I’m sure you’ve got plenty of volunteers here when your team is ready 
Noted 
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