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Love Plexamp, especially when connected to my car. I recently upgraded my phone from a Pixel 2XL (Android 11) to a Pixel 6 Pro (Android 12).
On my new phone’s Plexamp app I’ve set the Music Quality> Cellular 320 Kbps and only get 128 Kbps for playback. The source files in my library are all lossless FLAC. I didn’t have this problem with my old Pixel 2XL (Android 11). I’ve mirrored the settings across both devices. No luck.
Bug? Advice?
In Plexamp:
Settings - Advanced - “Conversion Bitrate”
The setting in your screenshot operates more like a threshold value, above which transcoding is engaged.
This allows you to direct-play e.g. 320 kbps mp3 files, but keep the rest of the transcodes at e.g. 256 kbps.
That worked! Thanks for the assist.
n.b. anything greater than 128kbps is a waste of bandwidth. opus is a great codec and considered transparent at that bitrate.
Nope.
Just because you say so doesn’t make it true.
Just because you can’t hear the difference does not mean no one can.
if you’re able to tell the difference with a blind ABX test then that’s interesting, otherwise it’s just your brain fooling you.
OPUS is as good as always transparent from 128kbit. And considering the locations you’d be likely to use cellular data (on the go, outside) ambient noise will make the difference irrelevant anyway. You’re only fooling yourself by believing otherwise.
I am a (not professional) musician with (not professional) producing know how, for sure I can feel the difference. What I would accept is that after 256kbit is VERY difficult and few people could recognize any difference. But 128kbit is not that difficult. I pity your ear if you really can’t, but I assume that you actually can but you are an Internet Warrior who are never wrong. And even if you really can’t, if someone with better ear is with you and tell you where the differences are and what to look for and practice with you with some examples you could learn to make a difference in probably less than one or two hours.
I would accept as well that most people stream music in loud places with subpair headphones and subpair DACs though.
Not all bitrates are equal. Opus is not mp3. A 128kbit Opus is comparable to a much higher bitrate mp3.
This is a pretty nice Opus bitrate comparison https://opus-bitrates.anthum.com/
E: I’d recommend doing a ABX test in foobar with your music of choice. foobar2000: Components Repository - ABX Comparator
Hi there, I’ve been doing a fair amount of research into codecs lately.
Ogg Opus and Ogg Vorbis use algorithms that categorically steamroll most other lossy codecs even though you use lower bitrates. (Source: OpusFAQ - XiphWiki - but not FLAC/ALAC/WAV because these are not lossy formats and its not optimal to stream these even if you have “unlimited bandwidth”)
If you get a FLAC and compare it to OPUS then obviously you will hear a difference but you may need to really look out for it and compare them side by side to notice a difference especially if you use an optimal bitrate ( Understanding audio bitrate and audio quality | Adobe ; yes there are optimal bitrates for codecs simply adding big numbers won’t make your music better) on your lossy codec. (even when you use gimmick software like Sony’s DSEE HX, which claims to “uncompress lossy audio to higher quality” you can still notice a difference on some songs that make use of the larger spectrum saved by FLAC/ALAC/WAV and so on and so fourth)
However… if your going to compare OPUS 128 to 256 kbps and saying you can hear a difference, well I am sorry to break the news to you that is indeed your mind playing tricks on you. This is regardless of what DAC or headphones you use or the environment because each algorithm has its own “secret sauce” if you will to compress audio. The optimal bitrate for OPUS is 192 kbps is literally the sweet spot set by a bunch of organizations ( rfc6716 ) . None of these secret sauces compare to your original zezty FLAC but the rest try all these weird things to make it kind of like the original. They add different ratios of water, spaces, mayo, etc.
kbps is akin to how much sauce you use. Do you always need a lot of sauce to make a sandwich taste great? No you don’t and the amount of sauce you put on your sammy won’t always make it like the original secret sauce thats used on the spongebob krabby patty.
However when you compare mayo/shiracha/ketchup (OPUS) to honey mustard/ketchup (MP3) there will obviously be a difference because these use two completely different approaches as to how to shrink music. So you need less of the OPUS to MP3. Drowning your sandwich in either or you might feel better and great about it but its not going to make the sub taste any more or less better; your just eating more of something. (eg. if you use OPUS at say 320 kbps but you use spatial audio that exceeds 92 khz you might or might not hear that spatial audio and that file is going to be huge for nothing because adding more kbps will not necessarily capture ranges past 92 khz; which is often required of dolby atmos and used often with uncompressed classical music)
I hope this light hearted analogy has cleared up how music algorithms work. I mostly used food because like music it is mostly down to user preference. If you want to drown your sub into ranch, marinara, and cheese sauce I won’t judge… but y-you only need a little.
well yes but now i’m really hungry.
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