Question about transcoding

General Discussions
1

Hello

Apologies if this is in the wrong place, but I’m not very tech literate so I couldn’t even figure out which specific category this should go into.

I have Plex running on my 2011 era Macbook, attached to a hard drive which is not directly connected to my home network. My laptop is connected to my network through an ethernet cable.

I play my music through a Cambridge Audio Minx Xi streaming amp, which is also attached to the network by ethernet and which has the ability to find the Plex server and play the music on the hard drive attached to my laptop.

All my music is stored as ALAC, a legacy issue of using iTunes and wishing to limit storage space. When I play music from my hard drive via Plex through the amp it tells me that the file is an ALAC at 44.1/16 as expected. However, I have just found a setting on the amp which sets a transcoding bitrate which was set at 192 - and only offers me up to 320. The technical material about the amp says it can play ALAC from storage or network across uPnP.

So the question I have it, having spent money on a seemingly decent amp, and more importantly, decent speakers, am I actually getting the lossless ALAC files being playing direct through the amp, or is Plex transcoding to max 320? Is there any way I can tell, beyond assuming it is direct if the manual says the amp can play ALAC direct?

2

If your amp is showing ALAC, then it is playing the file as is. The 320 limit only applied if PMS has to transcode the audio, in which case it will be MP3.

3

Thank you. I also found on the plex server browser app that it says in the active stream information whether it is being transcoded. I will double check the Minx display result against that.

Thanks again.

4

PS except apparently if you play from Plex to a Minx it doesn’t show up on the server…sigh.

5

If you connect to PMS’s DLNA server, that will not show up.

6

Gotcha, thank you.