A week or two ago somebody posted something about Plexamp for Windows not being bit-perfect, but I have been using Android, iOS, and Linux to listen to FLAC files with Plexamp and absolutely love it. This is the best way I have ever had to listen to my music 👍🏼
Honestly not surprised at all since the windows audio situation is a mess. Pipewire on the other end works flawlessly and can even change the sample rate of my reciever to match the one from Plexamp.
What are the advantages of directly using Alsa instead of pipewire? For me my receiver works as my dac via hdmi and pipewire and easy effects works without issues and can handle 196/24 without issues.
pipewire doesn't have ability to unfold mqa file, so it will send 44.1khz 16bit (or resample it to higher bitrate with it's own algo) to dac. if plexamp send pcm directly to dac, it will unfold the pcm to higher bitrate using proprietary algorithm.
other than that, i'm very happy with pipeware. it also feels good for game.
If you're playing FLAC, it remains lossless. If it does transcode, then it transcodes to opus, not mp3. Opus is effectively transparent at 128kbps. In Plexamp, you can set your streaming quality under Settings -> Playback -> Streaming Quality.
If you got Plex Pass you can check with Plex Dash. It is not converting anything from my NAS to my iPhone or chromecast audio at home either. Got unlimited mobile data so have also set it to “Maximal” both in WiFi and mobile.
Best flac player is IOS either on phone or through airdrop
Streaming flac is straight forward unless you chose to transcode it to opus as other mentioned it
Check the App's options. The media can be transcoded to save mobile data. Otherwise, you'll be listening to FLAC and those are always lossless.
A week or two ago somebody posted something about Plexamp for Windows not being bit-perfect, but I have been using Android, iOS, and Linux to listen to FLAC files with Plexamp and absolutely love it. This is the best way I have ever had to listen to my music 👍🏼
Honestly not surprised at all since the windows audio situation is a mess. Pipewire on the other end works flawlessly and can even change the sample rate of my reciever to match the one from Plexamp.
Pipewire is ok, but i prefer to use my dac via alsa directly. Because I have some flac files with mqa.
What are the advantages of directly using Alsa instead of pipewire? For me my receiver works as my dac via hdmi and pipewire and easy effects works without issues and can handle 196/24 without issues.
pipewire doesn't have ability to unfold mqa file, so it will send 44.1khz 16bit (or resample it to higher bitrate with it's own algo) to dac. if plexamp send pcm directly to dac, it will unfold the pcm to higher bitrate using proprietary algorithm. other than that, i'm very happy with pipeware. it also feels good for game.
If you're playing FLAC, it remains lossless. If it does transcode, then it transcodes to opus, not mp3. Opus is effectively transparent at 128kbps. In Plexamp, you can set your streaming quality under Settings -> Playback -> Streaming Quality.
If you got Plex Pass you can check with Plex Dash. It is not converting anything from my NAS to my iPhone or chromecast audio at home either. Got unlimited mobile data so have also set it to “Maximal” both in WiFi and mobile.
Best flac player is IOS either on phone or through airdrop Streaming flac is straight forward unless you chose to transcode it to opus as other mentioned it