High Resolution Audio vs Emby

[Richard Branches 278]

I've been looking at some info about high resolution audio support on Android and all I've seen is complaints about poor support by the Android driver in this regard, where the driver resamples everything to 48Khz instead of playing the audio in its real resolution even on phones with DACs that support up to 192Khz.

In a previous release of Emby for Android mobile I saw the release notes saying the app was supporting high res on phones that support it, but given the above situation I wonder what the Emby app actually supports in this regard.

One suggestion could be adding the real output the app is giving in the "Stats for nerds" option inside the cog icon in the now playing screen.

Edited April 10, 2023 by Richard Branches

[Luke 40111]

Hi, yes we can certainly look at expanding on that information in future updates. thanks.

[Richard Branches 278]

Can you please then move this topic to the feature requests section?

Thanks.

[GrimReaper 4156]

Done.

[Richard Branches 278]

On 1/24/2022 at 12:24 PM, Luke said:

Hi, yes we can certainly look at expanding on that information in future updates. thanks.

But what does the app do? is it outputting the real resolution or is it resampling everything to 48 khz as well?.

Edited March 20, 2022 by Richard Branches

[Luke 40111]

On 3/19/2022 at 8:02 PM, Richard Branches said:

But what does the app do? is it outputting the real resolution or is it resampling everything to 48 khz as well?.

We are configuring the player we're embedding to not resample so it should not be, when possible.

[Richard Branches 278]

I bought a FiiO KA1 USB-C DAC for my phone and this is what I found out:

The DAC has an RGB indicator light that changes depending on the format and audio quality:

- Blue: when 44.1Khz and 48Khz is playing. So far so good.

- Yellow: When 88.2Khz and higher are playing, the Emby app on my phone was able to output these qualities. So far so good.

- Green: When native DSD is playing, the Emby app was unable to play or passthrough this format.

- Magenta: This is for FLAC files encoded in MQA, I have a few songs on this format but unfortunately the Emby app passed only the standard quality and I imagine the reason is because the MQA core needs to be implemented in the app in order for this to work, more info here https://www.mqa.co.uk/tag435sdf43te and here https://github.com/purpl3F0x/MQA_identifier/tree/master/gui. Perhaps you can make the app to tell the DAC that the song playing is MQA encoded. An MQA sample is attached here Coldplay - Paradise.flac

I was impressed that the app actually passed through all Hi-Res qualities, however, on the Android TV app the situation is very different, this is the current state:

I hope all this gets implemented in a not so distant future...

[Luke 40111]

6 hours ago, Richard Branches said:

I bought a FiiO KA1 USB-C DAC for my phone and this is what I found out:

The DAC has an RGB indicator light that changes depending on the format and audio quality:

- Blue: when 44.1Khz and 48Khz is playing. So far so good.

- Yellow: When 88.2Khz and higher are playing, the Emby app on my phone was able to output these qualities. So far so good.

- Green: When native DSD is playing, the Emby app was unable to play or passthrough this format.

- Magenta: This is for FLAC files encoded in MQA, I have a few songs on this format but unfortunately the Emby app passed only the standard quality and I imagine the reason is because the MQA core needs to be implemented in the app in order for this to work, more info here https://www.mqa.co.uk/tag435sdf43te and here https://github.com/purpl3F0x/MQA_identifier/tree/master/gui. Perhaps you can make the app to tell the DAC that the song playing is MQA encoded. An MQA sample is attached here  Coldplay - Paradise.flac 31.91 MB · 0 downloads

I was impressed that the app actually passed through all Hi-Res qualities, however, on the Android TV app the situation is very different, this is the current state:

I hope all this gets implemented in a not so distant future...

Cool thanks for sharing. We are looking into the dsd issue.

[Richard Branches 278]

On 4/20/2023 at 12:14 AM, Luke said:

We are looking into the dsd issue

Make sure the app supports the three DSD available modes:

- DSD converted to PCM.

- DoP (DSD over PCM).

- DSD native.

The "Exclusive USB Audio Access Mode" option for DACs is needed of course for all this to work, which it's already requested here:

 

Thank you.

Edited May 17, 2023 by Richard Branches

[Richard Branches 278]

Android 14 will supposedly provide support for direct USB DAC playback along with the "bit perfect" playback, therefore, below is the available documentation about it, I hope that you guys take a look at this and implement the API in the Android app, I will be more than happy to test it out with my DAC and provide support once I get a phone with Android 14 of course:

Preferred mixer attributes on USB devices:

https://source.android.com/docs/core/audio/preferred-mixer-attr?hl=en

AudioMixerAttributes:

https://developer.android.com/reference/android/media/AudioMixerAttributes

[Luke 40111]

Sounds promising.

[Richard Branches 278]

Looks like the "bit-perfect" feature can be tested on any Android phone with Android 14 despite Google statement that it needs to be "turned ON" by each OEM in order to work, therefore, there is an app which it seems to be the first one supporting the feature, the app is called Omnia (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rhmsoft.omnia) and I was able to test it out on my Moto G34 with Android 14 and my FiiO KA1, at first it didn't work but I contacted the developer and after testing several builds the bit-perfect feature finally works.

Currently, the app upscales or resamples everything to the maximum resolution that a DAC supports but that is better than getting everything resampled to 48Khz, the developer will continue working to improve the app until every song plays in its native resolution.

All this mean that you guys can start the development of this feature in the Emby for Android app and I will be more than happy to test it out for you and provide feedback.

Note: for those interested in testing Omnia, please wait until the developer releases the final build with the implementation that works correctly, it should be version 1.7.2 or higher.

[sydlexius 268]

On 5/28/2024 at 9:18 AM, Richard Branches said:

Looks like the "bit-perfect" feature can be tested on any Android phone with Android 14 despite Google statement that it needs to be "turned ON" by each OEM in order to work, therefore, there is an app which it seems to be the first one supporting the feature, the app is called Omnia (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rhmsoft.omnia) and I was able to test it out on my Moto G34 with Android 14 and my FiiO KA1, at first it didn't work but I contacted the developer and after testing several builds the bit-perfect feature finally works.

Currently, the app upscales or resamples everything to the maximum resolution that a DAC supports but that is better than getting everything resampled to 48Khz, the developer will continue working to improve the app until every song plays in its native resolution.

All this mean that you guys can start the development of this feature in the Emby for Android app and I will be more than happy to test it out for you and provide feedback.

Note: for those interested in testing Omnia, please wait until the developer releases the final build with the implementation that works correctly, it should be version 1.7.2 or higher.

I can see not wanting to resample something to a rate that isn't an even multiple (44.1kHz -> 48kHz), but there's no demonstrable benefit to upsampling to even multiples (44.1kHz -> 88.2kHz, etc).  With that said, I'd love to be able to ditch using USB Audio Player PRO in favor of Emby (or Symfonium, @Tolriq) for bit-perfect listening!

[Tolriq 135]

Device needs to add support https://source.android.com/docs/core/audio/preferred-mixer-attr you can check those files on your device

And as said when it's officially out I'll support this.

 

[Richard Branches 278]

4 hours ago, Tolriq said:

Device needs to add support https://source.android.com/docs/core/audio/preferred-mixer-attr you can check those files on your device

And as said when it's officially out I'll support this.

 

I already told you in the forum of your app that ANY PHONE with Android 14 already have support like mine (Moto G34).

[Tolriq 135]

No they don't, the fact that you say something does not make it true ...

They need to add some very specific things as very well documented, including in what you linked ... Anyway I'm out, you are always so nice in our exchanges that it's not worth it.

[Richard Branches 278]

4 hours ago, Tolriq said:

And as said when it's officially out I'll support this.

After I connect the DAC to my phone, the Omnia app shows a notification at the bottom that informs that it was detected along with the maximum resolution the DAC supports, that is something I suggested to the developer to do, let me know if you need more proof:

[Tolriq 135]

And again, YOUR phone and maybe a few others have added the necessary thing, but all you can say and repeat is :

Quote

I already told you in the forum of your app that ANY PHONE with Android 14 already have support like mine (Moto G34).

With a big large ANY PHONE that you completely make up without any evidence, just that you know better than Google and all the docs, because well who cares about those, it's easier to just know the truth.

No need to answer I'll leave it to this thread asking support in Emby, I just answered as I was pinged.