Nvidia Shield and Wavpack

[smoothquark 5]

Just trying to pick brains...

I have quite a few DSD files that I have converted to wavpack - these play as DSD via DoP on my DAC in a different room when playing on a RPi via USB using MPD and not Emby. I am trying to play the wavpack files on Emby on my Nvidia Shield, but this gets converted to AAC 24/192, stutters a lot and sounds absolutely awful. I have the NVidia Shield connected to my Denon AVR for both sterero and multichannel music. I also use the Tidal app on the Shield (less said about it, the better!). Yes, I am aware that I can simple convert DSD to PCM FLAC and be done with it...

1. Admittedly, my Emby server runs on a QNAP NAS, and it has not got sufficient horsepower to transcode without stuttering. However, the trancoding / playback does not always show up on the Emby dashboard - not sure whether this is a bug or whether it is because of a lack of horsepower. I assume that the transcoding is happening as the sample rate for the wavpack is 352.8kHz, with the maximum being reported by the Nvidia Shield to the Emby server is 192kHz? Is there a way to bypass this?

2. Ideally, I would love it if Emby on the NVidia Shield / Android TV could play DSD directly via USB to a DAC supporting Dop and/or native DSD. I do have UAPP running on the shield and it does play play both wavpack and .dsf files, but as it is not a native Android TV app, so the D-pad on the Shield remote cannot be used to navigate it properly. I don't think UAPP will ever become truly Android TV compatible and I am assuming there is no way ever that the Emby app will output direct to USB. Perhaps things might change if Nvidia ever provides and Android 14 update for the Shield.

3. Kodi on the Shield does play wavpack files - plays them as 32 bit 176.4kHz files via HDMI to the Denon. Sounds actually quite good - certainly far better than Emby transcoding. Kodi does have its own player built-in which is doing the conversions. I thought Emby on Android TV used its own built-in player? If so, is it possible to get the the player to downsample from 352.8kHz to 176.4kHz? The Shield definitely has the processing ability to do so - in fact, even multichannel wavpack files play fine!

I am also using Kodi a bit more as there is a plugin to support Tidal. It works much better than the built-in Tidal app, but is rather clunky. Overall, I much prefer Emby for the UI as well as the client-server model which serves other devices in different rooms. Pity that Emby will not support streaming services, but I guess it is better to do the few things well rather than try to do everything and mess it all up.    

[Luke 40086]

Hi, yes we have an open issue with .dsd files on android that we are looking into. Thanks for reporting.

[smoothquark 5]

Any updates on this? I have been doing more testing, and interestingly, one of wavpack files actually was shown as "direct play" on the Emby dashboard. When stopped and played again, it was being transcoded and did not actually show its status on the dashboard. I have seen this on a number of occasions where the dashboard does not show what is playing.

[Luke 40086]

HI, we are still looking into this. Thanks.

[smoothquark 5]

Thank you.