Can't sync HD music without it being transcoded

[echoxxzz 22]

I have a lot of HD music (ie. 96+Khz, 24bit). In the Emby client for Android I set the Max audio file bitrate to None so none of my music is transcoded into an mp3 format. For most of my music files (ie. 44.1KHz, 16bit) when I download the song to play offline it downloads as a flac file. For some reason all  of my HD Music files keep getting transcoded to an inferior MP3 format. The HD Music plays just fine if I stream it from the server and is never transcoded.

 

After reviewing the server log I found this entry:

 

       Info App: Bitrate exceeds DirectPlay limit: media bitrate: 2837104, max bitrate: 2000000

 

It seems that the None setting for Max audio bitrate is actually 2000000, which would explain why all my HD Music is being transcoded.

 

Is this a hard limit or can I change it somewhere in the Sqlite database so my HD music isn't getting transcoded.

 

 

[Luke 42078]

Where did you configure the setting?

[echoxxzz 22]

In the Emby App for Android under Settings | Offline Sync | Max Audio file bitrate.

 

If I change it to say 320K and try downloading an HD music file the 2000000 value in the log file is now 320000. If I change it back to None it goes back to 2000000. 

[Luke 42078]

Ok when you select none it's actually using 2000000, simply because our api always needs to have a value. so we'll bump that to a much bigger number for the next release of the app. you'll need visit the settings screen to re-save the value. thanks.

[echoxxzz 22]

What's really strange is that this is only effecting my Emby account. If my wife downloads the exact same music file on her phone it doesn't transcode it. Even stranger is if I logoff of Emby on my phone and have her logon and download the same file it also works. And vice versa if I logon to her phone it stops working. It's clearly a setting in my account that isn't configured in her account.

[echoxxzz 22]

Okay I figured out why my wife's account appeared to be working. She had "Allow media downloading and syncing that requires transcoding", unchecked. Seems that by unchecking this setting you can still download media it just won't ever get transcoded even if the device doesn't support that file type. I'll uncheck this for my account since I never need require transcoding of any media either.

[Luke 42078]

Thanks for the info.

[Luke 42078]

There is a beta release available, 3.0.18, and it has the fix for this. Please reconfigure your download settings. Thanks.

[echoxxzz 22]

The new max bitrate of 5000000 is better but still not large enough to allow me to download FLAC media encoded at 192Khz/24bit without it being transcoded. Any chance you could double it? Even SACD to FLAC rips would fit if the value was doubled.

[Luke 42078]

Yes that's fine, thanks.