Ronstang 293 Posted July 31, 2020 Posted July 31, 2020 I have a fairly large music collection that consists of over 6000 albums in various formats. I have mostly mP3s that are encoded in LAME VBR mostly at high quality levels. I also have a lot of music in lossless format, which while mostly redundant it is the format of choice to play at home. I use the mP3s on my phone as a music player in the car. My preferred lossless format is WavPack and all my CDs are archived as WavPack images. I also have individual WavPack tracks that I can play back on numerous software on the computer including Windows Media Center which has how I have been organizing my music for over a decade. Will EMBY even play WavPack tracks at all? I have a lot of FLAC files and images also but I prefer WavPack in all instances but I can easily change all my files to FLAC if I have to.....but it is going to take a lot of evenings. If I switch to FLAC is there any way for EMBY to directly play my music to my sound system without transcoding to mP3? I have my HTPC connected directly to my sound system and use WMC to play the files at the moment but I am in the process of switching all my movies over to EMBY so it only makes sense to do so with my music if it can play it the way I like. Will EMBY also transcode all my current mP3s in LAME VBR HQ while playing? If so then EMBY has no use to me as a way to handle my music and I'll have to find something else to use for my music in order to ditch WMC completely. I like the way EMBY handles the files but with music, for me at least, playback is most important and I'm very particular on this issue. I would like to use EMBY for all my media but will only use it for movies if it can't handle my music as desired. Basically....is there anyway to use EMBY as a frontend to organize my music letting an external player on the computer handle the files and playback to my sound system? I only care about local playback.....nothing has to be streamed over the network or internet. My phone is my music player every where else and has my most important music on it at all times. Thank you.
Carlo 4560 Posted July 31, 2020 Posted July 31, 2020 Here is what I'd suggest you do first thing. Install on your HTTP, Emby Theater for Windows available on the download page on our website or https://emby.media/emby-theater.html. Go into the configuration and set it up to match your sound system and then try some of your files. If you haven't created a Music library in Emby yet just take a half dozen or so of each type of file and make a test library to test devices with. With this you should be able to get a good workout between you mobile and Theater connected to your sound system to know what the best format for YOU will be based on formats you presently have.
Ronstang 293 Posted July 31, 2020 Author Posted July 31, 2020 Thank you, you are always johnny on the spot very thorough, and very helpful. The support for this software is incredible. I look forward to the day I purchase premiere. Just a few more things to evaluate and it looks like WMC is in the rear view mirror.
Carlo 4560 Posted July 31, 2020 Posted July 31, 2020 Thanks for the compliments, always nice to hear. We have a lot of talented people here in the forums helping people!
pwhodges 2012 Posted July 31, 2020 Posted July 31, 2020 (edited) It depends (as always) on the capabilities of the client. I have just checked playing audio files in my browser (Opera on Windows), and all the following were direct-played: flac, ogg/vorbis, mp3, m4a (aac), opus However (no surprise) a tak file (Tom's Audio Kompressor) was not even recognised as a media file. I don't have any WavePak to check. In the past I've had an issue in some clients with aac not in an mp4 container - but I've not checked the status of that for a while. Paul Edited July 31, 2020 by pwhodges
Carlo 4560 Posted July 31, 2020 Posted July 31, 2020 Which browser did you use @pwhodges? I have no tak or WavePak either or I'd have tried to give a better answer based on experience. But with a test library he should quickly figure it out.
pwhodges 2012 Posted July 31, 2020 Posted July 31, 2020 I said (Opera for Windows)!. I've also just tested an audio-only dts file (with either .dts or .wav extension)*. Both forms played; they were transcoded for the browser, but played directly in Emby Theatre 3.0.11. Whether transcoded or not, the multiple channels were preserved. I don't have a stand-alone ac3 file to hand to check. Paul *For a short time I made DTS CDs as a way of giving people playable copies of my surround recordings.
Carlo 4560 Posted July 31, 2020 Posted July 31, 2020 1 minute ago, pwhodges said: I said (Opera for Windows)!. Yea you did. But isn't an Opera that nasty music old people like with money? LOL
pwhodges 2012 Posted July 31, 2020 Posted July 31, 2020 (edited) I have loads of opera... In fact for a few years (30 years ago) my then wife and I ran an amateur opera group we started for her singing pupils to show off in, putting on fully staged performances with orchestra and all. Paul PS - I'm an "old people", but the money - not so much! Edited July 31, 2020 by pwhodges
Luke 42077 Posted July 31, 2020 Posted July 31, 2020 Quote Will EMBY also transcode all my current mP3s in LAME VBR HQ while playing? Hi, no it will not. Pretty much every device supports mp3 nowadays.
Luke 42077 Posted July 31, 2020 Posted July 31, 2020 Quote If I switch to FLAC is there any way for EMBY to directly play my music to my sound system without transcoding to mP3? Emby will direct play flac whenever possible, so there's nothing you need to do. What Emby app will you be playing from?
Ronstang 293 Posted July 31, 2020 Author Posted July 31, 2020 6 hours ago, Luke said: Emby will direct play flac whenever possible, so there's nothing you need to do. What Emby app will you be playing from? I am using the Web App at the moment because that is all I need. I understand the Desktop Theater app has more capabilities but I am only trying to understand Emby and it's capabilities. I will get Premiere at some point but this pandemic has decimated my finances and right now I'm only spending money on things I really need. Some interesting findings testing with music: Yes, the Emby web app in Chrome will direct play my LAME VBR encoded mP3s on the HTPC and across my network, no surprise but nice to know since my high quality mP3s are as good as lossless in most cases. The Emby Web app in Chrome will direct play my WavPack tracks on the HTPC using Chrome but transcodes them when served across my home network.....surprising that it will direct play in Chrome at all but YAY!!! The Emby Web app in Chrome will not direct play FLAC files on my HTPC even though it will direct play WavPack.....it always transcodes FLAC to AAC 384kb/s and while this may be acceptable to most, AAC is not acceptable to me for music. I am and old school audiophile and I was digitizing vinyl 20 years ago and did tons of research and listening before adopting the mP3 standard for most of my music playing and there is nothing that compares to LAME encoded mP3s......especially on good stereo equipment. So in conclusion my preferences for audio are not only directly supported by Emby but WavPack is preferable to FLAC.....so it's time to crank up dBPoweramp (the best CD and music handling software on the planet) and convert all my FLAC to WavPack.....I was slowly doing this whenever I was working on my music collection but now it makes even more sense.
Ronstang 293 Posted July 31, 2020 Author Posted July 31, 2020 13 hours ago, cayars said: Yea you did. But isn't an Opera that nasty music old people like with money? LOL I'm old and I don't like Opera.....but my music collection spans 9 decades......1930's to current.
Luke 42077 Posted July 31, 2020 Posted July 31, 2020 Quote The Emby Web app in Chrome will not direct play FLAC files on my HTPC even though it will direct play WavPack Is this on Windows or something else? Is Chrome up to date? It has supported flac for a couple years now so it really should be direct playing.
Ronstang 293 Posted July 31, 2020 Author Posted July 31, 2020 1 minute ago, Luke said: Is this on Windows or something else? Is Chrome up to date? It has supported flac for a couple years now so it really should be direct playing. It is a Windows 8.1 machine that should be up to date on the system software but I'm not sure how to make Chrome up to date, I always thought it auto updated itself so it's nothing I have ever worried about.
Luke 42077 Posted July 31, 2020 Posted July 31, 2020 Maybe that's the answer then. Chrome does support flac, but it's very possible that flac support depends on something on the system being there which 8.1 doesn't have. @Happy2Play do you have that link handy to the page that shows supported formats for your browser?
Ronstang 293 Posted July 31, 2020 Author Posted July 31, 2020 I just updated Chrome on my HTPC Luke and it still transcodes FLAC but direct plays WavPack.....which is fine by me as WavPack is superior in my opinion and my default for archiving all my CDs.
Happy2Play 9780 Posted July 31, 2020 Posted July 31, 2020 2 minutes ago, Luke said: Maybe that's the answer then. Chrome does support flac, but it's very possible that flac support depends on something on the system being there which 8.1 doesn't have. @Happy2Play do you have that link handy to the page that shows supported formats for your browser? I use http://html5test.com to look at browser support.
Carlo 4560 Posted July 31, 2020 Posted July 31, 2020 Hey Ronstang, you may want to rethink a couple of your formats if you're looking for best quality sound. Obviously Lossless codec are going to do you the most justice so either FLAC or WavPack are going to sound the same so it's normally best to pick the format with most support. In this case FLAC easily has far more support on devices. AAC and MP3 are both lossy audio formats however AAC generally achieves better sound quality than MP3 at similar bit rates so you might want to rethink that choice. I know you mentioned the opposite but MP3 doesn't have the sampling ability that AAC does. AAC has more sample frequencies (from 8 kHz to 96 kHz) than MP3 (16 kHz to 48 kHz) AAC can have up to 48 channels (MP3 supports up to two channels in MPEG-1 mode and up to 5.1 channels in MPEG-2 mode) Here's a pretty good article on this. https://www.diffen.com/difference/AAC_vs_MP3#:~:text=AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) and,lossy formats for audio files.&text=Designed to be the successor,more obvious at lower bitrates. So what I use is AAC or FLAC depending on need and Chrome will play both of them without a problem.
Luke 42077 Posted July 31, 2020 Posted July 31, 2020 3 minutes ago, Happy2Play said: I use http://html5test.com to look at browser support. Ok that's a good one but it doesn't show flac. What about this one, what does it say next to flac? https://hpr.dogphilosophy.net/test/
Carlo 4560 Posted July 31, 2020 Posted July 31, 2020 3 minutes ago, Ronstang said: I just updated Chrome on my HTPC Luke and it still transcodes FLAC but direct plays WavPack.....which is fine by me as WavPack is superior in my opinion and my default for archiving all my CDs. What's the reason for the Transcode in stats for nerds on the server dashboard?
Ronstang 293 Posted July 31, 2020 Author Posted July 31, 2020 3 minutes ago, Happy2Play said: I use http://html5test.com to look at browser support. I used that last night in Chrome and it mentions nothing about FLAC or WavPack support so could it be dependent upon installed codec? I don't see how it could because all my audio software on the HTPC and my other machine all play both FLAC and WavPack files.
Luke 42077 Posted July 31, 2020 Posted July 31, 2020 Regarding your statement here: Quote The Emby Web app in Chrome will direct play my WavPack tracks on the HTPC using Chrome but transcodes them when served across my home network.....surprising that it will direct play in Chrome at all but YAY!!! Did you explore the audio playback settings in the app? Your answer is likely there.
Ronstang 293 Posted July 31, 2020 Author Posted July 31, 2020 4 minutes ago, cayars said: What's the reason for the Transcode in stats for nerds on the server dashboard? Not exactly sure where to find what you are asking for on the server dashboard.
Ronstang 293 Posted July 31, 2020 Author Posted July 31, 2020 2 minutes ago, Luke said: Regarding your statement here: Did you explore the audio playback settings in the app? Your answer is likely there. In the dashboard under playback the only option I have under audio is playback language
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