A Playback System for HD Audio (and Maybe A/V in General (1 Viewer)

[JohnRice]

iPadOS 14 seems to have bricked the Oppo app. I don't know if it's going to be fixed. I've been wanting a new way to play back HD audio anyway. I've been using an Oppo BDP-103 with music on an SSD, controlled with the iPad app and sent to an external DAC.

So, I'm looking for a new playback system. Hardware and software. It just needs to be controllable with an iPad and user friendly. I also want to add DSD capability, which will require a new DAC with an i2s input, from what I can tell. This is kind of foreign territory for me, and I don't know what systems are out there. I also wouldn't mind if I can load up all the ALAC files from my iTunes library (all ripped from CDs) and be able to play them back without using AirPlay, but that's a secondary consideration.

 

[JohnRice]

One DAC I'm considering is the Matrix Mini-i Pro 3, which has some streaming features built-in, including AirPlay and Roon. That might eliminate the need to bypass AirPlay. I'm not familiar with the capabilities of Roon.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Plex can handle high resolution audio on the server end, and some of the different clients can play it back depending on which device and app you’re using.

If you’ve got an AppleTV, the Plex server can hold the audio files but you’d need to use a third party app on the APTV like Infuse to get unmodified playback. I don’t know offhand which other streaming devices support that kind of audio from a Plex server without transcoding.