Suggestions for Local Streaming Music Player for Atmos and Muiltichannel FLAC (1 Viewer)

[gregstaten]

A little background. I've been collecting multichannel music for about fifteen years now. First on SACD and DVD-Audio and then on Blu-Ray. Over the years I've amassed a pretty huge collection and all titles are ripped, as individual tracks, to my home server (just like my film library is). The 4.0/5.1/7.1 mixes are all stored as FLAC while the Dolby Atmos albums are stored as either MKA (for TrueHD Atmos) or M4A (for eAC-3 JOC / eAC-4 JOC). I also have the TrueHD Atmos ripped as whole albums as MKVs as Plex's audio player annoying does not pass Dolby Atmos (TrueHD, eAC-3 JOC, or eAC-4 JOC) bitstreams to the receiver, but instead insists on (poorly) downmixing to stereo.

In my home office I use JRiver as my music player and have a 5.1.2 Atmos setup. JRiver works great as it handles all of the formats I can throw at it and everything "just works". (The only annoyance is that it doesn't already read all MKA tags, but that just means a bit of manual editing after they are read into the library.)

In my main media room I have a 7.1.4 setup and have used Plex via an NVIDIA Shield as my playback engine for years, but as my Atmos library has grown I've reached the point where I would much rather store the albums as tracks, not albums, as it makes it far easier to hop around while playing music for friends and family. But I can't do that on Plex as, as mentioned earlier, Plex uses different playback engines for video and audio libraries and the audio playback engine doesn't pass Atmos to the receiver (as the video player does). (It also has a notoriously bad history of playback of multichannel FLAC files on the Shield, but of late it appears to be working well for me.)

I'd like to have a setup similar to JRiver in my main room (where everything (stereo FLAC, multichannel FLAC, DSD, TrueHD Atmos, eAC-3 JOC Atmos) "just works" (plays) correctly), but with more of a "on the couch" UI - which certainly isn't JRiver's forte.

I've been digging around and just haven't found any one streaming player that does this. Has anyone found a single streaming player that can handle all these formats correctly and provide a good UI/UX experience on a large TV? I just can't believe that a solution isn't out there, but I haven't located it. Note that I've tried several Android-based streaming players but all the ones I've found are so riddled with compromises that they are more frustrating than useful.

 

[JohnRice]

One question. You keep saying a “streaming” player, but it sounds like you are playing only locally stored media. “Streaming” means playing media stored on a streaming service, and accessed over the internet. Looking for streamers might be causing a problem finding what you want.

You are asking for some pretty significant technical things, combining all those codecs and formats.

The Zidoo UHD5000 and UHD8000 might do it all.

 

[gregstaten]

I say "streaming" as it is streaming locally off a NAS rather than off of local storage.

I've looked at the Ziddo before and they cannot pass TrueHD Atmos via HDMI to a downstream receiver. They can do so for video files, but not Audio. (Android limitation?)

 

[JohnRice]

OK. Just saying, using the term “streaming” in that context will cause a lot of confusion. That’s just not how it’s typically used. Network storage just isn’t commonly referred to as streaming.

Weird that it plays Atmos video files, but not audio.

 

[DaveF]

I think Emby plays MKA and handles multi channel audio fine. I don’t use my HTPC as a music library, so have only dabbled with that capability. But it seems worth trying out.

 

[gregstaten]

Thanks! I've downloaded Emby and set up a test server on my JRiver server box. It is pulling in my library now and I'll report back after it completes and I can run some tests.

Edit: It works! Both MKV True HD Atmos and M4V eAC-3 JOC Atmos bitstreams are correctly passed to my processor and decode correctly. Wonderful!!!

I see that I can't use the Shield TV app past a 14 day trial, though, without buying Emby Premiere. That said, if it works I'm fine with getting a lifetime subscription.

Thanks DaveF!

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I can’t figure out how to rip multichannel audio from SACD / DVD-A / BD Audio. Is it super complicated or am I missing an obvious method? My multichannel discs have held up pretty well but I wouldn’t mind having backup copies to throw into my Plex server.

 

[gregstaten]

Well, it isn't necessarily that complicated, but it can be. Blu-Ray audio is the easiest as you can use MakeMKV to rip the discs, just like one does for Blu-Ray movies. If you want to split the albums out into track files, you can use MKVToolNix. (Honestly it has been nearly a decade since I ripped all my DVD-A discs to FLAC, but I seem to remember the process was the same as regular DVD discs DVD-A uses the lossless MLP encoding, which is the same encoding used for Dolby TrueHD.)

SACD is a little trickier as you need to create ISOs of the discs. This typically requires a special firmware for a specific Blu-Ray player. Then, once you have ISOs you can use foobar to convert them to FLAC or even pull the DSD files out if your processor can decode. I won't go into all the detail as it can get involved, but there are lots of sites online that have the steps required.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

SACD is a little trickier as you need to create ISOs of the discs. This typically requires a special firmware for a specific Blu-Ray player. Then, once you have ISOs you can use foobar to convert them to FLAC or even pull the DSD files out if your processor can decode. I won't go into all the detail as it can get involved, but there are lots of sites online that have the steps required.

That sounds like Martian to me

 

[JohnRice]

That sounds like Martian to me

Even though I have a requisite player (Oppo BDP-103) I’ve been unable to rip SACD. I’d really like to.

Yes, there are sites with info, but the people writing the ones I’ve found only speak computer. I need instructions for carbon based life forms.

 

[gregstaten]

Yeah. I hear you. It was a bit of a pain to get it working, but now I just have the firmware for my Sony player on a flash drive and a hard drive attached. When I buy an SACD (usually classical music from a European/UK label), I pop it in the player and the ISO is generated on the hard drive. Then, after ripping, I mount the drive on my computer and use fubar to convert to FLAC. Yes, there was some trial and error, but I was determined and have had it working for years now.