[georgelai57]

I have given up trying to determine whether Plex streams lossless or not. I just play it on my iDevices, as well as balanced output on my Onkyo DP-X1, and just enjoy the music that is on my iMac and not loaded onto my DAPs. Life's too short for that.
 
Having said that, I might explore AK Connect for lossless streaming.

 

[yay101]

Upnp does lossless and is a drop in replacement.

 

[aut0maticdan]

Reviving an old thread because I think things are officially solid with Plex.
 
It has been quite a while since I've checked this out, but:
 
plex server on mac > plex app on iOS > Chord Mojo
 
I'm getting a dark blue light as soon as I hit play a 24/192 file indicating the dac is playing at 192kHz.  If I look in the web interface, I can see the stream is using "direct play."  Not only lossless but hi res!  I use ALAC/iTunes but will do some FLAC testing as well, if anyone needs.  I have not tested outside of my home network.  
 
Pretty awesome.  Not sure if this came with iOS10 or a recent plex app update, but a total game changer for me.  Last time I checked, I couldn't even load these files through iTunes onto any iOS device.
 
EDIT:  using the plex browser app transcodes to mp3, so don't use the browser

 

[Jammin72]

  Reviving an old thread because I think things are officially solid with Plex.
 
It has been quite a while since I've checked this out, but:
 
plex server on mac > plex app on iOS > Chord Mojo
 
I'm getting a dark blue light as soon as I hit play a 24/192 file indicating the dac is playing at 192kHz.  If I look in the web interface, I can see the stream is using "direct play."  Not only lossless but hi res!  I use ALAC/iTunes but will do some FLAC testing as well, if anyone needs.  I have not tested outside of my home network.  
 
Pretty awesome.  Not sure if this came with iOS10 or a recent plex app update, but a total game changer for me.  Last time I checked, I couldn't even load these files through iTunes onto any iOS device.
 
EDIT:  using the plex browser app transcodes to mp3, so don't use the browser

 
 
Good news.  I would like to do this as well with either Android and a Chromebook with a Grace M9XX.  Will be interesting to see what this reports.

 

[gabrihamlincoln]

Why would you ever use Plex for music? 

 

[Jammin72]

  Why would you ever use Plex for music? 

 
 
Because it's a great all around media player that works on nearly every device I own with a great organizational scheme.  Connect drives to the router and the PC, The Xbox, Tablets, Phone all get to pull from that source.  Even works away from home with a subscription.  It's DLNA at the house so there's no transcoding for devices that support the original format.  If you haven't used it in a while it's worth a re-visit.

 

[pinnahertz]

  Why would you ever use Plex for music? 

So many reasons, but primary in my case, a library too big to load on any portable device becomes available anywhere there's Internet, and, where bandwidth supports its, in its original format with no transcoding. Gone are the days of trying so pick and choose what music to take along, or having to compress everything to get more of it to fit. And the library becomes available on many diverse devices.  All of that is great for the audio library...then you toss in video too, it's a total win. 

 

[aut0maticdan]

  Why would you ever use Plex for music? 

 
Streaming of high res files off my computer is a pretty good reason.  There aren't a load of options to play 24/192 files on the iPad/iPhone.
 
Update:
 
iOS transcodes FLAC to aac
android transcodes ALAC to mp3 (but direct plays FLAC)

 

[georgelai57]

Does anyone know whether using DLNA on an AK300 I would be able to get lossless from Plex? The options seem to be limited to 320 kbps. Thanks

 

[MikeyFresh]

.

 

[georgelai57]

I think all of the current A&K players use a custom version of Android for their OS?

That likely means you'd be able to play FLAC files natively, but not ALAC which would be transcoded to mp3.

Ok I shall try that when Plex finishes scanning my HDDs
Thanks

 

[cpauya]

  Reviving an old thread because I think things are officially solid with Plex.
 
It has been quite a while since I've checked this out, but:
 
plex server on mac > plex app on iOS > Chord Mojo
 
I'm getting a dark blue light as soon as I hit play a 24/192 file indicating the dac is playing at 192kHz.  If I look in the web interface, I can see the stream is using "direct play."  Not only lossless but hi res!  I use ALAC/iTunes but will do some FLAC testing as well, if anyone needs.  I have not tested outside of my home network.  
 
Pretty awesome.  Not sure if this came with iOS10 or a recent plex app update, but a total game changer for me.  Last time I checked, I couldn't even load these files through iTunes onto any iOS device.
 
EDIT:  using the plex browser app transcodes to mp3, so don't use the browser

Thanks for sharing!  
 
Here's my setup on my network: PMS v1.3.3.3148 on Mac (DLNA turned on) -> HibyMusic on my iPhone 5S -> Chord Mojo.  
 
I get green color on Mojo for my 24-bit 96KHz AIFF or FLAC music.
 
So yes, Plex does stream lossless nowadays. 

 

 

[aut0maticdan]

 
Thanks for sharing!  
 
Here's my setup on my network: PMS v1.3.3.3148 on Mac (DLNA turned on) -> HibyMusic on my iPhone 5S -> Chord Mojo.  
 
I get green color on Mojo for my 24-bit 96KHz AIFF or FLAC music.
 
So yes, Plex does stream lossless nowadays. 

 

That's great that it works over DLNA!  I expect that means we'll be rocking  Hi Res soon with our inbound Chord Poly over DLNA and no wires!

 

[aut0maticdan]

Anyone else finding plex pretty unreliable? The playback for me gets sketchy in practically every listening session. I ran into one bug where if I started an album it would play the first track fine and then start skipping around the album and after several seconds totally crap out. A restart of the server resolved it, but I'm still plagued with regular hang ups and stalls to the point where I find it unenjoyable and ultimately unusable.

It turns out that iOS totally supports high resolution now. (I'm sure this is old news for some. I just failed to notice earlier.) I've switched back to the music app via home sharing. There is a long-standing annoyance with homesharing large libraries to iOS taking forever to initially load. For me it is around 90-120 seconds. But once it is loaded playback is flawless.

Plex is still king when I'm away from home but in the house I find it too annoying to use. They also need to get sync support sorted because that always transcodes to MP3

 

[pinnahertz]

Anyone else finding plex pretty unreliable? The playback for me gets sketchy in practically every listening session. I ran into one bug where if I started an album it would play the first track fine and then start skipping around the album and after several seconds totally crap out. A restart of the server resolved it, but I'm still plagued with regular hang ups and stalls to the point where I find it unenjoyable and ultimately unusable.

It turns out that iOS totally supports high resolution now. (I'm sure this is old news for some. I just failed to notice earlier.) I've switched back to the music app via home sharing. There is a long-standing annoyance with homesharing large libraries to iOS taking forever to initially load. For me it is around 90-120 seconds. But once it is loaded playback is flawless.

Plex is still king when I'm away from home but in the house I find it too annoying to use. They also need to get sync support sorted because that always transcodes to MP3

No issues here.  I don't use home sharing libraries with PLEX, though, it's a single huge library physically on the server (more than one drive, though) that I manually sync with media, some of which exists outside my iTunes library (also synched). Works fine, no issues, no hangs, stalls, etc.  I'd look at a configuration issue, server load, net traffic, etc.  I find the speed of the library load in a PLEX client depends mostly on the client and platform.  Some are fast, others slower, but none of mine take anywhere near 120 seconds.  Library is about 150gig, audio and video, bit a lot of video is PLEX only, not in the iTunes library at all.  PLEX makes it look like one big library.  Loading is almost instantaneous.