[pimeys]

One thing to solve here, that nobody else but Roon can do, is bit-perfect playback. Meaning that your SACD rips in DSD format are not transcoded. Plex cannot do that, neither can any subsonic server or jellyfin.

You need a native player for this, but it is doable. Mpv at least can play the files.

[rollcat]

I'm a bit of a noob when it comes to DSD, but don't you need a DAC with DSD (as an alternative to PCM) support?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the player would need exclusive access to the device, and bypass almost all of the audio processing stack, like software mixing. Can you play PCM audio (like system alerts) through the same DAC at the same time? Like, a hw analog mixer?

[pimeys]

Yeah, I'm also interested on this. I don't know, but my gut feeling on this is that no, you can't mix other audio or use a software volume control with DSD audio. It has to be converted to PCM first.

But, with Pipewire you _can_ play DSD audio, here's how:

https://wiki.libre.moe/linux/pipewire/dsd-playback

And yes, you need a DAC that supports it. They are not that hard to find though.

Edit: just noting I do not have hardware that can play DSD audio. The audio files started to be available, and there are shops that sell them such as High Definition Tape Transfers. Space is cheap, and if I would have them in my collection it would be great to play them with the best quality. Although, I probably don't hear the difference even with these Hifiman headphones, but it's the nerd in me that likes to see this to work.

[rollcat]

I have a ZOOM UAC-232+Marshall Monitors/KRK Classics, and I couldn't tell 320kbps MP3 from FLAC :,) but I know one person who probably would.

[brookst]

A few years ago some friends and I did a carefully controlled blind test between 320kbps mp3 and FLAC. Studio monitors, identical source HW, etc.

The person playing them was not in the test, we randomized 20 second samples of different styles, randomized order determined in advance.

I don’t remember exact results but it was completely inline with binomial probability.

To this day I feel like there’s something wrong with high frequencies like open hats in 320 mp3, but on that day I could not tell a difference so I’m accepting it as negative placebo.

[hashhar]

Plexamp can surely do bit-perfect playback, not vanilla Plex though.

[kaaskop]

I'm pretty sure both lyrion music server and music assistant can do it.

I'd recommend implementing the squeezebox protocol if you were to go this route. There's already a ton of clients and it also handles multi-room audio.

Here's the music assistant implementation for reference: https://github.com/music-assistant/server/tree/stable/music_...