Emby for MCH/Atmos music playback

[lauti]

Hi guys,

wish you a Happy New Year!

I am evaluating Emby as an alternative to my Vero4k/Kodi for playback of MCH and Atmos Music at the moment. As I have no Nvidia Shield yet (I assume it is the ideal playback device for this purpose?) and don't wanna buy before being sure that the following requirements are met so I am asking to share your experiences.

My MCH albums are stored as FLAC files (individual files per track), my Atmos albums are stored as single mka files accompanied by CUE file. With vero4k this plays gapless for both. Gapless play is a manadatory requirement for me and I already noticed that Emby has weakness in that - plays gapless only with a few clients (e.g. the Androis app, but not the Android TV app nor does the iOS app). Hence, wondering if it was able to play my albums gapless on a Shield. The single mka file is scanned by Emby and playable, however, the CUE file is ignored so no tracks shown. I could convert these albums to individual m4a files but unsure if they would play gapless.

Is anybody using Emby for playing MCH/Atmos albums who could tell if this is working or not? Also, any alternative to the Shield? E.g. the Zidoo ZX9 Pro?

Thanks for your help!

 

[HomerJAU]

What is Emby going to give you that your current system won’t?

 

[lauti]

Mainly, a centralized database, support for many end-devices, download features, nicer features to explore my music library, cool features for home cinema.

 

[pat bateman]

The Shield Pro is still the best little box out there right now just because it works with anything you throw at it. Other devices like the Zidoo can work for you depending on your use case. If you have 4K Blu-ray Remux movies (1:1 rips), then the Zidoo is a hard pass, as it doesn't support Dolby Vision Profile 7. It also may not support Atmos. I say may not, because their sales pitch page is careful to say "Dolby Audio" with no mention of Atmos - so if it does indeed support Atmos, they are selling themselves short. But it also does some very niche things that the Shield doesn't, like HDR10+ and HLG HDR. 2 pretty rare formats use with live TV HDR and Prime Video.

I would test this for you right now, but my HT room is torn apart right now - redoing everything. I am looking for a Plex alternative after their privacy fiasco. That being said, Plex could be a solution as well, if ALL of your files are 5.1 FLAC. I think anything beyond that, their "audio" libraries get confused with other formats, even though their "video" library will play anything you throw at it.