Skills are now permitted to send *lossless* streams to Echo devices - yaay! Under the hood, MediaServer uses the *stream.mp3* mechanism to setup a network client whose audio is directed to the Echo. This always transcodes the stream to - you guessed it - mp3, so it's lossy. I have some ideas for how to get lossless directed to the Echo natively, but short of a miracle like the devs creating *stream.flac* for us, all would involve no pseudo-player in LMS showing up for the Echo in question. Is that a show-stopper? Full access to your local LMS library, but bypassing the GUI when streaming lossless files?
To give you a flavour of what to expect, I've modified MediaServer's code for the *StreamFavorite* intent. When you ask to Stream an internet radio favorite whose URL starts with *https://* -and- which has the word 'FLAC' or 'lossless' in the URL string itself, that URL is passed directly to the Echo without starting up stream.mp3 in LMS. The sound quality is noticeably better, even on a Dot 3 but certainly on an Echo Show 2 which is a very decent device. I've even succeeded in sending 24-bit 88.2KHz stuff to the Echo in testing. To give it a try with e.g. RP, create a favorite from one of the flac/flacm URLs at https://www.hiresaudio.online/radio-paradise/ and make sure to make it https. Call it Radio Paradise. Now, when you say "Alexa, stream favorite 'Radio Paradise'" you'll get the lossless stream with no transcoding by stream.mp3. You'll notice this worked correctly if the background image on an Echo Show says 'LMS DirectStream' instead of 'LMS Stream', the favorite's name is shown with [Lossless] added, and a different image is displayed. The now-playing metadata from the station will not display (yet). Enjoy ! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ philchillbill's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=68920 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=111016 _______________________________________________ plugins mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/plugins
