adam2434 wrote: > Wt0, thanks for this app and thread! > > Ive been searching for alternatives for if/when my SB3 dies, and have > also been considering a Fire TV. > > As I understand it, a TV needs to be connected and powered-on for the > Fire TV to operate. Is that correct? > > If so, would an HDMI connection to a powered-on AV pre/pro or AVR allow > (fool) the Fire TV to operate, even if the TV is off or not connected to > the AV Pre/Pro or AVR. > > I would be feeding the Fire TV HDMI to a pre/pro and optical to a DAC, > using the DAC for the SB music. I would not mind having the pre/pro > powered-on for the sole purpose of enabling Fire TV to output SB via > optical. > > Also, will the Fire TV and SB Player output a bit-perfect signal, > without resampling, etc. (equivalent to the SB3s digital output)?
I don't own a Fire TV, but from what I gathered from this thread, you only need to have the TV turned on initially so you can setup the app. Once it's running you can turn off the TV and even unplug the HDMI connection. It's just that if you turn off the TV while music is playing the music will pause, but you can just press play again. However, I think that's because SB Player is reacting to the TV turning off like when headphones are plugged from a phone/tablet. That behavior can be turned off in SB Player. There maybe one limitation though. The ability to auto launch the app when the Fire TV turns on may not work if the TV is not turned on. One user emailed me about having trouble getting that feature to work on the Fire TV even though others with the Fire TV have said that it works, so I'm guessing that maybe it is related to the turn being turn on or off. It won't be bit perfect unless it's 16bit 44.1K audio and even then there maybe some internal processing that I have no control over. Android could not handle 24-bit audio until version 5.0 and the Fire TV is not running 5.0. Even on Android 5.0 when a USB DAC is connected, the output is locked to 16/44.1, so it's probably the case with the optical out on the Fire TV. Unlike the dedicated hardware of a Squeezebox, the decoded audio from SB Player has to go through layers of software inside the Android system before it reaches the output. Those layers of software are not designed to switch sampling rates or bit depths on the fly, so to handle gap-less playback, the output sampling rate and bit depths has to be locked to one setting once playback starts and any audio that does not have the same sampling rate or bit depth will be converted. If I tried to switch output settings for each song, there will be a noticeable gap. The output sampling rate can be specified by the user in SB Player, but Android can only handle certain sampling rates. For Android versions less than 5.0 the max sampling rate is 48Khz. Android 5.0 can handle up to 96Khz. However, SB Player up-samples all output that rate, so it is not recommended that you set the output to a specific sampling rate unless all your audio files are of the same rate, since some devices may not be powerful enough to handle a difficult up-sampling like going from 44.1Khz to 48Khz. Down-sampling is done by the server before the audio reaches SB Player. (The caveat is that as I mentioned above, the digital output is likely to be lock at 16/44.1 so choosing a higher output rate inside of SB Player may be pointless) In addition, SB Player supports crossfading and it obviously has to be done digitally. As far as I know, there is no way to digitally mix two audio samples with different sampling rates and//or bit depths without converting one of the samples. -------------- Squeezebox apps for webOS, Android and Windows Phone, http://www.angrygoatapps.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ wt0's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=18760 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=98049
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