A competitor to Apple TV 4K as far as audio is concerned.

2021-12-19 01:18:52

Hi.

I happen to have my second box from Apple, as a product, which it is the TV 4K. The whole experience is great but the iTunes Sharing and the audio experience is quite superior to anything I've seen - the browsing, the effects, it reads album art quite nicely and it seems to respect Soundcheck Gain from iTunes, when this tag is applied to the file. It plays everything gaplessly and it reads iTunes playlists. Even the remote control feels good.

The problem, the issue, the impertinence, about this device, is that if I want to go totally lossless in music, this music should be encoded in ALAC format -- it does not support FLAC in Apple Music App. Another problem is the iTunes dependency and network streaming dependency. Ok, no problem with that. But after a lot of reading, I am still not very convinced this format is the right one to go -- I don't want to do conversions, nor have replicated library. Furthermore, I have read some articles from 2019 and 2020 in which they say Apple will kill iTunes at some point.

Question is: Is there any device that gives a similar experience as ATV4K, when it comes down to audio files? I mean... the same experience... a device that would support FLAC; read and honor ReplayGain tags; display album art; play gaplessly, play M3U8 files (or) playlists of any kind? Could be SMB dependent and networking dependent; but having a USB to read your external drive would be a nice thing to have.

Is there such hardware up to it? More or less same support and service from vendor?

PS: I don't consider using VLC or Plex in ATV4K for the obvious reasons.

Thanks for any advice.

Re: A competitor to Apple TV 4K as far as audio is concerned.

Reply #1 – 2021-12-19 15:23:50

There isn't anything else with that level of polish. Either convert to ALAC, pay for Apple Music (which is mostly lossless), or be content with the 256kbps AAC that is streamed.

Re: A competitor to Apple TV 4K as far as audio is concerned.

Reply #2 – 2021-12-19 16:10:02

I use older ITX board (J1900 CPU) with LibreELEC and Kodi. It does all of these things: reads album art, respects Replaygain, supports whichever lossless format you want, plays gaplessly, I don't use playlists but I think it supports them, can reach files over SMB, and if your box has USB connectors, it will read USB disks.
It does quite a lot more, and it has numerous skins with which you can customize your experience.

Re: A competitor to Apple TV 4K as far as audio is concerned.

Reply #3 – 2021-12-21 04:13:12

Thanks for the replies. XMBC used to be good. Kodi looks a bit weird now.

As Thomas Shelby would to say:

"ALAC it is."

Re: A competitor to Apple TV 4K as far as audio is concerned.

Reply #4 – 2021-12-21 08:08:22

Quote from: krafty on 2021-12-21 04:13:12

Kodi looks a bit weird now.

As I said, you can apply whichever skin you like. There is still that old Confluence skin, which was on older Kodi versions, and many more.

Re: A competitor to Apple TV 4K as far as audio is concerned.

Reply #5 – 2021-12-27 07:29:33

Thanks, I remember that skin. I will try this too.