Music Assistant
Why does the signal path show FLAC twice, why is there an output limiter, and why does it end up as LQ? #5267
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Hey everyone, I'm using a Cast-based player ("Küchenschrank") and noticed some things in my audio pipeline that I don't fully understand. Hope someone can help! 1. Why does FLAC appear twice in the signal path? My source is an internet radio station via RadioBrowser, and the signal path shows FLAC 44.1 kHz / 16 bit at the input stage, and then again FLAC 44.1 kHz / 16 bit at the output stage. Is Music Assistant decoding the incoming stream and then re-encoding it as FLAC internally before sending it to the player? And since the specs are identical both times, does this mean there's actually no quality loss happening, or is there still some processing going on under the hood? 2. Why is there an "Output Limiter" in the chain? Right before the audio reaches my Cast device, the signal path shows an "Output Limiter". I didn't set this up manually — it seems to have been inserted automatically by Music Assistant. Is this related to using a Cast-based player? Is it connected to the OS-level audio mixer or some shared audio output situation? Does the limiter actually degrade audio quality, or is it just a safety measure to prevent clipping? 3. Why does the quality indicator show "LQ" at the bottom? Even though the stream is FLAC 44.1/16 the whole way through, the quality badge at the bottom shows "LQ" in orange. I suspect it's because the output limiter breaks the bit-perfect path — but is that really enough to trigger LQ, even if the limiter isn't actively clamping anything? Is there a way to remove it, for example by disabling volume normalization in the player settings, or by switching to a different player type? Thanks in advance! 
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Replies: 2 comments 1 reply
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https://www.music-assistant.io/audiopipeline/ Those links should answer your questions. Let me know if you have any others. |
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The LQ badge was actually a frontend bug which is fixed recently. As long as you pick a lossless codec such as WAV of FLAC, your stream will be lossless |
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that is actually what i was wondering about. Thank you! |
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The LQ badge was actually a frontend bug which is fixed recently.
As long as you pick a lossless codec such as WAV of FLAC, your stream will be lossless