As far as I know Ugoos AM6 don't have official certificates so it can't play HD in most of streaming platforms, but if it has good image quality it could be a good option for local content playback.DaMacFunkin wrote: Fri Feb 26, 2021 6:06 am So I have the Chinoppo, 2 Shield 2019 Pro, 4K firestick, Zidoo Z9X, had the Google thing with the long name and sold it because it can’t do lossless audio, what do I buy next, is this Ugog a winner?
After a decade of playback of lossless audio tracks I have switched to this small device to get an all in one solution: suppport for 4K HDR, 5.1 in almost every streaming platforms, the best app store in my opinion, offical Google support, compatibility with all HDR formats in local content, great image quality and expandable through USB 3.0 type C.
About audio, Chromecast with Google TV supports:
- Dolby Digital
- Dolby Digital Plus
- Dolby digital Plus + Dolby Atmos
- DTS (not officially, but it supported with Kodi)
- DTS-ES Discrete y Matrix (not officially, but supported with Kodi)
- AAC
- PCM Multichannel (not officially, but supported in Kodi and Plex)
It doesn't support:
- Dolby TrueHD
- Dolby TrueHD + Dolby Atmos
- DTS-HD
- DTS-X
In my case what I do when necessary is to convert with ffmpeg the best track with audio in a format not supported in my language to Dolby Digital+ (EAC3) at 1536kbps and 5.1 channels and adding it as the default track.
I use EAC3 because is the best multichannel codec my AVR can playback (better than AC3) and I encode it at the highest secure bitrate to maximize quality. I can't go beyond 5.1 channels because it's a limitation ffmpeg has, but there are only a few films that has more than 5.1 channels in my language.
I must say that I can't hear any artifacts and can't distinct anything about audio quality from the original source, and I think I have good hearing.
Other option is to use Kodi to extract raw lossless multichannel PCM, and the audio quality would be exactly the same as the original source, as it seems to do.
Plex is not sure that sends lossless PCM and Emby has issues with this, but are working on it.
To finish I have to say that I don't have an Atmos/DTS-X ready AVR and there is practically no film that have a track of this kind in my language, so I'm not in a hurry with this. I don't know if it could be possible to convert the TrueHD stream to lossless MCPCM or EAC3 and maintain the Atmos layer.