Audio Quality & Playback

Samply's audio playback engine is engineered to deliver the highest quality audio to the widest possible set of devices. In addition, it allows you to set the audio quality for listeners, giving you more control over what your clients hear.

Uncompressed Stereo

When a typical uncompressed audio file (e.g. WAV) is uploaded to Samply, different variants are created for streaming purposes, including:

1. FLAC (Original bit depth and sample rate)
2. High quality AAC (256 kbps)
3. Medium quality AAC (128 kbps)

The AAC variants are combined for "Adaptive" bitrate streaming, and the FLAC variant is used for "Lossless" streaming.

Note: Since the FLAC variant is at the original bit depth and sample rate, the "Lossless" quality will deliver the exact same waveform data in the original WAV file to the client.

Compressed Stereo

When a compressed audio file (e.g. MP3) is uploaded to Samply, the FLAC variant is not created since the source itself is not lossless. The high quality AAC variant is typically higher than the bitrate of compressed audio files uploaded to Samply, so any losses due to transcoding are minimal.

Note: If you need Lossless streaming for a compressed audio file, then you can convert the compressed file to an uncompressed WAV before uploading it to Samply.

Atmos MP4s

When a Dolby Atmos MP4 is uploaded to Samply, the original MP4 file will be streamed to the client on supported devices (Safari). The stereo AAC variants are also made as a fallback for devices without Atmos support, but a warning message is presented to the user in this case.

ADM files

Samply has partnered with Dolby to provide official ADM support for Dolby Atmos.

When an ADM WAV file is upload to Samply, the file is processed using Dolby's Audio Encoder to produce an Atmos MP4 file for streaming. Once the Atmos MP4 file is created, the same variants are created as above.

Gapless

When listening to audio in a Player, Samply attempts to play audio gaplessly, meaning that adjacent tracks in the sequence are stitched together into one contiguous audio stream. Currently, Projects do not use gapless transitions.

Exceptions

Since Samply is a collaborative platform, the web app will react to changes in realtime. This, however, can be a challenge if audio is added to a player while it is being played with gapless transitions. Currently, gapless transitions are disabled when this occurs in the web app. If this happens, then refreshing the page will enable gapless transitions with the new track sequence.

Lossless

There are 3 different lossless configurations. In your audio preferences, you can set the default audio quality for the specific device you are listening on. This does not change the default audio quality for any other device.

In your Player Options, you can set the default audio quality for your player if you're on our Pro tier. This applies the default audio quality to anyone listening to your player, regardless of the default audio quality set for their device.

In the player itself, anyone can change the audio quality, regardless of what is set as the default for the player or the device, by clicking the Audio Options button and updating the audio settings. This only updates the settings for that specific device and player.

Exceptions

In some scenarios, lossless playback is not an option, either because it is not supported in the browser or the source files themselves are lossy (as mentioned previously). Most of the time, if lossless audio quality cannot be enabled, it is because one of the following file types exists in the player which are lossy:

• .mp4
• .m4a
• .mp3
• .aac

Additionally, the below browsers do not support lossless audio quality:

• iOS Chrome
• iOS Instagram in-app browser
• iOS Safari major version 13 or below