The Nvidia shield Pro is popular amongst home theatre enthusiasts due to its ability to play pretty much any video file, including blu ray rips with lossless audio. However, I could not find any audiophiles using the Nvidia shield as a streamer/player to playback pit perfect audio. As the Nvidia shield runs Android TV OS, the device has huge potential to be great for audio and video, especially with Chromecast built in for apps such as tidal and Amazon Music HD.
Whilst Kodi is a very useful app and can play any music file you throw at it; it does not allow for bit perfect playback. This guide will show you how to enable bit perfect audio playback for files such as DSD and hi-res flac files. Please note that in order for this to work you will need an Nvidia Shield TV which has a USB port (the new Nvidia shield TV pro or the previous generation) and a USB DAC. I use the ifi zen DAC, a review for that will be coming soon.
There are a few things you will need before you start:
A USB drive to store your music on (create a folder called music and store all your music files/ folders in there)
You will need to install the Sony Music Centre android app on your Nvidia Shield TV (there are other guides on how to install APK files on your Nvidia Shield available on YouTube)
To make things easier you may also want to use the Nvidia Shield TV remote app and download and app called side launcher as apps not installed from the Play Store don’t show up on the menu
The first thing you will need to do is allow the Nvidia shield to install apps from unknown sources, this will be found in security settings. I use File Commander which is a free file explorer; this will allow you to install the Sony Music Centre APK which should have been downloaded to your USB drive.
When Sony Music Centre is installed, you should download side app launcher from the play store. As Music Centre isn’t available on the Android TV store and you had to install the APK, the app won’t show up with your normal apps. Side app launcher will resolve this issue as it shows you all the apps installed on the device.
With Sony Music Centre installed, you can now insert your USB DAC and allow the app to have access to the DAC. This prompt will pop up when you insert the DAC.
You will now need to open the audio settings on the Nvidia Shield TV and ensure they are set to the following
Once this is done you can open Music Centre and configure the settings; using the Nvidia Shield TV remote app will work better as the app was designed for mobile devices. Go to this mobile then select settings. This YouTube video also demonstrates how to set Music Centre up: https://youtu.be/aymp5PauXhg
Go to sound and playback settings and select direct source to enable bit perfect audio playback for FLAC files which allows them to be played in the file’s native resolution and format.
If you are looking to play DSD files and have a DSD capable DAC, then go to output settings and select DSD native for USB output for DSD.
Set up is now complete and you can view your library stored on the USB drive.
The LED on the ifi Zen DAC changes depending on the file being played which is an indicator as to whether the file is being played by the Nvidia shield in its native format; DSD files show up as blue, files up to 96khz show up as green and above 96khz show up as yellow.
Now that the Nvidia shield is set up to play bit perfect audio, your DAC can be used for almost any set up, whether you are using the headphone output or RCA for an amplifier.
If you have any questions please post them in the comments or send a DM on Instagram.
If you decide to buy any of the products mentioned in this guide please use the affiliate links as this supports the tech by ask with no additional cost to you.
How does this approach bypass the inherent lack of support (by Google) of passing native DSD files from the NVIDIA Shield aka Android TV OS? All that I have read (including the pending feature request to Google) indicates that whether USB or HDMI outputs the output is transcoded to PCM first?
Thank you.
John
Thank you for reading the article. I’m not sure exactly how it works, however I think it is to do with the sony Music Centre app which has some sort of walkaround. Please let me know if you have any luck with this method and share because i haven’t found another way to make it work