Music Assistant adds an optional quality threshold for choosing which copy of a song plays. An old MP3 rip can give way to a higher-quality version from a connected music service, including inside an album, playlist or folder and when local files are preferred.
The setting starts off. Listeners can ask for high-bitrate compressed audio, lossless audio or high-resolution audio. When preparing a track, Music Assistant prefers a copy meeting that threshold, or the closest better copy it knows. If needed, it searches other services for a match. The first song can wait up to five seconds; later songs are prepared while the current song plays.
This adds an explicit exception to the source-preserving playback reported on October 14. Copies whose quality is unknown are left alone, and audiobooks and podcasts keep the account they started from. Marcel van der Veldt supplies the setting and a guide to how the source choices interact.