@cardy said:
I tried this again yesterday. I got the “Sorry I am having trouble accessing your server” (Which was online and available). So i rebooted the echo and removed and enabled the Plex skill. The server then could be located but now when I request it to play a song all i get is playing radio and still no sound.Its highly frustrating !
Seems as if you’re stuck on music playback now according to the logs. Does your router support turning off DNS rebind protection or NAT loopback?
I’m running pfsense as a firewall and have
rebind-domain-ok=/plex.direct/
Configured on the DNS settings which resolved my original issues of using the server with a secure connection.
The NAT reflex is more of a problem to reconfigure and would probably cause me other problems. I used to use split DNS (override the external DNS entry for my machine and make internal machines resolve the address to internal IPs)
@cardy I deployed a hotfix to the app servers today to add unsecured local connections as a fallback option. Essentially if we try your remote address and it fails, we try your local https address, if that fails we then try ip:port. Please let me know if this solves your problems.
@vasinator
I have tried it just and its much improved. I tried the following:
“Alexa, ask plex to play Adventure of a Lifetime” this song is by Coldplay and is on the server plex responded with “Playing radio” and started playing another track off the server by a totally different artist". Previously it used to find this track on my server but I just didn’t get any sound.
The sound now seems to come through reliably but it just defaults to radio a lot rather than telling me it couldn’t find the song i requested. Strange as with the particular song above it used to find it reliably but just didn’t play.
Asking plex to play “Nothing else matters” however worked fine.
I have tried other artists and songs some it seems to find and work fine others it just says playing radio.
We’re getting reports (and are able to reproduce) instances of our playback intents “snapping” to our library radio intent. A partial workaround on your end would be to use the media type in your request. For instance: ask plex to play the song Adventure of a Lifetime or ask plex to play the artist Coldplay. These types of requests are both sufficiently unique that our intent snapping bug shouldn’t occur and you’re more likely to get what you want because we can scope your media request to a specific type of media.
@vanstinator said:
We pushed a hotfix to the server so your Alexa store won’t reflect it. We pushed another hotfix today adjusting our timeline parameters we send to PMS. We based it off the PMS logs @Geoff555 provided us. If anyone has audio cut out prematurely from this point forward please provide a fresh set of logs so we can continue looking at the issue.
Which .log files would be handy for you to peruse? I’'m still getting dropouts.
Everything at C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server\Logs, or specific ones?
Cheers
I am still receiving dead air when trying to play music via Echo Dot speakers.
I get that occasionally, first time I ask for a song it won’t work then the second time it does. Slightly annoying but the playback is much improved.
Still getting dead air when trying to play music from my Plex server using the Echo Dot. And when it isn’t busy broadcasting dead air it’s busy telling me that it can’t find the music that is all labeled correctly with metadata all correct. Why is this getting worse over time?
I too get “silence”, intermittently or erratically, when trying to play music to the Echo Dot. BTW, how does one explicitly set the player to Alexa (Echo Dot). If I say “Ask Plex to change my player” it’s not listed.
Hello @vanstinator and @elan I’m a longtime lifetime Plex Pass member who just bought my first Amazon device (Echo Dot) yesterday. I created a test music library in Plex but I can’t get music to play on the Echo Dot. When I ask Alexa to ask Plex to play a song, Alexa says playing the song but nothing is played.
Remote access is enabled, as it shows “Fully accessible outside your network” in green text. I’m behind a single NAT using a port forwarding rule on 32400.
Alexa says my primary player is Chrome, yet when I ask Alexa to ask Plex to play a song on Chrome, the same silent behavior occurs. Are we also able to play a song in the browser using Alexa? If so, how?
How do I explicitly set the player to the Echo Dot? I read it should default to the Dot, but that’s not happening.
As you know smart speakers, including Alexa, are becoming very popular. Shouldn’t you beef up the Alexa Plex skill integration a bit more in the Plex web interface by including telemetry and diagnostics in the interface? I also feel the Echo devices should appear in the devices interface and also be identified by Alexa as a player. This would certainly add more clarity for your users.
For giggles, I installed the My Media server daemon on my Plex Media Server computer, pointed it to my iTunes music folder, and added the My Media Alexa skill. It worked flawlessly from the start, and I am enjoying my iTunes music on my Echo Dot using Alexa voice control. I didn’t have to open any firewall ports, or do anything to get it to work with the same computer and Echo Dot on the first try. I’m probably comparing apples to oranges, but based upon my failure to get it working and reading issues from other users, Plex Alexa voice integration seems incredibly flaky, overly complex, or dare I say, half-baked in comparison to the My Media solution that I don’t want to use. Why does this other third-party local music streaming server application work with zero effort, but you guys can’t get Plex to work? I hope you put the proper resources into diagnosing and fixing this problem. Now that I think about it, you may actually know what the problem is but can’t or won’t fix it any time soon because it is caused by the design of the Plex cloud architecture.
I am hoping to migrate my music from iTunes to Plex, but this is a definite show stopper. How do I get Alexa voice control working? I’ve spent a lot of time trying to get it to work, and I’d appreciate a heads up as to a solution or if I should quit wasting my time.
Cheers.
@LiveAndLetDive said:
For giggles, I installed the My Media server daemon on my Plex Media Server computer, pointed it to my iTunes music folder, and added the My Media Alexa skill. It worked flawlessly from the start, and I am enjoying my iTunes music on my Echo Dot using Alexa voice control. I didn’t have to open any firewall ports, or do anything to get it to work with the same computer and Echo Dot on the first try. I’m probably comparing apples to oranges, but based upon my failure to get it working and reading issues from other users, Plex Alexa voice integration seems incredibly flaky, overly complex, or dare I say, half-baked in comparison to the My Media solution that I don’t want to use. Why does this other third-party local music streaming server application work with zero effort, but you guys can’t get Plex to work? I hope you put the proper resources into diagnosing and fixing this problem. Now that I think about it, you may actually know what the problem is but can’t or won’t fix it any time soon because it is caused by the design of the Plex cloud architecture.
Cheers.
I have had the same results with mymedia and the same music library that i use for Plex. It baffles me how such a smaller company can get it working but Plex seems to be having a pretty large issue with this and avoiding providing us with any updates.
I really do not want to use mymedia in order to use Plex with my Echo Dot. But in the meantime I guess we are all stuck with this flaky option. I say flaky cause mymedia is awful with metadata and labels almost every track incorrectly. Come on team, please save us from this mess.
@LiveAndLetDive Thanks for the feedback! I’ll try to address your issues the bets I can.
We are able to adapt to various playback and network conditions. If you’re not getting any playback at all via the Echo device that would be a bug that we would need to look at. I’d be happy to help debug that with you.
Today we default all music playback to the Echo device. To do a one-off playback request to another player your request needs to include on PLAYER_NAME at the end of your request to initiate a cast. We’ve had sporadic requests to be able to have a default music player that isn’t Alexa and we’re looking at that for a possible future release.
We can’t show the Echo device in the devices list as its not something you can cast to. Other platforms like Spotify have a special 1st-party integration to allow for that. Your Echo account does show up in the device management page in Plex Web.
As far as telemetry I’d love to hear additional suggestions. We’ve talked about possibly including logs from the skill somewhere for users to self-diagnose some issues. I can’t make any promises but I’d love to hear more thoughts here.
Our situation is more complex out of the box because we support remote and shared servers. Correct me if I’m wrong but MyMedia only works locally right? We’ve come a long way with stability since we launched but there are still corner cases like yours that fail. Rest assured we’re constantly looking at ways to make playback more robust for edge cases.
I can look at your logs specifically to see what might be happening. Can you reproduce the issue for me if you haven’t tried in awhile? We don’t keep logs longer than a week so I’ll need a fresh repro to be able to diagnose.
I’ve unpinned the topic to help decrease the pinned posts noise in the new forums. I’ve also updated the thread title. I’ll also be closing this thread in a few weeks once the current discussion dies out as the root causes for the original issues are fixed. If someone has playback issues lets open a new thread per person per issue to diagnose and fix.
I had created one of the original threads/topics regarding this and ya’ll seem to have neglected it. Please don’t close this topic as it seems to be the one you all are most responding to and keeping up to date. This is still an ongoing issue that needs to be addressed.
Vanilla made it difficult to cut through the noise of all the threads. When you’re an engineer only spending a few hours in the forums it’s hard to keep up. Discourse has made keeping track of specific threads much easier. I’ll find your original thread and pop in.
As far as the issue itself goes as I said we’ve addressed many causes of issues. I’d rather use topical threads per-bug now than one catch-all.
Hello @vanstinator & cc: @elan
Thanks for getting back to me. I am hoping to migrate my music from iTunes and I want to see how it works with Plex. I purchased a single Echo Dot speaker but I am planning to get multiple Echo smart speakers until Sonos drastically improves Alexa support. I need to see Plex working properly with a large music library (including playlists, and Alexa voice control). I created a music library pointing it to my iTunes music folder. It eventually finished importing and all my tracks seem to be there.
Yes, the My Media daemon and skill plays music using Alexa voice control inside my home flawlessly from my local iTunes library on my MacBook Pro, which is exactly what it needs to do. I didn’t need to open firewall ports or deal with any cloud networking issues. All I need Plex to do is to play my music, movies, etc. WITHIN my home. The fact that I require internet connectivity to play a movie, or even sync a movie to my iPad on my home network is making me seriously reconsider Plex. Plex Media Server should have a “LOCAL” mode for Lifetime or Plex Pass members where all playback, syncing, etc. can be performed offline without internet connectivity. I digress, but this is a major turnoff about Plex.
Also, your new and “improved” forums are diabolical and a complete nightmare. WT* were you all seriously thinking?? As I certainly don’t have the time and energy to even begin to figure that mess out, here are the Plex issues I would really appreciate your assistance with:
Alexa voice control of Plex to play music on my Echo Dot doesn’t work. As I mentioned, remote access is enabled, as it shows “Fully accessible outside your network” in green text. I’m behind a single NAT using a port forwarding rule on 32400. I’ve asked it to play several tracks, and Alexa says she will play them, but nothing. I am not getting ANY music playback. Music plays when I click in the web interface in the Chrome browser, but as far as the Plex skill, I get nothing when I ask Alexa to ask Plex to play a specific song or a particular artist. I also notice that sometimes when I ask for a specific song, Alexa says she will play songs by that particular artist, rather than the specific song I asked for. I have sent the logs in a private message, and hopefully you can find the problem.
I can’t browse my iTunes playlists in the web interface. When I click on playlists under Libraries, as I scroll down and they all say “Loading…” and never load. If I click on one, nothing happens. Once I reach playlists that say “Loading…”, Plex Media Server always hangs and shows as unresponsive in Activity Monitor. Plex Media Server shoots to over 100% CPU utilization, and the fans on my Mac go crazy. Plex won’t close if I choose quit from the menu bar. I have to Force Quit in Activity Monitor to make it close. If I restart the server whilst still on the playlist web URL, Plex again pegs the CPU to over 100% and I have to force quit again. I have also sent my server database in a private message in case it is required to troubleshoot this issue with the playlists loading and Plex Media Server hanging.
Please put the previous Plex iOS app back on the App Store. This is another WT* were you all seriously thinking??
Thanks!
I’m having the playback problem too. It seemed to be working earlier in the week, but for the past two days all I get is nothing when I ask Alexa/Plex to play music. Server is available remotely, everything looks fine on my end, the proper cards appear in the Alexa app on my iPhone but there’s no playback and I don’t see anything listed under Status/Now Playing.
“Alexa, tell Plex to shuffle Oingo Boingo” -> “Shuffling music by Oingo Boingo” -> nothing
“Alexa, tell Plex to shuffle playlist The Big 80s” -> “Shuffling the playlist The Big 80s” -> nothing
edit: ah, I see more discussion about this and NAT loopback. I do have my Echos on a separate IoT network so I wonder if this is related to the problem. Strange that it was working fine a few days ago though as I haven’t made any network changes.
Any news regarding the logs and database I sent to you, thanks? Plex Alexa skill is still broken and Plex Media Server hangs when I try to look at my playlists imported from iTunes.
Cheers.
