henrysingleton
I was referring to the people suggesting that the new app was better because it has the option to plays random songs. That’s not how I listen to music. I tend to listen to an entire album not random odd tracks that an algorithm thinks i want to hear. I wrongly assumed that the new app was for listening to music that I want to hear, not what it thinks I should be listening to.
The Plex App works perfectly for me for that.
Additionally since I wrote my comments it has been pointed out that you can actually browse your library by going to some options under ‘Recently Added Music’. Certainly not intuitive to hear something you bought ten years ago! But at least I can browse it now.
One thing I am confused at is the referencing to buying vehicles under download section. Really not sure what that is about.
@henrysingleton thanks for the reply. Yes, I’ve tried using the music playback features of the main Plex app on my Android phone. What seems to happen consistently, and across multiple devices, is that if I let music play for a while, it’s almost as if the app’s controls become disconnected from the actual playback of the music. I can press play, skip etc. and the music just keeps playing until I reboot the device. That I’ve seen this on at least two devices would suggest it’s not an issue specific to my primary phone. In any event, I’ve given up on the main Plex app for music.
Definitely open to other third party app suggestions. I get that it’s pointless to fight the tide on some of these newer apps that have a specific philosophy. Just frustrated for the reasons I mentioned before.
Oh, and the albums vs songs thing… Simply put, I just want a way to quickly (not several taps to set filters and sorting) get to a complete list of albums.
@grv68, you’re not alone in your disappointing with plexamp. Is incredible they force their users to change how they use a media player when the solution would be as easy as put a “Browse” button on the Home, instead going around to browse albums or artists. With the same logic, some day they could force users to do the same with movies or tvshows. That’s would be as incomprehensible as I find force user to listen random music of force them to search something specific.
For those who say we need to try it, I’ll say I already tried both with the older plexamp and with the new one, and I don’t like it and I won’t use it. And as others, I have to have another music streaming solution which does the job as expected (mpd in my case), which I find unacceptable for a paying solution like plex.
Nobody’s forcing anybody to do anything, and if the Plexamp experience isn’t what you expect in a music player, you’re absolutely free to use whatever you prefer Plexamp was designed to be an opinionated music player. It’s about exploring different paradigms and possibilities, and as a result some people love it, and some people don’t. It is not replacing the official Plex apps.
As @alexanderjunk said earlier in this thread, browsing is on its way thanks to the feedback that’s been received so far. It should be available before too long.
I’ll say it again: browsing is coming!
In the meantime, you can browse your library via the (slightly more cumbersome) method I posted earlier.
@aubrey.wodonga That’s great news! Thanks for listening to the feedback you’ve received
I totally understand and appreciate a new, opinionated user experience. In fact, I believe Plexamp should primarily revolve around this new paradigms you all introduced. I personally love them and they should be the default.
However, a more discoverable, regular browse feature as a fallback would be appreciated as sometimes people simply enjoy scrolling through their libraries.
I actually decided to give Plex a try because of Plexamp I’ve been playing with Mix Builder and I’d love to have more historical data available to try the Time Travel! Soft transitions and dynamic backgrounds are great too.
Generally, I think every Station is a great alternative to the playlist concept. Playlists usually get “obsolete” after looping through them a few times, and maintaining them quickly becomes a chore. I like the idea of generating some tailored ones whenever needed, on the fly, while also allowing to (re)discover new stuff.
Unrelated to this thread but, however, I am still trying to understand if Plex itself is the right solution for me. I have a very large, carefully tagged library and I’m experiencing tons of problems in importing it. Artists images are injected everywhere, it’s a bit of a mess right now.
Hey @lucaorio. Did you happen change the metadata settings when creating your music library? Under the Advanced library options, you can turn on “Prefer local metadata” and then scolling down close to bottom, you can change Album Art to “Local Files Only” I hope this helps.
@alexanderjunk I don’t know why, but both local and personal agents were not appearing in the settings after installing Plex Media Server for the first time.
I believe this was telling Plex to pull all covers from elsewhere, even if the settings of the library were specifying to first look locally. And whenever not found online, albums cover were replaced by artist’ ones.
I have cleaned the cache and re-installed it, and it now works perfectly! Apologies for the false alarm and for hijacking this thread!
Hi Simon! Just jumping in on the topic to give feedback of using the app the first days:
Update: I pressed the play button on a video playlist I had and it crashed my app and it won’t even load anymore. Will have to reinstall it.
Pros:
Love the clean interface of the Now playing panel and the Blurred colour background (plus the fact it kept the wave figure design). Just as swiping up, shows the rest of the tracklist, etc. I’d recommend to add the ability to swipe down to reveal the previous panels in addition to the arrow button.
Recent plays, added, history and the charts feature is very cool as it shows your likes and gives a personal feedback on your listening experience. Bottom options for similar artists and moods is definitely a plus!
Now that I played with the radios features, they’re very smart in selecting the specific mood or scene all based on your own songs from the library! This is very awesome.
When browsing the artist and going into an album, when coming back to the album list, it remembers the scroll position!!! (when an artist has many many albums, it’s very useful). In normal Plex it jumps back to the top and it was annoying to scroll all the way down. Thanks!
Recommendations:
I’d still add a permanent feature of Library browsing, perhaps along with another bottom icon like in the regular Plex app. The current way of changing the settings in the Recently added won’t save the setting/filters and resets itself (plus I want to keep the recent added tab too).
Add Chromecast feature.
When having the phone locked, the blurred background photo that shows up is the artists’ while the player bar colors are based on the album cover. I think it would be better if the locked screen would use the album photo instead.
For the downloads: Add the option to sync/download single tracks in the album section as sometimes one would like to sync only a few songs instead.
Also, maybe this just for the album feature, add the option to choose the sync quality as one might want to sync some albums in full FLAC whereas some others in just 256kbps mp3. In the general settings, it applies to everything.
The automatic function for Downloads is very useful, though!
Thank you again
P.D.: what exactly is Loudness leveling? It increases the low sound tracks or decreases the loud ones?
plex uses r128 loudness information (obtained from scanning/analyzing your audio files) to attempt to keep tracks at similar (not exact) volume levels.
So essentially yes, it can increase or decrease the volume so that loud overbearing tracks don’t blow out your ears, and that quiet songs can be heard without maxing out the volume.
do note, ‘normalization’ (matching average volume to a standard level) is not the same thing as ‘compression’ (making all quiet things as loud as the loud things).
the volume analysis is also what is used to provide the ‘graph’ of the track while its playing.
Its not a ‘waveform’ visual, its a visual how loud each section is.
Hi! Thank you for the detailed explanation! So the loudness information does more like “compression” than “normalization”, that’s what I’m understanding, and reading the Wiki page, it sure looks like a very smart way of analyzing!
To follow up with this tech info, should I also use/enable the Limiter along with the Loudness option? And is the Pre-Amp db related to this too?
I did not know that the graph is showing the loudness of the section rather than actual wave form of the song! I guess in most cases it would match up. Very cool!
I would like the browse option also but this thread is full of people extolling the benefits of radios and mixes. I’ve actually found the custom radios and mixes to be what I use most. But that said, I would like a way to name a mix or radio I have created so I can have multiple custom mixes and radios that I can select later by a name that makes sense to me.
+1 to normal window controls on the windows app (eg, close, minimize, full screen, pay attention to media keys, etc.). I have an PC connected to my TV for playing multimedia and this app is really hard to use there although it is the best music play Plex has to this point.
couldn’t find anything on this. I have tons of artists in my library, the feature to jump to a letter (with a bar on the side like in the regular plex app) should be there.
Plexamp was designed to be an opinionated music player. It’s about exploring different paradigms and possibilities, and as a result some people love it, and some people don’t. It is not replacing the official Plex apps.
Apologies for the false alarm and for hijacking this thread! 