Server Version#: 1.24.1.4931
Player Version#: 8.21.2.27212 (f3c29f79)
I’m using the Plex app on an Amazon Fire Tablet HD 10 (9th Gen), connecting to my local Plex server running on a 2018 Mac Mini running Mac OS Catalina 10.15.7. All of my media is stored on a local Synology NAS that the Mac connects to. This has been part of my current home Plex setup for about a year and at first it worked nicely, but in the past ~4-5 months, music playback will randomly “go mute” at the start of a new track, and get stuck that way. Meaning, it’s clearly still playing- I can look at the Plex app on the tablet screen and see the seconds are ticking by, and volume level is “up” where it should be, but no sound is coming out. If I “jiggle the handle” by skipping forward or back a bunch of times, that’ll often nudge it into behaving itself again (even on the track that was giving me trouble moments earlier, can sometimes be brought back to life this way). Although, sometimes when I try to go back more than 1 track, it seems to get stuck and won’t let me go further back then the current track (as if it thinks it’s the 1st song on album). This can happen regardless of whether I’m playing an album or playlist straight through, or either of those with Shuffle on.
The only time this doesn’t happen is when it’s actually the first song that I’m trying to play. Meaning, if nothing is playing, and I browse to an album or playlist and tap Play or tap directly on a track I want to start with, that always works just fine. It’s just “the next track or after” that falls victim to this behavior, as if it had trouble figuring out “what comes next” and goes into this confused state.
As a test, I tried synching a few albums and playlists to the Fire Tablet so that I could play them back locally instead of streaming from the server. Same problem still occurs, at random. When it does start happening, it seems like a “flare-up” and stays bad or gets worse for hours at a time. I’ve tried restarting the Plex app and rebooting the tablet entirely but can’t say for sure if that settles things down in the moment. If it does, the problem eventually comes back anyway. If I let it just keep going (like a days-long playlist), it might go for an hour without outputting anything audible, then all of a sudden “wake up” for a track that I can hear out loud, but at some point it’ll go back to muted playback. It only breaks/fixes itself at the start of a song- never in the middle.
As another test, I tried the tablet’s native “Silk” browser to run the Plex web client, and that worked just fine- no random muting after a few days of testing.
Things I haven’t tried yet, but suspect they won’t reveal anything-
- Run the Plex app on an Android phone (Pixel 2) and see if it ever ‘mutes’ like this
- Play music from someone else’s/remote Plex server through the Fire Tablet to determine if it still does this
- Delete and reinstall the Plex client on the tablet
The majority of my music library is 320kbps MP3s ripped from my CDs in iTunes, that I’ve been listening to for years through Plex without issue from various Plex clients- iOS (Plex & Plexamp), MacOS (Plex Media Player), FireTV, Plex skill on an Echo Dot, and even this same Fire Tablet at first, was fine.
Does this sound like an issue with a recent update to the Fire OS Plex app? Is it really the same as the Fire TV app, or Android app? I don’t recall exactly how I got Plex onto my Fire Tablet in the first place - I don’t think I had to do anything sneaky to install it. I haven’t experienced these symptoms with the Spotify or Pandora apps on the same tablet.
Any tips on how to extract relevant info from the player or server logs? I figure there are more clues in there but I’m not sure where to dig for them. Thanks,
ron
