iMac M1 PMS Performance

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
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PMS Version: 1.32.4.7195
Platform: iMac 24” with Apple M1 Max

I was running my PMS on a Synology NAS (1019+) with an Intel Celeron J3455 @ 1.50GHz. The 1019 does a pretty good job with a limited number of streams but does not handle 4K well at all. To avoid getting two movie versions, I decided to try installing PMS on a spare iMac with an Apple M1 Max chip. All content is on the NAS with a CAT5 connection to the iMac.

Plex is the only app running on the iMac. It handles the 4K transcoding; however, I notice that even on 1080p content I’m getting buffering all over the place now. When I use the back 15 sec button, it gets hung up and I have to sometimes wait up to a couple of minutes for the video to start again. Several times during shows the video flicks back to the cover art for a couple of seconds and then back to the show. Video scrubbing causes hangups as well. I am also seeing messages that my connection is not fast enough to support playback. Did not see that with the NAS.

Shouldn’t the M1 chip should be killing the Intel Celeron? I am seriously considering switching the server back to the NAS.

Any suggestions on server settings that would help with the buffering?

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I don’t think there is an iMac with anything other than the base M1 processor.

But it should be able to handle it either way. Have you tried straight copying a big file from the NAS to the iMac using Finder? What speeds are you getting there?

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My mistake, the M1 Max is my Mac Studio.

I thought about the disk speed as well; however, even the highest bitrate content for Audio+Video is about 40mbps at the high end. The iMac is reading from the NAS at about 25 MBs at the slow end.

Turns out that what really seemed to help is logging out of my apps and logging back in.

When I switched servers I just selected the new server from the web interface which was still pointed to the IP address of the NAS. Once I opened the web interface pointing to the iMac IP address and then logged out/in things got much better.

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