Guys, you did a great job with revamped Plex Amp. I have now used it for couple of hours and have a few suggestions and pointers.
I have Plex server installed on my HTPC and using Plex Media player on HTPC to TV. I use cast function a lot using both Android and IOS app to cast to Plex Media Player. I am using a connected Denon AVR for pass through and bit streaming music. By bit streaming I mean pass-through of FLAC 24/96, FLAC 24/192, few .dsf files to AVR. These are read and decoded by AVR for best sound.
A lot of us are turning towards Roon for the Audiophile Music experience and convenience. Updated Plex Amp did the bit streaming part okay I think as it is passing the codecs to the AVR. It is fast and music quality is great. But still a lot of advanced features of Roon is missing.
The Plex Media Player (PC) on the other hand is trans coding and re sampling and is not passing as bit stream to AVR for music files.
The Plex AMP does not have a cast button which is a deal breaker. As most of us use it for locally stored songs on a server to be cast to a player (Advertised as Player).
In Windows the Plex Amp cannot be sized easily with no full screen button or sizing button.
How to show lyrics along with the song?
The equalizer in Windows app is not working.
Browse of Library files is not there, which is again a deal breaker.
The future is of multi room streaming of audio and video. The media can be locally stored or through services like TiDAL, Spotify, QoBuZ, Amazon HD etc and similar for video. Plex is positioned to integrate this into its platform and become a solution which is easy to use and a one stop solution.
Please keep these in mind in further developments as these will make or break Plex. If these features can be added Plex will rule the future.
I dont know, whats his problem, but for me configuring the equalizer is a pain, beacause grabbing the “knobs” with the mouse is incredibly hard. Often the wrong controller reacts, when the mouse is on another. Sometimes even the first, but mouse is miles away from that.
For me it changes the sound however.
Resizing manually loses the charm of using a sophisticated software. Resizing options should be there or simply option to make full screen
The equalizer - I have gone back and tried to use it. The dots cannot be dragged with a mouse, the lines can be dragged with mouse. But it is a very cumbersome experience and does not give accurate results.
The PlexAmp on Windows does not allow any keyboard shortcut or even arrow keys, back space, escape. It is difficult to operate with mouse. The system loses the charm.
I second and totally agree with @montyking’s post and his feature suggestions. I totally get that PlexAmp is a work in progress and a great start. Casting is a HUGE DEAL to me too; there’s no button for it and if it can be done I haven’t figured it out yet. I also agree with @montyking’s statement that
I’ve been in search of a good solution for multi-room streaming of my music and have yet to find a great one stop solution.
Audio: Plex has added a huge lot of features including indexing, metadata sourcing, radio, artist bios, concert etc. But all these features are yet to mature and not perfect. The metadata source is not exhaustive so a lot of albums will not draw any metadata. I rely on local metadata editing and pre-matching via musicbrainz picard. Plex then picks up the data in grid syle perfectly. But if you have a lot of albums and files this exercise will be very time consuming and futile. In this aspect Roon may be better. Audio is another area where more controls are required for selection of DAC and output. Also information on the file playing should be shown as to bitrate,format etc. Also the path it is travelling and conversion at each stage should be shown as info. On HTPC Plex Media Player uses WASAPI and that I think can transfer bit perfect audio to AVR. Casting function of plex to chromecast, other plex players on every device where plex client is installed can be done by using anyone of the clients as remote. This is a huge +. Only PlexAmp does not have cast as of now. Streaming services integration is another feature where plex has made good stride by integrating TIDAL. But adding spotify, qobuz, amazon may be a killer move in future. Plex is making an excellent progress towards multi room audio but many features are yet to come and improve existing apps
Video: This is a strong point of Plex and is already quite mature. Casting browsing content is easy. Integrating services like Netfix, Hulu, Amazon, Disney, HBO etc will be a killer move.
Plex can be a master solution for multi room audio, video in future smart home. It is promising and I wish the best to the team for great success ahead. Hope I was able to answer your question.
Here are some of my notes as I played with Plexamp v. 3.0.3
Areas of improvement for desktop version:
Keyboard shortcuts
‘?’ brings up a menu of shortcuts
Bring back shortcuts to turn on/off visualizations
Bring back shortcuts to cycle between visualizations
Right-click to change visualizations will automatically scroll/jump to the currently selected visualization.
Example: If you have the visualization Scratch selected and you want to select a neighboring visualization, you have to scroll all the way to the currently selected visualization. So, if you are going in sequential order shopping for that visualization that you want, but you don't know what you want, there is a lot of needless scrolling once you get past Retrospect
Clicking on the search button should automatically allow you to start typing for your search.
Right now, you click on the search button → click on the search box → then start typing.
Rating songs is a multi-click process (which, can provide protection against inadvertently changing your previous ratings) when before it was a single click process in v. 1.1.0
Enabling 1-Tap Track Plays does not remedy this.
Bring back two favorite visualizers, Pulsar Joy & Rose:
Refine this because if you have Plexamp as the active window, the keyboard shortcut does not work. You have to have another window as the active window or be on the desktop for this to work.
22-JUL-20: The search keyboard shortcut has been improved, but it’s still not quite . The shortcut does not work if Plexamp is already in focus. And then when you do click on the search button at the bottom of the program, yes it brings you to the search tab, but it does make it so you can automatically start typing. You still have to click inside the search box.
So, perhaps enable the search box to be typing ready without making the Aural Fixations and Recent Searches disappear until the user starts typing.
I would love to see profiles for the equalizer. I had to do an image search to find how a rock / bass-heavy setting should look, and even then, the toggles are hard to manipulate on an iPhone.
I would like to see individual tracks to create a playlist, if possible, using information from musicbrainz. Is it possible to have a successor to Plex Mix? I would like to test this out with PlexAmp and see if that’s possible. I think it would be the final piece to complete what otherwise is a really solid music application.
Loving PlexAmp and has almost replaced spotify as my daily driver.
However, I have a few suggestions along with some issues.
Suggestions:-
Play search results as playlist
– Scenario – I have many tracks for coldplay but none of their albums. I would like to
search for coldplay and play all the results that it finds.
SHIFT+CLICK plays a track (From anywhere, including search results) and finds other tracks
by the same artist (Would make searching a lot easier)
CTRL+CLICK plays a track (From anywhere, including search) and finds similar genre songs.
Split (sizable) view when a track is playing. So you don’t have to scroll back to the top to
pause a track.
A volume slider so you dont have to go into windows volume mixer to reduce volume
compared to other apps.
When playing radio, allow to permanently exclude specific artists/albums/songs.
BUGS:-
When a track has been partially played, when revisited it continues from where it left off.
Although I understand why this happens, for music this is not needed and replaying from the
beginning is much better. I have hundreds of tracks that are mid-way through when I start
playing.
Some tracks don’t normalize correctly and subsequently play too quietly.
Shift clicking on a track causes interface to freeze until you hit the / button.
Radio constantly picks the same songs/artists and doesn’t consider other/new albums
added.
I’ll stop there for now as there are quite a few, but this is a new app.
Pulsar Joy is my favorite visualizer and honestly, its absence in the new updated plexamp is deterring me from updating. Also, I would love to see them bring them over to iOS.
I would like a way to reset the EQ to baseline, but maybe that’s just me. Or at least have the handles snap to 0 dB when making adjustments on the phone or desktop program.
22-JUL-2020: Some good news. If you want to reset your EQ to baseline, then all you have to do is tap on the corresponding frequency label. Easy peasy!
Make sure to go under your Music library settings and untoggle the following:
Settings > Manage > Libraries > Music > Edit > Advanced > Store Track Progress
I am trying to use Plex as a replacement for Roon. Obviously Plexamp needs casting added, and thankfully it is confirmed to be on its way. But I also desperately need gapless playback. Using PMP on my Nuc running windows to feed a DAC via USB right now and I’m not getting gapless. I would love to replace PMP with Plexamp on that machine but it kinda sucks compared to PMP because I can’t use remote buttons, It can’t do true full screen, and I can’t cast to it from my phone. If Plexamp evolves to include these features along with more control over how audio is routed like Roon, it will be an excellent alternative.
Global keyboard shortcuts are no longer working in macOS Big Sur.
Also, unable to cast/Air Play from Plex Amp to other Air Play compatible devices on the network.
. The shortcut does not work if Plexamp is already in focus. And then when you do click on the search button at the bottom of the program, yes it brings you to the search tab, but it does make it so you can automatically start typing. You still have to click inside the search box.
