Wondering what features people would like to see from the upcoming updates to the PlexAmp ?
Obviously we are getting Multi room support in Plexamp v5 especially now that Elan has added a lot of things we wanted in Caldera.
Like we technically got a TV version of Plexamp… Somehow I wasn’t expecting us to get it from Elan directly as well. Surprisingly no one tried to make a 3rd party app for this either. But It’s never been confirmed that Plexamp will ever get a native TV app so for now I’m hoping that Elan expands support Caldara TV app for more platforms like Android TV and more than just tvOS.
We also got exclusive mode support for Windows that’s for Plexmap and not the Desktop/HTPC app. Although this implementation feels more like headless for Windows, MacOS and Linux with a attached visualizer. Which is funny cause there is already a dedicated headless app Caldara for Linux and not mention the existing Plexamp headless too.
There also seems to be surround sound support which is interesting cause Plexamp already has support for downmixing surround to stereo. But I’m hoping this means it can support Dolby Atmos music. Elan has mentioned multiple times this is a issue due to licensing at best he can find a way to transcode it but It would be great if he had the option to passthrough the native Dolby codec straight to an AVR. Currently on Windows Plexamp you can’t do this cause of the lack of exclusive mode and you can’t do this and on headless even if you connect to it via HDMI, it can’t read it as a surround sound track. The only way to do this is if you Plex Desktop/HTPC and allows exclusive mode passthrough for Dolby Digital Plus then it will work perfectly but it only works cause Movies/TV Shows use the same codec whereas music doesn’t so have this supported would be great.
At least so far that’s what we have seen added to Caldera so we can only hope it gets added to Plexamp v5. There are still a lot of UI elements that could be added like Better offline mode, Better Playlist management and search, maybe even a dedicated Desktop app? The current port is fine for what it is, but if it was possible to create a brand new TV app from scratch, I wonder what a Desktop equivalent would look like? Maybe this asking too much but HTPC Plexamp that would be a port from what we saw from tvOS would be great too. Yeah the Plex HTPC app kind of does the same thing but we don’t get the benefits of Plexamp features or the new UI either
PlexAmp is very new to. And I’m fallen in love with this! It’s taken my MP3 to a different level with the current interface. Been working with audials to grab more music but upping to FLAC. I hope this app gets more growth!
Things I’d like…
- Google TV support, please!!
- In the Now Playing view, massively increase the size of the text used for artist, album, and song info. Right now the text is too small to read when the phone is at arm’s length on my car mount, and there is SO MUCH empty space that could be used. (We don’t all use Android Auto or CarPlay!)
- Continued work on reducing unwanted mobile data usage. Despite my only ever playing pre-downloaded playlists, occasionally Plexamp will use a few hundred MB of mobile data, which costs me a few bucks. I’d rather Plexamp just blow up and fail to work than bypass my prefs and use mobile data. I never want it to use one byte of mobile data. (I have a weird unaffordably expensive mobile data plan so I notice this acutely.)
- Classical music support like the
Composertag. This would require server changes too, I’m sure, but if Plex wants to be a proper music server this has to get done. - I’d like the option to have my smart playlists refresh themselves occasionally while on wifi. This way, recently added music will trickle into my downloaded playlists without my having to go into Plexamp’s Downloads section and refresh them myself.
- Better, more colorful visualizers. The current visualizers are always gross muddy low-contrast hues.
Being able to use available ReplayGain values for tracks AND albums. Currently, I’m not even sure that Plexamp follows my values. I used dbPoweramp years ago to generate the values. It’s not hard-coded, but it sits in the metadata.
Improve the server back end. Expand the available metadata tags on each track for better playlist creation. This will enable more accurate radio and auto playlist generation
Better playlist editing on the server. Sorting, instancing.
If Plexamp or Caldera added internet radio services like TuneIn or RadioParadise then I would have my dream setup. I’ll ditch any streamers I have as I got used to that both with Wiim and BluOS products. @elan is this something that is even possible? Or is it a headache of licensing and money?
You CAN use it with Echo devices but you have to flash them and put a different OS on them…I bought some Echos for cheap and set this up for porch speakers.
What is caldera?
Also, what about Audials radio? You can record music from the app.
Classical music support is similar issue to multiple artist support.
Something that has been a requested feature since 2015 and Plex haven’t really considered it a top priority. At best Elan has said the “Appear On” feature on Plexamp is the closeted we will get to see to multiple artist support. But even that has it’s issues as explained here
I personally listen to a lot of film score so many soundtracks will have multiple composers working on an album or even share the album artist title and unfortunately you always need to pick the first artist and disregard the other artist otherwise Plex doesn’t know what to do with it.
I’d love to see music video support added to Plexamp. It would be great if artist pages could display all of an artist’s associated music videos, with the ability to play them either sequentially or shuffled, whether for a single artist or across the entire music library.
I know Elan has previously said that Plexamp is a music player, but music videos are an integral part of the music experience. Since Plex Music libraries already support adding and organizing music videos, it makes sense for Plexamp to support browsing and playing them as well.
As much as I want this as well I think the issue is that Plexamp will be need bake in support for Video formats and that would make the app heavier for something that is mainly for audio only.
I would like to be able to browse all of my audio libraries on Plexamp but I can only find search options on there now. I’m creating a library of audio books and old time radio shows for my dad because he can’t read regular books like he used to due to his Parkinsons. A browse feature would work so much better with him so he can see what I have added to the library. He doesn’t know what is in the library so he has no idea what to search for. Not sure whose idea it was to make it search only.
I see what you’re saying. I was expecting it to be more like the Plex app when the home screen initially shows the whole library. So just a couple extra clicks and I found it. Thank you very much!
Multiple artist support for albums and tracks.
Better support for multiple artists with the same name. These get messed up almost always.
Ability to name discs in multiple disc albums.
More recommendations - plexamp is quite good at giving recommendations from the library but the front page of Plexamp is not populated with that many of them. Sometimes I would like to scroll more and see more ideas for what to play.
We need to give up on Multiple artist support cause it will never happen, we been asking for that for more than a decade and Plex can’t deliver. One of their reasoning was that the solution would lead to Plex having to be re-written from scratch just to add support for it.
What good does giving up do? Plex has pretty much abandoned Plexamp, might as well give up on it?
Plexamp’s entire existence is dependent if Elan still has some use for the app for himself cause it’s his passion project. The only reason we are getting updates is cause he still wants to add stuff to it but the reason I say we need to give up on multiple artist support is cause he has already said he isn’t interested in it multiple times already.
