I've converted into a big Plex fan, specially the audio quality.
The audio quality is so great, I'm starting to use it more and more as my default audio player (specially after I added a toslink cable).
Here's a suggestion/request:
A "Plex Audio Player" that's specialized in only playing audio files.
That means all types of audio content (mp3,FLAC, lossless etc.etc) but again.... it ONLY plays audio/music files.
No video, no Hulu streaming nothing but music.
A minimalist and easy to use interface with support for digital audio and other good stuff.
Some may be asking: "But why just an audio player?"
Less CPU intensive
Specialized UI
Better audio quality and broader file support
More stability
I'm not a developer and correct me if I'm wrong, but can't most of the infrastructure be based on Plex?
It can be free of many features that Songbird, Itunes and other players have and be a simple player for audiophiles. Or if possible (and it'll be stable while retaining simplicity and low CPU usage) more features that are audio related and Ipod compatibility.
Is this a possibility?
And again.... I apologize if this has been discussed already.
I apologize for my "noobness" I'm just excited its possibilities and potential.... sorry.
Personally I kinda think of Plex as the iTunes of video media (in the "premier application" sense not the "drm laden virtual store" one). It just does video stuff so well, and its so obvious that is where the developers care, and so much of the community is into using it as a living room video on demand box... I don't see a big following for a music only app when there is already an iTunes or whatever.
In fact for music I prefer to use itunes because of search functionality.
But (bout to produce many nodding heads) I can take the award as the most overall most wrong guy on the forum...
I too would love to see the plex music player being improved, but I very much like the integration of it within the media center app.
this is the main reason I like plex so much. it plays practically all media files I have and I don’t need to use different apps for each media type.
ofcourse, easy searching and a more flexible overview of the music library would make me an even happier man, but I believe this will be improved in the not too distant future. support for even more audio formats is always a good thing as long as it’s stable, but come on, I listen to crust-punk, mp3 suits my needs just fine…
Off topic, but I looked up what this is on Wikipedia because I love new things and it was the first time ever that I left a wikipedia page more confused than I found it. The first sentence:
that definition sums it up pretty adequately ;)
for your listening pleasure:
[martyrdöd](http://www.myspace.com/martyrdod)
[skitsystem](http://www.skitsystem.net)
;)
What I'm talking about isn't an improved music overview within Plex.
I'm requesting an entirely different app based on the current engine.
Same file support (perhaps a few more file support)but solely dedicated for music.
I think that keeping it simple and not as open source would also make it more stable.
If doesn't have to sync with Ipod/Iphone, It doesn't have to have Last FM support, it doesn't have to play videos or link me to blogs, etc.etc.
Just a simple elegant, elegant, high quality music player, with a clean interface,
What could be included:
Support for as many audio files as possible
Hot keys and remote control support
Playlists
Multiple source
Artwork
Lightweight
Visualizer
Tags
All based on the current audio engine but with an Itunes like GUI.
so, let me get this straight, you are requesting that the plex team abandon plex to begin work on an entirely different and new project that would be of limited use in a field that is already way over-saturated?!
and “not as open source”? What the ■■■■?
i dont get where you think source code disclosure hurts stability, its actually the exact opposite. Not to mention that making derivatives of plex and the many other GPL licensed components plex contains without also adopting a GPL compatible license and disclosing source is a violation of the terms of the license and will leave you legally liable, Without the open source nature of the community, unless you personally hire developers, there is no way for the casual community of devs to get involved and contribute, and software like this that is literally built by the community would simply not exist.
I have said before that music seems to be the poor relation to video within Plex. However this is only because reflects the interests of the devs who give up their spare time to make this happen and the users who create feature requests to influence the development path to a certain degree. This is how if is and we have to accept it.
Having said that music works for me and it sounds great. Whilst I would like to see improvements in the user experience (better scraping and metadata, fanart visualisation, lyrics that work, etc.) I find I am listening to more music than I ever did. My 1000 albums ripped using lossless sound fantastic and can dip into different albums that I had forgotten I had using just the Apple remote. So whilst I would like to seem improvements it works, not as well as Windows MCE in this area but good enough. I would rather see things like a better library, eyetv integration and DVD playing sorted.
So what can we do about it? Either create feature requests and drum up support on the forums or learn how to code for Plex and join in the effort. I would love to do this if I had the time. If I don’t get the features I want in the long term I will make the time. Alternatively if want you really want is a completely different application that just plays music then take a fork from Plex and roll your own. That will give you a great starting point and that is the point of open source.
I don't believe they have to abandon Plex and I never stated that. I admitted to my ignorance to the process, which is why I asked if the request was a possibility.
And I disagree of the market being over saturated.
There's only a few players dedicated for playing high quality music (Cog, Play, Vox, and Songbird)
And NONE of them sound nearly as good as Plex, and they all have their limits and problems.
And again, excuse my ignorance into the coding process but it seems that the more features and plugins that an app has. The more it seems to have compatibility issues and stability issues. Which is why some apps prefer to be closed source in order to maintain control for better stability and performance. I might be wrong on my assumption, so forgive me.
And again.... it was a "request" and I wanted to know if it was possible. I thought that they could implement their audio engine and adapt it to become solely an audio player. I guess its not as easy and there's legal terms that might prevent this from happening, something that I admit I didn't consider.
And to be clear, I also mentioned that I'd be willing to pay for such an app, and I'm sure that many Mac users would be willing to pay for a high quality audio player.
So excuse my ignorance to the entire process, it was never my intention to disrespect or demand anything from the developers, it was just a "request" since I love the audio quality so much.
im not sure what you mean in terms of sound quality, itunes outputs via coreaudio just like plex, or do you just mean flac support? and there are many more audio players out there, from your needs i’d suggest you try amarok or maybe even foobar2k through wine or crossover, and of course there’s always mpd and its many front ends.
Again.... forgive me if I'm wrong, but Itunes and Plex don't seem to have the same audio. And the audio is clearly better in Plex than Itunes. Now.... they might be based on Core Audio, but Plex has extra plugins or features that distinguish it from Itunes and any other player out there.
Now.... that may be due to the video end of the app, but its a "system" wide setting that includes music as well.
Thank you for suggesting other music players, but running crossover just to listen to music is a too much. I checked out the mpd and that's too much work (and I believe some are outdated if unless I'm wrong). Either way, they won't have the same quality that Plex provides.
I get pristine beautiful audio that I've never experienced on any computer. The quality (at least in my system) is comparable to DVD-Audio, its that good. Which is why I'm willing to pay for a dedicated app.
But I understand if its too much work and/or unrealistic for the various reasons given.
I apologize to the developers for my insistence and ignorance, it was never my goal to irritate anybody (if that's how I came across.)
amarok 2 has a mac native version now, and those 2 settings you’re showing are just for ac3 and dts passthrough to your receiver, they shouldn’t make any difference for normal 2 channel music.
if you have your reciever configured properly in the audio midi setup utility, core audio can passthrough audio resolutions as high as your receiver can support, up to 32bit/192khz i think, and any app (vlc, songbird, amarok, whatever) that can play high resolution flacs (usually 24/96) can output them properly. for multichannel music, most musicplayers should be capable of ac3 and dts passthrough through toslink, however i dont think toslink can cary lossless multichannel audio (flac 5.1, Dolby trueHD, DTS HD MA). they’d have to get downmixed to stereo or to lossy ac3/dts, those streams can only be carried losslessly over hdmi or analog multichannel.
I am not a dev so I don't really have a place to say this, but you don't need to apologize. I understand the want for a simple music app and I think Plex has great potential as one. I think your request is valid. If nothing else it shows the priorities of Plex's community, which you are now a part of. Please don't apologize for that.
My honest suggestion is this: I don't see video being dropped from Plex, but it doesn't mean that Plex can't be the worlds best audio player as well. Please think of and suggest audio features that are lacking and help with bug reports when there are new audio features.
Each member of the community has something to add. I personally will stay in the camp that obsesses over the playback quality of 1080P content and TV show ordering, but I am glad there are those like you to focus on the audio.
One day my SO might demand her itunes play in Plex and on that day I will be glad you filled out a bug report that makes some feature work well that makes her go "ahhhhh." Just like one day you might rip a Blu Ray and get that "discs are the devil" thought that many video Plexers like me have and on that day we will be there.....
Let's just strive to make Plex the best media (and kind) center on the planet. Something for everything. I mean really, who cares about bloat on modern day higher end Macs. Mac users have to deal with Universal Binaries bloatedness. No one really complains about a Intel only app (that takes up less space overall) taking up a little more space for video or audio. Plex will take up the same resources running wither way because of what it is (constant content display).
I am not sure on the detail like but itunes for instance cannot change output on the fly, so if your music changes from one sample to another all that happens is OSX resamples on the way out, this can be detrimental to good audio replay. I do not know if plex handles things differently.
I would agree though that plex sounds better than itunes in terms of 2 channel audio but itunes and remote app is going to take some beating in terms of use.
Andres, rather than requesting a separate app, would you not be just as happy if Plex could improve on the Music section of the app to give you the kind of functionality that you need (along the lines of what poofyhairguy said)? It’s currently easy enough to set Plex to start in the Music section, and with the extremely flexible skinning engine, it’s even possible to make Plex look and act entirely different just by using a different skin. I realize you’re not a coder, but you may be able to find a coder with similar interest who might be willing to work on such a skin.
Of course, a skin can only do so much, and that would only make Plex look like more like a dedicated music app. A lot of the extra functionality that you’d want would be part of the underlying library system. I have no idea what kind of enhancements the Plex devs have planned for their brand new library system, but perhaps you could find out. If the current developers of Plex are much more interested in the video side of things (which may well be the case), you may be able to put out a request to have some more music-minded developers to join the Plex team or contribute some code. That’s one of the best things about community-driven applications like Plex
This thread’s a bit old, but I just stumbled across it. I’d love to see Plex have a better music interface as well, last time I tried it with my library I ran into a lot of problems, though that was before some of the improvements around itunes integration, etc. I’m surprised to hear about the audio engine being better than iTunes though. I haven’t had a chance to set up a Hifi system around my Mac Mini, but I wouldn’t have thought the sound would be much different. The biggest issue with Hifi audio on Mac in general is the fact that the music data sample rate needs to match coreaudio’s configured sample rate, otherwise coreaudio starts resampling, and that will definitely sound a bit degraded.
The idea I had that I’d like to see is an improved audio interface with the ability to use MPD as a back end. MPD was actually recently updated to handle higher bit & sample rates, along with wav & aiff tags, etc. If it’s installed on Linux with ALSA then the sample rate switches to match the audio on the fly. This could potentially give more dedicated audiophiles the ability to run a dedicated music server but all the goodness of the Plex GUI. Note someone over on the xbmc side of the house started working on a mpd client, not sure to what extent it’s usable or portable to plex:
The other option is to try to find a way to switch the core audio sample rates on the fly, I don’t know of anything out there that can do that outside of a several thousand dollar package from Sonic Studio called Amarra.
