I want to talk about using Plex primarily as a way of listening to my music library. OK, I mean I want to vent a bit about some of the features. I do want to be lighthearted about it as It’s a free platform and I’m hoping to get used to its foibles.
To start off with I’m really trying hard to be patient getting Plex to work with my network drive, a Macbook and my iPhone. All my kit is new and I’m not particularly (admission: not at all) handy at configuring computers. It’s a bit frustrating but I hope I’m getting there after a few uninstall/ reinstalls and spending a while relabelling my files, both in iTunes and using Finder.
I’m looking forward to things working now and for the next few years as I add to my music library.
However, there are a few aspects of Plex I think are laughable.
the artwork Plex insists on linking with artists is often way off the mark. For instance, it’s put a picture of some 40’s dude in a Fedora as the image for Bach. “Really?!”
Does anyone need a potted history of the artist printed up on their page? I find this really cringeworthy. Is it finding this from last.fm or the other database? I’d like to turn this off.
It is often relabelling artists incorrectly - for instance, ‘DJs’ becomes DJDS, and ‘Dilla’ becomes ‘Dillaz’ (along with a photo of this Dillaz character).
That’s it for now.
I see the priority for most users is video. Perhaps I’m using the wrong platform and there’s another better suited to my needs. I haven’t found it yet and I’ve invested a long time trying to get Plex to work… so here I’ll stay.
Thanks.
I don’t mind iTunes.
Latest issue:
This iPhone Plex app will not connect to the network drive.
Dunno what to do
Have uninstalled and reinstalled, power cycled the drive.
Fing sees the drive, pings it no problem.
Any ideas?
Thanks
The Plex app on the iPhone doesn’t connect to the network drive.
The app connects to the Plex server (in your case running on the Macbook) which connects to the network drive.
@timedweller said:
I want to talk about using Plex primarily as a way of listening to my music library. OK, I mean I want to vent a bit about some of the features. I do want to be lighthearted about it as It’s a free platform and I’m hoping to get used to its foibles.
To start off with I’m really trying hard to be patient getting Plex to work with my network drive, a Macbook and my iPhone. All my kit is new and I’m not particularly (admission: not at all) handy at configuring computers. It’s a bit frustrating but I hope I’m getting there after a few uninstall/ reinstalls and spending a while relabelling my files, both in iTunes and using Finder.
I’m looking forward to things working now and for the next few years as I add to my music library.
However, there are a few aspects of Plex I think are laughable.
the artwork Plex insists on linking with artists is often way off the mark. For instance, it’s put a picture of some 40’s dude in a Fedora as the image for Bach. “Really?!”
Does anyone need a potted history of the artist printed up on their page? I find this really cringeworthy. Is it finding this from last.fm or the other database? I’d like to turn this off.
It is often relabelling artists incorrectly - for instance, ‘DJs’ becomes DJDS, and ‘Dilla’ becomes ‘Dillaz’ (along with a photo of this Dillaz character).
That’s it for now.
I see the priority for most users is video. Perhaps I’m using the wrong platform and there’s another better suited to my needs. I haven’t found it yet and I’ve invested a long time trying to get Plex to work… so here I’ll stay.
Thanks.
I have spent time with Plex and my Music to find there are some issues but all have workarounds.
If your looking for OCD tghen your itunes Library will work well with Plex. If your Using Flac or other Hi Quality audio you may need to go to Vox Player. VOX Mac Music Player: Best FLAC Player for Mac. iTunes Alternative..
You can make Flac work with Plex with a separate Library but no OCD “On Screen Display” through your Network Receiver. DLNA as it’s passage. Great sound, I use My Onkyo iPad app to control it’s play with great success. I love it, I use it hours on end.
Plex’s main issue with itunes Library artwork and metadata can be mostly fixed with Right click in iYunes Library and Get Info to Edit data. Multi Artist albums are a must along with full Meta data input.
Unfortunately nothing Perfect and I believe if you make a small Library to Trial, to see if it fits your prerequisites. It will be worthwhile exercise even if it falls short. It has a lovely OCD for a iTunes Library which can be controlled numerous ways and playlists can offer a bonus for different matches for Music for moods .
@Gdr56
Thanks! Trial library is key. I’m getting there with the metadata - multi-artist albums & metadata etc… all the incorrect data PLEX associates with the files can be deleted but it’s quite time consuming
@rsava.
It’s a NAS drive - sorry, should’ve said. Any ideas how to force the iOS app to connect to it? It’s doing my head in.
Is the NAS running Plex server? You have to have Plex server running somewhere to “serve” the media streams (music, video or pictures) to the client running on the iPad.
There are other iOS apps that can do what you want (without the library type functionality) but the Plex app has to have the Plex server
The NAS has a Plex app on it. Perhaps I uninstalled it and forgot to reinstall it though (I’ve done this process so many times it’s def possible).
It has been working in the recent past! I just wanted to reorganise the files, and in doing so had some issues so uninstalled the applications.
I’ll take a look tonight - thank you.
If your folder structure and file naming aren’t spot on for Plex’s needs, it makes it difficult for Plex to match your albums/artists with info from Last.FM (or Gracenote, in Premium libraries).
The online music databases, including Last.FM and Gracenote, are full of bad data. Much of their info originated with users who submitted info without really knowing what they were doing, and so Last.FM’s database has a ton of junk that, frankly, is more trouble than it’s worth, in my opinion. So even if you got your media prepared perfectly for Plex, you may still get some junk, though not nearly as much as before. Even then, I personally have found Last.FM and Gracenote to be too fraught with bad data to be reliable anyway, and especially for classical music.
It took a lot of up-front work, but I have Plex working very well for my music collection, and I did it by configuring Plex to rely more on local embedded ID3 tags (edited by me), rather than depending on Last.FM or Gracenote. Configuring Plex was easy. The time and effort was in getting my embedded ID3 tags into good shape. But once that was all squared away, the headaches vanished. Adding new albums, I just rip the CD, edit the metadata, download artwork (or maybe scan my own), and put it into Plex. When this is done, the folder/filename structure isn’t nearly as important, though still recommended.
@timedweller said:
The NAS has a Plex app on it. Perhaps I uninstalled it and forgot to reinstall it though (I’ve done this process so many times it’s def possible).
It has been working in the recent past! I just wanted to reorganise the files, and in doing so had some issues so uninstalled the applications.
I’ll take a look tonight - thank you.
Thanks, everybody.
It seems that I hadn’t reinstalled Plex on the NAS so I could only get access to the files when the MacBook was turned on - I had been using the Plex app on the computer rather than the Plex app on the NAS to import my music folder. so I could only speak to Plex when the computer was on.
I’m now reimporting the library via the NAS app.
Does this make sense?
I’m using a Terramaster F2-220.
Yes, that makes sense.
Unfortunately I have no experience with running Plex on a NAS as I use a Mac Mini and 2 Raspberry Pis (running DietPi) to run my Plex servers.
My music server (a Raspberry Pi 2) it mounted under a desk with all my music on a NAS sitting on the other side of the house and works flawlessly. Might be an option to look at since Pi’s are so inexpensive.
Hi,
Back again.
Plex worked for a while, then dropped off so I ignored it for a few weeks & now it’s back again… okay__
Can anyone help me add some new music to my library? It’s in one of the folders I’ve pointed Plex to to find for my music… but it doesn’t seem to ever add it if I, for instance, Update Library.
What command should I be using to get it to add this new album to my Plex library?
Ta
I’ve got my media files on the NAS and my plex server running on a stand alone pc. The processor in the Synology is nice, but it get’s killed with it is doing too much transcoding of video while trying to do something else.
As far as music, I’ve found a few things.
99% of it is making sure your metadata in your mp3 files is right. By that I mean the song titles and track numbers should be good. Don’t put track numbers in your song titles. The file names can havtrack numbers if you want, plex doesn’t seem to care what the files are called. The album name and year needs to be correct. Don’t put the year in with the album name.
Plex doesn’t seem to see or care about the Composer field so Classical albums are a bit of a problem. The Album Artist is what gets picked up as the Artist name so if you want Bach, put Johann Sebastian Bach in the album artist field and you will stand a better chance. Remember you are pulling all this from Lastfm.com and they are kind of focuses on rock and pop over the last 40 years so when you toss a few hundred classical albums at it don’t be surprised if it has no idea who it is.
Plex doesn’t seem to care about folder names or nesting. It just grabs the metadata and runs with that.
Despite this you may have to do a lot of unmatch and match as well as digging up your own artist photos if you don’t like the stuff they give you. It isn’t like movies where you may have six choices. If you don’t like what they have, go get something else.
