I read about disgruntled and frustated users regularly in these forums. I myself have raised a couple of issues. Of course we all come here when something’s not right and need help (or venting), so there’s a bias. But today, I wanted to change to tune…
Thank you Plex team!
I started using Plex about 1 year ago. Small household, used to use a home-grown NAS + HTPC with Kodi. That went on for ages, and it was an unending heap of maintenance and troubleshooting, but mostly worked (except when it didn’t). Then I finally moved to a Syno + PMS + Roku.
After learning the ropes I was generally pleased with Plex and the ease of use of this new setup. Even though I cannot stream video remotely due to my glossing over the HW requirements when I purchased my Syno (totally my bad), I loved the idea of streaming my music when out and about. A relic from my formative years, when I bought plastic discs and listened on a desktop and a wimpy MP3 player at most and indulged in some degree of OCD-fueled curating. Thousands of perfectly good lossless (and ahem bootlegs) albums that sat still in some harddrive, rusting away since I made to jump to the (imperfect) world of streaming convenience. No more putting up with badly ID’d songs, mistyped track names, pulled albums and constant replacing of originals with re-re-remasters (with a new meaningless release date! the nerve!). Plus, seamless integration with Tidal for all my new-music instant gratification needs. What’s not to like?
Sadly, I hit roadbumps. Right away.
Tidal worked. Just not in my livingroom Roku. I read it was enabled for a couple of weeks before I tried it, and then… “coming soon”. I fell back to a kludgy setup involving my iPhone, an Xbox, AirPlay, and much fidgeting whenever I wanted music. It worked but… kludge.
Worse, actually playing music was glitchy. The iOS player would hang or crash. Tracks would pop and jitter and glitch. Consistently. I’m guessing due to the “silence-removal” feature, intended for podcasts. But quite, calm or “space-y” songs, and even silent compasses within a song, would get chopped up and utterly ruined. No matter if streaming from Tidal, or from my lossless rips, or from lousy MP3s, no matter if using Roku, PC, console or smartphone.
I was frustrated. The own-collection dream was oh so close, but painfully out of reach.
And then, a couple of weeks ago, everything clicked! 
Tidal on Plex on Roku was released (I believe the official Tidal app was also released at around the same time, could be coincidence or not, IDK). I could just come home and just switch over the music, with beautiful cover art to boot. Bliss!
And the music glitches, I don’t know exactly when it happened, but I’ve been trying it out and it seems to have been resolved! I don’t know what you touched, but keep it like that!
Of course there’s more features I’d like, and the ocasional glitch, and gapless seems to be hit and miss, and I wish there was a standalone, simpler app for music, but man what a difference a couple of month made! Now I’m happy to kick Apple Music to the curb and take back control of my music!
I’m happy. Thank you Plex team! I owe you guys a beer!
