Plexamp 3 Is So Good

Plex Labs
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Been using regular Plex for over 10 years now. Added my music library a year ago. The Plex app does a good job but it doesn’t feel like a music player. It feels very stiff. Plexamp is exactly what I’ve been looking for.

It feels like I’m searching through my CDs or album crates and playing tracks as I find them. And the best part is that it tracks what I play. So if I ever get that killer follow up and I have a string of songs going I can then turn that into a playlist.

Downloaded it last night been using all day so far. First run. It’s easy to use. The play next feature is awesome.

I feel like I am rediscovering and enjoying my music again. Keep up the great work. I’m hooked. Thank you plexlabs!

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Thanks so much!

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Does everything get transcoded through OPUS? I’ve noticed whether I am on wifi or mobile all of my AIFF and PCM files get transcoded. I am running Android app.

Is this a bug? Or a settings thing? My plexamp on Mac desktop does the same thing. It transcoded everything.

Again. I love this app. It’s making me fall back in love with my music

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My whole library is FLAC. I haven’t noticed any transcoding on iOS, Android, or macOS, playing over local WiFi.

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several things to keep in mind… if the player/client can’t natively play the file format it will transcode… also if you have Music Quality set to a specific bitrate, it will then fall back to conversion bitrate transcoding. Yes, Opus is doing the transcoding.

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AIFF and PCM files aren’t supported directly by the player; if you can convert them to e.g. FLAC they’ll be much more compatible with our platform in general, and will definitely play directly inside Plexamp.

Thanks for the kind words!

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not to mention, if you convert them to flac they will save you some (or maybe even a lot of) disk space.

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Ah I see. Thank you. Yeah, my entire library is AIFF. The setup I used to listen for years was more suited for AIFF playback.

Now I’m in a pickle. I love Plex love Plexamp. I have to decide if I want to keep two copies of my files. Or encode all to FLAC.

I wonder, If I keep two versions next to each other will Plexamp play the FLAC file and skip over the AIFF?

Edit: I tested to see if I put FLAC files in the same folder as my AIFF files what Plex and Plexamp would do. Plexamp does not play one version over the other. Plexamp sees the AIFF as a completely different album.

The AIFF files show up as an album under the artist and the FLAC files show up under the artist as there own album. When I search in Plexamp it shows me that the artist has two albums of the same. So I have the same album twice.

I prefer to work with AIFF files. It’s my go to format. I see it as my start point. Over the years I have converted my AIFF files to everything under the sun to play with the various players in my life. So another conversion is in the cards for me.

I love this app so much I’m going to convert a separate library just for Plexamp. My current setup I am sharing my families iTunes library with Plex. I have migrated away from using iTunes about a year ago to use Plex instead. But I still use iTunes to ingest and metatag the music for my family.

I think what I am going to do is, keep my iTunes library for my family and as my archive and met tagger. And for Plexamp specifically setup a folder with FLAC files. Kind of serves two purposes, a back of my iTunes and fresh FLAC files for all that sweet music goodness. I will need to use something else to meta tag for FLAC though.

Keep up the good work! And thank you for responding. I will keep you posted on anything that comes up. I really want to help and contribute anyway I can to Plexamp.

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Good news, I think we might be able to make AIFF work after all :sweat_smile:

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I don’t understand what the benefit of AIFF files is over flac? they are both lossless, so there is ZERO difference in sound.

https://www.google.com/search?&q=aiff+vs+flac+vs+wav

Unless maybe you are doing some kind of personal ‘customization’ or ‘self-remastering’ (ie modifying the original audio), I would expect flac to be usable in just about every audio app under the sun.

If whatever other app(s) you are using absolutely does not support flac, then perhaps consider ALAC (apple lossless) if you are on a mac-centric platform.

Either flac or alac will save space, and the larger your collection, the more space you will save.

It makes zero sense to me to keep a collection of both though, in the end choose one and stick with it, whatever works best for YOU.

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Wow just wow. That is so awesome. I’m speechless.

Elan you the man!!! You seriously blew me away just now. I don’t know what to say. 1000 times thank you. Thank you again. Just, man, I can’t even tell you how awesome that is if it works out.

Technojunkie,…So yeah the AIFF file format. Let me explain myself. For me. I spent years working in a recording studio and am still an Audio Engineer as a hobby. So years back we are talking 2000, I had two file types I used for audio, AIFF and SDII. Those were the master files and the only formats the studio I worked in equipment would record to. Then we would master, turn those into CDs, mp3, or, aac or whatever the client wanted.

File size is important yes. Absolutely don’t want to use more than I have to. And yes agreed FLAC and AIFF are lossless. I agree with you 100%.

In my case I have over 500 actual CDs that I have ripped into my computer as AIFF. I also have original SDII files in my library. I have AIFF files that are 20 years old at this point. For me. It’s just one of those things. I stuck with a file format I knew and was familiar with and universally read and accepted by audio programs.

If I found a program that didn’t like the AIFF I would just convert it and move along. For example my car stereo doesn’t like AIFF so I would convert it to mp3. So I’m used to it. But I would only do mixes not my whole library. I would convert and then delete the compressed files and then convert again later. But we are talking a few albums at a time on a thumb drive or a CD or iPod or synced to my phone. The main AIFF files were always there as my main files.

Yes I know it seems crazy. To keep both file types. And it’s a bit crazy to convert all the time. For me the AIFF files are something I convert into something else…

When on the go I accept lower fidelity. At home I listen through my system with AIFF. Then comes along Plex I don’t have to convert my music anymore. It does it for me. So I have been using my phone and I have all my music. And the burden of converting things has gone away. But Plex doesn’t feel right as a music player.

And now Plexamp. It converts my music on the fly so I don’t have to anymore and it feels like a real player. It’s pure magic and everything I’ve been looking for.

I already converted two albums this afternoon to FLAC to test out Plexamp. And yes the FLAC files I literally just did a 1 for 1. I ran no compression on the AIFF. I used XLD so the FLAC was identical. And then Plex and Plexamp were happy. It sounded so good.

Elan if I don’t have to convert my files that would be so awesome. I have used so many music apps over the last few years and all of them make me go back to my iPod classic or my Fiio. Yes the classic with the click wheel. It plays AIFF and it sounds so good in my car.

Plexamp is the end of a very long road for me and my digital music library.

Plexamp is my savior from other apps and gets me away from carrying my iPod or fiio. I’ve been using the app everyday since I downloaded. I feel like I’m flipping through my music books and pulling CDs off the shelf.

For example something I like that Plexamp does is when I pick a song to play and it continues on through the rest of the album. That is brilliant other apps just stop after you play the song or go to something random. The way Plexamp does it it’s the way a CD player would. It’s perfect.

There are little subtle attentions to detail here that are so smart and so good. This app was built with love and built for music lovers. It gets to the music and leaves out all the nonsense.

So I am all in. If I have to convert all my tracks and put them on a separate hard drive I will do it. Having my music everywhere and at full quality. Totally worth it to me.

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It sounds a little like you are wedded to the AIFF files for sentimental reasons rather than anything else.

FLAC is lossless so whether you use level 1 or level 8 FLAC compression, the FLAC file produced will sound exactly the same as the uncompressed AIFF file.

Producing an uncompressed FLAC file from your AIFF file is pointless other than for compatibility. The advantage of FLAC is the space saving from compression whilst not losing any fidelity. Plus, it’s widely supported.

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yeah, if you are OK with the extra space required for aiff, by all means stay with it.

I just wanted to make sure you understood that aiff/flac/alac/wav are all the same, and it seems you do understand fine.

All lossless formats sound the same because the internal data doesn’t change, but some folks get confused or get told/believe that one type is ‘better’ than the other, where the only way one is better, is if it plays in what you want to play on.

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Thank you very much guys. I do appreciate the discussion. Yes you are right, there is sentimental value there for me also.

I have read up on lossless and I understand what it is and how it works and how it compresses and keep the meat and get rid of the dead space etc.

I still choose to rip my CDs completely uncompressed. I’ve made peace with this years ago. My hard drives keep getting larger. For me it’s worth it.

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Sry I didn’t read the long text on AIFF. Although I do agree FLAC is all-around better file format for consumer audio-- open source, better compatibility, better hardware support, etc., I do think that AIFF is an important legacy format that should be well supported. A lot of musicians, audio engineers use AIFF not just in production but as an archival format as well.

I don’t think AIFF has changed at all in the last 2 decades so if it’s an one-and-done thing, Plex could do well to support it.

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I like it so far, but…I hate having to go to the bottom of the phone and hitting the little arrow to close the viewer. Most iOS apps confirm to a “back swipe” to return to the previous screen, which is more natural for me (as an iOS user).

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I can’t wait to get my Plex Pass and try Plexamp… the only thing holding me up is that my PMS reports my .aiff files as being transcoded to 128 or 271 Kbps, which is annoying because all my music is ripped directly from cds at 1411Kbps.

Happens when I play through a browser, my iPhone, even the new 4k Apple TV. It’s got me crazy!

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That is all dependent on each client player.

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I don’t understand why a wired AppleTV can’t play AIFF audio files at full quality. Or just transcode to WAV.

If it’s a setting I don’t see it.

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You would be better helped if you opened a new thread, posted all the specific details of your players, network, server, what versions of plex (latest is not a version), maybe a screen shot of the server dashboard, and logs from the server and clients.