Plexamp is an amazing player. I think this will extend capabilities further.
Older receivers, and various media players (like TVs, etc) have built in support for DLNA. However, no one doing streaming wants to run a server on their local network. If PlexAmp is able to provide music streaming as a DLNA server to these devices we will be able to revive a ton of receivers without extra equipment.
There’s a cue here from Sonos, which does appear on the local network as a DLNA server(?) out of the box.
If you guys can get this right, then the next step is streaming it to Google Cast, and to AirPlay. Check out the DoubleTwist software for hints on how to get it compatible – maybe there’s an acquisition there ? or a collaboration ?
TL;DR : DLNA Server on PlexAmp to stream server content from Plex Server, to PlexAmp, to a local network that has a DLNA-enabled device, then to AirPlay, then to Google Cast. A “swiss army knife” of streaming protocols from server->mobile device → local speakers.
oh, that’s great! Yes, I have voted for that as well. However, the scope of audio offers a world of speakers that have probably not been streaming-enabled. The ability to tap into that market is particularly interesting as those with Plex account visit other homes, and stream to friend / loved one’s speakers. This has a network effect for Plex, and is a lower barrier to entry than tackling it with “let’s watch a movie”. Hope that helps ?
I’m surprised at the low number of votes here. There was a recent request along similar lines that puts it a bit better from my perspective: Plexamp stream to UPnP media renderer
In essence, this could make Tidal as widely useful and convenient as Spotify Connect.
I’ve linked Tidal to my Plex account and noticed that I can control audio streaming on other Plex instances (i.e. on my Android TV or tablet) from Plexamp on my phone. However, Linux desktop instances failed with an ‘unsupported at this moment’ message and I could not get anything to work on my Raspberry Pi streamer (the headless Plexamp doesn’t appear to work with newer nodejs versions, should it even offer this functionality).
At present, I use Bubble UPnP on my phone with Tidal set as the cloud Library source and I select one of my various upmpdcli renderers for playback (where this is installed on anything from a Pi to a full desktop). For info, upmpdcli is a UPnP Media Renderer front-end for MPD, the Music Player Daemon. It supports UPnP gapless track transitions and the OpenHome ohMedia services.
As Plexamp offers a much better user interface and as it’s clear that the functionality is practically there under the hood (as Chromecast is a basic, non-gapless, UPnP renderer that’s supported and I can only assume that’s how Plex clients communicate too), I’d much rather make use of my Plex Pass here
Rather than develop and maintain a client/service for a number of operating systems, I propose opening up the ‘select player’ interface to include other UPnP renderers such as upmpdcli. I believe that distributions such as Volumino also use this renderer, so you can expect quite the uptake beside the DIYers such as myself.
Plexamp is truly beautiful. Add this one feature and you could probably ask Tidal for a bigger commission.
Plex’s “Companion” feature works fundamentally different.
Both Apple and Google take the audio output of the player software and re-package it again for transmission to the device with the speaker.
Plex does not send the audio. It only instructs the device about where to fetch the audio file. Everything else is up to the device with the speakers. The big advantage is that the controlling device is no longer necessary after playback has commenced. And the data stream is not relayed through the controller device.
The downside is that all devices which need to act as receiver need to support the unique Plex method of accessing a Plex server and the Plex method of authentication etc.
I don’t think I said that Plex ‘sends’ anything, only that it ‘communicates’. I think we both understand just fine how the fundamentals of UPnP and Chromecast work… The suggestion here is to fully open up to the UPnP specification which would bypass the downside you mention above.
Anyway, as an update, I persevered with the headless Plexamp release and got it working on both a Pi streamer and on my Linux desktop as a background service. As I am not running either PI OS or Debian stable, my initial issues were down to newer versions of nodejs being incompatible with the release. After specifying a much older version (12.22, while the current in my OS is 18.7) it works well enough for my needs - that being as a gapless, lossless WiFi renderer, controllable by other instances of Plexamp.
My house has two floors and I listen to music at several locations. Since leaving Roon after their latest database blunder and increasing costs, I am using Audirvana and PlexAmp. Can’t let go of Audirvana because it can send audio to all my streamers and receivers, mainly YamahaCast, as well as my Astell&Kern media player via uPNP and DLNA. I must say I enjoy using Plexamp but my utilization capability is limited because I can only control and play to other running Plexamp instances with it. This means if I want to use Plexamp throughout the house, I have to have some sort of computer instead of my streamers on all my systems, which is not possible.
I wish we had such “play to” DLNA/uPNP capability in Plexamp (we don’t have it, right?)
No, not beyond Chromecast at least. I’d imagine that it’d reduce development time by implementing this too, as there’d be no need for a headless Plexamp if this was supported. Surely win-win?..
A question about Plex’s DNA server capbiltility - when streaming from Plex to an DLNA renderer does it update the play count / history on Plex? As one thing I am interested in doing is having a consolidated history of the music I play and obviously while using PlexAmp is some rooms this is perfect but if I was to also use some other device but still use Plex as the ‘server’ for the music content it would be nice to track all music played.
