Forgive me if this is in the wrong thread, but after a number of weeks browsing the forum I have noticed a lot of devs interact with the forum which is great. and was hoping someone may already be working on this.
I am brand new to plex and recently got set up with the plexamp app for android and it’s a great way to rediscover the old CD collection, many of which were just gathering dust.
I love how to plexamp interacts with tidal and has an almost seamless integration. Before discovering plexamp I was strongly considering roon. The price tag was what was holding me back and then I discovered Plex. Not only does it have a beautiful interface but I have access to my cds anywhere in the world. Are there any plans to integrate this service with actual hifi components such as network streamers from some of the hifi companies. Using their streamers as a plex end point or plex player for plexamp?
I know many streamers use chromecast which works with plexamp but chromecast does not support gappless playback which is the only draw back.
Really hope to see plexamp integrated into hifi network streamers in the near future.
Are you talking about Chromecast audio that has been discontinued or one of the other Chromecast products?
I assume you are using PlexAmp with the Plex Media Server as hosted by Plex? Some of the features, Tidal, are in Plex Server.
What is the streaming that you envision? As driven by customers everybody seems to be moving to video screen play including audio. TVs have this along with Roku, AppleTV and a Google offering. I use the Plex App on IOS to stream audio to Bluetooth enabled speakers or an entertainment system along with screen play to AppleTV, TV and Roku.
You can build your own streamer on a raspberry pi with a DIGI+ or DAC+ Or other card, and install plexamp headless on it. You can then control it from the plexamp on your phone, and cast to it, just like the chrome cast. Gapless is supported with this solution.
You then simply connect it to you amplifier via coax (DIGI+ HAT) or line-in (DAC+ HAT).
Thanks for the reply. I was thinking of attempting the headless plexamp on the pi for a few days now. I think I’ll give it a try later on and see how I get on. I was definitely hoping for a more straightforward install, but I’m sure I can follow instructions.
See the instructions on my simple installer, it gives you the paths to it! You have to install an older version for the file to exist, links are in description also!
Just use the script, makes it really simple to install, and holds the nodejs at needed version so you can update the rest of the OS.
Hi Aidan, I run both Roon (using 3 Raspberry Pi’s dotted round the house and either a wired or higher quality Bluetooth connection) and Plexamp, but with Plexamp not headless via a DIY Pi streamer. Sounds like we have trodden similar paths here!
For what it’s worth, I am ready to ditch Roon on next renewal in a few months if I can get Plexamp to play nice in an equivalent setup. If you do follow the set up provided by @odinb1 (awesome, thanks !), please report back on your findings.
I think for me, how Roon has so far kept me engaged is the UI - I like to be able to surf and explore by following up on my curiosity as to what other tracks this person wrote, or what other credits that drummer has! It’s not perfect, but Roon offers that. While Tidal is great at providing similar credits info, I am not sure to what extent it’s integration into Plex can do that.
Plexamp has been a game changer, and of course it offers remote connection, which Roon has (despite its price tag and alleged years of trying this) so far failed to deliver. If it could approximate the Roon experience, I would completely jump ship!
The other thing is being able to serve up higher res audio than CD quality (if that matters). I understand Plex and Plexamp can’t do this. A shame, considering that Tidal has recently vastly expanded its Masters/MQA repertoire in its native apps. It’s a shame if within Plex, we can’t leverage that if we have the equipment to dish it up via Plexamp or even Plex.
Anyhow, please report back if you give this a bash - I likely will too
Sure! Happy to!
Saw how many people here in the forums had issues installing and getting it to work, so after I spent a couple of hours figuring it all out, I thought I wanted to help out, since this is a really great setup!
Sure, you do not get same audio quality as roon, volumio etc, but plexamp does use alsa, so not far from! And it is so much better integrated, and just works, especially if you have your music on a Plex-server (mine runs in a docker-container on my NAS).
These other players suffer from old OS-versions, and are poorly updated. If you update manually, they break! Accessing your local music-collection is clumsy, and non-intuitive, and usually requires the player to create a local database, which is resource-demanding, and prone to discrepancies! Plex-server does a much better job at this!
Let me know if you have input or issues with the script!
I primarily store and play all my high quality music on a Daphile server when listening locally. I have the data drive mapped on my Plex server so that I incorporate all the music there also. I have Daphile hooked up directly to my primary amp with a USB DAC and Daphile can Airplay and/or Chromecast to any of my other devices. Plex amp connecting to it is just icing in the cake for me.
I’ll just throw my $0.02 in here as I followed the exact same path! (Roon too expensive, love the Plex interface, happy to work on a DIY project)
I ended up with RPi 3B --> HifiBerry Digi --> Khadas Tone Board DAC into my '75 Luxman powering Dynaudio speakers. WOW!
Add my kudos to Odinb1 for the script - made it dead easy!
Gotchas are to make sure you grab the server.json file from PlexAmp v1.x and be careful about doing OS updates that automatically upgrade the node.js version.
I also find that you cannot stream Tidal to Plexamp headless (at least I cannot). But I can when I use Plexweb or Plexamp for desktop, so I guess it must be a casting issue?
I am about to fully retire my Logitech Media Server (Squeeze server) and the various players I have.
@mcewan71 I completely agree with the MQA streaming for Plex. For desktop, I end up using the Tidal app and headphones, but I want to cast it to my hifi!
Hopefully this is on the dev roadmap, and if anyone knows of a feature request thread that they watch for +1’s please let me know and I’ll add my vote.
I’m all for the plexamp app. I’ve been enjoying my cd collection again. I digitised it all a few years ago and just didn’t really listen to it. Just streamed it all from Spotify. recently migrated to Tidal and really enjoying the cd quality streams but after discovering plexamp I have been listening to my cds on repeat again.
The only issue I am having now is that I can’t cast plex to my hifi unless I cast it via chormecast audio but unfortunately google doesn’t support gappless playback.
The main reason I was considering roon was the tidal integration but plexamp has this integration down to a T it is just unfortunatley for now I can’t ask plex to play my Tidal library via another player.
Actually, I put a hold on the nodejs with the script, so unless you remove that hold, doing update of the OS should be risk-free (or as close to as can be).
The last step of my script actually does such a full OS-update!
Good to hear the script helped you out, that was my main reason for creating it! This, and because I have 4 of these, and the script makes re-installing a 5-minute project as opposed to a 30-60minute job!
I will be fully migrating to plex in the next few days. I digitised my cd collection a few years ago and could never find an app I was happy with to control it so basically turned to streaming services whenever I didn’t want to put a CD or record on.
I recently discovered Tidal and ditched Spotify then I found plex and plexamp and have been listening to CDs almost non stop since setting up my server.
I have my pi 4 + hifi berry digi+ pro going into a Cambridge Audio CXA80 which power Monitor Audio Silver 100s.
My main gripe is that i can’t get my tidal library to stream through this solution. If I want Tidal to stream I need to use a google chromecast which doesn’t support gapless playback. (I normally don’t mind this. but if I have a live album on it definitely takes you out of the listening experience. I hope the devs have a plan to allow Tidal casting in the future.
your installers are a great help. Thank you. Looking forward to the future development of the Plexamp. It truly is one of the best digital audio experiences I have had in a long time with my own music.
Thanks! Just tried to support this, but I’ve used up all my votes! Aargh!
I don’t really buy the argument that Tidal just don’t make this available to 3rd party apps (they did for Roon). It’s not like they invented MQA! And, as others have said, it makes the whole Tidal integration really half baked.
Ah, right. I used Ropieee software to link with Roon when I first set up my Pi’s as budget endpoints.
Luckily it also served up AirPlay 2 and Spotify amongst others - so up till now I have cast Plex and Plexamp (pretty sure this included Tidal content I added into my Plex music library, it was a few months since I last did this!) via AirPlay from iOS devices to active speakers. Not the most mind blowing of audio experiences but it sounded okay, and at least it cast Tidal from within Plex.
!), please report back on your findings.
