Yeah I have chromecast Audio to cast tidal from within plex and the only drawback is that chromecast isn’t gappless. But this only gets to me when listening to live albums, and I ojli listen to them about 5% of the time so it’s not a deal breaker for me. Definitely a plex convertor…
Just hope the Devs continue to develop the plecsmp side of things
I’ll have to give credit to Roku for working with Apple to enable AirPlay protocols through Roku OS on their TV’s and sticks because it’s honestly what’s saving my PlexAmp audio experience. I rather have PlexAmp stream to Chromecast since I have Chromecast everywhere but Google has limitations of their own as said many times by Plex. Gapless and the PlexAmp feature like Sweet Fades are must haves on both Airplay and Chromecast platforms going into 2021.
I noticed the hold, but I assume that only works if you update via your script?
I think I must have done a standard apt-get upgrade and ultimately I ended up wiping the Pi and using your script to start from scratch - but as you say, at that point it is a 5 minute operation!
@odinb1 do you think it would be possible for Volumio to coexist with PlexAmp headless on the same RPi? I believe is supports master streams from Tidal in MQA.
Definitely not a very clean solution, but it might be a decent workaround until PlexAmp gets a solution? I haven’t even looked at this package so it could be a total brain fart, but man, would I love to see if there is an audible difference! 
The hold stays after running my script, so I as stated, unless you manually remove the hold (or change nodejs manually), apt-updates should not cause any issues, even when run later, and not using my script.
In regards to co-existence, it might be possible if plexamp works with older versions of nodejs, since volumio seems to need v6.9.5, which is darn old!
You will also need to configure ALSA to use a different configuration, as both currently run as though they have sole access to the ALSA-resource, meaning if the plexamp-process is running, volumio will not get access to ALSA, and vice-versa. A setup using ALSA-mixer should work, but you would loose support from the volumio team by changing.
As stated earlier, volumio is running so much legacy-crap, so if you start poking around, it most surely will break! I get the feeling they do not care about updates/security, it is a case of “when it works, don’t touch it!” Kind of setup, which I do not like!
As an example, it still runs on Jessie, which was end of support for the LTS-version on June 30 this year!
They have a beta on Buster, but same thing there, start poking around/installing things manually/running apt-update totally breaks Volumio! This is telling me they are not expecting you to run anything yourself outside their volumio on the HW, This is as very poor implementation in my opinion, and was one of the main reasons I gave up on volumio, and moved to Plexamp!
Oh, great to know about the hold staying!
And based on the info you provided about Volumio, I will not look into that as an alternative! I guess I just need to wait for PlexAmp to address it.
Most other Pi-players are the same, they expect to be the only thing running on the HW, and doing apt-update, or installing other things will often break it, and make it unsupported.
On my dedicated plexamp-HW, I also run Hyperion, and as long as the additional applications/services are not using the audio-HW/ALSA, or “eat up” other resources like RAM/CPU, it should work just fine!
If being an audio-application, you will have to solve it with ALSA-mixer.
Ugh, Volumio! I trialled it headless on a Pi a few months ago. Aside from issues mentioned above, the UI was horrible. And don’t start me on the laughably bad ‘credits’ feature they introduced - to display the production credits and reviews of any given recording: it worked for less than 10% of my library, following all the instructions they gave. And as I remember it had problems playing anything more than 44/16 from Tidal.
Volumio is about half the price of Roon, so it appears quite an attractive option on paper. And say what you like about Roon for cost etc, but it is a far slicker experience (and feature rich) than anything else in its class IMO.
I am one of those that would love Plex to approximate Roon in terms of playback and library. It has taken huge strides, and Plexamp is awesome, but it’s not there yet. And I don’t know its roadmap, so unsure which direction it’s generally heading. I did mention before (based on my observations of various forums) that I think there’s a market for those who balk a bit at Roon’s cost but who would be prepared to pay more than the standard Plex Pass cost for a more fully featured player.
@mcewan71 you are an existing Roon user, right? Do you still think you will not renew your sub with them in favor of PlexAmp? If not, what would it take for you to make the switch?
I’m in the opposite boat - I’ve been using PlexAmp for awhile now, and it definitely got a LOT better after building my RPi+Khadas streamer and PlexAmp headless, but I do wish I had insight into their product roadmap. On frustrating days, I consider changing to Roon. It seems to me they are pretty darn close to a really good solution, and I agree with you that they could compete with them in this market.
I just hope this product is more than a skunkworks that has the personal attention of their CTO. (This is not said in a condescending way - corporate priorities have to lead the way and I’m just wondering how high in the scheme of things PlexAmp is.)
I think, for me, the past year’s change in daily routines etc due to Covid-19 has highlighted the difference between what I fundamentally am after in my Audio setup versus what is perhaps more a series of ‘nice to haves’.
Meaning, what I thought I couldn’t live without in Roon (enhanced metadata, pimped up Roon audio transport) were perhaps not as valuable and useful in the new daily grind as I had previously thought. Roon can be a frustrating experience at times. Updates are not that frequent (more than once a year would seem to be good going, and that’s if you’re lucky) and after years of requests from users, a remote network access solution is no nearer. It also is clearly geared to those with a higher internal percentage of audiophile than I have.
I guess it comes down to what as individuals we value in our music libraries (the purpose of streaming versus owning, how you use your music files - e.g. in any other apps for sampling, jamming along with etc, whether you like surfing and exploring similar artists etc) and how important digital bit perfect etc is to you. I am a sucker for new stuff too.
I have a few more months on my annual Roon sub. I haven’t really used it for several weeks versus using Plex and Plexamp regularly - which I guess is quite telling! I just really have the sense from the various forums that I certainly seem to not be alone in my ambivalence and general outlook. Exactly what the ‘dream product’ is in this case - up for debate, plus it may well change over time with technology and the general consumer direction of travel.
The no 1 feature missing from Plexamp to compete with Roon is definitely endpoints. I can’t seem to get it to play on anything other than my phone. My server can’t be configured as an output. I can’t even select my Sonos play:1. Apple tv is a no. I have multiple Raspis and i’m not really willing to spend the time setting up something thats not out of the box to get them to work. The most frustrating thing is the process for outputting through other devices isn’t documented at all and you find yourself looking here and on reddit to find any info.
In this regard Roon is amazing. Its plug and play with so many different devices. It’s configurable in such a way to really make multi room audio a real blast with custom naming, icons, etc.
In-home audio goes well beyond screens and plex players. I think the concept of a plexamp endpoint needs to be implemented and service style apps provided for win/mac/linux as a start.
Yes, works very well!!!
I completely agree. Honestly, as simple as a Plexamp/Plex endpoint on rpi would be perf. Ropieee XL could integrate it, or some other distribution (Hifiberry). While multiroom would be nice, it’d be great just to have the ability to cast to more things.
On another note, one feature that I really would like Plexamp to steal from Roon is zone-switching. I switch from my work laptop to home laptop to phone, etc., and would like to bring my queue with me (honestly, better queue management would be nice as well).
To get the Sonos speakers to show up, you need to login on the Sonos webpages and allow it! After that, they show up in plexamp!
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