Hi. I happily pay the monthly Plex subscription and I think Plexamp is a super music player, but I am considering to finish my subscription because it is impossible to get Plexamp broadcasting properly to the Mini HomePods through Airplay.
The problem is really severe while doing it with any iPhone. Not so severe when doing it with an iPad or Mac, but still, the sound is cut off, until the point it stops playing. Super annoying. Curiously, it happens much less with the normal Plex player (on any device), but it also happens.
It is not a wifi/network problem (I have done many tests). All other services work fine air playing to the Home Pods. Not only native iOS app, but also the competence (Spotify, VLC, Infuse…)!
I pay this subscription mainly to support you guys. I work in the tech industry and know how hard to maintain a Multiplatform app is. But I will stop paying if you don’t solve this problem soon because my main use case for Plexamp (listening music at home) is fully broken.
Thank you for your understanding and I hope you can give me some feedback regarding this issue.
AirPlay should work fine, and does for me on Home Pod (regular and mini). I have noticed AirPlay itself to be somewhat buggy, and at times I’ve had to reset the Pods to get them to behave again.
There is not much we can do to address this issue, as AirPlay streaming is handled by the OS, and I can’t explain why you’re having issues with Plex(amp) and not other apps.
We do have some pending work on low-latency AirPlay 2 streaming which might make some difference, although like I said, I haven’t experienced the issue you’re facing.
Hi, Elan, thanks a lot for your reply. It seems version 3.9.1 of Plexamp has almost completely fix the issue when simple airplaying. I mean, it is working only if I airplay to only one HomePod mini. If I decide to play in two HomePod mini or two different devices simultaniously, it can not handle it and the reproduction breaks in seconds after continious cut-offs. So, as long as I keep airplay in one speaker, good, but nothing more. I have not seen any related point in the 3.9.1 release notes, but sure something has changed in the last version. Thanks again for your support. It would be good to know what you think about this several-speakers air playing issue.
Well, it is not really working. As said, Airplay reproduction breaks if I sent Plexamp to two or more Airplay devices, even with just one is not smooth after a while. It is the only app reading from my server that has this problem. Previous versions did not have it. Since it seems the problem “does not exist”, you are not interested in knowing if it’s iOS-caused, QNAP or yours, and it does not look like it is going to be solved on your side, I will cancel my subscription. It makes no sense paying for something that only half works.
I was really willing to support you and I am going to miss Plexamp (it was perfect in the car through bluetooth, for example), but you have a poor bugs report system (event thou you take the time to answer the questions in this forum, which is lovely) and I fear this is going to happen again and again.
it’s not that we’re not interested in the issue, it’s that literally there have been zero changes in our audio code, and regardless we have no direct influence over AirPlay (it’s completely transparent). so you might think an earlier version worked better, but it’s almost certainly a confounding factor (iOS update, WiFi change, etc). i’m sorry if that frustrates you, but its the truth.
Hi Elan. After your last message I have done many more tests on my lan. It is difficult to say what kind of connectivity/streaming issue is because the Home Pod has only wifi connection, but I do have found that other non-native iOS music apps are also suffering from the same streaming issues. It could be my router or who knows, but it is not a Plex/Plexamp problem. I apologise for my insistance on this and for having thought it was some bug in your code. I have not solved the streaming problem but it is a relief concluding that, after years of usage, I will not have to abandon the whole Plex platform. Thanks a lot for your support and in general for the great product you are developing.
But I’m glad it’s working for you.