Howdy! I’m looking to revive my CD collection and am in the market for a vertical slot-loading CD player that I can fit between books in my library. I would love to have Plexamp function as a CD player. Yes, I know that I can rip the files and play them from the server, but I want to be able to run Plexamp on an iOS device, or maybe a Mac Mini with a small monitor, attach a slot-loading USB optical drive, and have Plexamp pull the metadata for the CD and be able to directly play it on my system. Thank you.
There is pretty much zero chance for this to happen.
It doesn’t make sense at all, IMHO.
1 Like
Well, I wouldn’t say that it doesn’t make sense, since Volumio OS Premium has a similar feature: you plug in a USB optical drive and now you can play or rip your CDs. I just can’t justify spending $80/yr to make this happen. I think this feature would help Plex be more competitive as a music platform.
Plex is not a player, to be used by just one person on one device.
It is a media server, serving its content to potentially several users over the network, to more than one playback device. Some of which can be remote, and any can be of a different device type.
It makes much more sense to simply rip the CD and put its content onto the server. From where it is available to all users in all locations – in the same full quality that is also available when directly playing the CD. All you need to do is to rip to a lossless storage format, instead of e.g. MP3.
Imagine a remote user wanting to listen to that CD. Even it the Plex client and the CD drive are just in different rooms, it gets fast from “annoying” to “impractical”.
You could also say that this is going against the central philosophy of the Plex platform. Local, standalone player versus a centralized repository of media (and metadata).
1 Like
Yes, I totally understand what you’re saying. I have been running a PMS for many years and it contains all my music.
But let’s think about this from a server perspective rather than just a local, standalone player: Roon/Volumio/Moode all offer features to make a USB optical drive available to play or rip CDs (ripping only on Roon), or to even have a line input available as a source.
I have an OTA TV tuner attached to my PMS, which makes local broadcast stations available to Plex clients. If a line input on PMS becomes a source I could play a record on my turntable and have that available for all clients to listen to, whether that’s multiple zones in my house or a remote listening party.
If a USB optical drive becomes another source, I could play that CD on a Plex client in the same room (effectively making a cheap high-end CD player), across the house, or remotely. I could also rip CDs directly to the PMS in the same way I use the DVR function to record my OTA tuner.
There’s still value, and even been a resurgence, in physical media. Even here in our small community we have vinyl nights where 50 humans gather around, eating, drinking, and listening to our record collections. I know this may be a niche use, but it would be a way for Plex to include these media into their platform rather than try to transpose them. I could also see being able to use audio and/or video inputs to do live streaming events directly from Plex.
I see that you are a moderator and I don’t know if you speak for Plex or not, but in reading their culture page, I see many points that show that this idea is not “going against the central philosophy of the Plex platform”.
Our Mission: We’re on a mission to create a global community where everyone can discover, experience, and share all of the entertainment that matters to them.
Our Vision: To empower real human connection by bringing people and entertainment together.
…it’s the responsibility of every person and team at Plex to constantly put themselves on the customer’s couch and work to build, support, and advocate for our community.
Thank you for your response and perspective. 
I love CD’s as much as anyone in 2025, but I don’t think this is worth dev time. Very few people listen to music via direct CD playback today, and those who do are mindful to use dedicated modern CD players with audiophile hardware. So while it would be cool, it is unlikely that anyone other than you would actually use direct CD playback in plexamp.
I think I know where this idea is coming from. I’ve seen the prices of CD players too. I don’t want to pay thousands of dollars to listen to CD’s on my hifi system when I know that I can rip the music to my server, and play it back with bit-perfect accuracy into any DAC I choose thanks to plexamp. I know all this, but there is still a desire to experience the ritual of opening the jewel case, dropping the disc into the tray, and pressing the play button. I get that too, but that’s just not what plexamp is for.
The plex devs are obviously free to do whatever they want with your request, but it seems like an idea that is outside of the scope of the project. Plex is designed to serve, and play digital media libraries.
1 Like
Thanks for your response; it was very thoughtful and didn’t diminish my request. 
I have currently settled on using KODI via LibreELEC to play my CDs and it works perfectly. It’s installed on a mid-2010 Mac Mini with SuperDrive, so it’s very slim sitting vertically on my shelf, and there’s a small 7" monitor attached. Pop the CD in and all album+track data is pulled in. I can even rip the CD directly from here.
As nice as the setup is, it does have a few problems:
- I now have another device just to play CDs rather than using my existing PlexAmp setup.
- I have to manually transfer ripped files from KODI to my PMS.
- PlexAmp is sooooo much better looking than KODI.
I get it, I’m one of the few that would use the functionality of PlexAmp as a standalone CD player. But, focusing on the CD ripping feature (that also can be used to play CDs) would be such an amazing add-on. I hope the devs read this and add this feature (though not likely). Thanks again for your input.
I have a soft spot for that specific era mac mini. I’m glad to hear that one of them is still being enjoyed. If I remember correctly LibreELEC is a read only OS. I think you might have an easier time automating the CD rip to PMS operation running a standard Linux distro with kodi installed on top of that. You could set it to boot straight into kodi. Then you would also have tools like rsync, cron, etc. to automate transfer your ripped CD files to your other plex machine. Than can all run in the background. I don’t think LibreELEC has those, or can have them installed.
If it was me I would install Debian with KDE, and use syncthing to send any new files added to the CD rip folder to the music folder on my plex server. Plasma bigscreen looks like a cool HTPC frontend to use instead of kodi. Hope this helps.
1 Like
