Having played around with Plexamp on iphone for a little while now I wanted to provide some feedback.
I’ll start by saying that for a while now I’ve had an issue playing long audio files with the iOS Plex player. I frequently run into the player freezing up when trying to change tracks, as well as some audio noise that doesn’t appear when played on natively on my PC. Thats kind of a background to my Plexamp comments.
Anyway so my first comment is that unlike my audio issues with the main iOS Plex client, when playing those same files with Plexamp I see none of those issues. No issues with audio noise or the app freezing when changing tracks. This I’ll admit confuses me given I would have figured both would use the same underlying audio playback code.
I guess my other comments relate to my server library setup. Firstly I have multiple audio libraries and I do find it annoying that I have to manually change libraries to access audio, unlike the main plex client. Secondly with me playing very long audio tracks I really do with the player had controls to jump forwards or backwards within a track. its pretty awkward to try and just drag along the timeline to move forward or backward. I wish there was skip ahead/back 30 seconds or a minute or something. Lastly (and I guess this also applies to the normal plex client) I wish searches returned collections.
I only recently started using Plex for music (have used it for years for TV/Movies) and I guess it was well timed! Overall PlexAmp really whips The Llama’s ass! (on both Linux/iOS where I use it). I agree with swapping libraries being a little cumbersome, but I feel this for native web UI as well when trying to use three music libraries, in addition to Tidal.
For the iPhone app I would love to have better integration between libraries, or at least the ability to switch libraries as a more forward option instead of having to go to settings and then select a library.
The other thing… Oh how I would love CarPlay support!
I’ve just discovered Plexamp for iOS after being a long time user of the desktop version. I really like the route it’s going, many thanks for this cool release!
The only thing annoying me as well is switching libraries. As I have a lot of music I organise it in around 12 libraries. How about a small improvement in the UI which would be similar like in the Plex App: Swiping left on the home-screen could take me to the library list.
In Plex Web, go to your music library (on the ‘Library’ tab).
Without selecting any artist/album first, click on ‘Add to Playlist’.
Name the Playlist ‘All Music’ or something like that
play this playlist in Plexamp.
See how that goes for you.
If you have a particularly big collection, you might want to adjust the hidden server preference RadioDaysSinceLastPlayed to a higher number of days.
No, this is a ‘smart’ playlist. It keeps itself up to date. All playlists which were made from “filters” (without selecting any item manually!) are doing this.
You can tell by the little ‘cog wheel’ icon on top of the poster, when you look at the playlist in Plex Web
Thanks @OttoKerner - I followed your instructions and this ‘All Music’ magic playlist appears to do what I’m after! It’s also at the top of the ‘Recent Playlists’ in Plexamp for iOS so it’s easy to find too.
Also - after a few days of using the ‘All Music’ playlist, I’ve a sneaking suspicion that it is favouring the ‘popular tracks’ in the smart playlist over the the other non-popular tracks - would you know if this is the case?
Because it is set by default to just 2 days.
Which means, if you have a lot more music in the radio or playlist than you can play in 2 days, the less popular track will never get played.
Increasing this value will cause the more popular/(or higher ‘rated’) tracks to stay longer in ‘demoted’ state, so they are not bubbling up to the top again, if they have been played already = more diversity.
Having 30-second skip backward/forward is dumb tbh. No other music app has it for a reason. It would clutter up the Now Playing screeen and the usage would be minimal as people skip/replay whole songs.
