Plexamp Gapless playback over Chromecast Audio?

Plex Labs
1

Hi,

I am considering Plex and Plexamp to replace my LMS wit various aging squeezebox players.

I have a few Chromecast Audio devices in the house, as well as DLNA players.

I like Plexamp as an alternative to LMS or the very expensive Roon - but a deal breaker would be the ability (or inability) to play gapless audio to a Chromecast audio device.

Setup: Linux server, Chromecast Audio (2x), and for DLNA NAD D7050

If this is confirmed, I will be happy to pay for the plexpass immediately.

Cheers
Matt

2

Take your very nice NAD D7050 and pair it with a Raspberry Pi + SPDIF hat (as described in many forum threads here) and run headless Plexamp on it. Some advantages over Chromecast:

  • Gapless playback.
  • Sweet fades.
  • Loudness leveling.
  • Equalizer.
  • Bit-perfect playback.
  • Can run independently (Chomecast want a sender connected).
1 Like
3

Thanks Elan - I will look into that - never built a pi before - guess it is now time to start :slight_smile:

4

Easy installer: PlexAmp-installer for Raspberry Pi with ARM64 HW

1 Like
5

Thanks all. Upgraded to Plex Premium yesterday. The Raspberry solution looks to do the trick - I find getting the parts a bit of a challenge at the moment (HAT, Case, and Board - plus the fact that I am new to the Pi hardware) - For now I have it linked to the ChromeCast Audio - have not tried the gapless yet - given I am expecting it not to work in this setting, I cannot get too disappointed at this stage (would be cool though - as HiFi Cast on Android seems to be able to pull it off.

6

Here is a tip to make gapless audio work with PlexAmp casting to ChromeCast Audio:

Open the Google home app
Cast your phone audio to the ChromeCast of your choice
Open PlexAmp and play (do not cast from PlexAmp)

PlexAmp will play locally, gapless. The home app will cast all phone audio as a single media stream to ChromCast.

Hopefully this is useful to PlexAmp casters, or the PlexAmp developers (maybe a configuration choice in the settings - cast as single stream for gapless audio)

7

wow i didn’t even know this was possible :joy:

8

I think the ability to initiate casting from the Google Home app only exists on Android … and it acts kinda like using Airplay from an Apple device

(Plexamp on the Android device handles gapless playback and then the Home app passes the output along to the Chromecast device … there might be some extra conversions due to Android audio constraints)

So the Android device must stay connected/active during playback (compared to it just functioning as a remote).

1 Like
9

You are right. It is a work around. The streaming quality is also not the best this way. I’m waiting for my Pi to arrive.

I still have the squeezebox setup to fall back to.

Loving PlexAmp BTW.

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