Plexamp macOS stuttering when using other apps

Plex Labs
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While Plexamp is playing in the background and I use other macOS apps, the music sometimes stutters or breaks up very briefly. This seems to happen during spikes of higher CPU usage, such as a heavy web app in Safari loading a chunk of new content or initialising a video, or when I change between apps or Spaces.

Unfortunately there’s nothing interesting in the logs around the time of the stutters, just Memory usage: 104.0MB. Restarting Plexamp, Plex Media Server, or the machine does not affect the issue.

Maybe Plexamp just isn’t buffering enough audio and stutters because of that when there’s not enough CPU to go around?

The stuttering has happened ever since I started using Plexamp earlier this year, and has gotten more noticeable in the last few weeks.

Plexamp 4.11.2
Plex Media Server 1.41.1.9057-af5eaea7a
(both running on this same device)
Mac Studio 2023
Apple M2 Max, 32 GB
macOS 15.0.1 (24A348)

Edit: forgot to mention this issue definitely only happens in Plexamp. If I play music through the Plex Web App, the issue does not happen.

2

Try increasing the cache size. Go to settings >> Playback >> Caching>>>Cache Size.

3

No effect, unfortunately. Sounds like those settings are more about caching entire tracks anyway? To me this seems more like a live audio buffering issue, but I don’t know.

4

Sounds like the at least some of the people here are experiencing the same issue: Reddit - Dive into anything

5

Shouldn’t affect stuttering.

What audio device are you playing to? I’ve never seen any stuttering on macOS, personally.

6

wondering if the 10Gb network interface is keeping your ssd a little too busy during plexamp track prefetch ?

i have seen cases where i think plexamp stuttering can be caused by fast networking feeding slower storage (normally just an issue for something like a headless pi that runs on a slow sd card … but maybe a 10Gb interface could cause issues even for faster storage)

by default, plexamp prefetches multiple tracks in advance … makes sense for mobile, but otherwise i recommend setting this to “next track only”

and also under caching, if you have network speed set to unlimited, you might try setting this to something lower

1 Like
7

That is good advice!

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Hmm, well I’m having trouble reproducing the stutters after changing to the following, restarting Plexamp, and skipping a bunch of tracks.

  • Wi-Fi Caching: Only next track
  • Network Speed: 5 Mbps

Reverting to more tracks + Unlimited speed, restarting again, and skipping a bunch of tracks seems to bring the stutters back.

So seems promising! Will continue testing over the weekend, since reproducing the stutters has always been unreliable.

To the earlier question: my audio output is set to follow the system, which goes to AirPods Max via Bluetooth.

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That’s always another variable, but yeah, @tgp-2 was really smart to bring that up, because we can suck down data quite quickly with caching.

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(Thanks for all the replies so far! Really wish I had a better way to debug this, but….)

The cache settings stopping the stutters seems to have been a coincidence. Maybe the lower CPU/disk/network/something usage from them decreased the chance of the stutters happening, but they’re still there.

However, the Bluetooth angle seems more promising. I’ve been using a USB headset (Logitech Pro X Wireless) all day and had zero stutters. This definitely wouldn’t be the first time an AirPods product has unexplained issues on macOS, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the culprit. :confused:

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