PlexAmp not transcoding on Wi-Fi & slow downloads

[whepper]

My music is stored in FLAC format. When using PlexAmp on my iPhone I prefer to have music transcoded to Opus, even while on wifi. I’ve set the Music Quality setting for both Wi-Fi and Cellular to 160 Kbps. When on cellular it works and it streams Opus, but it continues to stream FLAC. I get the same behaviour when using PlexAmp on Windows. I’m on the same network as my PMS.

Another issue is that donwloads (transcoding from FLAC to 160 Kpbs Opus) are quite slow, even while the PMS CPU usage (super)low. So it’s definately not busy transcoding. Is there any throttling in place? Downloads in original FLAC are much faster. Same behaviour on iOS & Windows.

Server Version#: 1.19.4.2935
Player Version#: PlexAmp 3.1.0

[elan]

@whepper

When using PlexAmp on my iPhone I prefer to have music transcoded to Opus, even while on wifi.

Why?

@whepper

I’m on the same network as my PMS.

There is a special case exception we make for the LAN (because remember that WiFi settings also affect remote access to your server if you’re on a “foreign” WiFi).

@whepper

Downloads in original FLAC are much faster

To be expected, downloading FLAC is just blazing the bits across the network, Opus requires a conversion, which even if fast, still takes time.

[whepper]

Thanks for your prompt answers!

@elan

Why?

This was the idea: I was trying to lower the writes to my iPhone to extent the lifetime of the storage, also because on my iPhone I for sure won’t be able to ABX between Opus and FLAC and the FLAC files are cached ahead (even when set to +1) to storage (and not memory).
I guess this is also the case when playing locally? When playing on a local network I would prefer direct play / streaming without any caching.

@elan

There is a special case exception we make for the LAN (because remember that WiFi settings also affect remote access to your server if you’re on a “foreign” WiFi).

Thanks. This explains the behaviour.

@elan

To be expected, downloading FLAC is just blazing the bits across the network, Opus requires a conversion, which even if fast, still takes time.

I see about 20% CPU usage by the transcoder process and it seems to be spread over multiple cores. If I start a batch encode myself on the same server using the Opus encoder it is about 5x faster, although I can understand you don’t want the transcoder to use up all available CPU.

Still a very pleased PlexAmp user though!

[elan]

@whepper

If I start a batch encode myself on the same server using the Opus encoder it is about 5x faster

Some of this overhead is probably due to the fact that we have a few layers of abstraction in there in our transcoder pipeline.

[whepper]

@elan

Some of this overhead is probably due to the fact that we have a few layers of abstraction in there in our transcoder pipeline.

Thanks. I normally use the download function quite last minute; like before boarding a plane and select the albums I’m in the mood for. Will have to schedule that a bit earlier!

[lapagaille]

@elan

There is a special case exception we make for the LAN (because remember that WiFi settings also affect remote access to your server if you’re on a “foreign” WiFi).

@elan, does this exception apply to connections made from “foreign” Wi-Fi but via VPN? In my testing, it doesn’t. The server’s dashboard shows my VPN client IP as “remote” but FLACs don’t get transcoded nevertheless.

What I’m trying to achieve is to always transcode FLACs when outside LAN, be that Wi-Fi or Cellular. I also have Remote Access disabled and VPN into my LAN instead.

[elan]

I’d probably need to see a plexamp log to see what it’s doing and why, but the exception is for a LAN (private IP) connection, so if you’re connecting remotely and it looks like 10.0.0.x then it would probably consider it “local”.

[lapagaille]

Thanks. This must be it. I couldn’t find anything relevant in the logs (so not posting them), but my VPN clients get IPs from a private range (10.1.0.0/24).