Credit where credit is due
I’ve posted about a number of bugs, so let me dedicate this thread to praising Plexamp. I’m an audiophile who code for a living, so I’m not easily impressed by software for music playback - but I believe Plexamp deserves a standing ovation for a number of reasons:
The UI. Man, this thing is SLICK! Just the basics, but it’s all we need and it looks GOOD.
Gapless just works. This is a huge deal for me. If a player doesn’t have gapless, I’m not using it. This is why I didn’t use regular Plex for my music.
Cool visualisations. Wow this takes me back to the Winamp days where we’d sit around, stoned off our a$$es listening to Jean-Michel Jarre with a 19" CRT as the only light source in the dorm room. Trippy, man…
Flawless streaming. I’m running Plex server on a humble DS116 NAS box and I can stream 24/192 FLAC perfectly to the office.
Lyrics. I don’t sing along, but I love me some well-integrated lyrics display.
Remote control. Today I’m working from home, using my desktop PC with the nice studio monitors hooked up, but controlling playback from my laptop with the dedicated media keys.
Plexamp is FREE as in free beer. I came ~this~ close to shelling out for a Roon license and then Plexamp showed up offering a better UI & UX with the one feature Roon doesn’t have: Streaming my collection from home. Plexamp just saved me $119 a year. Hell, even if I had to get a Plex Pass just for using PlexAmp, I’d still be saving $70 a year.
We’re on the 1.0 release which when you consider #7 just makes points 1-6 even more impressive.
Totally agree Sorensiim! Spectacular debut. LOVE the Stations & Discovery options! I’ve got a decent library (50,000+ tracks) and I really enjoy sitting back and letting some well-reasoned “AI” offer up a playlist. CONSTANTLY surprises me hearing things I didn’t know I had, or wouldn’t have picked to listen by myself. Big BIG fan!
No, seriously, this is the best thing since Winamp. Itunes, iPods, iPhones… no, this beats them all for media consumption. I’m running Plex on my home Drobo5N (just purchased a Plex account earlier this week), then Plexamp gets announced, I d/l, and AAAAAHHHHHH!!! I’m in love. Just WORKS, and very reminiscent of Winamp if development had started all over with all the best of what the latest technology offers on Windows or Mac. So happy your employees drank a beer and got to work on this!
@cavemanf16 said:
No, seriously, this is the best thing since Winamp. Itunes, iPods, iPhones… no, this beats them all for media consumption. I’m running Plex on my home Drobo5N (just purchased a Plex account earlier this week), then Plexamp gets announced, I d/l, and AAAAAHHHHHH!!! I’m in love. Just WORKS, and very reminiscent of Winamp if development had started all over with all the best of what the latest technology offers on Windows or Mac. So happy your employees drank a beer and got to work on this!
P.S. Please give that team a beer bonus for Christmas. I keep discovering features in Plexamp that make both my new Plex Pass and the free Plexamp totally worth the money!
I agree with all of the above points, and I’m loving it so far. The only thing I’m missing is a way to output the (gapless) playback to my receiver and/or (Samsung) smart tv Plex client. I understand from elan’s post that the idea is to eventually have Plexamp running on a headless playback device such as a Raspberry Pi, but I’d love to see playback without adding yet another device to my setup or cabling up my receiver and desktop pc.
Since my receiver has a built-in Chromecast Audio, DLNA, etc and it’s hooked up to a Plex client, I’m sure there must be a way (yes, I’m aware of the technical limitations imposed by devices such as Chromecast regarding gapless playback) to get that working without another device or cable.
@craighill said:
Hi DenzoML if you’re running Plexamp on a Mac, you can use the Airfoil app to cast Plexamp (and lots of other things) to Chromecast(s)
Hi craig, I’m aware of solutions like this (also on Windows), but don’t they just send the entire audio output to the Chromecast in order to achieve gapless playback? It technically works, I don’t want to send the rest of my PC audio to my receiver as well, e.g. when playing a game.
The worst problem I’ve had is to have to reboot the laptop every couple of days when the signal gets choppy
Oh, it seems that it actually does filter per app. Unfortunately the Windows app doesn’t have Chromecast support, but that is coming in the near future. Thanks! It would be awesome if Plexamp could offer this function natively without a third party app, though.
Just discovered PlexAmp and I have to praise this as well. For a v1.0 it’s quite remarkable. And yes, finally GAPLESS playback! I’m eager to try this little app at work and see how it performs outside the local network.
As a long time user and Plex Pass subscriber, I have complained (a lot) in the past about Plex pushing releases without making sure that all the components are working.
But I also feel the need to congratulate where it is due: Plexamp is amazing!
It is the perfect Music player for me thus far, I have even stopped using Yamaha Musiccast for my HRA files at my desk now.
Just wanted to say I also really love this little program. Can’t wait for some of the niftier features like gapless, and artist radio station to make their way to web and android clients.
I’m only 15 minutes into using PlexAmp… and it just might be my new music player at work. It’s really really nice. Sure beats using a full web browser.
This looks very interesting and something I have been hoping would happen. Just a couple quick questions before I jump down the rabbit hole, again.
On a MAC can I stream 24/96 flac files located on NAS without transcoding.
Not directly related to this app but I am trying to learn more about how Plex server player handles files described in 1. So many posts on the forum have left me confused. Posted this question about by specific hardware etc but no direct replies. Is there a better way to ask for specific support question? Many thanks and I look forward to trying PlexAmp.
That really means a lot to us.
That really means a lot to us.