Issue
Plexamp’s Network pre-caching speed limit appears to affect currently playing tracks.
This causes the player to buffer when the currently playing track’s bitrate is higher than the caching speed limit.
Description
When playing music with Plexamp, I was experiencing buffering on my LAN when playing back my lossless tracks. Plex server logs pointed to the client buffering.
I had configured Plexamp to cache ahead at 1Mbps. Given my tracks were slightly over that bitrate, I went ahead and set my pre-caching speed limit to “unlimited”. The buffering stopped.
OS: Android 15
Plexamp v4.11.2
PMS: 1.41.2.9200
Network Environment: Pixel 6 > Cisco 802.11ax APs > Cisco Switch > Ubuntu 24.04 server w/ PMS --(SMB)–> Synology NAS
Question
Why does Plexamp’s network pre-caching speed limit affect the buffer of currently playing tracks?
Can you reproduce with a single track (e.g. a playlist with one track)? If so, please post Plexamp logs after the buffering kicks in so we can have a look. The logs do comment on the speed limit.
DM’d you the logs. Most will contain the behavior. The very tail end of the logs should show the setting change and the new behavior w/o a pre-cache limit
eg.
WARNING - Cache: READ underflowed at 638976 bytes, will go into buffering state.
Dec 01, 2024 16:28:50.716 [0x8ee3c710] INFO - Cache: Buffering until offset reaches 1908736 (read buffer offset: 638976, size: 1269760).
These log entries disappeared when I disabled the pre-caching speed limit.
The speed limit applies to all transfers, except for initial buffering (so playback starts as quickly as possible). So this is by design, you shouldn’t set your limit below the media bandwidth.
Got it! Appreciate you jumping on this and clarifying the expected behavior @elan !
My assumption based on the settings wording and nested location under caching was that it functioned something like below. (apologies in advance, threw the diagram together in 5 minutes, haha)
We added the limit not least because we found that on e.g. Pis or other scenarios with slow persistent storage, writing at too high a speed could cause other issues (e.g. audio stutter). So it would apply to current as well a subsequent tracks…
