So I’m running Plex Media Server on my unRAID NAS. On the same machine I run “abcde” which can rip stuff to to a bunch of formats. Currently I have it set to rip to both flac and mp3.
Unfortunately Plex doesn’t like this. When I have the same movie ripped in multiple formats it’ll ask me which version I want to play, but not for music. With music I see 2 different files with the same name and they’re indistinguishable from each other (at least as far as I can tell from the Android app).
So… how should I rip my music to have it kept on Plex.
Storage isn’t a problem and I want it kept in an uncompressed format, so flac is basically a must. The question is whether I should also keep it in mp3 or not if the UI cannot handle it.
I have LTE where I live but when I’m on the road and have a bad connection I don’t want to be playing 30MB sound files. Can Plex transcode the flac to mp3? Where is this setting, can I do it on-demand like I can with videos?
Thanks,
~Eric
1 Like
Not sure about the transcoding question but with Plex Pass, you can sync your content to your phone while traveling to ensure uninterrupted music.
@eric.frederich said:
I have LTE where I live but when I’m on the road and have a bad connection I don’t want to be playing 30MB sound files. Can Plex transcode the flac to mp3?
That’s what Plex does. It will transcode pretty much everything, depending on the settings of your client.
Which Plex app are you using? iOS, Windows mobile or Android?
At least one of these already has a separate quality selector for ‘mobile network’ music playback.
And I’m not sure that all of these apps even are capable of playing flac - which means that your server will transcode your flac to mp3 or opus anyway and automatically.
I’d simply try it:
put only the flac version into your music library
keep the web app open in a web browser on the ‘Now Playing’ page. There you can see whether playback is Direct or Transcoded.
Then switch off Wifi in your mobile device and make it use LTE.
Play a song.
Watch the Now Playing display
Why would you take compressed audio in Dolby Digital or DTS & rip it to FLAC? FLAC is a lossless CODEC. & is great for ripping the WAV off CDs to a smaller file size but is pointless for other formats where the FLAC file will end up larger then the source file.
I can’t see anwhere in this thread that someone mentioned ripping video files.
This is about music.
