Sonic Analysis - has processed 6 albums in 40 minutes

I’m running Plex and TrueNAS and don’t see any of these options for Sonic Analysis. Do you know when or if it will be available for TrueNAS (FreeNAS)?

Side Questions:
1: What is Sonic Analysis? and why is it worth the wait? (search finds nothing)
2: What servers support this, I don’t see an option for this on my Arm64 (pi 4B)
3: Can I run this on my much faster (power Hungry) Win 10 pc and move the results (database?) to the pi?

Thax.

https://www.plex.tv/blog/super-sonic-get-closer-to-your-music-in-plexamp/

Processing 623 albums on an Intel i5-8259U NUC. Averaging about 1.5 minutes per album so it will be about 15.5 hours to process the entire library.

It took me around 24 hours to scan about 1300 albums with a Macbook Pro mid-2015 (Intel I7-4980HQ).

Alternatively you can see progress information in the “Plex Media Server.log” logfile. Look for lines that say “completed xx.x% - Sonic Analysis”. The logfile will also tell you which album it is currently working on.

If you don’t know where your logfiles are have a look at Plex Media Server Log Fils

From what Plex have replied in other threads there’s no clear roadmap as the underlying ML libraries aren’t available for those platforms (at least not yet)

1 Like

You’ll have to live without sonic analysis. It is unfortunately only available on x86-compatible CPU’s.

I have a Sandy Bridge i5 and around 5000 albums. Looks like around 10 days on a midnight to 4PM schedule.

Maybe is it time for an upgrade.

SO maybe someone can answer this question for me.
It seems like this analysis takes a “fingerprint” of each song.
Am I right to assume that the fingerprint of “Hey Ya” by Outkast would be the same on my computer and every other computer that has that song? And that after the analysis, it compares those fingerprints to the other fingerprints on your own Plex music server?
If that assumption is correct, then why is there no “fingerprint” database on Plex’s own servers so those with the better processors making this analysis possible would help create a database so the analysis of the music files of those of us with processors from 2013 (which works MORE THAN FINE to run EVERY OTHER PART OF PLEX) would just access that shared database on Plex’s server and download a small (I imagine the data analysis fingerprint would be a very small file) file and voila! Sonic information for every track. The tracks not in the database would obviously still have to be analyzed, but with a limited amount of actual music out there - wouldn’t this be the best solution?

I’m sure at least 50% of Plex users would probably willing “opt in” to allow their music fingerprints to be uploaded anonymously to Plex servers to help each other out.

What part of this am I missing?

Because half a year to process my thousands of albums collected over the years (cd rips, free online music sources, music purchased, etc) is ridiculous and the idea of upgrading my Plex server just for this seems ridiculous - as much as I REALLY want it (because I’m one of those who prefers my own music to a music subscription service - which would cost a lot less than upgrading my Plex server).

Anyway - I hope someone from Plex can answer my question - maybe it never occurred to them and I just gave them a great idea (and the potential for a spin-off business with crowd-sourced music fingerprints of millions of songs).

Thanks.

2 Likes

Mainly for privacy implications.

It is not a sonic fingerprint, like you may know from Shazam.
Shazam can only tell you which song it is. It doesn’t differentiate between different recordings or masterings of the same song.

Plex on the other hand does analyze a few dozen sonic characteristics, which include the tonality (EQ etc.). So even a different master of the same album may produce different results.

To use a central repository of analysis data Plex would then have to rely 100% on the file name being correct and complete.
And of course, then it is still unknown in which version and which mastering of the song is in the file.
Is it live, or studio? Was it a re-recording, a cover? etc.pp.

4 Likes

This is, for my case, a very good question.
My Plex server use a middle CPU with a large storage. But I also have a high end cpu (online dedicated server) with a more realistic storage capacity.

Moving only the music library to the second server to execute the Sonic scan should be perfect. (and new addition will obviously take less time as it’s only few album each time)
Could it be done ?

Just a quick question, would Sonic Analysis work on a Mac with a M1 chip?

Yes. The M1 has a very good x86 emulation.

1 Like

the analysis run entirely locally.

on each individual file/album.

on each individual users server.

there is no shared analysis, at least yet.

would it be nice, to only have to fingerprint and use a shared database, heck yes.

but as otto mentioned, there are privacy issues, not to mention back end logistical issues that would have taken even longer to design, build, implement, test, and eventually release.

perhaps some day there will be a future, where global analysis data can be stored ‘in the cloud’, but today is not that day.

today, you get to run cutting edge machine learning analysis on however old or new your particular server is, and that will of course take as much time as it takes.

sorry if your server is old and/or low powered.

sorry that you must wait until the entire analysis completes before you will see/hear any results.

as already mentioned previously, if you want to see it RIGHT NOW, create a small test library with a couple hundred different artists/albums.

it shouldn’t affect your main library, and you can mess around with the test library until the main library is finished.

https://www.google.com/search?q=how+much+cpu+does+machine+learning+use

I am curious how the results of compilations and soundtracks that contain a range of song types are factored into sonic. For example the Pulp Fiction soundtrack has Funk, Rock, etc as well as dialogue which IMHO would make an interesting sonic album profile. I still have about 20% to go on my FLAC library which contains complete albums.

Also, I have two music libraries, one for MP3s (mostly incomplete albums) and one for FLAC. Will sonic make the relationships/recommendations between libraries?

Thanks in advance. I am really excited to use this feature.

No Shield? Ouch. No wonder I had no idea what this thread was about, I have never heard of this option. I better not look it up!

No.
A separate library is separate.

Probably only albums which cover a similar range & sound will be considered “similar”.

I’m noticing Plex Music Analyzer Process on my Mac is only using 1 thread and there are two processes running. I have a 6 core Xeon processor. Is there any setting I can change to enable more processes or more threads to take better advantage of my CPU?

there are no such user settings.

it could be possible that other thread(s) have stalled on potentially bad files, IIRC it should give up eventually and continue on processing others.

worst case, you may need to restart your server and/or try to identify which albums/files it seems to be stuck on and either temporarily move them out of the plex music library and/or replace them with a fresh rip.

1 Like