# Sonic Analysis Not Making Progress
**URL:** https://forums.plex.tv/t/sonic-analysis-not-making-progress/932154
**Category:** Plex Media Server
**Tags:** server-linux
**Created:** [October 5, 2025, 1:05pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/sonic-analysis-not-making-progress/932154 "2025-10-05T13:05:34Z")
**Posts on this page:** 12
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@spiceygas](https://forums.plex.tv/u/spiceygas)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2025, 1:05pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/sonic-analysis-not-making-progress/932154/1 "2025-10-05T13:05:35Z")
Server Version#: 1.42.2.10156
Hypervisor: Proxmox 9.0.10
Install: Docker Container (VM: Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS, 12 CPUs, 16 GB RAM)
This is a brand new Plex install. Imported my music library (10,000+ tracks) and checked the box for Sonic Analysis.
Scheduled tasks run from 02:00 - 05:00.
Sonic analysis progress hasn’t changed in several hours. It’s constantly spinning but with no progress. **CPU usage is zero** , implying that nothing’s actually happening.
It’s not currently within the scheduled task time window.
Any ideas what’s happening?
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### Author:  [@nibbles](https://forums.plex.tv/u/nibbles)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2025, 5:58pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/sonic-analysis-not-making-progress/932154/2 "2025-10-05T17:58:24Z")
That’s a gigantic music library and will definitely take significant time.
Like you mentioned though, a CPU usage of zero implies nothing is happening.
My older Celeron gets a good spike. What is your CPU?
You probably want to tail some log files to check for activity.
Because it’s a new install, I’d start over and import 100 albums in the first load.
I would have my **Settings → Library** adjusted to process when media is added.
I would time how long that takes, then estimate for the rest.
You might as well let it analyze the music day and night and get it over with. It spends a lot of time finding metadata as part of this.
Also PMS runs best when your server has a static IP and uses Cloudflare or Google name servers rather than any other because Plex has so many domains it rotates through.
good luck!
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### Author:  [@spiceygas](https://forums.plex.tv/u/spiceygas)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2025, 9:26pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/sonic-analysis-not-making-progress/932154/3 "2025-10-05T21:26:27Z")
The VM is assigned 16 cores from a Threadripper PRO 5975WX, so I doubt it’s a problem with low CPU power. Especially because there’s zero CPU load.
Plex started having response issues (laggy when clicked, failing to load pages, etc.), and I couldn’t even restart the Docker container. (Just hanged when trying). So I bounced the VM and it’s working again.
Something about Sonic analysis has it really unhappy.
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### Author:  [@nibbles](https://forums.plex.tv/u/nibbles)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2025, 9:33pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/sonic-analysis-not-making-progress/932154/4 "2025-10-05T21:33:32Z")
Yes sir. Hopefully ChuckPA will be able to share some insights when he’s online this week about your CPU load. Maybe sonic analysis is single threaded. I wouldn’t expect much of PMS to work while that’s going on if so.
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### Author:  [@spiceygas](https://forums.plex.tv/u/spiceygas)
#### Post date: [October 6, 2025, 2:17am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/sonic-analysis-not-making-progress/932154/5 "2025-10-06T02:17:41Z")
Being single-threaded probably isn’t the culprit because it’s sitting at zero CPU usage.
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### Author:  [@spiceygas](https://forums.plex.tv/u/spiceygas)
#### Post date: [October 6, 2025, 9:19am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/sonic-analysis-not-making-progress/932154/6 "2025-10-06T09:19:03Z")
Well, this morning I woke up and the job wasn’t stuck spinning. Logs show that the CPU was working overnight during maintenance hours, and returned to zero at the end of maintenance without the “hung” job showing up in activity.
I’ll watch it for the next couple days to see if the problem happens again.
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### Author:  [@nibbles](https://forums.plex.tv/u/nibbles)
#### Post date: [October 6, 2025, 10:02am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/sonic-analysis-not-making-progress/932154/7 "2025-10-06T10:02:15Z")
Oh jeez I’m sorry I only now noticed that you don’t have a Plex Pass. You may have been wondering about a feature that’s not available to you. From [the Plex Pass support article](https://support.plex.tv/articles/201751006-plex-pass-feature-overview/) it says,
- Premium Music Features
- Take your music experience to eleven! Enjoy sonic music analysis, Guest DJ, Mix Builder, Track Radio, automatic lyrics from LyricFind, visualizers, and more.
That would explain that feature getting hung or not using the CPU.
Darn it.
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### Author:  [@spiceygas](https://forums.plex.tv/u/spiceygas)
#### Post date: [October 6, 2025, 10:23am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/sonic-analysis-not-making-progress/932154/8 "2025-10-06T10:23:52Z")
What? I have a plex pass.
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### Author:  [@nibbles](https://forums.plex.tv/u/nibbles)
#### Post date: [October 6, 2025, 6:11pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/sonic-analysis-not-making-progress/932154/9 "2025-10-06T18:11:16Z")
oh okay, my mistake. I was going by your forum Avatar which doesn’t have the Plex Pass arrow over the green S. However I just clicked your green S, and the popup says you have a plex pass. Double darn it. 🤷♂️
When sonic analysis was successful, you’ll see Guest DJs enabled.
When loudness analysis was successful, you’ll see an audio amplitude graph under the track being played.
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### Author:  [@chadm](https://forums.plex.tv/u/chadm)
#### Post date: [October 6, 2025, 6:33pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/sonic-analysis-not-making-progress/932154/10 "2025-10-06T18:33:46Z")
Based solely on vibes, I’d say PMS mistakenly staged the task outside the task window and then simply had to wait. If it hadn’t completed the task successfully by morning, I’d have suggested corrupted files, which left me with never ending analysis previously.
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### Author:  [@spiceygas](https://forums.plex.tv/u/spiceygas)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2025, 11:42am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/sonic-analysis-not-making-progress/932154/11 "2025-10-08T11:42:26Z")
It’s been a few days and the problem has not repeated. So maybe it solved itself…?
Not a very satisfying answer, but I appreciate all the thoughts and input from folks.
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### Author:  [@system](https://forums.plex.tv/u/system)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2026, 11:42am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/sonic-analysis-not-making-progress/932154/12 "2026-01-06T11:42:33Z")
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