Anyone else trying to avoid roon’s insane lifetime fee to come to plex which is much more reasonable? If so what are your thoughts on plexamp so far. I wonder if 1 or 2 years plexamp will be a great alternative to roon for less?
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Hi, me again from the other thread! 
I am both a Roon and Plexamp user. I think both have their unique merits and both have their downsides. It’s quite telling I think that despite Roon being asked daily to produce a remote or mobile network app, they still haven’t done it. Plex and Plexamp do it - job done. And I find it reliable and gives me plenty of the Roon features, at a bargain price comparatively.
Is it as good as Roon? No. But I don’t think it’s trying to be, so there’s that. Off the top of my head, Roon beats Plex and Plexamp hands down in my experience in two areas at least - integration with streaming services (I have Tidal inside both) and audio transport (and quality). But arguably, Plex and Plexamp beat Roon in user friendliness and accessibility. Plus the lack of as many rabid audiophiles on the forums in Plex is a plus IMO 
. They can be fairly terrifying in the Roon forums.
Ultimately you may not be able to replace Roon with Plexamp without a few compromises. Whether that matters is up to you and also, presumably, the future direction of Plexamp. The devs have done an amazing job with its development, and it will likely just keep getting better. Depends what your set up is, how you use a music service and where and what your expectations are I think.
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The eco-system on Plex is soo much better! Like you said, it has an app for iOS/Android. It also has the server part that works! And it has a headless player, even if not updated in a while, that can be used as a player for your Amp!
The audio to be honest, is not that much worse than roon, since it uses ALSA, just like roon.
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Thanks for this. I had meant to ask you about this before. In Roon I can see that a couple of my endpoints have ALSA. I never got round to finding out what that was! 
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So, I can set up a Pi of mine as a Plex server, attach a USB storage drive for my media and use Pi software of some kind (Raspian, DietPi?) and just install a Plex image?
I am not the brightest with this - last time round with Roon it was a pre-installed system and image. About right for my limited abilities! 
The Roon forums are a very toxic, unfriendly place. If you don’t belong to the inner circle of fan boys there, they will virtually kill you if you dare to criticize Roon, or dare to say that something doesn’t work as expected.
Anyway, Roon itself is fine on the desktop, if you can get past the outdated UI, but Plexamp is miles ahead of them on the mobile front. It looks much better, it’s easier to navigate and it just works without taking 20 or 30 seconds to find the server every time you open the app.
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Best to leave them to it. I agree - was my experience too.
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Plex-server can be installed on almost any OS, NAS-Devices, Docker etc.
I run mine in a docker container on my NAS! Then I store my TV-series/Movies/Music there!
Headless PlexAmp (using ALSA, just like roon/Volumio etc.) can be installed on a RaspBerry Pi, preferably with an audio-HAT for better sound-quality. I wrote an installer for it, since it is not straight forward, especially if you are not used to Linux!
Then to control the thing, you use the PlexAmp on your iOS/Android device, or desktop! From there you can cast to itself, or to the headless PlexAmp on the Pi, or a chromecast device (no gapless audio with chromecast devices).
For the OS on the RaspBerry Pi, I prefer Raspbian OS, since it is the most flexible! DietPi is too “dumbed-down” in my opinion, and frustrates a power user!
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Thanks for your help here @odinb1. I am a Linux noob but I will give this a go, so really appreciate your explanations!
I just wasn’t sure if the Pi itself also had the PMS installed on it as well as the Plexamp image and then I attached the removable storage containing my media, just like a Windows PC.
This is an option, to co-locate them. Just remember, the PlexAmp headless will grab the ALSA-device, and other apps will not get access to audio without re-configuring ALSA (setting up ALSA-mixer for example).
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Thanks @odinb1 - yes, my journey through the Pi posts on here had made me aware of this. Seems simplest is best! 
Sounds like the inability to play hi rez files on Plexamp is a limitation compared to Roon. That may not mean much to most on PLEX but for me it is a killer since I’ve collected much hi rez media over the years. I am going to sign up for a trial with Roon today as I’ve seen the interface and heard it at the many audio conventions I’ve attended. With it’s focus on those that care for hi rez and a ton of great metadata, Roon seems like a better fit for me. I know…PLEX leadership doesn’t care…that’s been made obvious to those of us who care for hi rez. The ability to play hi rez media outweighs the ability to access my library remotely. Most audiophiles don’t care if their music is hi rez while they hike. I know I don’t. If Roon could get that remote access piece in place, even at lower bit rates, they should see a flood of people jumping onboard. Even with the higher prices. People will pay for higher quality. I guess I’ve talked myself to go the other way…drop my PLEX pass and apply that to Roon. I need to begin my massive RIP project to my Synology NAS and lay Roon over that versus PLEX. If PLEX ever decides to bring back hi rez (was there until a year ago) maybe I’ll reconsider. With everything ripped to the NAS I can lay either PLEX or ROON over top of the files.
Roon certainly gets the win as far as metadata and ‘surfability’ are concerned. And as you say the bit-perfect playback doesn’t hurt. Hope you enjoy it!
While I was looking into NAS options before for (ideally) both Plex and Roon, I found there’s a definite split of opinion on using a NAS as a Roon server or core on their forums.
In my experience the main day to day thing about Roon is the need for suitable endpoints to handle hi-res playback, and I am at the more budget end of the scale! I did set up a bunch of Raspberry Pi devices with Ropiee installed, but these have been unreliable lately, and I think it’s fair to say the market is not exactly overflowing with relatively cheap endpoints to handle Roon with. I am giving serious thought to not renewing my Roon sub when it expires later this month because I am not sure that the returns are not much diminished for my personal use case. Plexamp could clearly be better, but in fairness it’s not trying to directly compete with the likes of Roon I don’t think.
Plexamp will serve up to 44/16 and that is good enough for me to use as ‘background’. For more ‘forensic’ Hi-Res listening I can use my headphones and Dragonfly DAC and serve up the higher res files via Qobuz or Tidal. That’s my thinking at this point anyhow.
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I find linux and CLI scary and difficult. After a lot of trials and failures i opted for unraid as a nas. Its super easy to set up and handles a reasonably large library (2500+ tracks) all flac ripped from CD or Hi res from HD tracks.
I use a Pi 3B+ with DAC hat as an endpoint running raspberry pi os and an older headless pi version of plexamp. This took a bit of trial and error to get working but there is lots of help here. Its reliable.
I controll it all from plexamp on ios and android mobiles and it casts direct from the nas to the endpoint. I press play every morning and it continues intantly, even over wifi in another building with gapless playback.
Both my wife and I log into the same plex account so we can both controll the same playlist in realtime. This works exceptionally well most of the time.
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