Installing Plex yesterday to stream with a friend, we immediately found out that Plex suffers from an unfixable low volume bug. Even with Plex volume maxed, and everything else minimized, it was nearly impossible to hear anything even when silent.
Looking it up, this has been a widely-encountered issue for people for many years. Dozens of threads, hundreds of comments, plenty of people abandoning Plex, and absolute silence on the issue from officials.
Not surprising, as Plex is one of the companies that believes it deserves to recieve money, but shouldn’t have to provide any support (After all, they’ve got unpaid community members of limited power to falsify that impression!).
So, since there’s no real way to fix this issue, and the company at fault refuses to even recognize that it exists…
Why?
Has Plex decided that they won’t gain as much by fixing their broken program as they’ll spend? Are they incapable of finding any solution to their own ruinous issues?
I believe I can answer that: It’s because Plex has outsourced the audio engine to MPV, and so any bug regarding audio playback is generally related to that open-source component. One I might add, that they have little control over; except through Plex users that are also involved in that open source project.
This means that any audio problem has to be fixed by a third party that moves very slowly. I will state as evidence, the length of time that a playback bug for DTS files at 44.1/88.2 kHz are erroneously played back at 48/96; causing both speed and pitch issues. In case someone is wondering how bad this particular issue is, it makes Seal sound like a female singer.
This will be a recurring problem because I believe that Plex considers themselves as not responsible for these problems.
BTW: Emby also uses MPV; but I believe also allows for a native player.
There are other Plex users here that might chime-in; that are also involved in MPV. I hope I did not mis-characterize anything. (Aside from my disappointment and criticism!) Please correct me if I did.
IMHO, if Plex is going to “hide” culpability or responsibility for something as basic as audio playback in a media system, then they have to allow for an open API that will allow for any number of third party players. If MPV is is incapable of resolving (IMHO) serious issues on a timely basis, then Plex needs to either build their own; or open it to the market so that perhaps a competitive environment causes bug fixes to be resolved with greater alacrity.
I generally like my Plex system; but the disappointment as an audio player has literally curtailed my music listening. That is NOT what you want as a marketing tag.
What a load of tripe. The only Plex clients using MPV are the desktop apps and Apple TV. The audio issues are a talked about thing on many platforms, including Android, which is using ExoPlayer.
if the user is direct-playing media Plex’s usual response it so claim since it’s direct playing the audio is being sent as it is in the file and they have nothing to do with the audio output, even when the user has apps like VLC running on the same device and can do A/B testing to see that the volume adjustments to get the same subjective “loudness” are higher on Plex.
I’ve found I can get hotter audio levels on DD/DD+ using HDMI passthrough verses Plex playing back the audio itself on my Fire Sticks.
First you call it a load of tripe - and then you state that desktop uses MPV. Wow. You do realize you are in the Desktop Players forum, right?
And, where do you see in the original post that someone mentioned Android - or that I mentioned Android.?
My source was a Plex Employee who posts on these forums. Perhaps take a moment to do some research. That person stated that they needed to use a pre-built 3rd party engine for desktop players - or they never would have done it due to the development time required.
It’s not possible to list a topic in multiple forums simultaneously. The original poster has to pick one regardless of how many clients they are talking about.
The tag does not change the fact that we are in the Desktop Players forum.
And since they also tagged player windows, perhaps maybe you should have asked if the poster was in the right forum before criticizing someone who was responding correctly based on that.
Which, if you look at the threads, do mention iOS and Plex Media Player. But they also include complaints about low audio issues effecting the following clients:
Android TV – which does not use MPV.
Roku – which does not use MPV.
XBox – which does not use MPV.
Playstation – which does not use MPV.
Samsung smart TVs – which do not use MPV.
I’ll also personally throw in I’ve had this issue on LG webOS, which… does not use MPV.
I didn’t need to ask the poster if they posted in the wrong section, because I knew their tagging was correct based on the content of their post. They stated they had already researched this issue and mentioned all the other topics they had found on it (as I quoted above). All those topics which included other clients besides the Plex Windows Desktop PC app.
If I may be so bold, the person who needed to ask more questions here was you, since you were quick to blame MPV for the issues despite it only being a possible cause on one of the three players this topic was tagged with. You could have also done more research into all the previous topics the original poster mentioned. It only took me a couple minutes to collect that list for this post.
Wikipedia: “In slang, a troll is a person who posts deliberately offensive or provocative messages online[1] (such as in social media, a newsgroup, a forum, a chat room, an online video game) or who performs similar behaviors in real life.”
This will be my last post on this subject since responding to Trolls just furthers the behavior… Good luck nx6.
Slang. something, especially speech or writing, that is false or worthless; rubbish.
I prefer to use reference sources for words that can’t be freely edited by anyone.
But if we want to use his definition…
Implying Plex is attempting to pass the buck to a third-party and trolling development on MPV…
Using this logic, Plex could blame any iOS/AppleTV video issues that use the new player on MPV, too.
Implying an open source project has any obligation of timetable to resolve your issues – Topkek.
Nothing provocative about that post. No siree.
Note: Using “offensive” and “provocative” as part of a definition is rather questionable, as those are subjective terms of the content being labeled. Something being false isn’t open to the feelings of the reader. Holding MPV responsible for clients they are not involved in is a rubbish take. I don’t have an alternative fact to give.
Or they could…I dunno…contribute to this OPEN SOURCE PROJECT? The company is making millions of dollars and uses free open source software and doesnt even contribute code to it. LOL
