Hi All
I'm new to the forum but have been avidly reading.
I'm quite new to decent audio also, recently got my first record deck and have it paired with a Naim Muso with my media server also running through it. I'm very happy with the setup.
I've noticed a lot of people on here poo-pooing Plex and just wanted to get people's opinions...
Whilst I completely agree that historically, Plex music performance was a secondary consideration they never really focussed on, they've made some major improvements recently, now including Tidal natively within the player as well as playback enhancement, and various other things. I wasn't sure if people here appreciated the new potential of the platform and thought I'd share it.
This is the latest from the Plex Pass subscribers channel:
We want you to have the dopest music experience imaginable! So we've improved the audio player in iOS and Android with direct play for FLAC, ALAC, MP3, AAC, APE, and MPC, as well as improved best-in-class transcodes for low-bandwidth scenarios. We've also added seamless transitions between tracks, soft pauses, and advanced hybrid caching (a fancy way of saying buffering ahead for smoother playback). Put on those headphones and get ready to rock!
In case you were off the grid and didn't hear, we also announced the TIDAL x Plex revolution last week and our users are loving it! Whether you are combining TIDAL's 60 million+ songs and videos with your own personal music collection, or just streaming TIDAL**, Plex gives you the most flexible and complete streaming music experience out there. Plex Pass users get a monthly discount on TIDAL** and more, including loudness leveling, sweet fades, silence compression, and voice boost.
I'm obviously a huge fan and have just upped my data subscription so that I can stream on the go and have to say, it's worth giving it a go these days. Most of my personal Plex server is in Flac.
If you've experienced the new enhancements, but still feel Plex is lacking, can you recommend any alternatives and give reasons why it's superior?
Posted on: 06 December 2018 by garyi
I use PLEX for playing my home library at work and in that context its perfectly fine.
In terms of at home on the local LAN, then its Roon here. There are no tweeks to be made to PLEX and if not very careful music can be transcoded rather than passed through etc. Its alright but has never been strong on audio, and still is not.
Posted on: 06 December 2018 by SpyderTracks
I saw Roon cropping up quite a lot in a couple of threads, it's obviously a serious bit of kit.
The one thing putting me off is the cost, I'd have to get the lifetime membership but it's a lot of cash.
BUT, if the benefits are that great, it's got to be worth a try, I'll set it up on my server and have a listen when I get a moment.
Posted on: 06 December 2018 by garyi
Hey listen, I have bitched about roon for many a year and frankly have to eat a bit of a hat on this one. I am not advocating it on sound quality per-say, but in terms of 'as much compatibility as possible' then roon is knocking it about.
It has its downsides too, the side scrolling action is just shite for instance, but its better than plex, plenty of geek tweaks available and when installed you find it will play to airplay, pcs, macs, iphones, etc etc, very compatible.
Posted on: 06 December 2018 by SimonPeterArnold
I saw Roon cropping up quite a lot in a couple of threads, it's obviously a serious bit of kit.
The one thing putting me off is the cost, I'd have to get the lifetime membership but it's a lot of cash.
BUT, if the benefits are that great, it's got to be worth a try, I'll set it up on my server and have a listen when I get a moment.
Compared to what you pay for Naim kit and a stupid audiophool ethernet cable its not expensive. Why do people think software should be cheap, it has just as much research and work put into it as hardware and its constantly evolving for no extra cost, Try it out for free and take a years sub to see if you like it,. If you do you can swap to lifetime and they knock of whats left of you year off the cost,
In 18 months of having it so much more features have been added. Its changed the way i engage with my collection that no hardware could ever achieve on its own. Worth every penny in my eyes.
Posted on: 06 December 2018 by feeling_zen
I use Plex for video and it is fantastic for this. Uncompressed 4K content with original HD audio tracks all passed through to a variety of streaming renderers like my network equipped BlueRay player, Amazon Fire tablets and TV boxes. And photo sharing works great too. It really scales up nicely. It smoothly manages my collection of 800 ripped DVD and BlueRay discs and over 20,000 photographs.
But for audio, it is... poo. It doesn't support WAV, WAV transcoding, and the menu navigation for audio seems a bit clunky from control points. The only thing worse than Plex for audio was Twonky.
Like many on the forum, for audio I use Asset instead. I have it installed on the same host as Plex and just use them for different things. Asset won't securely share remotely over WAN though. A way around this would be to convert your entire audio collection to FLAC (which Plex supports) and use Asset at home for real hifi listening with WAV transcoding turned on, and use Plex for accessing the library out of the house.
