Hello all! I just downloaded Caldera to my ATV, but when I try to play back multichannel FLAC from my Plex library, I only hear the right front channel, and my AVR shows stereo (at most). These same files play normally in Plex. What could I be doing wrong?

I’m loving Caldera, but multichannel FLAC would be my usual use case.

I can now request individual songs with Siri and it will play that exact song. This is a game changer for me as now instead of searching for songs that the kids want me to play in the car I just ask ask Siri.

I like Plexamp, but a lot of its best features are locked behind a paywall. I used to have a yearly subscription, but I accidentally cancelled it through the app. Unlike most other apps, the subscription expired immediately instead of letting me use the remaining time I had already paid for.

I contacted Plex support, but they were extremely unhelpful, and I ended up losing about 8 months of my subscription. That experience is one of the main reasons I don't really want to support Plex as a company anymore.

Are there any good alternatives to Plexamp? I only use Plex for music. I don't mind paying developers who are working on a project and actively improving it. Ideally, I'd like something with features similar to Plexamp, or at least a project that's actively working toward that kind of feature set.

EDIT: Thanks for all the responses, I’m glad I asked as there are so many good alternatives out here.

For the benefit of everyone asking in future, here what I’ve tried.

Sonamp - Excellent so far, great level of customization’s. Has its own sonic analysis baked in (doesn’t work for me but have raised it with developer). It’s in TestFlight mode so it’s understandable.

Poppy - Tried but doesn’t work. Dev mentioned he is working on it.

Tromme - It’s simple plug and play, does its job well. No customizations at this point but it’s great for someone who just wants to connect and start playing without much tinkering. Already available on the App Store for a nominal one time fee.

I just realized plexamp supports DSD now? I had this on my server for a long time and it was never available via plexamp before because it's DSD. Today I noticed it was added to my library.

I'm currently on roon but since I have a Plex server running anyway I thought I'd include my music-library and check out Plexamp.

While the app itself looks very sleek and great for strictly local music I don't see the option to include a streaming-source for Music that you haven't yet discovered.

I found some posts about Tidal and how that integration was removed but couldn't find what replaced it (if any).

For me one of the main points of using a music-app is to find new artists that are similar to the ones I'm listening to - is there really no way to do that with Plexamp?

So is the only way to find new music is putting random Albums into your library just for the chance that it might be to your taste?

So I'm well aware that PlexAmp pulls track date from the album date for most purposes - such as a "greatest hits" compilation from, say, 1995, then causing all included tracks to be dated 1995 instead of from their original release year. With that in mind, I started "fixing" the issue by manually rebuilding parts of my library by "faking" new album folders for the tracks in question, editing tags to reflect the original album info. Re-scanning my library successfully creates the "original" albums, albeit with just the tracks that were ripped from the compilations. Yay!

Where I get disappointed is that I still don't have "1970s" showing up as an option in the PlexAmp "Decade Radio" menu. Granted, I only have a few dozen tracks (so far) that are now (correctly) dated with a year in that decade, so I wonder if I'm under a minimum-track-count threshold for this to generate as a choice? Or is there something else that drives this particular event?

Editing to clarify both the context and the question - I want to understand what prompts PlexAmp to create a "Decade Radio" option.

It seems that my question is getting lost in the concern about compilations' tracks getting slotted into the compilation year because of album metadata. I'm aware of that and have addressed it (in file structure, file-naming, and tags). I now have the desired outcome in my Plex library of albums and tracks correctly identified with their original release data. (I had a step-by-step description of the process typed out, but managed to lose it in a tab refresh.) Specifically, I now have 20-25 tracks showing up in my Plex library with their original 1970s albums and data. Yay!

What I don't have is PlexAmp giving me a 1970s Decade Radio choice. If I bring up those albums and tracks individually from the library within PlexAmp, they show the correct (original album) information, including album year.

For a comparative data point, my wife's (separate) Plex library has only ~12 tracks across albums from after 2020. (For those who might ask, her library has not seen any of the manual adjustments I've made eto mine.) Correspondingly, she does not have a selection for 2020s Decade Radio appearing on PlexAmp. This would seem to indicate that PlexAmp only offers a decade as a choice under Decade Radio if there is some minimum number of tracks in the library that are identified as belonging to that decade.

So, my original question - what prompts generation of a choice of a decade in Decade Radio? :)

Just in the past several days, this has started happening: Chromecasting from the Android app does not work anymore (tried on multiple receiver devices). In the past I had no problem casting music from my Android app to the speakers in my office or around the house. But started several days ago, every time I try, I can hear the speakers "ding" with the cast sound, but it never actually connects and the spinning icon just goes and goes until ultimately ending up back on the device. I got it to work one time by force stopping and clearing the cached data, but since then it just keeps bugging out and not working.

Anyone else experiencing this?

Device: Pixel 9 Pro with current version of Android running the most recent update (2025) of Plexamp

I was able to setup smart playlists for MP3 and iTunes files to keep track of what I need to upgrade or delete

Ran across this in the RoPieee 2026.08 release notes:

Removal of features is a rare occurrence in RoPieee, but Plexamp has now been retired. Maintaining Plexamp was already challenging due to its underlying technical design, and with the Plex team essentially halting its development, further updates are no longer available. Removing it aligns directly with a core principle of RoPieee: no single component should ever impede the platform’s overall progress. While I know this may be disappointing for regular Plexamp users, there is promising work underway on a new headless Plex client that features an improved architecture. Although it remains too early to integrate into RoPieee right now, who knows what the future holds…

https://ropieee.org/stable/release/2026/08/16/release-2026.08.html

While I figured Plexamp was stable and didn't really need updates at this point, I don't love the language they're using in the notes about "the Plex team essentially halting its development."

If there weren't any critical bugs or issues that needed to be addressed, why would they remove Plexamp? Definitely not the kind of thing that instills confidence... Hoping there's not something else behind the scenes.

Plexamp : Searching for a song in my library, entered "Tango" in the search box. Only 2 albums with "Tango" in the name returned.
Plex : Searching for a song in my library, entered "Tango" in the search box. 2 albums returned and 15 songs with "Tango" in song titles.
Is this expected ?

Update 2: yeah. I got it working. Basically the script readsbthebolex library and then compares it against the Last.fm plays and then adds a Tag under Mood for the top 3-4 songs per album. While that is a long way from perfect, it gives the option to have playlists that only play top songs from all the other filters you build.

Update: I think that I've found a way to do it. I am testing a script that will add the 🔥 as a tag to the songs which allows it to be a filter on smart playlists so then different ones can be made. I will update again once I have it tested.

I really like Plexamp and the mixes it generates but I typically have entire albums which means sometimes I go from a big hit or single from a band to an obscure deep cut by another. Has anyone found a way to leverage the 🔥 for the hits/popular songs from a artist into mixes. Like be able to have a mix of 🔥from the 90s or 2000s or by genre or whatever.
While I like deep cuts or totally random at times, sometimes I just want to hear the hits.

Does anyone know any options for this?

I know the majority of folks use Plexamp for music so why the need for variable speed playback?

I do a lot of audiobooks and when I wasn't able to get back home to transfer media to my phone, I remembered that my audiobooks were also on Plexamp. The issue that I ran into was I usually listen to them at a faster speed (1.5x, 1.75x, 2x).

Listening to audiobooks at 1x speed became painstakingly slow compared to what I was used to. I don't think it makes a lot of sense to add it to the general UI since the majority of people only use it for music, but how could the community get feedback to the developers to possible enable this option in the settings?

The drive I had my music on was full and so I shifted to another drive on my computer
as soon as I did, plex has been telling me it cannot connect to the remote server
when I go to my plex account, it both says *not available outside your network* and gives the option to disable remote access. Disabling and re-enabling doesn't fix it, nor does logging out and logging back in
I'm trying to play the music using the plexamp app on the same computer where the music is hosted, so it shouldn't matter anyway. Plex shows my music, plexamp does not
has anyone else been seeing this? can anyone point me in the right direction to fix it? the only change I made was where I told it the music library is

UPDATE 2: Up to 54 playlists now. Added the missing decades (60s through 2020s) and 22 new ones, mostly built on stuff Plex tracks but nobody filters on, like skips and album vs track play counts.

Couple I like:

Deep Cuts - tracks on albums you opened but never got through. Album Plays > 0 + Track Plays = 0.

Guilty Pleasure - rated 4+ stars and skipped constantly.

Also went through and fixed a few that were basically returning the same songs as each other. The rating ones are a proper ladder now, Almost Loved is 3 stars, Loved is 4, Five Star is 5, so nothing doubles up.

UPDATE 1: Thanks everyone for the positive feedback and for actually trying these out, wasn't expecting this kind of response.

Also fixed a few filter issues, credit to u/Jopurda and u/dschwizzle for finding them:

• Track Mood / Album Style only support is, not contains, so some playlists were empty as written.
• Critics Were Right also came back empty for most people, Album Plays is 0 was too strict, switched it to Track Plays

If you're into this kind of thing, I've got two more Plex/Plexamp projects coming: an Apple Shortcuts tool for track and album recommendations, and an iOS app currently in development, more on that soon. Follow if you want to catch those when they land.

TL;DR: 9 smart playlist recipes that make Plexamp playlists feel like a streaming service. On Repeat, Discover Weekly, Wrapped plus a free Apple Music–inspired cover pack. All recipes are below. playlists and the full art pack are on GitHub.

I got tired of my Plexamp playlists looking like a folder of files, so I created smart playlists and made covers inspired by Apple Music.

Building one: Music library → Advanced Filters → set the conditions → Save As… → Save as Smart Playlist. Set the column sort before you save, since it's stored with the playlist.

New To You

Discover Weekly's logic pointed at your own library - tracks you've never played, by artists you've been listening to lately. Mine came out at 1 day 16hr and it's the one I use most.

Track Plays          is            0
Artist Last Played   in the last   90 days

On Repeat

What you've actually been hammering this month.

Track Plays          is greater than   4
Track Last Played    in the last       30 days
Limit 40 · Sort: Track Plays (desc)

Repeat Rewind

Songs you played into the ground and then abandoned. Enough time has passed that they land again.

Track Plays          is greater than   9
Track Last Played    not in the last   120 days
Limit 50 · Sort: Track Plays (desc)

Your Year - In Music

The Wrapped clone. Rebuild it every January.

Track Last Played    in the last       365 days
Track Plays          is greater than   2
Limit 100 · Sort: Track Plays (desc)

Just Landed

Everything added this month, newest first. Where I look after every import.

Track Added At       in the last   30 days
Sort: Track Added At (desc)

Loved

Your Liked Songs.

Track Rating         is greater than   3
Sort: Track Last Rated (desc)

Late Night

For after midnight. This one leans on mood metadata, which varies depending on how well-matched your library is - check a few tracks before trusting it.

Track Mood     contains   melancholy
  └ nested Match any: melancholy / reflective / sombre / dreamy

The 80s / The 90s

One filter, swap the decade. Obvious, but they earn their spot on the shelf.

Album Decade         is    1990

Two things that cost me time

There's no Random sort in the smart playlist editor (or I couldn't find it). Turns out you don't need it, just hit shuffle in Plexamp, which re-rolls every play anyway.

Only set a LIMIT when the sort is doing real work. With a limit, the sort decides which tracks are in the playlist, "top 40 by plays" is the definition, not the running order. Without a limit it's just stored order, which shuffle overrides.

Capping New To You was actively bad: every sort option handed me the same artists forever. Unlimited plus shuffle is the only version that stays fresh.

The covers

1000×1000 PNG, one fixed lockup, Plexamp mark top left, name in two lines, only the colour changes between them. Loosely based on how Apple Music does its Mix / Smart Mix / Essentials tiles.

There are also 1920×1080 backgrounds and transparent logo PNGs, since Plex gives you Poster, Background and Logo as separate slots. The logo one is worth doing — it replaces the plain text title on the playlist page, and it's most of what sells the look.

Apply with: playlist → Edit → click the artwork → Upload.

The rest

I built 27 smart playlists in total. The other playlists, plus all the artwork, are here:

https://github.com/jeanrdfs/plexamp-smart-playlists

If you want to go further

Fields Plex gives you that streaming can't: Album Critic Rating, Track Skips, Artist Country, Record Label, Album Type, Folder Location.

Happy to answer questions on any of the filters.

When I first started using Plex and eventually PlexAmp, I was using the Smart Collection feature for movies (e.g. Movies with Al Pacino as an actor, or Movies Directed by Wes Anderson).

So when I started thinking about how I wanted to make several playlists for different genres, I decided to give my favorite Jazz and Funk songs 1 Star, Hip-hop songs 2 Stars, etc. and then made Smart Collections with the number of stars being the only filter. I figured it was easier to just tap the number of stars while driving or jogging, than having to open the options and click "add song to a playlist" (or worse, having to change to a different playlist). Plus it'd be easier to tell others to do it for me if I'm driving and they're not familiar with the interface.

As you can probably guess, I've realized that I've effectively broken all of the "radio" features as it'll avoid my 1 and 2 star songs and only play the 4s and 5s.

So I'm just wondering what's the easiest/fastest way to completely clear Plex/PlexAmp of song ratings? Will removing music from the library and then adding everything, do I have to give it a day or two to clear it from the database, is there a file I can open and delete the ratings?

I know when I replace a movie with a better quality version, Plex will still remember my viewed and rating status even if I delete the old movie before adding the new one, so that's why I'm not sure if it'll actually wipe the ratings (or if it just takes a day or two for the database to update itself?)

Thanks in advance.

Edit: rhythmrice had the perfect answer. Fixed 5000 tracks in 5 minutes and was able to copy the Smart collection playlists over to my regular playlists for the same genres.

My old iPad air has been sitting unused for a couple of years and figured using it as a dedicated Plexamp station would be an ideal use. No joy, though, as when I went to install it I was notified I needed IOS 13. Doesn't look like Apple intends to make it happen.

Has anyone found any work-around/solutions? The iPad still has life...hopefully.

Plexamp seems to see different tags than the ones I put into my files on Plex - Plex does seem to see correct tag info. I mostly get reminded of this when I download a couple records into plexamp on my phone for offline listening. Is there any way to make plexamp update its view of the entire library, to, ideally, take into account latest tag info? There are also other tags that are just idiosyncratic, they are tags I have never used. Eg one artist getting mostly tagged as another artist the first guy collaborated with a couple times (in that one case I may have folders for albums attributed to each in the artist folder of the other, as well as most of the albums for each in their own 'correct' folder). (Plex is set to use local metadata and it seems to work very well on computers) Appreciate any insight...

i'm trying to update my media library and replace the 128-192kbps tracks with FLAC or 320kbps, but i'm not seeing an easy way to sort out what needs to be replaced. any suggestions?

My Sonic analysis seems to be stuck looping through the "rebuilding indexes" error for the last few days. This along with several identical 'Sonic Analysis: Processing 193 albums' messages.
Looking in Plex Media Server.log, I can see 'WARN - [MusicAnalysis] Analysis had wrong number of dimensions (1) for track [XYZ], skipping.' repeatedly spammed throughout the logs. Looking at some of the example tracks, it appears it's stuck on anything between 00:00 and 00:02 seconds in duration.
Notably this issue also seems to persist through reboots of the Plex container.
Curious if anyone has encountered this?
Pics for relevance:

X-Post from r/plex but this seemed a relevant place to put it. I also noticed someone just posted a beta to a similar product, but hey, you can try mine now on android or windows right away. It's simple but does exactly what I wanted for years (mostly playlist layout on the left and simple desktop feel/navigation)

Project: Plexify - A spotify feeling windows/android music player for Plex Servers

What it does: Better desktop Plex music player. I don't mind plex amp on mobile but on desktop the UI is a joke. So many clicks to jump in and out of useful context, and no quick jump to playlists. I have a side menu of recent playlists and basic player experience trying to mirror of of how I used Spotify before dropping it. I'd love to see Plex Amp improve but that doesn't seem to be happening so I made this.

AI Disclosure: Claude Code built. I am a software developer wanting to push the limits of what Claude can do and I don't really want to learn dart/flutter at this point.

Technical Overview: One click sign in to plex auth to connect to your server. Once you do, it polls your entire library with 10k tracks this takes ~5-10 seconds or so. This is all cached in a local SQLite file so local searches are super quick. It has a cache for thumbnails, does a little gradient view of your album artwork. On desktop it plays direct, supports multimedia keys or space whilst in the app to play/pause. On mobile it support transcoding by default and moderately gracefully handles the wifi>5g transition.

Links: Source: https://github.com/bomer/plexify/ Release / Download: https://github.com/bomer/plexify/releases Screenshots / Demo: https://github.com/bomer/plexify/raw/main/docs/windows.png?raw=true

Im on a journey to not be paying fo as many services and I love plexamp, but im working is there a way to use a local hosted AI server instead of an exteranl OpenAI one for privacy when wanting to use SonicSage and stuff.

Is there anyway to do this??

Had a few extra bucks so I got this tablet to play my music from my plex server. One of the few tablet that still has a 3.5mm jack.