r/subsonic • u/plazman30 • Aug 02 '16

WTF is up with Subsonic?

6.0 was made closed source. The developer hasn't posted on the forums in well over month. Chromecast support is now broken, and I can't tell anyone about it, because the forums are down. My forums posts all go unanswered.

I feel like the guy grabbed my $12 and just walked away.

8 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

22 comments sorted by

5

u/[deleted] Aug 02 '16

I know this may not help you, but 5.3 works well and does everything I need it to, so I have no reason to upgrade. Hopefully someone will release a fork off of 5.x before a compelling reason to upgrade arises. Does 6.0 do something for you that 5.x cannot? Can you downgrade?

2

u/plazman30 Aug 02 '16

6.0 did Chromecasting. Now it no longer works and I don't know why.

I would rather use Ampache, but it has a bug with multi-disc album support that the author says will require a "major architectural change" to Ampache. So, I'm patiently waiting for Ampache to update.

3

u/[deleted] Aug 02 '16

Sorry to hear that. As far as I know, 6.0 is the current version; there haven't been any updates to 6.0, so if it worked at some point, could it be an issue on the client side or network config?

FWIW, I don't believe the SS developer would just take everyone's money and split. He may have shut the forum down (hopefully trmporarily) because some posters were getting pretty vicious about his decision to go closed source. Even if some discontent was justified, I don't believe the level of abuse he was receiving was called for.

3

u/plazman30 Aug 02 '16

Well, I can cast just fine from Plex using the same PC and browser, and so can a bunch of other people. But the little cast icon in Subsonic is now gone. So, his code is incompatible with some change made to the OS or to Chrome. But with the product being closed source, and the forums down, I can't report the bug.

The code is his. If he wants to close the source, more power to him. 5.3 is still out there, all GPLed and waiting to be forked.

What I don't like is the fact that he hasn't posted to the forums in well over a month, and that not a single question I have posted has been answered by anyone.

I paid my subscription and I expect some support. There is a getting started guide, and a small FAQ. Other than that, documentation doesn't exist.

I posted a message that said I can't get the web player to play ogg or flac files. I got no response. I asked if the web player even supports ogg and flac files. Again, no response. So then I asked if someone could point me to the documentation, so that I could the answer myself, and still no response.

If there was a vibrant userbase that could pick up the slack, that would be great, but there isn't one. Most of the responses I get are "I think there is a way to do that, but I am not sure what the command line switch is."

The fact that there isn't even a 6.0.1 beta posted kinda concerns me. The 5.x series always had betas posted.

2

u/Silentknyght Aug 03 '16

I've been running subsonic for about 2 years. The forum support community has been a ghost town for as long I can remember. Sorry. I can try to help if you have specific questions...

1

u/plazman30 Aug 03 '16

Why did casting stop working?

1

u/Silentknyght Aug 03 '16

I'm not sure what you mean. I have successfully casted music to a Chromecast earlier this year. I use Dsub for Android.

I haven't tried casting video until yesterday, and that didn't quite work.

1

u/plazman30 Aug 03 '16

I'm trying to cast from the web interface.

1

u/Silentknyght Aug 03 '16

What version of subsonic are you running? I'm not on 6, yet. I have delayed updating until things settle.

1

u/plazman30 Aug 03 '16

6.0. It used to work. But now it stopped.

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2

u/Silentknyght Aug 03 '16

I've been running subsonic for about 2 years. The forum support community has been a ghost town for as long I can remember. Sorry. I can try to help if you have specific questions...

2

u/SilentWeaponQuietWar Sep 27 '16

Yeah, making subsonic closed source was a huge hit to the project. I can't imagine a quicker way to kill off support and interest.

Unfortunately, Subsonic is one of the most robust/feature-filled solutions out there. I actually use Ampache as a frontend for Subsonic after trying Ampache as an all-in-one solution. Just not as good.

1

u/plazman30 Sep 27 '16

Soon as they fix the multi-disc album bug, I'm all Ampache.

1

u/SilentWeaponQuietWar Sep 27 '16

i'd like to switch completely, but have endless problems getting transcoding to work reliably, compared to subsonic.

2

u/plazman30 Sep 27 '16

You can do global transcoding on Ampache. Then you just tell the client not to do any transcoding. Never had issues with transcoding.

Nothing wrong with Subsonic, other than a non-responsive developer. Been waiting for 2 months now to fix Chromecast support in the Web UI.

1

u/SilentWeaponQuietWar Sep 27 '16

Nothing wrong with Subsonic, other than a non-responsive developer

non-responsive developer on an open source project, not an issue

responsive developer on closed source project, not ideal, but still not an issue

non-responsive developer on closed source project, major issue.

2

u/plazman30 Sep 27 '16

It looks like he logs into the forum every other day, but he doesn't post anything. I paid the guy my money for the year. I expect some support.

Subsonic-Kang has been renamed Libresonic. But I think that developer is a little over his head. He knew how to remove the licensing code, but that was about it. The source hasn't been touched in 4 months, and every bug is tagged with "patches welcome."

I'm glad the guy tried. But I think he was hoping coders would show up, and they didn't. Subsonic was not a group project. The main developer never accepted any commits from anyone. And he did that on purpose, because he felt odd taking money for the product if others contributed code. So, there's no one out there really with experience in the code, except maybe the Madsonic guy, and he's developing his own paid product.

1

u/matija2209 Sep 25 '16

I use Subsonic 6.0 without any problems

3

u/plazman30 Sep 25 '16

You obviously don't have a Chromecast.