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Comment by peterldowns | Hacker News Reader

Looks very pretty and the demo is nice. Congratulations on the launch. I'm a happy Plex user, via Plexamp for audio and the Plex app for Apple TV for video, and I'm not interested in switching. That said,

> It started as a "sandbox" project where I could learn about tech I was interested in, and slowly became more than that.

This is a fantastic reason to build something. Looks like a wonderful project.

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In case you‘re into audiobooks, I suggest to check out Bookcamp too. I guess Plexamp works for that as well, but Bookcamp is just like Audible in a way.

For anyone who's game to run another service for audiobooks, I've found Audiobookshelf to be pretty good: https://github.com/advplyr/audiobookshelf

I love ABS but I use it mainly for podcasts since it downloads each episode to my server which I then stream from. It’s awesome. My only gripe is the iOS app, which is a pretty slow webapp wrapper.

I haven't used it, but couldn't you serve them out via RSS and consume with Apple Podcasts, Pocketcasts, etc?

I would suggest you give some of the alternative iOS apps a try.

-plappa

-ShelfPlayer

I second the other suggestion for Prologue on iOS as a Plex frontend for audio books. It’s such a good experience that I’m now listening to more audio books than before and they also just launched an Apple Watch version.

Seconded! (Or thirded?) Prologue is so much better than Audible. I’m using Libation to liberate my copy protected audiobooks, not to share them but to avoid that godawful Audible app

> not to share them but to avoid that godawful Audible app

It’s sad how true that is for many things these days. I usually download shows to have them in Plex even though I have many paid streaming accounts. Just because it’s a better UX and it also automatically scrobbles to Trakt.tv.

> I’m using Libation to liberate my copy protected audiobooks

Interesting, I'm going to have to check this out. I've been using OpenAudible for this purpose (paid).

Prologue on iOS is an Audible-like experience with a Plex back end as well!

The biggest hurdle I've run into when trying to manage an audiobook library with Plex is the metadata source. There are a few plugins that try and gather from Audible, I assume by scraping, but it's always minimal and very flaky. I haven't revisited this for a while now though, so hopefully things have improved - I would love to start archiving my Audible collection.

Bookcamp has fairly negative reviews on the App Store.

Have you had issues with it?

I've noticed that in general, a lot of selfhosted-adjacent apps tend to get negative reviews. Without having looked at bookcamp specifically, I've noticed that a lot of times, it's because those apps require a minimum level of competence from their users, and those users that miss the threshold generally leave negative reviews.

No issues whatsoever.

How are you using Plexamp? Do you DL albums and stream it from there as a spotify-ish alternative?

Not OP, but I just stream from it as a better Spotify alternative. It uses opus codec for encoding, which works really well even with a slow CPU. The playing is instant.

Jellyfin uses AAC, which then spins my homelab fans when I try to encode anything. With opus the fans stay silent.

Instant unless your NAS drives spin down! Haha efficiency ugh.

Need a Spotify connect like thing for PlexAMP so it works in car at full quality. I won't hold my breath. Maybe the Plex web app works

I'm admittedly unfamiliar, but have appreciated the effort the developers took to make Plexamp a native CarPlay app. What's your perceived limitations of Plexamp on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto?

I admittedly have a car with lots of road sound, so maybe I'm not the target audience for lossless car audio.

I don't have either of things you mentioned, so it's just Bluetooth, but the UX tends to be better with Spotify/Tidal connect. No drop outs, no battery drain, etc. (generally speaking, not just car)

I mean, you usually should not spin down your NAS drives. They add wear and also consume more energy that way.

We use plexamp with Android Auto, and with the usual car sound system 128 kbps opus is transparent. You can stream with the original flac quality of course, but I've found it to be way too much in our trips.

Streaming music with plexamp has never been an issue for us. It just works.

(On spinning down) Well that's what everybody parrots but this isn't a business and it's for my own pleasure. It's idle unless I'm engaging with content.

It would be silly to burn that energy just because it's the status quo?

I mean, I would prefer to avoid those stalls but still

If I had CarPlay I'd be happy car-wise. But Spotify/Tidal Connect means all of your devices become remotes. They all behave as if they're the player and have the ability to change where the output goes. It's really slick.

Plexamp is the one thing that keeps me on Plex.

I have Jellyfin setup in parallel for the day Plex enters an「enshittification」phase, but the lifetime membership I paid for in 2012 has served me well.

If you don’t mind paying a subscription, I find Roon hugely superior to PlexAmp.

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