Emby, Madsonic, Plex, Subsonic...what is the current state of media servers?

[pvuchetich]

Is there a media server that does everything? I haven't seen an unbiased review based on a few searches.
I have multiple users (kids) who want to stream music and video. We have many CDs, and some DVDs stored as MP3, FLAC, etc., on a freeNAS server.
Is there a current (2019) comparison of media servers? Ideally they would be able to work on FreeNAS (obviously), and stream to whatever TV, Xbox, tablet, phone, etc.. that kids are using. One wants to download audio to an MP3 player (which requires transcoding from flac to mp3 for some tracks).

I've installed the Emby, Madsonic, Plex, and Subsonic plugsins (because they are easy) as a starting point for testing, but is there something better?

Media is easy enough for me on my primary workstation, but I am looking into the options for making this easy for everyone else in the house, on whatever devices everyone else wants to use.

 

[Brer]

I'm not sure you will get a like for like comparison since they all do different things, for example you couldn't really compare Subsonic with Plex because Subsonic will focus on music as opposed to video.

You can look at the 10+ best media streamers out there which include the list above and you can judge for yourself.

Personally I use Plex, all the media (Video, Music and Film) are in one location and can play on multiple devices (PS4, Web Player, Android and Apple apps, Fire Stick etc...) You can have multiple users and have parental controls and you don't need to sync each connected device like you do with Kodi (or used to) It is very easy to connect any device once you setup your server and you can even open up to outside your network so you can play at work or school. I'm not sure it plays FLAC and yes you can download a movie or mp3 to any device.

I used to have mine running in a Docker but I found it less cumbersome and more stable to run in a VM on FreeNAS 11 but you can install the server anywhere as long as you open the relevant ports.

 

[nojohnny101]

+1 for plex. From what you describe, it would probably do everything you wanted it to.

 

[ThreeDee]

I use Plex for movies, music , podcasts and the beta channel has web shows..etc .. Tidal integration if you're into that