Plugin for iTunes/Music

[BBarker]

So I got my Plex media running and really loving it so far.

Now I have to move onto my music. I have about 250gigs of FLAC files ranging from 16bit/44.1 to 24bit/96 and over 100 gigs of AAC and MP3 files all encoded at 256kHz or 320kHz. The FLAC files are all arranged according by Artist/Album/Song tracks as are the AAC and MP3s. The AAC/MP3 files are also loaded into my iTunes on my laptop (there is a large percentage of ALAC files there as well). I noticed there are few plugins here for audio media servers and I am looking for some advice and input on what forum members here have found useful. The FLAC files will be played on either one of my two Onkyo receivers over a wired network and I will also need to set up an iTunes media server for my Apple devices and iTunes apps loaded on other devices. I guess of there is a media server that will transcode FLAC, I can consider it as well. Being able to access the files from outside my network would be a bonus.

Thank you in advance for any input.

 

[j_r0dd]

Plex does everything I need for pictures, videos & music.

 

[BBarker]

Plex does everything I need for pictures, videos & music.

Ok....good to hear. All I need to know now is that you and I expect the exact same things or more specifically, will Plex work as an iTunes server for my music? I know it will let my DLNA devices see and play music.

 

[TheDubiousDubber]

You can simply point Plex to the existing music library and you should be able to play the music through any Plex client. Though I don't think Plex can transcode FLAC files, but I could be wrong.

 

[BBarker]

You can simply point Plex to the existing music library and you should be able to play the music through any Plex client. Though I don't think Plex can transcode FLAC files, but I could be wrong.

I went ahead and loaded 353 FLAC albums and set up the music library. The files were all tagged using MusicBrainz prior to moving them and it took Plex about 20 minutes to download all their Metadata. Seemed to have some problems with duplicate albums all getting lumped into one. An example being that I have a 180 gram vinyl rip at 24/96 of the Dark Side of the Moon and it loaded it under the Discovery Edition CD rip. I'll get that sorted out later.

It has to do some transcoding as the music plays fine on all my Apple devices and I am pretty certain Apple does not support FLAC. There is a way to import iTunes playlists so my next step is to create an iTunes library and see what happens......

 

[fracai]

You could transcode your FLAC to ALAC, but if they're being synced to mobile devices you probably want to be transcoding to a lossy format anyway. If you're streaming to an AppleTV or some other computer it might make more sense to transcode to a lossless format that is natively supported by the clients.

 

[BBarker]

You could transcode your FLAC to ALAC, but if they're being synced to mobile devices you probably want to be transcoding to a lossy format anyway. If you're streaming to an AppleTV or some other computer it might make more sense to transcode to a lossless format that is natively supported by the clients.

Good point. I wonder if ALAC files would stream to Apple devices without being compressed to AAC files? Wonder where I would find this information or what the best test would be other than a listening comparison.

I know the FLAC files play direct on my Onkyo and sound wonderful.

 

[fracai]

Odds are you wouldn't be able to tell if you're listening to compressed or lossless files. You'd probably need to rely on measuring bandwidth.

I've never tried or even looked in to this, but I'm pretty sure you can mandate transcoding rules by setting up device profiles.