I use Kodi/Plex Connect on a mac mini for my main viewing of tv/films. My setup is Plex Media Server running on an Unraid server. This is a pretty simplistic explanation as it’s all pretty flexible, but hopefully gives you an idea. Prologue is dedicated to audiobooks, for example. Plex Media Player is a generic “catch all” player. There are different clients focussed on playback of different media. It generally runs on a machine dedicated to your media, be it NAS, Pc or whatever.Ĭlients can be your smart TV, ios, android, computers etc. Server and client can be on the same machine, but I’m not sure how common this is. It is a server/client topology where you are expected to have one (or more) servers where your media is and one (or more) clients to play that media. Plex is the generic term for the whole ecosystem. The key thing I was pointing out was to bear in mind that you won't be able to use Plex client/app with the same ease/simplicity once you're no longer streaming to Plex supporting devices. I expect Plex will move in a similar direction in time, but up till now their focus seems to have been getting their Plex client built into video supporting devices (like Roku/Apple TV etc.) rather pure audio/hi-fi devices. Roon also allows direct streaming to Airplay/Chomecast/Sonos devices as a fallback. Roon also promotes their own proprietary RAAT protocol, but at least has the advantage that RAAT is integrated in more dedicated audio devices than Plex. It a shame Plex doesn't support a similar architecture as it would make it a far more powerful platform for audio. You can't use the native Plex web/mobile client to stream to a DLNA renderer.īy comparison, LMS will allow you to stream audio to any DLNA/AirPlay/Chromecast/Squeezebox supporting device in the house via the same control interface. But that will then require you to use your devices own controller app or a 3rd party DLNA controller (like mConnect Player or BubbleUPnP) to browse and retrieve audio from the Plex DNLA server. You're correct, that you can enable Plex to act as a DLNA server. The downside is Plex will only playback to Plex clients, so if you later wanted to incorporate/playback to a device (like an AVR/Amp/SmartSpeaker directly via AirPlay or DLNA) that wasn't running a Plex client then you will hit problems. To be honest given your main playback devices are Apple TV which can all have the Plex app installed on them and the WD comes with a Plex server, I'd say Plex is probably the way to go. None of the above options include CD ripping so if you need that feature you'd need to use some 3rd party software like dBpoweramp's CD Ripper or XLD to rip your CDs. Plex in combination with PlexAmp is the only option from the above that will allow you to keep offline/downloaded copies of your music on individual mobile devices, so if that's an important feature then I expect Plex + PlexAmp is your best option for your setup. It doesn't however support multi-room synced playback. You just point it at your existing iTunes library and control it via the desktop or the mobile app. If you're laptop is always on (while you're playing music) then Audirvana might be a fairly drop in replacement. It also has the advantage that it can stream to DLNA/AirPlay/Chomecast devices natively without the need for a Plex app/client to be installed on those devices. It's free and won't alter your our existing library. You would then control LMS via a web browser or app on your phone or laptop. But you could install it on your laptop and point it to your iTunes library on your NAS to get a feel for how it works. It looks like getting it run on the M圜loud NAS is a bit of a pain, so that's probably a non starter unless your technical minded and fancy a challenge. But it will require a bit more configuration than Plex to get it up and running nicely. Logitech Media Server (with the Material Skin and AirPlay bridge plugins enabled) is another completely free option if you want to keep everything centralised. Why not give it a go, Plex won't alter your iTunes library, you just need to point Plex to the root of your iTunes library on the NAS. But you can test it out for free just using Plex web interface. You would ideally pay out for the PlexPass to use PlexAmp which will give you the best user experience. That would keep everything centralised on the NAS with your phones controlling playback. You should be able to install Plex on your M圜loud and then use the PlexAmp mobile app to stream to the Plex app on each Apple TV.
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