[Alpha Test] Pleez — Lightweight, Ad-Free Local FLAC Player for Android (Privacy-First, Clean UI)

[marcoroche]

P.S. If you know fellow music lovers or offline playback enthusiasts who might be interested in testing, please feel free to share the form link with them! The more real-world library setups we can test across different devices, the better the player will be.

 

[marcoroche]

OK, a nice UI for Pleez would be welcome.
Also, so far, any or all of GEQ/PEQ/ReplayGain/True bit-perfect/playlist support/DLNA/SMB/remote control/no ads/free would be nice, as would a crate of wine being delivered each week, gratis.

That can definitely happen if we accidentally mix up our weekend shopping list with our strategic development plan!

Regarding the actual roadmap, we're taking a phased approach. Right now, advanced features like a full AudioFX engine (EQ/DSP), external NAS/Cloud access (SMB, DLNA), and specialized format decoding are deliberately kept out of our initial Alpha scope.

Our main focus for phase one is getting the core engine rock-solid: lightning-fast local indexing, clean playlist creation, and smooth FLAC/MP3 playback. Once those foundations are bulletproof, we'll start opening up the next phases based on community feedback!

 

[Ruediger]

Every player app out there has something that can be made better.

Library handling is one of them most of the time for me. Although Poweramp comes pretty close to optimal. I had to enable an extra feature so I can go back from playing to folder traversing though. Some players more or less require the user to start at the top of the sources list for every new selection / playlist commando. These devs can't have serious collections.

UAPP kind of has it all. But the GUI let's many things left to desire.

Neutron is the odd one out for me. It has it's fans that say the sound quality is superior, but I see no indication for that anywhere. The GUI is the prime example of how not to do an app. Highly subjective of course. I don't regret giving the devs money, they deliver a huge product. It just needs an UX overhaul into this century.

Gone are the days where reading a library in the TBs and 6-figure files was nearly impossible. Your app has to do that as fast and good as the others. The slowest I have are Neutron and VLC. Maybe the foobar app too, but I almost never use it.

The benchmark in usability and GUI design is Poweramp for me. It just has local playback and streams. If they add UPNP and the network protocols it will be hard to beat. The dev clearly knows how to design an app. You don't have to be tech savvy to enjoy it, but you certainly can.

Anyways, keep us updated.

 

[marcoroche]

Every player app out there has something that can be made better.

Library handling is one of them most of the time for me. Although Poweramp comes pretty close to optimal. I had to enable an extra feature so I can go back from playing to folder traversing though. Some players more or less require the user to start at the top of the sources list for every new selection / playlist commando. These devs can't have serious collections.

UAPP kind of has it all. But the GUI let's many things left to desire.

Neutron is the odd one out for me. It has it's fans that say the sound quality is superior, but I see no indication for that anywhere. The GUI is the prime example of how not to do an app. Highly subjective of course. I don't regret giving the devs money, they deliver a huge product. It just needs an UX overhaul into this century.

Gone are the days where reading a library in the TBs and 6-figure files was nearly impossible. Your app has to do that as fast and good as the others. The slowest I have are Neutron and VLC. Maybe the foobar app too, but I almost never use it.

The benchmark in usability and GUI design is Poweramp for me. It just has local playback and streams. If they add UPNP and the network protocols it will be hard to beat. The dev clearly knows how to design an app. You don't have to be tech savvy to enjoy it, but you certainly can.

Anyways, keep us updated.

Challenge accepted! 6-figure collections are the ultimate final boss of library indexing

We’ve built the engine specifically to stay snappy and reactive, but to be completely honest, neither my son nor I own 100,000+ files to stress-test it to the limit!

Testing how it handles gigantic collections without melting is exactly why we need brave audiophiles in this Alpha. If you’ve got a massive library and want to help us push Pleez to its breaking point, we’d love to have you on board!

 

[Tell]

Got any screenshots of that clean UI? Is it better than Symfonium that I'd consider more or less perfect?

 

[Ruediger]

Challenge accepted! 6-figure collections are the ultimate final boss of library indexing
We’ve built the engine specifically to stay snappy and reactive, but to be completely honest, neither my son nor I own 100,000+ files to stress-test it to the limit!

As you are programming, create a batch file that creates f.e. 2500 artist folders with 10 years-albums folders in there and copy 15 numbered audio files + a cover + some pics into them. You can also tag those audio files on the fly with some generic text but incorporate the running numbers, so it's unique and searchable. For testing most of the files can be 1s length, it's more about file handling / file system / tag reading / indexing and handling the database at that point. So you can go directly to 500k files or even way more.

In the long run you need something like this anyway to cover all local sources. On a mobile, on sdcard, on a DAP, on SMB and on UPNP.

AI can put you that into a short cmd, ps1, bash, py or whatever is preferred.

 

[marcoroche]

Got any screenshots of that clean UI? Is it better than Symfonium that I'd consider more or less perfect?

Thanks for mentioning Symfonium—I actually didn't know about it! It has a really nice UI, though for my taste, it almost offers too much customization to the point where icons get a bit confusing.

Our philosophy with Pleez is to let you get up and running instantly without forcing you through a long onboarding process.

Beyond the UI, our biggest differentiator is privacy: we don't hide the fact that Pleez will be a paid app (a modest one-time fee), because our uppermost value is zero outbound data, zero tracking, and zero ads.

As for screenshots: since we're currently fine-tuning the layout in this early Alpha, we're sharing previews directly with our test group as we iterate! If you'd like to test it out and compare, we'd love your feedback.

 

[ShadowBoxer]

Symphonium already has EQ/PEQ which is a standard requirement. So, it's still not clear to me what your differentiator goals are? Simply another (different) UIX is not a strong case, imo.