Skip to main content

Plex’s Super Sonic neural A.I. analyzes your music to find hidden connections

Despite the huge influence of streaming music services like Spotify and Apple Music, there are still many folks who spend a lot of time listening to music they’ve purchased and stored digitally on their computers. For those people, Plex is offering a new way for them to discover musical connections within their own collections. Launching today, Super Sonic is a new feature included with a Plex Pass subscription ($5 per month, $40 per year). Plex says it performs a neural A.I. analysis on all of the tracks in your library and uses that information to build “sonically similar” lists.

Plex Super Sonic sonically similar artists.
Plex

One example given is if you happen to own Taylor Swift’s two most recent albums. Because they sound really different from many of the artist’s previous recordings, you might be surprised to learn that they’re sonically similar to music by Lana Del Rey. The system can find sonic matches for artists, albums, and tracks within your music library. Plex claims that because its matching process is based on dozens of data points from each song, as opposed to recommendation engines on music services that are typically based on the listening patterns of their customers, it can reveal matches even among your most obscure indie favorites.

Recommended Videos

In another example, it turns out that Neil Young’s Mirror Ball is a sonic match for Pearl Jam’s Vitalogy.

Plex Super Sonic sonically similar albums.
Plex

Super Sonic requires a Plex Media Server installation on a Mac, PC, or Linux machine. Because of the complexity and intensity of the neural A.I. process, it can place a fairly heavy burden on your machine’s CPU and Plex even warns your machine might get quite hot while the initial database is created. For that reason, it doesn’t support Super Sonic on Plex Servers running on ARM-based machines like NAS drives or the Nvidia Shield TV.

You’ll also need to use the company’s Plexamp music client for playback. All of the sonically similar matches are presented within the Plexamp interface and won’t be visible within the regular Plex web client or Plex clients for popular streaming devices like Roku or Apple TV.

Plex is also using the Super Sonic dataset to replace its deactivated Plex Mix feature with several new options like Track Radio, Album Radio, and Mixes For You, which builds playlists based on your most-played music, interspersed with sonically similar selections that you might not play as frequently.

Unfortunately, Super Sonic may face limitations as a music discovery tool. Because it only works with music in your library, if you don’t own the Taylor Swift albums referenced above and some Lana Del Rey tracks, the system won’t be able to perform that match. Likewise, should you own every album in Swift’s discography, it’s unlikely that Del Rey would show up as a sonically similar artist because that match is really only applicable to Swift’s most recent albums and tracks.

So even if your favorite K-Pop band might sound a lot like one of the popular boy bands from the 90s, unless you own both, Super Sonic won’t help you discover that connection. This is true even if you’ve got a subscription to Tidal, currently the only streaming music service that can be integrated directly into the Plex interface.

Its possible Plex could substantially expand Super Sonic’s capabilities, but to do so, it would likely need to partner with a music service or record labels to acquire the data it needs to perform matches that live outside of a Plex user’s personal library.

For more on what Plex is, how it works, and how you can use it to organize and access your movies, TV shows, music, and photos from anywhere in the world, check out our full Plex explainer.

Simon Cohen
Simon Cohen is a contributing editor to Digital Trends' Audio/Video section, where he obsesses over the latest wireless…
One of TCL’s biggest TVs has a huge $1,700 discount!
2024 TCL Q6 4K QLED TV.

You may be wondering if you should stick to the tried and true projector-with-projector-screen combo for a larger viewing space. Then again, there’s nothing wrong with owning a gargantuan TV. As such, we came across this fantastic Best Buy offer on one of TCL’s biggest 2024 sets:

Right now, when you order the 98-inch TCL Q6 Series (2024) at Best Buy, you’ll only spend $1,700. And if that sounds like a lot, consider the fact that this size usually costs $3,000.

Read more
Best Walmart TV deals: 58-inch 4K TV for $238 and more
lg 55 inch oled 4k tvs deal walmart class b8 tv

Best Buy TV deals and Amazon TV deals can be a great way to land a discount on a new TV, but Walmart is in play as well. The retail giant is home to quite a few of today’s best TV deals and they include 65-inch TV deals, 70-inch TV deals, 75-inch TV deals, 85-inch TV deals, and more. With so many TV deals going on at Walmart we thought we’d round up today’s best Walmart TV deals all in one place. You can find them all below, and if you’d prefer to shop for a specific brand be sure to check out today’s Samsung TV deals, Sony TV deals, LG TV deals, Vizio TV deals, and TCL TV deals as well.
Hisense 58-inch R6 4K Roku TV -- $238 $298 20% off

One of the best TV brands for value, Hisense is worth checking out, particularly with its Hisense 43-inch Roku 4K TV. A great size for the price, you get all the benefits of a 4K resolution along with HDR and Motion Rate support. The latter means you won't have to worry about motion blur while you play a game or watch fast-moving action or sports. Plus, get access to the best of Roku, including the free Roku channel while using this TV. Also, the TV works with Google Assistant and Alexa so it's easy to use and control your TV and other smart home devices.

Read more
Best headphone deals: AirPods, Sony, Sennheiser and more
Beats Studio Pro sitting on travel case.

There are a lot of headphone deals available today, and among them are some impressive Beats headphone deals, AirPods deals, Bose headphone deals, Sony headphone deals, and more. This is great news if you’d like some audio privacy throughout the day or if you’d like to experience your home theater in a more immersive way. With so many headphone deals to choose from we thought we’d round up all of the best headphone deals for your shopping convenience. Reading onward you’ll find some serious discounts on popular headphone models, and if you’re looking for some cool devices to pair them with you can also shop TV deals, gaming console deals, phone deals, and tablet deals.
Sony WH-CH720N -- $98 $150 35% off

The Sony CH720NB are good-quality headphones for a relatively budget price, with the audio being dependable but nothing exciting or comparable to the higher-end Sony XM4s, for example. That's ok since they aren't meant to compete at that level, and given the price you're paying, they're relatively comfortable to wear, have good audio, and you can get about 35 hours of total use per charge with ANC switched on.

Read more