Known limitations#

What Aether does not do yet, or does with a catch, and what to do about it. Most entries link to the page with the details. A few things it leaves out on purpose are under Not planned.

Apps#

JSON only. Apps that understand only the original Subsonic XML responses, such as DSub, cannot connect yet.
No transcoding, ratings, artist information, lyrics, podcasts or jukebox mode, among other app features. The full list, and what an app does without them, is under What apps cannot do yet.
Some apps’ plays count twice: Aether records an app’s “now playing” report as a play too.
Plays stay in Aether. Nothing is passed on to Last.fm or ListenBrainz.
No DLNA or UPnP. TVs, receivers and other network players cannot browse Aether on their own.

Web player#

It plays what your browser plays. There is no transcoding: FLAC, MP3, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, Opus and WAV play in most browsers, WMA in none, and AIFF and Apple Lossless only in some.
Radio stations are left out of the synced play queue. Another browser picking up your queue does not get them, and they upset the sync: with a station queued before the track that is playing, the other browser resumes at the wrong track or the queue is not saved at all, and a queue of nothing but stations clears the saved one. Keep stations out of a queue you want to carry on elsewhere.
Lyrics are not shown, even when your files carry them.

Your files#

The details are in Scanning and under Scan folders.

APE, WavPack and DSF files are not scanned, nor anything else outside the supported formats. .cue sheets are ignored.
WMA and .aac files moved and retagged in one go lose their favorites, playlist entries and play history.
A move must not straddle two scans. Reorganise, then scan.
Copying a scan folder to a new disk and pointing Path at the copy drops every track’s favorites, playlist entries and history, unless the old copy is gone by the next scan.
Network shares belong at a scan folder’s root, never inside one, and a share that hangs stalls whatever reads from it.
Symlinks that lead outside every scan folder give tracks that are listed but do not play.
Renaming an artist or a genre in your tags makes a new one, without the old one’s favorite or uploaded image.
Tag text that is not valid UTF-8 reads as empty, and saving the file in the metadata editor deletes it.
Sort tags are not read. Artists and albums sort by their names.

Metadata editor#

Symlinked folders are not listed, so the music in them cannot be edited in the browser.
Album identify can propose the wrong track positions. Check the Position column before applying: each song’s position can be changed or cleared there.
Lyrics, comments and sort tags have no field of their own. Change them under Raw.

Libraries and users#

Library filters only include, and hiding a library’s artists hides them from the whole catalog only, see Libraries.
Login names cannot be changed, and a user renamed in your identity provider arrives as a new user, see Authentication.

Not planned#

These were considered and turned down, so don’t wait for them in a later version.

Share links. Some apps can ask the server for a link that plays a song or album for anyone who opens it, without signing in. Aether does not create them, because such a link gets around sign-in.
Chat. Subsonic’s chat is a single message board for everyone on the server, and hardly any app still offers it.
Managing users from an app. Apps cannot add, change or delete users, or change a password. Do that in the web player, see Authentication. An app can still read your own account, which is all it needs to play music.