NDX and UPnP questions

Hi Ian -

This has nothing to do with nStream, and everything to do with your UPnP server.

I use Asset, not Twonky, so can only be of limited help.  But Asset only indexes the folders I tell it to index, so I assume there is some similar control over the discovery process with Twonky? Perhaps all is simply the default behavior?

You are correct in one regards about nStream.  If you turn off compatibility mode, you can not do any "the" processing.  "The Beatles" will show up in T instead of B.  With compatibility mode turned on, the order of display is solely up to the UPnP server (where, with Asset, I can move The Beatles under B as I prefer).  Phil said the reason nStream does this is to allow for letters instead of dots along the right-hand side (and this local indexing by nStream does result in a nice speed up). I do not like the extra latency caused by using compatibility mode, so I live with a whole bunch of artists filed under T.

Hook

Hook, yes that's what I thought, I just couldn't work it out!

But now I have. I was confusing the vanilla DNLA (UPnP) with Twonky. Having disabled that vanilla service and found the server still serving I delved deeper. Under the Applications folder in admin there is a folder called QPKG Center, and under this resides the Twonky install. I have updated it from there to the latest version, and also configured it to expose specific directories only!

Anyway, you won't care about these details, but perhaps it will help someone else in future.

Still have some issues with n-Stream (like track order - sometimes!) and what are, I suspect, the usual problems with tagging of WAV files. So I'm sticking with FLAC for the moment. I must do a bit of a test to see if there's any difference...

Good stuff Ian -- sounds like you've made some solid progress!

Best of luck figuring out any remaining issues.  Once sorted, I think you will be very pleased with the convenience and flexibility streaming brings (and especially if you are multi-user, multi-room).

Hook

PS -  I have ripped to FLAC level zero (minimal compression) using Media Monkey for quite some time, and tagging via Amazon or Freedb is very easy To do. Also, as you appear to know, there are lots of other FLAC-oriented tagging tools to choose from.  But then I have Asset transcode FLAC to WAV on-the-fly.  Am not sure if I can hear much a difference on my Naim setup, but one of my renderers is an old Denon AVR that does not support FLAC, and so transcoding to WAV has allowed me to put off any thoughts of buying a new one.

Yup, certainly working well enough. I'm used to streaming with Sonos, but the SQ just isn't up to it. Not bad, but not great, The NDX is essentially "just" a Sonos but that also sounds fantastic. I'll keep the Sonos plugged into the NDX in the lounge, but we also have it in the kitchen and bathroom where the SQ is just fine for purpose.

Hopefully Naim will keep working on the ease of use side of things - it's close, just not up to Sonos ease of use yet.

Ian, I am glad it's working out for you. I must admit the Naim streaming solution is very straight forward and easy to use if you use the Unitiserve as the upnp server.

From reading your posts the usability is less about Nstream and more about how the upnp server, Asset in your case, is set up, and possibly the meta data you are ripping into the tracks such as track sequence number. I find using dbpoweramp for ripping with Asset very straightforward. A little bit of a learning curve for tagging consistency and compliations, other than that fine.

Nstream will typically display and navigate what is sent to it, and I love the customisable navigation and search menus in Asset which work really well with Nstream.

Simon

Simon, I'm using Twonky on the NAS - I don't believe Asset is available for the NAS (which runs Linux) - please correct me if I'm wrong? Or if there is any other better alternative to Twonky to be recommended that will run on my QNAP NAS?

The Unitiserve is not an option for me - I don't believe it brings any SQ advantage and that's where my money will go For example at the moment I am using an n-Vi for pre-amp duties (don't laugh - it's surprisingly capable in this respect), but with an eye to go for a 202 or 282 when funds permit.

Ian, I keep my upnp server separate from my NASes. So i use Asset on a tiny WHS server box. That also doubles up as my iPad / iPhone print server and iTunes server.

By using a 'proper' server to run the upnp I find it very quick and responsive on Nstream. Also scanning and indexing is quick. I can search for a specific partial track match amongst 12181 in typically less than 20 seconds. ( if not already cached by Nstream in which case it's near instant).

With streaming, many of the benefits are around usability.. The SQcomes at the end of the chain once you have identified and selected the media..

Simon

Simon, which tiny WHS are you using? I might be persuaded

Mind you, now I've sorted a few things out it all seems to be running along quite well at the moment - but I've only ripped perhaps 100 CDs so far...

Thanks,

Ian

Ian,

there is indeed. It my not seem to be the most obvious solution as it was originally designed to feed Squeezeboxes, but Logetech Media Server is a very good, reliable and fast server.

It is available as a QPKG installation.

I have roughly 1,300 albums on my TS119 and operation is really smooth and fast. Via a plugin I can even search for composers. I don't know of any other server that will provide this feature.

PH (may I call you PH?) - aha, could be just the thing. Would mysqueezebox be the correct place to get the QPKG version from:

And if so, which is it? 

Asset supports search by composer as one of its main search fields (no add-ons required).

And under "advanced search", it also supports search by conductor, chorus, orchestra, soloist, instrument and period.   But other than a couple of hits on conductor, I have yet to find a tagging database that actually populates these fields, so I guess  it is up to the classical music lover to decide how much manual editing they want to do.

I am more of a jazz guy, and so I would love to find an easy way to populate the contributing artist field.  I think it would be cool, for example, to be able to pull a list of all albums where Dave Holland plays bass.  The info is all there in discogs, so I suppose I could copy and paste. I just haven't haven't worked up the will to do so. It's a ton of work, and I am usually pretty beat by the time I am ready to listen to music.  Besides, once I start an album, I usually just bring up Rovi, and its discography and/or similar albums section almost always leads me to a good choice of what to play next....

ATB.

Hook

Ian,

PH is perfectly acceptable.

mysqueezebox is actually not the right address for the QPKG, even though they might also have it, dunno. The best place to get it is to log into your QNAP's admin section. There is QPKG menue from which you can access the QPKG downloads. Before you install it, please make sure that the current firmware of your QNAP is campatible with the QPKP. If in question, run an update of the firmware.

PH - OK, I have it installed and configured it to see some of my library (my FLAC files subfolder). Should it show up under the UPnP list in n-Stream (it isn't there yet!), or do I need to do something else?

Ian, you might have to enable the UPnP function. I am not sure if this is set to 'on' in the standard config.

First go to the Advanced Setting of LMS. This should be on port :9001. There have look at the 'Plugins' tab. Make sure that the 'UPnP/DLNA Media Interface' box is checked. Save the settings.

Then go to port :9099 and check if the UPnP is enabled. This is on the SETTING page. If it is not, go to the STATUS page. Click on STOP. This will stop the server software. Then go back to SETTINGS and toggle UPnP 'on'. Back agein to STATUS and click START.

DO NOT play around with the UPnP toggle while the server is running!!!!! It will cause a crash and freeze the server and you will have to reinstall.

Sounds awful, but is really just a piece of cake. You should be done in two minutes!

PH - you star! - 1min 59secs later and I have LMS up and running 

I will experiment now and see how it works - I noticed quite a few options on the LMS settings pages...

Have fun!

Thanks for these tips. I just got LMS UPnP running on QNAP 219P-II.

I have been using Twonky with no real complaint except the lack of Genre/Composer search function. I just tried LMS but am disappointed because its default music tree is very simple indeed, not even Genre/Artist or Genre/Album. Am I missing something? Can I reconfigure it?

Peter, Originally posted by PinkHamster on another thread:

***

The nightmare regarding classical music can be somewhat appeased by installing the custom browse pluglin under LMS. This makes it possible to browse by composers. Even better, you can also define the hirachy. So you can specify to browse by composer --> album artist --> album ...   or by composer --> album ...

It'll cost you 20$ but it is money well spent.

***

Thanks for the info, Ian. I don't know where that plug in is but I'll try to find it.

This morning I tried to play some music in the bathroom via my Pioneer AV amp (zone 2 feeding the bathroom KEF ceiling speakers) with this newly installed LMS, but it kept saying format error and refused to play. I switched back to Twonky and there was no problem at all. Perhaps LMS is not compatible with the Pioneer amp.

Are you trying to stream AIFF or ALAC files? I am having those same issues with LMS. I cannot play AIFF or ALAC files on my ND5 XS using the LMS UPnP server.

Twonky is too flakey for me to use, unless I want to hear opera played in song alphabetical order rather than track order. 

I was trying to stream WAV files, not AIFF or ALAC.

BTW, to make Twonky serve in track order is quite simple. You just need to add a track number prefix to each music file, e.g. 01-xxxx, 02-xxxx, etc. If you already have a large number of ripped tracks this may be a time consuming task to add track numbers now. I realized this Twonky behaviour very early on so I just configured my ripping software (dBpoweramp) to add track number prefixes automatically before I started ripping my entire CD library. No pain at all. I only need to do this for WAV files because Twonky will stream FLAC files properly even without track number prefixes. Not sure about AIFF or ALAC though.

No, the problem really is Twonky. 

Edit: are you saying you edit the track titles with prefixes [ugh!], or the track file names? If the latter, all my rips and downloaded audio have that anyway.

Not only are my files named with track order prefixes 01, 02, ...10, 11, etc. but the track order tags are correct as well. And yet, it still ignores that and reorders in alphabetical order, which is ludicrous for classical music.

This is is known problem with Twonky, and was discussed here:

http://community.wdc.com/t5/My...de-still/td-p/482774

The solution is to manually edit a Twonky file. I am going to do that today and see if it fixes the problem.

I made the changes necessary to Twonky's database metadata files. It took making a ssh connection to the QNAP, since the web interface doesn't expose the part of the linux filesystem where those files are. Then I edited the file with vi to add the fix. From the Twonky web console I selected "Rebuild database."

The fix I used is actually the one described here:http://community.twonky.com/twonky/topics/twonkymedia_dis_order_my_music_tracks

It seems to work now. My opera title sorts in the right order. My tags and file naming were always correct. It is Twonky that needed fixing.

All I can say is well done. You're now the forum expert on this! 

Enjoy your opera - I have that Hogwood on order BTW, so thanks for the recommendation.