Adventures in asset UPnP?

Posted by: Tog on 19 January 2011

Yeah I know - Asset runs on Windoze or its ugly cousin Windoze Home Server but I've been playing with Asset UPnP again for the last few days and I still like it.
Actually I like V3 a lot - It's quick , runs most codecs and handles Cover Art at reasonable resolutions - one of the few failings of miniDLNA on Vortexbox.

Running a new mini TogServe on a Sony Vaio netbook hardwired to router.

I'm struggling to find fault at the moment - flacs maybe sound a bit brittle on the Uniti and Asset lacks the Vortexbox simplicity. I'm loathe to go down the WHS route but I'm a bit tempted. Can it be set up to autorip? Does it have issues I haven't spotted ... ?

Tog

Posted on: 23 January 2011 by Geoff P

Tog

What are you using to compose your posts?
The last two have 'paragraph' spaces between yor sentences that are half a page long. Looks like you hit the 'Enter' key about 10 times in between each sentence.

regards
Geoff

Posted on: 23 January 2011 by Tog

Songbird

Tog

Posted on: 24 January 2011 by okli

Reference:

Getting younger I mean. Now I know you were a Very Senior Member yesterday; now you are a Senior Member again. Whatever you are doing I could do with some of it, I get worried ever time I press the post button what I may be next.

Hi Peter, you are right - it is really interesting game with this ranking - I was at barber to cut some of my getting more and more white hairs - may be this did help :-)

Posted on: 24 January 2011 by Peter_RN

Hi Okli

That must be it. Mine is all grey and not very much of these days; hardly need a barber.

Peter

Posted on: 07 March 2012 by murkku

I've been happily running Asset UPnP v4 (beta) with CrossOver (Mac) for a few months now.

This morning I noticed a major version update (XI) for CrossOver (free upgrade for semi-fresh customers). So, being a hasty b'tard, of course I fired up the installer and killed my beautifully working Asset UPnP in the process.

I didn't have the time for proper debugging but will do so once I get back home.

Just a heads up for those feeling a bit "adventurous".

Posted on: 07 March 2012 by Geoff P

Originally Posted by murkku:

I've been happily running Asset UPnP v4 (beta) with CrossOver (Mac) for a few months now.

I didn't have the time for proper debugging but will do so once I get back home.

Just a heads up for those feeling a bit "adventurous".

I hate this effect. I was running PlugPlayer and it was zipping along very nicely then they went and added miniature thumbnails of album art to the search screens which take a while to load and are useless. Slowed it right down. No longer in use. Songbook is now much better.

On the use of CrossOver MAC I decided to do it properly and went for Parallels which puts a 'Windows PC' on your MAC as a virtual machine, then you can run dBPoweramp aswell as Asset UPnP and if you want Asset Control.

Geoff

Posted on: 07 March 2012 by totemphile

Originally Posted by Tog:

One of the reasons I have been working with Asset is the discovery of a small but irriitating problem with Vortexbox's UPnP server miniDLNA. Put simply the server will not distribute cover art at anything above 100 x 100 px - which is quite annoying if the original is 500 x 500 px. This would be an easy issue to fix if the DLNA standard didn't insist that the server rather than the control point is responsible for setting cover art sizes.

The Vortexbox project is run by one man not a corporation - which is why I marvel every time I press update on my iPad and Vortexbox installs a whole host of improvements. This is on top of the regular major point releases that seem to appear every three months or so.

Good news is that after requests made over on the Linn forums the issue has been fixed. Cover art resize can now be set to a maximum figure. That is what I call customer service and a strength of the Open Source model.

Sorry guys - I will shut up now.

Tog

Tog,

Are there any other issues with VB apart from cover art, which has been resolved, that one should be aware of ? If you were to choose between Vortexbox and RipNAS (Asset, dbPoweramp) today, which of the two would be your preferred option and why?

Thanks

Posted on: 07 March 2012 by murkku

Originally Posted by murkku:

I didn't have the time for proper debugging but will do so once I get back home.

Just a heads up for those feeling a bit "adventurous".

All is well again.

I just had to tune my firewall settings to allow connections to the fresh wineserver-binary. Should've seen that a mile away, but as I said, it was morning...

Posted on: 07 March 2012 by Tog

None - VB is now at v2.0 - and my server runs like a dream. Bliss has improved hugely and can now edit tags as well as manage cover art issues - £30 well spent.

Asset remains a great program too - its main advantage being its ability to easily transcode flac to wav. Oddly VB's iTunes server does this but it upnp server does not as the Linux guys love their flac.

For me it is perfect.

Tog

Posted on: 07 March 2012 by totemphile

Thanks Tog.

I am considering taking the plunge and buy a Vortexbox. Came across a UK based company that sells them all readily configured in a nice small black box, not much bigger than a UServe, silent, at a very fair price. I like the idea that it offers options to serve to a Naim unit, Sonos and iTunes all in one. It also offers the option to mirror copied files in a separate folder to import into iTunes, if so desired. But as I understand it only as ALAC or mp3, is that correct, do you know?

Posted on: 07 March 2012 by McGhie

I've run Asset from a PC for a year and really got on with it. I've also run a number of NAS/Server solutions at the same time (ReadyNAS native, ReadyNAS with Twonky, and most recently VortexBox on a MicroServer) as a more 'always on' solution (my PC is not always on). Last week, after six months of service, I ditched VortexBox for Windows Home Server 2011 and Asset (prompted by the discovery on this forum that there is now a beta version of Asset for WHS 2011). Very happy with the combo. MicroServer was a bargain with the £100 cashback. WHS does so much more than I anticipated. I bought it to host Asset, which it is doing perfectly, but have discovered how well it integrates with my home network to take care of backups (scheduled to run in the dead of night while no streaming is taking place) and more, including the remote web access facility. It is a very powerful OS! So, +1 for WHS 2011 and Asset (and -1 for VB). I only used VB for streaming (which Asset does better). VB provides more than streaming within the complete suite but for a fair comparison you need to include the rest of the dBpoweramp suite (for ripping and file conversion) together with Asset, and consider everything else that can be run on WHS. I know that it used to be fashionable to knock Microsoft but WHS 2011 is based on Windows Server 2008 R2 and is very resilient. Cheers Ian

Posted on: 07 March 2012 by Guido Fawkes

Hi Ian Curious to know how Asset can stream better than a Vortexbox? My VB streams perfectly as far as I can tell and my UQ happily plays what it receives. What is that Asset or any other streaming device can do better? It is a genuine question .. not an attempt to challenge your preference I'll stay with Vortexbox, but if there is something it can't do then it may be something we can put on the wish list Many thanks, Guy

Posted on: 07 March 2012 by Guido Fawkes

TP Vortexbox mirrors are to ALAC and MP3 for your iPhone, iPad and iPod or one of those Android things. There is a Linux utility it uses ffmpeg to do this conversion - it can convert to ALAC, but I think it is restricted to 24/48, but would need to check that. It can convert to other formats if you need it to. If you look up ffmpeg then you'll find it can do quite a bit. The VB is versatile and you can enhance it if you need extra functions. However, straight out the box it is pretty good I can't appraise it against Asset et al as I've never used them - only other UPnP server I've tried is Playback on OSX. Hence my question to Ian regarding what these other servers will do that my Vortexbox cannot All the best, Guy

Posted on: 07 March 2012 by McGhie

Originally Posted by Guido Fawkes:

Hi Guy

It's better on five main counts (in no particular order):

1. You can choose multiple sources of files (rather than one folder in VB), and apply filters

2. You can stream from many more file types (including Wave)

3. You have far more transcoding configurablility (if I recall correctly VB will do FLAC to MP3 and that's it)

4. You can configure your own browse trees (I've added ones for By Year then By Artist By Album and a similar one for Bit but it is very configurable)

5. There are loads more options still (e.g. how to handle "The", how to treat Multi-CD albums)

It really is much more configurable than VB, though I must admit that I don't use 1 or 3 (I have all files under one folder and they are Wavs). I do make use of 2, 4 & 5 though.

I was happy with VB but I was only using it because I didn't have a Windows machine on 24/7 to host Asset, which I ran on my PC and preferred. A WHS 2011 native version of Asset has been released (Asset v.4) in beta and that was the nudge I required to install WHS 2011 on my server and jump ship.

Cheers

Ian

Posted on: 07 March 2012 by Tog

The killer for me is how easy VB is to configure and administer using my existing Macs and IOS devices. I'll admit to being a little bit of a Linux geek but I do love the "let's build it !" approach of Andrew and the team at Vortexbox and the guys at Plex (take note Apple - how to do a TV app correctly) Tog

Posted on: 08 March 2012 by murkku

Being a Mac Mini owner, I like how Asset UPnP is able to serve my ever growing iTunes Library.

Some thoughts about the current setup

- Very fast with NDX & n-Stream

- iTunes is used for sorting & album art management

- Ripping with XLD (Accurate ripping + iTunes Library integration)

- ALAC files are transcoded to WAV (on the fly)

- Hi-res FLACs are served "as is" (from a different library)

- Wife and kids have "easy" Airplay access to the library from various gadgets

- Asset's configuration panel is fugly, but it gets the job done

I used to have Vortexbox running on my old PC and it was very good indeed.

VB just doesn't integrate as beautifully into a Mac environment.

The irony: I'm talking about beautiful integration achieved by emulation. However, CrossOver is practically free compared to Parallels+Windows license. Currently nothing native comes close to features of Asset.

Posted on: 08 March 2012 by McGhie

Hi Tog Yes, VB is very easy to install. IIRC, other than burning the distro to CD, it was just a case of booting up and providing a root password when prompted. From then on everything is via the web GUI, including updates, and there is something to be said for simplicity. Asset, however, is also very simple to set up. It has an installer, a very simple dialog to tell it if/how to run and to do rescans, and a single comprehensive form with all of the configuration options (you can just provide the folder details and accept the defaults but there are lots of options to play with if you wish to). After that, you can just leave it to it... Cheers Ian

Posted on: 08 March 2012 by Guido Fawkes

Hi Ian

Thank you for the very useful and informative reply.

Asset certainly has some interesting features.

All the best, Guy

Posted on: 08 March 2012 by Tog

I like Asset - I really do and can't imagine why anyone using a PC or Mac as their server would use anything else. I've used it with Crossover Mac and it worked fine but since I wanted a dedicated music server with a single library ( I like to keep things as simple as possible) VB just had the edge. For me program's like Bliss provide the edge I need; managing file structures ( I do like to use XLD for ripping), checking tags and making sure album art is correct with minimum fuss. The ability to use Plex on the VB rather than the Mac is another huge bonus. If only Asset ran natively on Linux. Tog

Posted on: 09 March 2012 by antz

Hi I use 'playback

Posted on: 09 March 2012 by antz

Hi I use 'playback' on my mac mini for iTunes via UPNP into the NdX and a Serve for all my CD's. Playback works ok on the iPad via nStream but the artwork gets all mixed up. Would Asset and Crossover resolve this? Regards Antz

Posted on: 09 March 2012 by Tog

That is what I meant about 'broken UPnP servers' on the Mac - Asset UPnP with Crossover would be far better and with Spoon you have a developer who clearly knows what he is doing. If I was you - which I'm not I'd try Vortexbox as well on an old PC to see how you get on or if you really like Asset - an Asset Nas might be in order. Tog

Posted on: 09 March 2012 by totemphile

Originally Posted by antz:

I run Playback on my Macbook Pro and album art comes up fine on nStream. How do you rip your CDs, all on auto settings letting iTunes add cover art? If so, try adding it manually to every track of the album you ripped via the add info option.

Posted on: 10 March 2012 by antz

Thanks guys Just to clarify - my cd's are ripped to a Unitiserve. ITunes is on a Mac mini. Playback works (sounds ok) but artwork gets muddled. This asset / crossover sounds like an option. I downloaded both. Nothing happened. I'm not that technical.Are there some simple set up instructions? I note the crossover web site says that iTunes 10 is known not to work? Should I just be patient and wait for AirPlay ? Thanks guys

Posted on: 10 March 2012 by Geoff P

Originally Posted by antz:

Antz have you created a 'bottle' in CrossOver on your MAC in which to run Asset? If you go to the CrossOver web site it should give instructions for this. Added to that here is a brief instruction I have pasted below, from 'Spoon' the Asset software developer off his forums.

NOTE: Spoon says in the Asset setup screen to set it to run as a 'service' which you should try first. If that doesn't seem to work try it in 'Local' mode. Dependent on how many CDs you have ripped the first time Asset scans your library it could take a little while so go have a cup of coffee and see what happens. I have run Asset in CrossOver and once I got through these instructions it ran very smoothly. Asset 'remembers' its catalogue after the first scan and will be ready to use pretty much right away every time you start it up in CrossOver from then on.

regards

Geoff

From SPOON on forum: Installing Asset UPnP on Apple MAC with Crossover MAC
First install Crossover MAC (download and drag to your Applications folder).
Start Crossover MAC by double clicking it (in the Applications folder).
Crossover Menu >> Configure >> Install Software >> Install Unsupported Software >> Continue
(after the bottle is created) visit dBpoweramp.com and click download for Asset (Windows XP / Vista), once in Downloads double click the Blue / Yellow Icon next to AssetUPnP.exe >> Open (on warning that is application from the internet).
Install Asset UPnP.
Close the Window 'Asset UPnP' (which shows the Asset Programs),
Back to the Installer Window (might be part hidden) >> Finish to view help and run Asset Configuration, close the windows until 'Asset UPnP Configuration' shows. Change Asset to run as a 'Service'.
Click Advanced Settings >> Edit
Top Left click [Add Folder] (open My Computer >> /Users/[username] Y: >> Select Music >> Click Ok
Click Ok to close Advanced Settings >> Click Ok to close Asset UPnP Configuration.