Which applications do you mostly use to control your UPnP renderer?

Dave***t posted:

Wolf R posted:

To me BubbleUPnP is the best control point app on the market, at least for Android. It controls my Muso and Google Chromecast Audio as well as Linn and probably even more. Beyond your NAS it will stream music from Tidal, Qobuz, Google Music and from a cloud drive. Gapless playback is supported. So not much to wish further.

For playing Upnp, +1. Bubble does a number of things better than the android Naim app. Miles more stable, allows hardware button volume control, has a mini widget accessible from the top of screen drop down menu and lock screen, displays now playing artwork on the lock screen, stays connected to the renderer when the Android device goes to sleep. I believe it can also do things like link up with lyric finding software, though I haven't tried it.

Overall far better than the Naim app, which does none of those things and crashes continually for me. But unless I've missed something, Bubble can't control inputs, change settings on the Naim equipment, choose iradio stations and so on. So thus far I've found it a matter of a few pleasant experiments with Bubble, but relying on the Naim app in the end and putting up with its shortcomings.

Yes, I 2nd this.

What BubbleUPnP does better than the naim app is also:

• display track times in library view
• display track times in playlist view
• do UPnP search across the whole server
• display more meta data
• if you enter a folder (at least in folder view; I did not check other lists) with the naim app and then return back to the parent folder, the folder you were in scrolls out of view approximately one page down or more.
• The naim app does not give you feedback of the volume level when changing the volume. I also have to check the display of the device.
• Setting the volume by +/- touch fields is much better/easier/more exactly than using a slider.
• Bubble can stream qobuz, youtube, bandcamp-pages, soundcloud, etc to the streamer by opening an own, local upnp server and do the transcoding

Unfortunately the naim streamers do not use openhome to control the playlist. This is the reason why I use the naim app in most cases. Using the internal playlist of the naim is more robust than controlling it from outside. Also the naim does not support the standard way to do inline navigation (seek to time), so you cannot use this funcionality with the bubble upnp app.

gert posted:

Dave***t posted:

Wolf R posted:

To me BubbleUPnP is the best control point app on the market, at least for Android. It controls my Muso and Google Chromecast Audio as well as Linn and probably even more. Beyond your NAS it will stream music from Tidal, Qobuz, Google Music and from a cloud drive. Gapless playback is supported. So not much to wish further.

For playing Upnp, +1. Bubble does a number of things better than the android Naim app. Miles more stable, allows hardware button volume control, has a mini widget accessible from the top of screen drop down menu and lock screen, displays now playing artwork on the lock screen, stays connected to the renderer when the Android device goes to sleep. I believe it can also do things like link up with lyric finding software, though I haven't tried it.

Overall far better than the Naim app, which does none of those things and crashes continually for me. But unless I've missed something, Bubble can't control inputs, change settings on the Naim equipment, choose iradio stations and so on. So thus far I've found it a matter of a few pleasant experiments with Bubble, but relying on the Naim app in the end and putting up with its shortcomings.

Yes, I 2nd this.

...

Unfortunately the naim streamers do not use openhome to control the playlist. This is the reason why I use the naim app in most cases.  

...

If I have not misunderstood Eloise's post, you could use BubbleUPnPServer to turn your Naim streamer into an OpenHome renderer. At this point you could control your Naim streamer with BubbleUPnP.

nbpf posted:

If I have not misunderstood Eloise's post, you could use BubbleUPnPServer to turn your Naim streamer into an OpenHome renderer. At this point you could control your Naim streamer with BubbleUPnP.

This is correct.

But BubbleUPnPServer still controls the playlist from outside the naim streamer. At least in former firmware versions of the uniti this could break the playing of a next track, so the streamer stopped playing or repeated the same track again. This often happend with short tracks that have a length of just some seconds. Very often it did work fine, but sometimes not. With newer firmware versions the uniti became faster and more robust. I did not try to play longer playlists this way recently, so I am not sure how much I trust the way through bubble upnp server now.

One drawback of using the bubble upnp server is, that streaming of a sound track of an youtube video did not work yesterday, because of a not supported mimetype (mp4). Streaming it directly to the uniti did work though.

Also: the more systems you are using in a chain, the more complicated gets the analysing of problems. So I still would appreciate if naim implemented openhome into there streamers.

gert posted:

nbpf posted:

If I have not misunderstood Eloise's post, you could use BubbleUPnPServer to turn your Naim streamer into an OpenHome renderer. At this point you could control your Naim streamer with BubbleUPnP.

This is correct.

But BubbleUPnPServer still controls the playlist from outside the naim streamer. At least in former firmware versions of the uniti this could break the playing of a next track, so the streamer stopped playing or repeated the same track again. This often happend with short tracks that have a length of just some seconds. Very often it did work fine, but sometimes not. With newer firmware versions the uniti became faster and more robust. I did not try to play longer playlists this way recently, so I am not sure how much I trust the way through bubble upnp server now.

One drawback of using the bubble upnp server is, that streaming of a sound track of an youtube video did not work yesterday, because of a not supported mimetype (mp4). Streaming it directly to the uniti did work though.

Also: the more systems you are using in a chain, the more complicated gets the analysing of problems. So I still would appreciate if naim implemented openhome into there streamers.

Thanks gert! I very much agree that introducing another server on the top of an approach already requiring three programs running on three different devices is not what one would like to do: it took me about two years (and discovering that Minimserver supports browsing classical music collections much better than MPD) to move away from a pure MPD solution with only a server and a client. 

I also agree that it would be good if Naim would embrace OpenHome. Ideally, one would expect Linn, Naim, etc. to rely on some common open source ground. At the moment it seems that every company is doing their own work in isolation and the resuls are often quite disappointing ...

I have played a little bit around with BubbleUPnP in a tablet shop since I do not have an Android device at home to test the application.

One very annoying thing was that I was not able to get rid of all the "Cloud", "Google Music", "Google Drive", "Dropbox" etc. icons in the "Library" menu.

Am I missing something? Isn't it possible to switch off all the stuff that one does not need and get a clean UI in BubbleUPnP?

nbpf posted:

One very annoying thing was that I was not able to get rid of all the "Cloud", "Google Music", "Google Drive", "Dropbox" etc. icons in the "Library" menu.

Am I missing something? Isn't it possible to switch off all the stuff that one does not need and get a clean UI in BubbleUPnP?

I do not know if you can disable all the icons. But they only occur if choosing the local media server that is spawned by bubble upnp itself. Normally you are connecting to your NAS's server so you do not see these icons. 

gert posted:

nbpf posted:

One very annoying thing was that I was not able to get rid of all the "Cloud", "Google Music", "Google Drive", "Dropbox" etc. icons in the "Library" menu.

Am I missing something? Isn't it possible to switch off all the stuff that one does not need and get a clean UI in BubbleUPnP?

I do not know if you can disable all the icons. But they only occur if choosing the local media server that is spawned by bubble upnp itself. Normally you are connecting to your NAS's server so you do not see these icons. 

Thanks!

You can get rid of these - I have - but I can't remember how I did it!  Perhaps something to try net time you visit the tablet shop, NBPF

JSH posted:

You can get rid of these - I have - but I can't remember how I did it!  Perhaps something to try net time you visit the tablet shop, NBPF

Thanks JSH!

JSH posted:

You can get rid of these - I have - but I can't remember how I did it!  Perhaps something to try net time you visit the tablet shop, NBPF

Yes, I have checked this now: In the settings of bubble upnp under the menu "Local Media Server" you can disable each service separately.

gert posted:

JSH posted:

You can get rid of these - I have - but I can't remember how I did it!  Perhaps something to try net time you visit the tablet shop, NBPF

Yes, I have checked this now: In the settings of bubble upnp under the menu "Local Media Server" you can disable each service separately.

Great, thanks a lot JSH! Best, nbpf

BubbleUPnP from LMS (squeezebox) server. Advantages (in addition to those above):

Naim UQ2 becomes a renderer. I can switch between the Naim and my squeezebox touch, to switch playing between two different rooms, or even switch to local renderer when driving a bluetooth speaker from my phone.

I use Naim app on my iPad and (almost) nothing at all on my Android phone because none of them are really very good. The Naim app is too unstable even now, Bubble is ok but doesn't do enough with Naim, and most others are shaky. I know Android is not a stably-managed software platform for all sorts reasons, but it does seem odd to have such a faultless IOS implementation and such mediocrity on Android.

If my iPad is out of juice and I can't find the remote, I will very reluctantly work through the crashes on the Android Naim app, but that's about it.

To be honest, I think arguments along the lines that Android is problematic because of the variety of devices using it are rather a cop out. It's not like there hasn't been time to work it out, and other apps manage it just fine (eg bubbleupnp). It might (or might not, I don't know) be trickier to produce Android apps, but given that there are some very good/successful Android apps produced by small companies and individuals, it can't be beyond the wit of decent programmers to sort it out. I can play the full edition of GTA Vice City on my phone and tablet, but not control my stereo without crashes etc? A bit daft.

There have been two updates to the iOS app since the last Android release, when the iOS app was already significantly ahead to begin with. I find it hard not to conclude that Naim people tend to use iOS devices, and figure that their customers probably do too, and therefore prioritise it far ahead of Android. But the days of iOS ubiquity are well over, especially among the demographic targeted for expansion via the Muso range.

If only it were as simple as Naim just giving the guy who makes bubble a job!

I can work with the naim app on Android (Nexus 5) because I know that it probably will crash on the first startup after a while of not using it. So I have to start it twice, but can work with it afterwards without any problems.

A question to BubbleUPnP users: does BubbleUPnP supports displaying the liner notes of an album?

This works very nicely with MPaD (an MPD client for iOS) and can be easily implemented on a laptop running mpc (another MPD client) but I am not aware of any UPnP control point for iOS supporting this quite fundamental feature.

Thanks, nbpf

Dave***t posted:

Wolf R posted:

To me BubbleUPnP is the best control point app on the market, at least for Android. It controls my Muso and Google Chromecast Audio as well as Linn and probably even more. Beyond your NAS it will stream music from Tidal, Qobuz, Google Music and from a cloud drive. Gapless playback is supported. So not much to wish further.

For playing Upnp, +1. Bubble does a number of things better than the android Naim app. Miles more stable, allows hardware button volume control, has a mini widget accessible from the top of screen drop down menu and lock screen, displays now playing artwork on the lock screen, stays connected to the renderer when the Android device goes to sleep. I believe it can also do things like link up with lyric finding software, though I haven't tried it.

Overall far better than the Naim app, which does none of those things and crashes continually for me. But unless I've missed something, Bubble can't control inputs, change settings on the Naim equipment, choose iradio stations and so on. So thus far I've found it a matter of a few pleasant experiments with Bubble, but relying on the Naim app in the end and putting up with its shortcomings.

+1 for Bubble UPnP and all the issues you highlight with the naim app. I use it for controlling minimserver and getting Qobuz on my NDX. The lock screen functionality is the icing on the cake for me.

My android phone has previously asked me if I'd like to uninstall the naim app due to the frequency of crashes!