uniti and macbook pro as a upnp server

UPnP on a Mac is grim - EyeConnect (free) will stream to Uniti but don't expect album art or speed with large libraries. IMHO Asset on PC probably the best PC based server - but if like me you are PC allergic you could use Crossover Mac to install it on your MBP or run a separate NAS or Linux server.

have fun 

Tog

EyeConnect does not support FLAC, so that makes it a bad choice IMHO. I am using Playback, but it is pretty barebones in terms of how it presents lists of music that aren't in iTunes. I am close to goung back to using Twonky. 

UPnP on Mac is pretty dismal, especially if you don't want to use iTunes (all my streaming music is FLAC ripped from CD or purchased in 24/96 resolution). I hate iTunes. It's just a festering, steaming, pile of...

Doesn't support FLAC. Terrible, bloated UI. Awful tagging system that isn't even fully supported. Twonky had it's problems too when I tried it, but was better than using iTunes. Doesn't matter whether iTunes is good or not, since all my music is FLAC anyway.

Fortunately, I mostly listen to vinyl. That works better.

What does this actually mean?  Never had a problem with iTunes tagging, if you take the time to understand how it works then it actually is very good and simple to use.

I listen to classical music (and jazz). The Group tag is there and ignored. I have defined the groups for classical compositions, but it's a waste of time, because nothing in the Apple ecosystem cares that it's even there. Doesn't do anything. Relationships that should be many-many are one-many. It's only possible to specify a single genre for music. And so on...

I understand the tagging system just fine. It's retarded, unless you just listen to pop/rock, where the concept of single albums and single tracks with single artists works OK. It's worthless for Jazz and Classical. Do a google search on classical music in iTunes. There are plenty of complaints and complicated systems for working around the lack of decent support in iTunes. FWIW: most music cataloging software is just as useless and broken.

I'm a huge fan of Apple product (and member of their developer programs), but I think iTunes is an embarrassingly bad and bloated waste of disk space. Apple needs to start over and do it right.

Twonky is one of the very few UPnP media server on Mac which can stream up 192kHz/24 bit. As I remember EyeConnect can not do this. It will downconvert everything to 48k above 48k. TVmobili is another promising UPnP server on Mac OS X.

I plan to install a new quad i7 Mac Mini server and its Lion Server OS with Twonky this week-end with a 12 TB Thunderbolt connected disk array, to try it as a high capacity UPnP server, to serve more than 10 UPnP devices in our home with video and audio.

I tried TVMobili and it ran my processor utilization up to 98% and stayed there. I uninstalled it faster than I installed it.

Get a NAS. 

A presumably mobile macbook being used as a UPNP streamer does not make a lot of sense.

Im my case I stream to my UnitiQute only on occasion & when I have my MBP attached to my network, so spending $20 for Mac UPnP software makes far more sense than spending $hundreds on a NAS 

I have the Mac Mini Server and the Thunderbolt disk array anyway, for other purposes too. No reason to get a NAS.

So what are the problems with Twonky? I did the 30-day eval some time back. While it had issues with album art, it seemed to work well enough streaming to my Qute otherwise. And I liked that it gave me several ways to browse my music, not just by artist (which is not very useful for me). NAS is out the question for me. I don't want to spend that much money for how little I use streaming.

Ferenc, how does that thunderbolt array perform?

They tested a top of the range one with SSD drives and it was something stupid fast like 800MB/s 

Nice!

Hi Garyi,

I do not know as the Thunderbolt cable is not arrived yet, so could not connect the disk array to the Mini Server because of the missing cable. It can take few days to get the Thunderbolt cable so I need to wait.

I think we have strayed from the OP's actual question.

Irrespective of their differing features, the various UPNP servers available for the Mac really should work just fine from a MBP.  I suspect that the problem is therefore something to do with how the network is configured.

Some ideas:

1. Try hard wiring to see if this makes a difference
2. Look at your router's wireless settings (ensure UPNP is enabled, fiddle with anything else that might be relevant)
3. Consider using a different router, or perhaps adding in a wireless switch for your LAN, connected upstream to your Internet router.  Apple's own AirPort Extreme or TImeCapsule kit works really well in this manner.  No doubt other vendors will too.

John

Hi

Just happened upon your post and I guess that by now you may have solved your problem.

We use Macs in our house and I spent many an hour trying cajole, bully, force a wide variety of upnp platforms to act as a conduit between an iMac and a Uniti Qute - with varying degrees of success.

Though not perfect, Majestic works best for me, transcoding Apple Lossless 'on the fly' and rendering artwork, playlists etc with ease (if at times a tad slowly) to either my iPhone or iPad.

I know many will be a bit sniffy about transcoding, but the simple facts are that I have a large CD collection for when I want to do some 'serious' listening, but for a significant amount of the time, I just want to stream tunes. Me, 'she who must be obeyed' and 2 teenagers have a central itunes music library which is also used to drag and drop music onto lord-knows how many iPods we have around the place.