Unitiqute/Mac/album art

Hi Tony,

Neither Allegro or EyeConnect serve up artwork correctly.

Try Majestic from the Mac App Store.  This does artwork well, but has downsides of thrashing the disk occasionally when re-indexing and of listing some playlists alphabetically rather than as intended.  I am running the current iTunes beta however so this may be at fault.

Alternatively, Twonky also does artwork.

John

Take a look at Doug's Scripts, which have a variety of Mac-specific plugins for iTunes that will allow you to save iTunes cover artwork as a folder.jpg.

I'd also consider Logitech Media Server which, in tandem with the plug-ins above, should work fine as a media server with a smallish number of clients.

I'm new to the forums too.

I had a very similar experience to tonyj with Eyeconnect / Mac & itunes for decoding my ALAC files.

I bought an Apple TV which I connected to the unitiqute with an optical cable.

It now works perfectly. Very fast, no drop outs & all album art displayed.

I can detect no discernible difference in audio quality either although I can't pretend that I have particularly tuned in ears

The Apple TV upsamples - so what comes in does not equal what goes out. 
Apple TV converts all audio to 16-bit/48KHz. 

Does this matter .... no, not one jot in my view. 

If you can hear no difference then this is purely for information as in your system it is totally benign. 

I don't have tuned ears either (wonder if can upgrade them). 

I tend not to care about things when I can't hear a difference. 

Though bit perfect for some seems the holy grail of digital audio: strange when so many use upsampling DACs these days (this forum is much more sensible and claims about magic ripping process have long since vanished from its pages). 

ALAC files seem to be troublesome for some music streamers: of course not the ATV which being Apple works perfectly will the Apple format. Sonos players work well too. 

ATV is a really neat device, I have one as well. 

The UQ is superb and one of the most amazing products Naim has made. 

I've never really got streaming through UPnP to work with my Apple kit (I don't think I'm alone) so I have been moving my files to FLAC on a Vortexbox, which is Naim, Sonos and Apple friendly (at least so far). Vortexbox software is free, but needs dedicated hardware.   

All the best, Guy

The last 2 weeks I've been trying Serviio, I haven't tried the OS X version, but the Linux version seems fine, could be worth a trial on your Mac.

Tony,

Try Playback from Yazsoft. You can download a demo before buying to see if it's right for you.

It served up my iTunes library without any major issues but i did find a few CD's where artwork wasn't shown.

I ran a small iTunes utility called embed artwork on the problem albums and this sorted the artwork.

James

I'm not sure I completely understand the question, but the Vortexbox is the best music server I have ever used and it works with iTunes. So you get the iTunes interface if you want, it works with other players like Sonos and Logitech too. You can also use its own built in player. If you use an iPad with iTunes then you'll see all the artwork, same goes for Sonos. I've not got anything from Logitech so can't comment on that, but I've read good reports. If there is something another music server can do that a Vortexbox can't then it is not something I've ever found a need for. 

Doug's Scripts are Apple Scripts for iTunes. They manipulate files within the iTunes structure. I have only used a few of them, but when they change things that alter tags with AIFF for example then they stay altered so any other player accessing the files will reap the benefit. The ones I have used just do what I could do myself manually through the iTunes interface, except at about 100 times the speed which is the whole point. 

I'm delighted with my set-up Vortexbox/W4S Sonos ZP90/Naim DAC - 555PS. It is quick enough for mewhen used with an iPad and the SQ is excellent. Only downside is it doesn't do hi-res. However, I can feed my DAC hi-res with a USB stick. 

The Sonos without W4S Cullen mods works faultless with my music storage whether on a Vortexbox or Apple computer. 

I'm not sure if that answers your question. If you have an old PC you can sacrifice then you can install Vortexbox for free and see if it does what you want. 

I can vouch for Majestic streaming an iTunes folder on a MacBook pro to a unitiqute. 

I'm very pleased now since I have a lot of stuff on my mac in iTunes that I haven't got ripped to flac on my nas.

Thanks for that Orangutan.

Assuming that you aren't using a NAS and do want to use iTunes (which accounts for many Mac users I think), then there is still no single perfect UPNP server for OS X.  You need to choose which compromises work best for you.

For example (and all based on my experiences only!):

EyeConnect:  Slow, no artwork in N-Stream, no FLAC support, but stable and transcodes ALAC to WAV on the fly

Majestic:  Fast, artwork in N-Stream, disk intensive and only transcoding to MP3

Playback:  Fast, no artwork in my case, streams FLACs really well including HiRes, no ALAC support

Twonky:  Fast, artwork, flakey and inconsistent iTunes support

Having played with each (and others like Allegro, Rivet, Songbook, Kinsky), I have eventually settled on using Playback.  This is because I use iTunes plus a seperate folder of HiRes FLACs and can live without artwork in N-Stream.  Playback fits well for this combination.

You can also run two or three of these servers at once if you like and just use the one that matches your need at the time.

Unfortunately (and Majestic is close) none of these match the Chorus DS server which seemed to offer the best integration with iTunes but only works with the Linn DS players.

A UPnP plug in for iTunes and the ability to use the iTunes Remote app on the iPad would be rather nice

James

M Fawkes speaks truth

Vortexbox + nStream just works

Tog

what is that???? iTunes choked on my library like 6 years ago.  Just importing my MP3s only bogs it down.

2000 odd CD's seems a pretty large library to me. I dont waste time with MP3's so haven't had any problems  ?

20,000+ files in my iTunes library, including 250 films, many in HD.  Never stumbles.

TonyJ - I noticed that if I ever update iTunes, the Majestic process that updates its index seems to send the CPU high and thrash the disk for some time.  I suspect this is not well optimised for small changes so just indexes the lot each change.  Playback and EyeConnect must use an alternative approach as they stay up to date with iTunes content without this issue.

Re. transcoding, Majestic can optionally transcode files for you so that they are presented to your client (Qute in your case) as mp3 on the fly.  The options are under the General tab, however it is always mp3, even at high quality.  By way of comparison, EyeConnect will convert to WAV instead, creating more network traffic but maintaining the highest sound quality.

I waste time with MP3s to load up my iOS devices with some local files.  Just in case I am out of 3G range (in the mountains), and cant access ALL of my music at home.

2000 cds???  Really?  Screenshot please! That  would be what, 80K-100K songs?  I dont buy it.  Maybe my PC just isn't fast enough.

My buddy has finally hit the performance limit at about 50K songs on his top-spec Mini.  It takes about 15 seconds for it to draw all album art on the screen, and there is PLENTY of swirling ball of death just scrolling around.  Plus, retagging takes forever.

He confirmed what I ran into a long time ago.  No he is investigating other players.  But as he is on a Mac there aren't any decent options (which I find bizarro).

Do you have any suggestions for him?  Does iTunes require self-organizing the library at this point (he doesn't), or some other different setting?

-patrick

Patrick - Not quite sure how you get 80 to 100k songs from 2000 CDs ?

Anyway just had a look and i've not got quite as much as i first thought (the other half would disagree!) -  1333 CDs which equates to 15230 songs. To match your buddy i'd need on average 5-6000 CDs so i think iTunes will cope for now 

Tog - i don't find fiddling with computers a lot of fun, let alone building one (although i did build a ZX80 once). That's why i've got a Mac. 

James