UPnP - Lightning, the beginning of the end?

Bizarre - you can do on-device playlist as part of the UPnP specifications now - you have a choice of whether the media is pushed or pulled - as Naim and Pure do currently.

I think a few might raise an eyebrow of referring to DLNA as legacy - i for one become instantly suspicious of such statements and smell an exuberant marketing department at play.

Simon

"Linn initiative" doesn't seem accurate, from what I've read.  But they are (have) added the format to their players. Along with AirPlay and several others.

I don't think we need to reinvent the wheel, but I do think that UPnP would benefit from more prescriptive solutions. As an open standard, the good news is that you can select among many competing components to build a highly reliable solution.  But the bad news is that it is even easier to pick a single poor component, and bugger up the whole works!

My current setup has proven to be extremely reliable. If someone asked me to build a shopping list for UPnP, I'd pick:

1) Naim renderer and control point (ND5XS, NDX or NDS with nStream)

2) Asset UPnP server software (on a PC now, or in beta now on a MAC, but ultimately as an installed package running directly on a NAS)

3) QNAP NAS (bullet proof but noisy, so locate it away from the audio setup)

4) Cisco/LinkSys E4200 wireless router and Cisco/LinkSys switches

This has given me 100% uptime and zero problems for several years, but I know it is not the only combination of components that works well together. There are others, but it seems that none of them have been assembled into easy to follow recipes. There's nothing terribly hard about this stuff if you know what you are doing, or if you are willing to read manuals. But if you are new to streaming and networking, there are still way too many opportunities for typing in something wrong, checking the wrong box, and so on. Also, there are way too many products that appear to work ok at first, but are flaky and bug-ridden, and so over time they prove incapable of meeting the reliability standard set by CD replay.

When I hear "new" and "advanced", I think buggy and hard to use. UPnP works just fine, and IME, when it is properly set up using best-of-breed components, it is extremely reliable, flexible and easy-to-use.

HNY!

Hook

the new Aurender Aries has no DAC build in, but one can connect it via USB to a DAC (DSD support as well, Airplay, spotify etc. are on their list)

I must say that's great...you can plug this to your DAC of choice :-) 

Ralf

It is a little far fetch to say that upnp/dlna is a "legacy standard".

However, it does not seems to gaining much traction the last year in terms of gaining adoption in most households. In my view, it is still considered a challenge to understand and setup for most people. 

Now that more information is surfacing about the Auralic Aries it turns out that the first release will be a wireless streamer capable of pushing DSD as well as PCM  (as well as Spotify etc) to the dac of your choice. Given their track record with the Vega I'm looking forward to finding out what it sounds like connected to the V1.

Tog

The Vega seems to be a very tidy piece of kit. The streamer should be very good. 

It is a stretch to describe the laughably named UPnP as a "standard" at all.

Lightning is a product range, not a new standard.  OpenHome (specifically, ohMedia) allows one to specify an entire range of network-controllable devices (Products), some with on-device Playlists, internet Radio functionality, Info about the currently-playing source / track, Time (and I'm sure I'm missing some more, need coffee).  One need not use Linn's proprietary code or network stack (ohNet) to support OpenHome; the ohMedia services are simply UPnP service descriptions.

Interestingly enough, the ohMedia services seem to be more widely implemented in products by non-European manufacturers.

It's also worth pointing out that the DLNA standards largely support the notion of "push" streaming as the primary mode of operation, from a server + control point device to a renderer, using an established minimum set of compatible codecs for wider device compatibility; in this regard, it's loosely correct to say that DLNA compatibility is really a tick-the-boxes variant of UPnP AV.

Happy New Year David 

To me the Aries seems similar to Sonore's Rendu but with wireless.

@Wat the V1's dac should be able to handle DSD - dependant on Naim's design. In any case Audivana + can decode to PCM for the moment. I have a V1 on loan at the moment and it is mighty impressive into my NAP 200.  Sharper and far more clearly defined than streaming through my Uniti.

I like the idea of separating dac from streamer, since the technologies are moving so fast. Using Apple Remote with A+ reminds me of how slick and quick it is as a control point compared to UPnP.

Tog

+1 

David, I am not sure where you get the notion of DLNA devices largely supporting 'push' streaming.. push and pulling is somewhat misleading, and in the DLNA architecture over view you see the terms 'DLNA-2 box model' and 'DLNA-3 box model'.

i think we recognise that Naim as well as many others adopt the 3 box model - that is the media URI is passed to the renderer by the controller so it can fetch the media from the server. This is indeed how Naim works, (although it uses I believe a proprietary way for loading the sequence into the renderer), and we call this pulling.. But there is pushing and pulling going on !!

http://download.microsoft.com/...LNA_Part_1_RS08.pptx

Simon

Sorry Simon, you are correct - I was referring to the fact that on-device playlists are not a DLNA-supported feature, oversimplifying things a bit.

Looks like an excellent product to me, wireless ac, only US$999, streams virtually any format to the dac of your choice, choice of control software - what's not to like!

The ideal partner for a V1

Tog

Auralic Aries announced - shown next month - for sale in June 

Vortexbox > Aries > Dac V1 then 

Tog