Simple Audio - Lost Album Art

Posted by: endlessnessism on 27 September 2015

I am using Simple Audio into Naim in a few locations in the house.  All was well, and still is except that I have suddenly lost all my album art.

 

Since I previously had all my album art displayed with no problem, and still have it for a couple of Sonos units that I use, I don't know what has changed or gone wrong.

 

My NAS (Buffalo Terastation) is the same.  There has been no update to the Simple Audio software (and there will never be - they are out of business).  There have been a couple of iOS updates in recent weeks, which might explain why I can no longer see album art on Apple devices but not why I can't see it on my PC desktop.

 

I know that Simple Audio will only tolerate jpg files up to a certain size.  I have gone back and adjusted a few from the last month or so, when the problem began, that were bigger than the maximum size, but to no avail.  Also, I'm sure that I had some older files that were theoretically too big but they didn't seem to be a problem; and in any case I don't see why I should lose all my album art just because one or two files were too big,

 

Any ideas?  One of these days I will follow everyone's recommendation and switch to Asset or similar but for now I'm just trying to understand why my system that has worked perfectly well for a couple of years or more should suddenly fail so completely.  

Posted on: 27 September 2015 by supmario

You can try what is called multimedia indexing on NAS. There is an option in NAS menu.

Posted on: 18 October 2015 by endlessnessism

I am still hoping that someone can help with a solution to this annoying problem. 

 

Thanks to Supmario for his comment but I don't fully understand it.  I have enabled something called "search indexing" on my NAS but it doesn't seem to have produced any result.  According to the user manual it "allows text searches for strings (such as from a text file or data) on the NAS". 

 

I have one further clue to the mystery.  If I copy some of my album folders from my NAS to a PC, and then use the Simple Audio Desktop on the same PC to add those local albums to the library, it shows all the album art correctly.  In other words, no problem with the album folders themselves, or with the way I have added art.  Rather it's a network / upnp thing. 

 

It's very odd because everything works and plays correctly across the network.  It's just the artwork that gets blocked.  It's also strange that it was working perfectly well then suddenly stopped.

Posted on: 28 November 2015 by endlessnessism

I am still struggling with this issue but I have narrowed it down and believe it is to do with my router, a Netgear R7000.

 

The problem is that the Simple Audio desktop control (PC) and iPad app will not show album artwork for a music library that is stored elsewhere in my home network.  The albums themselves show up and the music plays without a hitch, so access as a whole is not being blocked across the network - just the album art.

 

If I store an album on the same PC as the desktop controller, the album art appears correctly.  Therefor it's not a problem with the way the art is embedded in the folder (folder.jpg) or the Simple Audio software that decodes it.

 

I thought it might be a problem with my NAS (Buffalo Terastation) but I now don't think so.  If I store an album on another PC in the house (ie, not on my NAS) and then access it over the network, I don't see the artwork.  This seems to suggest that it's my router that's the problem, or some kind of UPNP / DNLA thing in the way Simple Audio looks at jpg images over the network.

 

For completeness I tried removing two big HP switches from my network and connecting my NAS, a Simple Audio Roomplayer and a laptop directly to the router.  It made no difference - no artwork.

 

It's bizarre because the artwork was all there until about July this year when it suddenly disappeared from both PC and iPad, and I don't know what caused it.  The Simple Audio software did not change - they went out of business at the beginning of the year and there have been no updates (and their help desk is closed).  There may have been updates to my router firmware but I don't know what they could have changed in my settings.

 

I can't help thinking that all it needs is a little tweak to my router settings, but what?

Posted on: 30 November 2015 by nbpf
Originally Posted by endlessnessism:

I am using Simple Audio into Naim in a few locations in the house.  All was well, and still is except that I have suddenly lost all my album art.

 

Since I previously had all my album art displayed with no problem, and still have it for a couple of Sonos units that I use, I don't know what has changed or gone wrong.

 

My NAS (Buffalo Terastation) is the same.  There has been no update to the Simple Audio software (and there will never be - they are out of business).  There have been a couple of iOS updates in recent weeks, which might explain why I can no longer see album art on Apple devices but not why I can't see it on my PC desktop.

 

I know that Simple Audio will only tolerate jpg files up to a certain size.  I have gone back and adjusted a few from the last month or so, when the problem began, that were bigger than the maximum size, but to no avail.  Also, I'm sure that I had some older files that were theoretically too big but they didn't seem to be a problem; and in any case I don't see why I should lose all my album art just because one or two files were too big,

 

Any ideas?  One of these days I will follow everyone's recommendation and switch to Asset or similar but for now I'm just trying to understand why my system that has worked perfectly well for a couple of years or more should suddenly fail so completely.  

I have no ideas but the first thing I would try to do is to make sure that all the services Simple Audio relies upon for album artwork are currently up and running.

 

This might not be completely trivial to check. For instance, my system is based on MPD and most MPD clients only need an MPD server running to access album artwork. But MPod -- an MPD client for iPad and iPhone -- requires album art to be served by an HTTP server. Thus, if I stop apache2 on my server, I am still able to see album artwork in my MPD clients but my wife will be unable to see any album cover on her iPad.

 

Which services does Simple Audio rely upon for displaying artwork? Are these internet services, NAS services or -- more likely -- a combination of both? Are these services actually available?

Posted on: 19 December 2015 by endlessnessism

I am pleased to report that I have found a solution to this problem, although I don't understand how or why it works.

I had noticed that artwork was not displayed if I sourced the music library on my NAS but it was displayed if I sourced a local library on the same PC.  Therefore, I simulated a local source for my NAS-based music library by mapping a drive to it on a PC and then pointing Simple Audio to the mapped drive rather than to the NAS.  It means I've got to keep the PC on all the time but I do that anyway so not a problem.  Better still (and for reasons I don't understand), this solution also means that I see the artwork on other PCs in the house.

Unfortunately, while fooling around and looking for a solution, I managed to delete the Simple Audio app from my iPad and it's no longer available from the iTunes Store and I didn't have a back-up.  I have a separate thread on this and if anyone can possibly help me to get the app back I will be very grateful.  If someone has the app, maybe it's possible to send the .ipa file by Dropbox or similar, or if someone in London has it we could meet and I think there is a way to copy from one iTunes account to another without compromising anyone's security.