Is Melco the new Hugo...

Dan, thanks for the info... It appears a fairly standard quality switch setup inside (btw all Ethernet devices need to be galvanically isolated to be compliant and as stated in the thread the light pipe reference is slightly misleading as it is not used at the physical LAN layer ).

There was a posting with a part WireShark trace, but unfortunately he didn't capture or discuss the part that effects sound quality .. Dohhh ... So it looks like there is stuff to be uncovered here...

Twonky it seems is always on, if you load MinimServer both come up, at this stage it appears you can't remove the Twonky server. MinimServer install is very much beta and not supported fully but you can do a manual install at your risk, It does work and many have done that manual install with beta caveats.

Until Melco release their new app/control software with its own updates my only request would be FLAC - WAV conversion and that control of music library while in Direct Playback mode. MinimServer will do the FLAC-WAV of course.

Forgive my ignorance - whatever's on the Melco seems to work just fine. What's the advantage of Minimserver or Asset? I use the latter on my iMac to supply toons to my MuSo & it works well but is there some sonic advantage in the two aforesaid?

Not sure there is Tony, maybe just UI preferences and choosing what you prefer to actually use.

There is an online argument that the delivery of the data differs (some form of aggregated data round off for bits of data) that could have an impact on the final delivery quality, but this could also be argued as splitting hairs I suppose.

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Dan, thanks for the info... It appears a fairly standard quality switch setup inside (btw all Ethernet devices need to be galvanically isolated to be compliant and as stated in the thread the light pipe reference is slightly misleading as it is not used at the physical LAN layer ).

There was a posting with a part WireShark trace, but unfortunately he didn't capture or discuss the part that effects sound quality .. Dohhh ... So it looks like there is stuff to be uncovered here...

Thanks Simon,

Be interesting to see if the Melco is doing lots of little tiny jobs a little bit better making the whole delivery work well or if there is one killer thing that is making it work? 

Natural curiosity makes me want to find out, as I do like the Melco and it has improved, by quite a margin, my delivery quality, in its Direct Playback mode.

Dan43 posted:

Be interesting to see if the Melco is doing lots of little tiny jobs a little bit better making the whole delivery work well or if there is one killer thing that is making it work? 

My question exactly  ............  personally I doubt there is a killer item, but I expect one or two items make a big contribution.  

A friend has one on demo until Tuesday,   He has a pretty well sorted QNAP - switch - LInn DS on an audio only fully wired network using a mix of Cat7 & Cat6 cables, hard to see what else he can do to max out on that, so it might prove interesting with the Melco.     I'm hoping to get a listen tomorrow nite.

I suspect if you have a sorted network infrastructure optimised for audio then I doubt you will hear a worthwhile improvement going via Ethernet. Andrew Everard written a good blog on his website about this after reviewing Melco where he introduced some optical fibre cable into his network. However, if not, or you are connecting to a dac without galvanic isolation (such as Hugo) via a noisy computer usb out then I would expect you will hear an improvement.

I guess one of the selling points of Melco that you don't have to worry about such things. It simply will store, stream, or play your music well without any worries at a reasonable cost (well when compared to similar products of other high end hifi brands). 

One thing to look for with Melco owners - is look to see whether ff2mpeg or avconv or perhaps both are installed in the OS build. I have narrowed one of the differences between two different UPnP media servers that were transcoding... ff2mpeg to my ears sounds bizarrely preferable to avconv when transcoding - the former sounds fuller bodied and more 'natural'. I have matched this same effect now on two different micro servers and two different UPnP media server applications.

FF2mpeg on many platforms requires some manual compiling and linking.... I have now told MinimStreamer to use ff2mpeg 

Simon

Simon,

Thanks for the info. I've just added ffmpeg to my Pi2 and configured Minimserver to use it. I think I'm hearing the difference you describe.

Which other UPnP server have you configured to use ffmpeg? I normally use Asset on the Pi. I'm not sure if it is possible to configure the transcoding method. I had a quick search on the forum but didn't find anything.

Thanks

Graham

Graham - I suspect Asset uses ffmpeg - as it sounds almost if not identical to MinimStreamer using ffmpeg when transcoding. I   have now used ffmpeg on MinimStreamer running on a RPi Mk1 and Mk2 with consistent results.

Great, thanks

Bit of eureka moment on the Melco, managed to get Direct Player working on one side and music library browsing through the LAN side, so allowing me to browse my entire library and playback through direct mode.

Needed to set static IPs and bit of messing about but now have a working system but for the Direct Playback mind, in LAN/Network mode everything works as expected with all apps and UPnP software, it was getting the ability to browse my library and playback files while in the better Direct Player mode that got my head scratching. Happy here, sure once the new apps are released from Melco this becomes standard but for now all good.