MinimServer Forum

(28-07-2017 23:30)simoncn Wrote: [ -> ]

(28-07-2017 22:50)DavidHB Wrote: [ -> ]Are you saying that, if transcoding is not specified, the FLAC stream is sent to the DS 'as is', that is with the unusual encoding? This would imply that some players are handling the stream correctly, and some are not.

Yes, I am saying that. A further possible complication is that different BBC programmes seem to be transmitted with different forms of FLAC encoding.

Thank you very much for that. Thoughts about different server configurations clearly ought to be put on hold; apologies for the red herring. I shall put a bug report on the Linn development forum.

(28-07-2017 23:30)simoncn Wrote: [ -> ]

(28-07-2017 22:50)DavidHB Wrote: [ -> ]... have you any thoughts as to why even the standard BBC streams do not play on my ADSM when they are transcoded to WAV24? Could this be an issue with FFMPEG?

It might be because MinimStreamer is sending an HTTP 200 response rather than an HTTP 206 response with Content-Range. There was a discussion on the Linn forum about this (see this thread).

Thank you for this too. I was not aware of that thread, which goes back before my time on the Linn forum. It does appear that the HTTP 200 vs. HTTP206 issue now arises in circumstances in which Linn ought to dig it out of the 'to do' pile.

LATER: I have now reported the issues on the Linn forum, with a cross-reference to this thread.

David

The problem is not caused by the HTTP 200 response. It is caused by the Linn DS firmware not being able to handle WAV stream sizes of 2GB or greater. The limit should be 4GB but some buggy renderers treat the unsigned 32-bit value as if it were a signed value, which means a value of 2GB or greater is interpreted as being a negative number.

The workaround is to set stream.transcode to *:wav24-2gb. If you have specified a stream type of flac or aac in your .m3u playlist, you need to use flac:wav24-2gb or aac:wav24-2gb instead.

(28-07-2017 00:23)DavidHB Wrote: [ -> ]Thank you very much for the instructions, which I was able to follow without difficulty.

I mentioned in my PM that I was having problems with transcoded radio streams playing to my Linn ADSM/1. Because "flac:wav24" was already set on my system, I left that setting in place. The player at first attempted but failed to play the lossless stream, and the following error message sequence appeared in the MinimServer log:

Error: java.io.IOException: Stream closed at offset 0 in file null (length 0)
MPEG-DASH: error reading initial segment
Error reading DASH stream: org.jminim.LogErrorException: MPEG-DASH: error reading initial segment
org.jminim.LogErrorException: MPEG-DASH: error reading initial segment
at org.jminim.core.LogImpl.error(LogImpl.java:219)
at com.minimstreamer.NetworkSource$DASHReaderThread.playStream(NetworkSource.java:1​915)
at com.minimstreamer.NetworkSource$ReaderThread.run(NetworkSource.java:870)

This could be caused by a random network error or a typo in the URL in the .m3u radio playlist. Is the error repeatable?

Quote:If I try to play the FLAC stream without transcoding, the DSM simply does not recognise the stream; no error message appears in the MinimServer log.

I am not having any problem with this. Are you sure that WAV transcoding was disabled for the stream when you tried this? As well as removing flac:wav24 from stream.options, you need to refresh the container for the .m3u playlist in the control point. Altnernatively, you can do a MinimServer restart after changing the stream.options value.

(29-07-2017 21:30)simoncn Wrote: [ -> ]The workaround is to set stream.transcode to *:wav24-2gb. If you have specified a stream type of flac or aac in your .m3u playlist, you need to use flac:wav24-2gb or aac:wav24-2gb instead.

Thank you very much indeed. I have set my stream.transcode property to "flac:wav24-2gb, mp3:wav24-2gb, aac:wav24-2gb", and the aac and mp3 (Linn) streams in my radio playlist play perfectly. I'm going to experiment separately with the [R3DASH] FLAC stream (see below).

Your diagnosis fits in with my recollection that this problem only arose after the rewritten Linn firmware (Davaar 50+) was released. If Linn ever fix the bug, will I need to change the stream:transcode property again?

David

(29-07-2017 21:57)simoncn Wrote: [ -> ]

(28-07-2017 00:23)DavidHB Wrote: [ -> ]... the following error message sequence appeared in the MinimServer log ...

This could be caused by a random network error or a typo in the URL in the .m3u radio playlist. Is the error repeatable?

No, unfortunately. It only occurred once. Now, all I get is a stalled player and no MinimServer error message.

(29-07-2017 21:57)simoncn Wrote: [ -> ]

(28-07-2017 00:23)DavidHB Wrote: [ -> ]If I try to play the FLAC stream without transcoding, the DSM simply does not recognise the stream; no error message appears in the MinimServer log.

I am not having any problem with this. Are you sure that WAV transcoding was disabled for the stream when you tried this? As well as removing flac:wav24 from stream.options, you need to refresh the container for the .m3u playlist in the control point. Altnernatively, you can do a MinimServer restart after changing the stream.options value.

Now that the transcoding problem is fixed for AAC and MP3, I shall re-check carefully, using a separate instance of MinimServer with transcoding disabled, and report back.

Thank you again for all your help on this.

David

I duly tried the [R3DASH] stream, using the instance of MinimServer on my old (Netgear) NAS. I cleared the stream.transcode property, and took the opportunity to do a rescan. The log showed only the normal rescan messages.

I then pointed BubbleDS at the libary on the Netgear NAS, and selected the [R3DASH] stream in the radio stations playlist. The DS briefly displayed the station name, then simply stopped, with the display showing just 'Title', as if it had simply not recognised either the URL or the stream. This happened very quickly; the DSM did not stall, as it had done on previous occasions. There was no message in the MinimServer log.

I tried this twice, and then verified that the other streams were playing correctly from the playlist. For the sake of completeness, here is the [R3DASH] entry in the .m3u playlist. It was copied and pasted from the original instructions, and appears to be correct:

#EXTINF:-1,[*R3DASH;flac] BBC Radio 3 lossless
'http://vs-dash-ww-rd-live.bbcfmt.hs.llnwd.net/al/lossless/client_manifest.mpd ; I've added the ' at the beginning of the line to prevent the creation of a link

As an aside, I tried playing the [R3DASH] stream from the same NAS to foobar2000, and had the following error message:

Unable to open item for playback (Unsupported format or corrupted file):
"http://192.168.1.200:9790/minimstreamer/*/R3DASH/$!stream.flac"

If I try to play the stream from the other NAS, and so transcoded, in foobar2000, the error message is:

Unable to open item for playback (Internal Server Error (500)):
"http://192.168.1.220:9790/minimstreamer/*/R3DASH/$!transcode-24-2gb.wav"

David

Am struggling here to get any transcoding to work with my Linn streamers, even with the revised instructions.

MinimWatch is showing ffmpeg as the stream.converty property. The MinimStreamer manual states that if you want MinimStreamer to perform FLAC transcoding using a converter program, a semicolon is added after the output type (see extract below), otherwised it's done by MinimStreamer itself.

FLAC files. Valid for local files served by MinimServer (.flac) only. The output type must be L16, L24, wav, wav24 or wav16. By default, a stream converter program is not required. If you want MinimStreamer to perform transcoding using a stream converter program, you can specify this by adding a semicolon after the output type.

I have tried every syntax permutation for stream.transcode I can think of, and cannot get the R3 lossless stream to play, nor can I get the aac stream to play as WAV (the native stream plays fine). Can the syntax be confirmed, particularly with regard to semicolons?

EDIT: apologies all round, just found a very silly mistake in my .m3u file. Both my Linn streamers are now playing the DASH stream in both FLAC and WAV. Was not expecting the untranscoded to work. However, with transcoding on, I get a pause button instead of a stop button in Kazoo, and I cannot stop playback unless I switch to another playlist entry. With native FLAC and AAC, I get a stop button and all works as expected.

(30-07-2017 10:13)ac16161 Wrote: [ -> ]EDIT: apologies all round, just found a very silly mistake in my .m3u file. Both my Linn streamers are now playing the DASH stream in both FLAC and WAV. Was not expecting the untranscoded to work.

Could this be @DavidHB's issue too? He did also mention an OpenHome Player not working with the prototype, if I remember correctly, not just the DSM.

(30-07-2017 10:13)ac16161 Wrote: [ -> ]EDIT: apologies all round, just found a very silly mistake in my .m3u file. Both my Linn streamers are now playing the DASH stream in both FLAC and WAV. Was not expecting the untranscoded to work. However, with transcoding on, I get a pause button instead of a stop button in Kazoo, and I cannot stop playback unless I switch to another playlist entry. With native FLAC and AAC, I get a stop button and all works as expected.

This seems to be an issue with how the DS handles WAV network streams. Kazoo sends a Pause command to the DS but for some reason the DS ignores it. I tried this with another OpenHome renderer (the Melco N1 USB-DAC renderer) and Pause from Kinsky works as expected. For this renderer, Kinsky doesn't show a Stop button for the WAV stream (it seems to show either Pause or Stop but not both).

The DASH stream can be paused (time shifted) for up to 10 minutes without losing any audio.

(30-07-2017 11:57)Cebolla Wrote: [ -> ]

(30-07-2017 10:13)ac16161 Wrote: [ -> ]EDIT: apologies all round, just found a very silly mistake in my .m3u file. Both my Linn streamers are now playing the DASH stream in both FLAC and WAV. Was not expecting the untranscoded to work.

Could this be @DavidHB's issue too? He did also mention an OpenHome Player not working with the prototype, if I remember correctly, not just the DSM.

My silly mistake was to miss out the #EXTM3U entry on the first line. I've not manually created a .m3u file before and thought it was an optional comment line, since the AAC stream still worked and there were no warnings in the Minim rescan log. However I should have realised something was not right as the playlist entries in Kazoo were based on the urls rather than the labels. Adding the first line fixed the playlist descriptors and enabled native DASH-FLAC plus transcoding. My older Linn streamer is an original Majik DSM (i.e. no HDMI), my newer one is a Katalyst KDS. As they both work would seem very strange if any Linn players out there could not play the DASH stream.