Apologies for what might be a very stupid question. Background: I'm brand-new to minimserver, I'm being pushed into it because I've just been lent a networked DAC (dcs Rossini) to evaluate over Xmas, and so I'm being forced away from my old Squeezeserver architecture and am trying to rush things.
This morning I installed minimserver 2.2 on my DSM7 Synology NAS and took out a trial license.
FLAC files sound very noticeably worse when streamed from minimserver to the DAC rather than from squuezeserver to the squeeze client and then to the DAC over USB. One key difference is that I transcode from flac to PCM on the squeezeserver, so the DAC just gets PCM, not flac. Maybe that's a clue?
So I noted that there's a minimstreamer component, so I attempted to install and enable it, and simply put one entry flac:wav24 into the stream.transcode box and clicked restart.
How do I tell if it's doing anything? The NAS box's network resource monitor suggests that it's exporting around 90kB/s, which doesn't sound like enough for a de-FLAC'd CD, especially one that's supposedly going to 24bit. When I ply a CD that's been ripped to WAV, by contrast, the Synology reports 176kB/s which seems pretty much bang-on for 2 x 16 x 44.1.
So my conclusion is that I haven't configured minimstreamer correctly (or at all :-))
All suggestions gratefull received.
Many thanks
Pete
If you could enter flac:wav24 in the stream.transcode property then it means that MinimStreamer is installed and working.
Most of the available control point apps do/can show the file type and bit depth/sample rate they receive from the mediaserver.
Here attached you can see Lumïn app … the original file is a flac 16/44.1 transcoded by MinimStreamer to wav 16/44.1
On the dCS Rossini (unlike any other DAC I've used), setting flac:wav24 for a 16/44.1 file is exactly equivalent to setting flac:wav.
Setting flac:wav24 causes MinimStreamer to extend each 16-bit sample to a 24-bit sample by padding it with zeros in the low-order bits. The Rossini detects these padded zeros and removes them before sending the sample to its internal DAC for processing. If you look at the front panel of the Rossini while a flac:wav24 track is playing, you will see 16/44.1.
When transcoding other stream types, wav24 transcoding does provide benefits compared with wav transcoding. I listen to BBC radio AAC 320k streams and using aac:wav24 on these streams creates true 24-bit samples where the low-order bits contain audio information. This is because aac:wav24 transcoding uses floating-point calculations with more than 24 bits of precision. In contrast, aac:wav transcoding only produces 16-bit samples.
(23-12-2022 17:45)simoncn Wrote: [ -> ]When transcoding other stream types, wav24 transcoding does provide benefits compared with wav transcoding. I listen to BBC radio AAC 320k streams and using aac:wav24 on these streams creates true 24-bit samples where the low-order bits contain audio information. This is because aac:wav24 transcoding uses floating-point calculations with more than 24 bits of precision. In contrast, aac:wav transcoding only produces 16-bit samples.
Thanks, Simon, that's very interesting. I'll play with that in due course, if I decide to keep the Rossini.
It doesn't unfortunately answer my original question, which is how I tell if the trranscoding is working? As I said in my original mail, when I'm playing a WAV file, I see a bit rate coming out of the NAS box that makes sense. When I played a flac file, I saw about half that, which suggests that the flac file itself is being played out, not the expanded version.
Christmas is here, so this'll all have to wait for a few days now, I (and I suspect many others) have better things to do :-). But I'm chasing shadows, because the comparison in my original post was between WAV over USB (from my old squeezebox, modded to have a streaming async USB output) and FLAC from minimserver/NAS/ethernet. There was a big difference in SQ; unfortunately a wav-vs-wav comparison reveals a similar difference, so it appears that my first problem isn't flac-vs-wav conversion but getting hold of some electrical/optical/electrical isolation for the ethernet going to the Rossini. Sigh.
While we're here, am I right in assuming that minimserver works, essentially, just with tags? Part of my music collection (the bits that *I* ripped) are mostly in FLAC or ALAC and are relatively well-tagged. Some bits that may have been <cough> shared with me are just WAVs in an artist/album/track tree. Squeeze never minded that too much, it was always happy to scan that tree, work out what it meant, and include it in its database, completely transparently. So if I'm to be dragged into this modern uPnP/DLNA world, does my future have to involve an awful lot of batch-conversion and tagging?
Unfortunately it appears that neither the dCS Mosaic app nor the Rossini front panel tells you whether the server is sending a FLAC or WAV file. The app says PCM in both cases and the front panel says nothing.
MinimServer can do both tag browsing and folder browsing. Most of its features are oriented towards tag browsing but it can be used to browse and play files without tags.
Thanks, Simon. So my future has a lot of tagging in it if I decide to buy this thing.
I’ve solved the streamer problem that I was complaining about. (Told you it was a newbie question). I hadn’t reset the *app*. That seems to be a bizarre dependency but I’m guessing there’s a reason in the standard somewhere :-)
I’ve put in some e/o/e isolation in the Ethernet feed to the Rossini, and that’s cleaned it up a lot, but it’s still not quite as a good over the Ethernet as it is over USB. And given the cost of the things, it ought to be.
Having minimaerver decode flac to wav24 seems to be a good thing. I want to try it with ALAC too, so I need a new transcoder. Your instructions are a little terse but I got there in the end, with a new ffmpeg from the synology community group. Well done. I’ll see how that sounds tomorrow.
One remaining question I think, what’s the syntax for bit extending a ripped CD - ripped to .wav - to wav24? Is it just wav(16):wav24 ? I tried that last thing and I wasn’t sure it worked, but then Real Life stopped play before I could investigate further.
Thanks!
You can use wav(16):wav24 to transcode 16-bit WAV to 24-bit WAV but this has no effect if you are using a Rossini (see post #3). For the same reason, there is no advantage in using flac:wav24 with a Rossini compared with flac:wav.
Hi Simon. Good point well made, and you did say that before as well. Apologies.
Think I've finally got to the bottom of the remaining SQ issues. The loaned "audiophile grade isolator" (it says that on the box, so it must be true :-) ) e/o/e converter doesn't - it suddenly occurred to me - do what it says on the tin. Sure, it does E/O/E with a length of fibre between the two RJ45/fibre boxes, but it comes with only one shared power supply, a 5V linear supply with a forked cable. So there's a lovely solid copper path between the two boxes, just to make sure that any noise gets through anyway. Sigh. Find a second 5V power supply and suddenly the magic starts to happen...
So I've loads of tagging to do now, but you have lots of documentation about that so hopefully I'll be able to go quiet :-)
(22-12-2022 15:38)stefano_mbp Wrote: [ -> ]If you could enter flac:wav24 in the stream.transcode property then it means that MinimStreamer is installed and working.
Most of the available control point apps do/can show the file type and bit depth/sample rate they receive from the mediaserver.
Here attached you can see Lumïn app … the original file is a flac 16/44.1 transcoded by MinimStreamer to wav 16/44.1
Hi, I have tried MinimStreamer and MinimServer and can't get it working. All I can see is FLAC in LUMIN App. I am running QTS 5 on my QNAP.
Can you post here your MinimStreamer settings?
These are mine and Lumïn app do show wav for an original flac file