MinimServer Forum

Hi! This is my first post. I've been using MinimServer starter edition for a few months. Recently I signed up for a trial edition so that I could play radio station streams. It took a bit of reading and study but I now have radio streaming working.

Since MinimStreamer supports transcoding, I wanted to explore what transcoding would do for me. Unfortunately I'm not sure transcoding is working.

I have MinimServer running on a QNAP TS-473A NAS with 32G memory. My renderer is a HoloAudio Red. My controller is JPLAY running on an iPad.

As far as I can tell I have ffmpeg installed. My stream.converter path is opt/bin/ffmpeg. I've tried various transcode properties for testing. Currently my transcode properties string is:

wav:wav24;96,mp3:wav24;96, flac:wav24;192, *:wav24;96

The reason I believe transcoding is not working is that my DAC, a NAD M51, displays the bitrate of the signal it receives and transcoding to a different bitrate does not change anything.

I have "debug" enabled for the MinimServer log but I don't see anything wrong.

I've stopped MinimServer and restarted, and rescanned the libraries. Any help or advice would be appreciated.

Are you seeing this issue (DAC bitrate not as you expect) when transcoding local files, radio streams or both?

If you play a local FLAC file (16/44.1) with your transcoding settings, what is displayed as the DAC bitrate?

Thanks for your message about the 403 error when you tried to post to the forum. For information about what causes the 403 error and how to work around it, see this forum thread.

As well as stopping/starting MinimServer and rescannng, you need to rebuild the cached copy of your library stored by JPLAY. Alternatively, you can browse your library in JPLAY by selecting Local Network/By Folder. This bypasses the JPLAY cache and shows the correct current contents of your MinimServer library. This is required whenever you make any changes to transcoding settings.

Thank you for the help! Transcoding seems to be working now. I wish I knew what I did to fix it.

It sounds like JPLAY has refreshed its cache.

I'm sorry, I spoke too soon. My transcoding is not working. I was mistaken. Is there any entry in the log file that would give a clue?

Edit: I was wrong a second time. Transcoding is working when playing with JPLAY, but not working when I play the same files with foobar2000.

I also realized that my radio streams were not being transcoded because the streams were not being routed through MinimServer. As a test I reverted my trial license to starter and with MinimStreamer disabled the streams played just the same.

This is one such playlist as an example:

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF-1,[WWFM] WWFM 89.1 Trenton
http://wwfm.streamguys1.com/live-mp3

(28-03-2025 06:01)Lavcat Wrote: [ -> ]Edit: I was wrong a second time. Transcoding is working when playing with JPLAY, but not working when I play the same files with foobar2000.

foobar2000 caches track information (similar to JPLAY), so you need to rebuild the foobar2000 cache after changing transcoding settings. To do this, close the foobar2000 UPnP Browser window and reopen it by selecting View > UPnP Browser, then select the file or radio stream again for playing.

If you don't do this but play the previous selection instead, the file or radio stream will not get the transcoding setting you are expecting.

(29-03-2025 02:02)Lavcat Wrote: [ -> ]I also realized that my radio streams were not being transcoded because the streams were not being routed through MinimServer. As a test I reverted my trial license to starter and with MinimStreamer disabled the streams played just the same.

This is one such playlist as an example:

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF-1,[WWFM] WWFM 89.1 Trenton
http://wwfm.streamguys1.com/live-mp3

Your #EXTINF line is incorrect. It should be this:

#EXTINF:-1,[WWFM] WWFM 89.1 Trenton

With this change, the stream is transcoded to 24/96 with MinimStreamer enabled.

Thanks!