Minimserver compatible replacement for two Sonos Play 5s.

[simbun]

(15-12-2021 17:42)simoncn Wrote:  Using MinimStreamer to downsample hi-res to low-res doesn't seem like a great option (in 2021). I am interested in hearing more about the HEOS (now Denon Home). Any comments from someone with experience of using these?

I've just managed to borrow a Denon HEOS 150 to see if it'll be a good replacement for a few Sonos Play 1's I have around the house, but so far it's not great.

It's largely what has been said before on the forum, but I'll cover eveything off here. For this I'm using the HEOS app v2.41.140 build 189801 on Android.

After selecting MinimServer you're taken to an index consisting of 'Search, Browse Folders, Arists, Albums, Genres, Tracks'.

Given I don't have Artist in my MinimServer config, the Denon appears to be performing a UPnP seach to get the results, which for Genre returns nothing.
'Artists' appears to display AlbumArtist and track Artist in alphabetical order (I do have a sorting associated with AlbumArtist but don't use Artist, so a generic display and sort is probably expected).
'Albums' is sorting correctly by AlbumArtistSort as well as displaying the proper Album.displayFormat
'Tracks' appears to show everything correctly.

Browse Folders is, as has been discussed before where we can access the proper MinimServer hierarchy.
Interestingly, the AssetUPnP browse tree is shown here on drilling through 'Browse Folders' but in MinimServer I had to add an additional folder in the root of my content directory called 'EXTRA_FOLDER_FOR_MINIMTAGVIEW', and then drill through:
'Browse Folders -> EXTRA_FOLDER.... -> >> Tag View -> EXTRA_FOLDER.... -> hierarchy tree.

Radio Playlists fail with 'An unknown error occurred (error code -23). Please try again'; local files through a playlist are fine.

At this point everything seems to be ok except there's no artwork other than album artwork.

There appears to be a bug in the app as it doesn't show Track Artist, except it tries to for Various Artist albums, but it just shows 'Various Artists' again! This is the case for Asset & Plex too, so nothing MinimServer specific.

Other than that, the app is a bit flaky for setup and firmware updates (both needed a phone reboot as I lost connection to the speaker), and the Denon 150 doesn't support seeking, having tried with FLAC nor does it support OGG vorbis.

Given I've only borrowed a single unit, I won't be able to tell if I can set up zones/a stereo pair in the HEOS app and play to them through another control point, but as a single unit it operates fine through BubbleUPnP as do the radio stations that are being transcoded with MinimStreamer.

It appears to support gapless playback, although without being able to seek it's a pain to test; maybe I'll break a track up later to test with properly.

Yet to actually listen to it properly :-)

If there's any logging you want from the Genre search or anything else just let me know.


EDIT: Just used audacity to break a track up into 10 second segments and it is gapless, at least for flac.