Streaming music from cloud storage

[simoncn]

(26-11-2023 19:16)GrumpyPatzer Wrote:  That said, I have got it working, to the point where I have (a) scanned just over 8,000 FLAC files; and (b) been able to play several pieces, including a 192/24 recording, with no drop-outs or undue delays. This is running MinimServer v2.2 on a MacBook Pro with a 100Mbps FTTP broadband connection, using an old Linn DS player with a wired LAN connection. The two packages I am using to make the OneDrive storage appear as a locally mounted part of the filesystem are called rclone and FUSE-T.

This sounds very encouraging.

Quote:1. As I anticipated, the initial scan is slow. Having spent only a few short time tuning, the scanning rate I achieved was c.3 files per second (although I now realise that that was with the laptop connected using wifi, not an ethernet cable, which may have introduced some further latency).

Changing to Ethernet is likely to make a significant difference. It does for me when I am doing a a large download from the internet or a bulk file copy across my local network.

Quote:2. When I first viewed the library on my iPad, loading the artwork for 274 albums was not particularly snappy (it took a second or two each time I scrolled down), but that was far from unusable. And I am wondering if there is some caching of artwork that will then come into play.

There is no artwork caching in MinimServer but some control points (including those from Linn) do this.

Quote:In the MinimServer log, I have observed trace records like

FLAC block type-0 length=34
FLAC block type=4 length=967
Found Vorbis comment block
FLAC block type=3 length-216
FLAC block type=-127 length=7265

The length of the type 0 blocks always seem to be 34, the others vary a bit.

So, if you’ll forgive a couple more questions (sorry to be a nuisance …):

1. With FLAC files like this, how much data is MinimServer having to read, in order to obtain the tag information?

2. Is this reading of tag information being done using several (four?) distinct read operations?

This means the file contains a STREAMINFO block (34 bytes, containing audio information), a VORBIS_COMMENT block (967 bytes, containing tag information), a SEEKTABLE block (length 216 bytes) and a PADDING block (7265 bytes) followed by the audio data. MinimServer reads the data in the STREAMINFO and VORBIS_COMMENT blocks and skips the data in the other blocks. MinimServer uses a buffered input stream to do all this in order to minimise the number of underlying I/O read and seek operations on the file.

Quote:3. Having used it on one system, is there a way to transfer that instance of the MinimServer license to another system?

The full license can be activated on up to 3 devices at the same time. To move an activation from device 1 to device 2, deactivate the full license from device 1 using the License tab on the MinimServer configuration web page for device 1 and then activate the license on device 2. To see which activations are in use on which devices, open the License details page and enter your license details.