Serento: The audiophile UPnP controller app for iOS/macOS

[serento]

Hello everyone,

Version 1.1.5 lets Serento drive HQPlayer, names every composer of a work, and finishes the night’s sync.

BEFORE YOU START: HQPLAYER

If you use HQPlayer, switch on “Allow control from network” in HQPlayer (the network button in its toolbar). That is all it needs: Serento finds it on your network, remembers it, and drives it from then on.

Whatever your server, sync each of your devices once after updating, with Enrich Data on, so that composers get their sort names: Settings › your server › Sync Data › Sync now.

NEW

Serento drives HQPlayer 5 and 6, Desktop and Embedded, through HQPlayer’s own control protocol. Your queue plays from HQPlayer’s own playlist, gapless, and changing it (Play Next, Add to Queue, moving or removing a track) never interrupts the track that is playing. Serento’s volume moves HQPlayer’s volume. Music started or stopped in HQPlayer itself shows up in Serento within a couple of seconds. HQPlayer Desktop 5, which has no UPnP renderer, is an output of its own and takes the whole queue the same way.

HQPlayer’s settings, in Serento. Open the gear next to HQPlayer in Audio Output:

A status card: whether HQPlayer answers, its address, the product, version, engine and platform, and the saved configuration it is running.

Upsampling: the mode, the filter up to 48 kHz and the filter above 48 kHz (HQPlayer 6 gives each one a short description), noise shaping or the modulator, and the output rate. Every list comes from your HQPlayer, so you see exactly what it offers on your system.

Processing: the matrix profile, invert polarity, adaptive gain, convolution and the 20 kHz filter.

Streaming: Freewheel, which asks HQPlayer to read each track from your server at full speed.

All of it is applied when you press Save, together, so changing five settings interrupts the music at most once instead of five times. Cancel sends nothing. A change of filter or modulator needs HQPlayer to stop; if playback stops after Save, Serento tells you, so you can try another combination. When you pick a new mode, noise shaping and the output rate are chosen after Save, from the lists of the new mode.

Add HQPlayer by IP address. The + in Settings › Audio Output adds an HQPlayer that does not appear by itself, for example one on another part of your network.

Output names on every device. The name you give an output (an HQPlayer, a streamer, any renderer) now appears on all your devices, and so does Freewheel.

APPLE TV

HQPlayer is listed among your outputs, and VoiceOver is better throughout.

IMPROVED

Classical › Composers files each composer under their sort name: Agustín Barrios Mangoré under B, Sigur Rós under S. Sort names come with a sync while Enrich Data is on.

A work by more than one composer names all of them, each a link, wherever it appears, and a performer’s Composers count includes them all.

A track tagged with a work but no movement, beside the work’s movements, is now a recording of its own, such as a reprise or an edit.

Classical Crossover is now a Pop genre, so an album tagged only with it stays out of Classical. On a classical album, a track whose own genres are not classical no longer joins a work unless a classical composer wrote it; a track without a genre follows its album.

Every classical list with a search field ends with Play, which plays what the list shows. A performer’s Recordings can be searched and have Pick for Me. A period’s composers have every control of the Composers tab, and both switch between grid and compact.

Pick for Me is on more lists: Statistics › Top Albums, the View All lists of an artist, a tag, Similar Albums and Search, and the Works of a composer, conductor or form.

A genre appears once in its tree: Latin Jazz, Soul Jazz and Flamenco Jazz only under Jazz, Alternative Metal and Progressive Metal only under Metal, and Gangsta Rap and its siblings only under Hip Hop.

A scheduled sync now finishes: one cut short resumes the same night where it stopped, without a new scan, and a server already done that night is skipped. Artists keep their photos, bios and counts during a sync.

VoiceOver: screen titles and sections are headings, action sheets say only the action, times and durations are spoken in words, and the format badge says Bit-perfect while the ring turns. Drawing a Z with two fingers closes what is in focus, one level at a time.

FIXED

On streamers that report a transition while a track starts, playback now continues past the track you skip to, the end of a track moves on, and a stop made on the streamer shows in Serento.

On a streamer whose volume scale does not end at 100, the slider now reaches its full volume.

A streamer that was off when you chose it sends its updates and volume once it is on, and one that stops answering shows as stopped.

Many bug fixes and other small improvements.

As always, if something looks wrong on your system, Settings › Send Logs tells me the rest.