Displaying Composer information in a Control Point

[DavidHB]

(24-11-2013 11:30)RSJ Wrote:  I suppose the question is whether there is a decent, easy to use, configurable control point to replace Kinsky. I am using a laptop with Windows 8.1. I am aware that MediaMonkey, J.River, Foobar2000, etc., are supposed to work, but my experience is that they are not very good for classical music, especially opera (gapless playback seems the issue).

On computers, there is a tendency to combine Control Points and Renderers (as both use the same OS user interface), and with some applications it can be a bit hard to spot where one ends and another begins. With commercial software, there must also be an incentive to blur the distinction; people like Microsoft want their application to be thought of as a one stop shop, and don't want users to look elsewhere. This may in part explain why UPnP on Windows Media Player is non-compliant; if it were compliant, WMP would work with MinimServer.

I can't speak of all the applications you mention, but foobar2000 with the foo_upnp add-on works well with MinimServer (with one relatively minor limitation, described in the MinimServer documentation). It seems to have no problems with gapless playback, which AFAIK is a renderer rather than a Control Point issue.

Quote:I am surprised that the manufacturers have not put more effort into developing the control point software.

I'm not surprised. Software is expensive to develop, but typically has to be provided free with hardware. Third party applications (such as the Bubble products) can only be sold at a price point that both keeps them in competition with device manufacturers' freeware and responds to the 'free software' culture of the internet. Inevitably, if we expect software to be free or cheap, some user requirements will not be met. That will not stop me asking for new features, however .

David