Welcome to MinimStreamer!

[simoncn]

(18-12-2013 11:03)retraite Wrote:  Hello Simon

Firstly, thank you for your continuing efforts on our behalf. They are much appreciated.

I would appreciate your guidance on a problem I’m having with transcoding.
I would first say that I find the sound from files transcoded from FLAC to WAV24 on my DS players (Klimax and Renew) preferable to the FLAC files played directly. Whether better or not is another matter, but certainly preferable and not just to my ears.

I’m happy to say that via Minimstreamer, I’m still able to enjoy that benefit and did not find it difficult to set the software up for that purpose.

However, I am having difficulty with the transcoding of streamed content. I followed the instructions in the guide to include Linn Classical in my playlists and the two versions were listed as your guide indicates. The version that is not transcoded pays in mp3 without problem, but when played through Minimstreamer the music will continue for about two minutes and then stops and does not restart unless the DS player is cycled through standby. This happens with settings as “mp3:wav, mp3:wav16 and mp3:wav24. I have not been able to get it to continue beyond two minutes with any combination.

I have tried it with a QNAP 459, QNAP ts219 and a PC and the problem is the same with them all. The stream.converter in each case is ffmpeg, as I too am told that I do not have avconf installed. I have looked at LIBAV with a view to installing it, but don’t feel I have the expertise to interfere with my NAS boxes.

Normally in these situations, I assume that I am at fault, given both my lack of technical expertise and a less than methodical approach, but given that I have got the transcoding to work temporarily, I felt that this time I should outline my experience on the forum and ask for further guidance.

This is working fine for me on a PC and on a QNAP NAS (20 minutes and counting), streaming to my Klimax Renew DS. In terms of sound quality, I find that transcoding the Linn Classical MP3 stream sounds slightly worse, and transcoding the BBC Radio 3 AAC stream sounds significantly better (when streaming to the KRDS in both cases).

At the moment, I can't think of anything that would cause the stream to stop after two minutes. It might be an network issue. To obtain more information, you could try enabling tracing in the log window after about 1 minute 45 seconds and making a copy of the minimserver.log file after the music stops playing. If you're doing this on Windows, the log file is in the folder C:\Users\<your-user-name>\AppData\Roaming\MinimServer\data. The AppData folder is hidden in Explorer, so you need to type the full path into the Explorer address bar. Please PM me when you have a saved copy of the log.

Quote:Could I also suggest that a little more explanation in the guide of how to prepare an M3U file might be helpful to people with less time to experiment than a retired type like me has.

I look forward to your response

M3U is an industry standard format, but I take your point that some users might not be familiar with it. I'll try to make it clearer what's needed.