Advantages of MinimStreamer

[simoncn]

(23-04-2014 12:51)simoncn Wrote:  I would need to verify whether uncompressed files take longer to seek than compressed files.

If you decide to change to compressed FLAC files, you should be able to do a bulk conversion of your existing uncompressed files in dBpoweramp without the need for reripping.

The combination I am using is to rip to compressed FLAC files (default compression level) and play the files transcoded to WAV. I have compared the sound of compressed and uncompressed FLAC files, and I have compared the sound of different FLAC compression levels, and I haven't been able to hear any difference in the sound. However, I do hear a difference in the sound when I transcode a FLAC file to WAV.

As I suspected, uncompressed FLAC files take longer for MinimStreamer to seek than compressed FLAC files.

I ran a test on my Windows PC (faster than a Synology NAS). Seeking to the end of your uncompressed test file took 9 seconds. After converting the file to the default FLAC compression level 5, this took 3 seconds. After adding a seek table using metaflac, this took 0 seconds.

The solution is for you to use FLAC compression, or a seek table, or both. You could try using dBpoweramp to convert the largest file you have into compressed format and see whether the Sonos is able to seek to the end of the track. If not, you would need to add a seek table using the following command:

metaflac --add-seekpoint=10s <filename>