Streaming quality

[sddawson]

Just installed Minimserver on a Mac. Working really well streaming to an Oppo BDP-103. Most of my music is ALAC, and up to 24/192. Pardon the newbie question, but does Minimserver deliver these files to the Oppo in a bit-perfect fashion? No transcoding of any sort?

I'm still hunting around for a good iOS controller app. Man, there's a lot of variation in the quality of these apps! So far, I've found that 8player seems to do the job (although I'm not fond of the UI), and all the others I've tried haven't been up to the challenge. One thing that confuses me about 8player - using it's own player it seems to be able to play 24/192 files streamed from Minimserver on an iPhone 5 and an iPad Air. How is this possible? Does something transcode on the iDevice to enable this? There is a Setting called Native Formats Player with options for Default iOS (the default), Alternative iOS and Custom. Anyone know what these actually mean?

Thanks for any pointers!

[simoncn]

(08-07-2014 11:36)sddawson Wrote:  Just installed Minimserver on a Mac. Working really well streaming to an Oppo BDP-103. Most of my music is ALAC, and up to 24/192. Pardon the newbie question, but does Minimserver deliver these files to the Oppo in a bit-perfect fashion? No transcoding of any sort?

MinimServer streams all files "bit perfect" without transcoding. MinimStreamer (an optional extension to MinimServer) can do transcoding of certain stream types.

Quote:I'm still hunting around for a good iOS controller app. Man, there's a lot of variation in the quality of these apps! So far, I've found that 8player seems to do the job (although I'm not fond of the UI), and all the others I've tried haven't been up to the challenge. One thing that confuses me about 8player - using it's own player it seems to be able to play 24/192 files streamed from Minimserver on an iPhone 5 and an iPad Air. How is this possible? Does something transcode on the iDevice to enable this? There is a Setting called Native Formats Player with options for Default iOS (the default), Alternative iOS and Custom. Anyone know what these actually mean?

Thanks for any pointers!

From this, it sounds like 8player contains some transcoding capabilities. I don't use 8player myself and I don't know what these options mean.

[sddawson]

Thanks so much for taking the time to reply. Do you have any recommendations for other iOS controller apps, if you don't use 8player?

[simoncn]

(08-07-2014 20:44)sddawson Wrote:  Thanks so much for taking the time to reply. Do you have any recommendations for other iOS controller apps, if you don't use 8player?

My preferred apps are BubbleUPnP on Android and Linn Kinsky on Windows. (I have a Linn DS.) There is a version of Kinsky for iOS, but unfortunately Kinsky doesn't work very well with with non-Linn renderers. Will you be streaming to an external renderer or doing playback on the iOS device?

Another iOS control point is PlugPlayer, but I don't find the UI very convenient to use.

[sddawson]

I'm streaming to Oppo players. Yes, Kinsky doesn't work too well with that. PlugPlayer works, but doesn't run in the background - switch away from it and the next track won't play when the current one finishes. 8player and Creation 5 work, but don't have any sort of iOS aesthetic.

I might see how Jriver works. Don't really want to run another music library alongside iTunes (which I use heavily for Airplay around the house), but it sounds like their DLNA support and iOS app are really good.

Your thoughts are much appreciated...

[simoncn]

(08-07-2014 21:38)sddawson Wrote:  I'm streaming to Oppo players. Yes, Kinsky doesn't work too well with that. PlugPlayer works, but doesn't run in the background - switch away from it and the next track won't play when the current one finishes. 8player and Creation 5 work, but don't have any sort of iOS aesthetic.

I might see how Jriver works. Don't really want to run another music library alongside iTunes (which I use heavily for Airplay around the house), but it sounds like their DLNA support and iOS app are really good.

Your thoughts are much appreciated...

You won't get the main benefit of MinimServer (the Intelligent Browsing tree) if you use JRiver as the iOS control point. This is because the JRiver server imports the MinimServer library and presents it through its own browse tree.

JRiver is a very powerful server with lots and lots of features. I find it too complex and overwhelming, but some people love it.

You didn't mention the OPPO iOS app. What are the problems with that?

[sddawson]

What do you mean by "the JRiver server imports the MinimServer library"? Do you just mean that it will be scanning and importing the same set of folders that MinimServer scans? There's no actual import of the MinimServer library/database is there?

The lack of Intelligent Browsing is a bit of a worry. All I really need, though, is the ability to browse by artist, album and genre. Within genre, I then like to see artists or perhaps albums. Not sure how Jriver would handle that.

Unfortunately, the Oppo iOS app only lets you browse media attached to the Oppo itself. It's not a DLNA controller app, and can't browse a Media Server link MinimServer (as far as I can see).

[simoncn]

(08-07-2014 23:05)sddawson Wrote:  What do you mean by "the JRiver server imports the MinimServer library"? Do you just mean that it will be scanning and importing the same set of folders that MinimServer scans? There's no actual import of the MinimServer library/database is there?

JRiver imports the resource URLs and associated DIDL-Lite metadata, not the files themselves.

Quote:The lack of Intelligent Browsing is a bit of a worry. All I really need, though, is the ability to browse by artist, album and genre. Within genre, I then like to see artists or perhaps albums. Not sure how Jriver would handle that.

For this, JRiver's browsing will probably be good enough.

Quote:Unfortunately, the Oppo iOS app only lets you browse media attached to the Oppo itself. It's not a DLNA controller app, and can't browse a Media Server link MinimServer (as far as I can see).

Thanks, I hadn't realised this.

[sddawson]

Hmmm...obviously more to learn here Do you mean that Jriver will just be using the tags in the existing music files to build DIDL-Lite metadata? Not heard of this DIDL-stuff before, but from a quick search it looks like the metadata that gets exposed to DLNA clients etc.

Can you give me some examples of how you use Intelligent Browsing yourself? Maybe I should be using it more effectively!

Thanks again for being so helpful (and patient)...

[simoncn]

(08-07-2014 23:38)sddawson Wrote:  Hmmm...obviously more to learn here Do you mean that Jriver will just be using the tags in the existing music files to build DIDL-Lite metadata? Not heard of this DIDL-stuff before, but from a quick search it looks like the metadata that gets exposed to DLNA clients etc.

Can you give me some examples of how you use Intelligent Browsing yourself? Maybe I should be using it more effectively!

Thanks again for being so helpful (and patient)...

No, I mean that MinimServer creates DIDL-Lite metadata (which doesn't contain all the tags in your files) and JRiver reads the DIDL-Lite metadata from MinimServer. This means JRiver doesn't have access to the original tags in your files, just the DIDL-Lite "view" of a subset of these tags that it obtained from MinimServer.

With Intelligent Browing, you can browse your library by any tags in any order. You can also add any custom tags that you want. If you are just using a fixed Genre/Artist/Album sequence for browsing, a server like JRiver will be good enough and the DIDL-Lite metadata will contain what you need to enable this.

An example of Intelligent Browsing:

Composer > Beethoven > Genre > Piano Concerto > Soloist > Brendel > Conductor > Rattle > Composition > Emperor Concerto

or in a different order:

Genre > Piano Concerto > Conductor > Rattle > Composer > Beethoven > Composition > Emperor Concerto > Soloist > Brendel

At each stage of browsing, only the choices still available are presented (this is the "intelligent" part).