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Netgear Readynas Ultra 2 plus
25-10-2017, 16:31
Post: #11
RE: Netgear Readynas Ultra 2 plus
Seems I should have used dbpoweramp to rip. However, the pc I use for ripping is locked for software installations (work pc), and the one I can install programs on has no cd drive.... I of course could buy a USB cd r/w drive to add to the "open" pc. But having copied 80% of my collection I would love to avoid doing this over again with dbpoweramp or another program.

Somehow I like the idea of having the rips in original format, not converted. Thinking that converting to lower res and back always will be less optimal (which might be wrong, but that's my logic).

Anyway, I have a NEW problem!!

I deleted Minimserver from the Readynas just to see if the problem with the app not finding the streamer/NAS would go away again. Good news: I can now control the player with no fuss, just like before adding MinimServer. So the problem was related to adding Minimserver.
To continue the problem solving I thought I could simply add Minim again, and as next step disable ReadyDLNA streaming, hoping that having both running could be the culprit.
Now, trying to install Minim once again nothing happens. Just a wheel rotating where the first time it was installed in less than a minute. And the Frontview window seems completely "frozen". I am going to restart both NAS and pc to see if this will let me install again.

When MinimServer is running again I will try to convert the tags of the Wav files, just a couple for a start.

Claus
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25-10-2017, 19:19 (This post was last modified: 25-10-2017 19:24 by DavidHB.)
Post: #12
RE: Netgear Readynas Ultra 2 plus
(25-10-2017 16:31)ClausDK Wrote:  Somehow I like the idea of having the rips in original format, not converted. Thinking that converting to lower res and back always will be less optimal (which might be wrong, but that's my logic).

No discourtesy intended, but I'm afraid that is wrong.

FLAC uses lossless compression. When the stream is decompressed for playing, the digital data that is played is identical to the original. Manufacturers have tested this on many occasions. If there is any difference between the sound from a WAV file and the sound from the corresponding FLAC file (and, as I said, this is a controversial issue), it results from the different way(s) in which the renderer handles the different formats, and not from the formats themselves.

While this might seem to be a distinction without a difference, it isn't. As the performance of renderers improves over time, the difference in sound quality may change or disappear entirely. So any difference is context dependent. Moreover, if you transcode FLAC to WAV, the renderer will know no different; from its perspective, the stream is WAV data, indeed the original WAV data that was encoded in the FLAC file. At no point in the chain of events does the resolution of the music data change. Even when the 16 bit FLAC file is transcoded to WAV24, the extra bit depth is padded out with zeroes, so the digital music data remains the same.

I hope that this explains why you are not losing anything substantive by storing your music files in FLAC rather than WAV format.

David
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26-10-2017, 07:52
Post: #13
RE: Netgear Readynas Ultra 2 plus
David, it's just that it seems logical to me that once you have compressed the WAV file to a FLAC that contains less information (less bytes) then whatever has disappeared in this proces will be missing in the playback, with an audible effect (in theory). Will the transcoding to wav during playback create a wav format with estimated or interpolated values, or will the transcoded signal be 100% bit perfect compared to the original wav file? How would the transcoding know exactly what to add to compensate for what was taken away when compressing from wav to flac ?

I'm not saying that you are wrong, not at all, it's just that it seems a bit against logics to me. I do however know that many files (not all) can be compressed to .zip files and the likes and later expanded to the exact original content. It might be the same here.

I will make a test and convert a few files to FLAC and see if the tags will be fixed.

Info to Simon
As mentioned above I had a problem re-installing Minimserver. Tried 4-5 times, including a reboot of both server and pc, with no luck.
I then copied the .bin file to the backup folder on the NAS, and installed from there. That worked!
I'm quite, but not completely, sure that I originally installed from the Downloads folder, reinstall from there wasn't possible.
It might be useful to you to know this, in case other users should have the same problem. :-)

I've only just got it running again, will get on with my experiments later today or in the weekend.

Claus
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26-10-2017, 08:00
Post: #14
RE: Netgear Readynas Ultra 2 plus
Just a quick one for now:
Is it correct that Album doesn't show on the tags list ??

Index tags are: Artist, Date, Genre, All Artists, Composer, Conductor, Orchestra .
Tag options are: Album.sortTags={Album, Artist}
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26-10-2017, 10:50
Post: #15
RE: Netgear Readynas Ultra 2 plus
(26-10-2017 07:52)ClausDK Wrote:  I'm not saying that you are wrong, not at all, it's just that it seems a bit against logics to me. I do however know that many files (not all) can be compressed to .zip files and the likes and later expanded to the exact original content. It might be the same here.

Yes, it is the same here. The file becomes smaller but no information has been lost.
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26-10-2017, 10:52
Post: #16
RE: Netgear Readynas Ultra 2 plus
(26-10-2017 08:00)ClausDK Wrote:  Just a quick one for now:
Is it correct that Album doesn't show on the tags list ??

Index tags are: Artist, Date, Genre, All Artists, Composer, Conductor, Orchestra .
Tag options are: Album.sortTags={Album, Artist}

The "albums" menu selection is always shown and there is no need to include Album in indexTags.
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26-10-2017, 11:05
Post: #17
RE: Netgear Readynas Ultra 2 plus
(26-10-2017 07:52)ClausDK Wrote:  Info to Simon
As mentioned above I had a problem re-installing Minimserver. Tried 4-5 times, including a reboot of both server and pc, with no luck.
I then copied the .bin file to the backup folder on the NAS, and installed from there. That worked!
I'm quite, but not completely, sure that I originally installed from the Downloads folder, reinstall from there wasn't possible.
It might be useful to you to know this, in case other users should have the same problem. :-)

Thanks for letting me know. I don't know what would cause this and I haven't seen it myself. It sounds like an issue with the ReadyNAS add-on installer perhaps having some incorrect information associated with the original file path.
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26-10-2017, 18:01 (This post was last modified: 26-10-2017 18:03 by DavidHB.)
Post: #18
RE: Netgear Readynas Ultra 2 plus
(26-10-2017 07:52)ClausDK Wrote:  David, it's just that it seems logical to me that once you have compressed the WAV file to a FLAC that contains less information (less bytes) then whatever has disappeared in this process will be missing in the playback, with an audible effect (in theory). Will the transcoding to wav during playback create a wav format with estimated or interpolated values, or will the transcoded signal be 100% bit perfect compared to the original wav file? How would the transcoding know exactly what to add to compensate for what was taken away when compressing from wav to flac ?

As Simon said, nothing is lost, so the stream is bit perfect, just as a unzipped file is bit perfect compared with the original. The compressed file contains all the information needed to restore it to its original state.

(26-10-2017 07:52)ClausDK Wrote:  I'm not saying that you are wrong, not at all, it's just that it seems a bit against logics to me. I do however know that many files (not all) can be compressed to .zip files and the likes and later expanded to the exact original content. It might be the same here.

What you are feeling is not that it is against logic (because the logic supports what Simon and I are saying), but that the process feels counter-intuitive. I can understand that feeling. But I do assure you that, in converting your files to FLAC, you will not lose any data at all, and they can be fully converted back to WAV at any time.

David
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26-10-2017, 23:57
Post: #19
RE: Netgear Readynas Ultra 2 plus
David, you're right, counter-intuitive is a better word for it.In Danish there is hardly a difference between "seems (or feels) illogical" and counter-intuitive. In fact, I don't even think we have a word for counter-intuitive, except for illogical. :-)

Anyway, I have news on my tags and streaming problems, good news (sort of).

When I got home from the office I just tried to see if I could use the Naim app and put on some music, while downloading Foobar to convert the wav files to flac. I chose this not least because I could also edit metadata/tags with it. I started editing tags some weeks ago with MP3tag editor, however that was very, very slow when editing album artist info on more than 1-3 songs at a time. 10 minutes or so. After installing Minimserver and switching to Readynas it got even slower, much slower, so it now takes 20 minutes or more to change tags on 2 songs!!

First, the Naim app is working perfectly again, meaning that it stays connected to the streamer/server and if shut down and re-opened it finds the streamer instantly again. The problems I had after first install of Minimserver seem to be history, so first problem is solved (or at least it's gone).

Next, I checked if the albums/songs I could see in the app in fact were the mp3 files only, or if they were a mix of mp3 and wav files. It turned out to be a mix, so it was not a "simple" question of mp3 = working, wav = not working. Rather it seemed like some mp3 files were missing (or not tagged correctly) as well.

I then started converting some wav files to flac to see what would happen. The flacs were shown in the app, but listed alphabetically without track nr info. In Foobar's property info I could see that the wav files I had converted didn't have a track nr. So before continuing converting to flac, I added the track nr. to the properties of the wav files, and then when converting they were included in the flac file info as well.

I then updated track number info on all the songs in an album folder and converted the files to flac. And did a "rescan" in Minimwatch. Surprise!! Suddenly I could see not just the new flac files with track nr. but also the wav files I had updated with track nr. info.

So, apart from now being able to control the player with the app again, it also seems as if I "simply" have to open all the "untagged" files in Foobar and set track nr. info, then the songs will reappear in the app as before. And I can see Danish, Swedish and German characters... :-D

My conclusion: simply converting to flac is not a solution since I then need to add track nr. info afterwards. And if I add track nr. before converting, then I don't need to convert at all...!
As far as I can tell this is the situation.

What's left then is to open all "untagged" music files in Foobar, add track nr. and run a Minimwatch Rescan. With some 5-6.000 files to edit, one by one, this will take some more than just a few hours.

What's a bit strange is that quite a few wav files were copied with correct track nr. info from start. Could be 5-10% (closer to 5 I'd guess).

I'll post an update some days from now, to confirm that everything is fine.

Thank you very much to both of you for your kind, patient and very quick help.

Claus
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28-10-2017, 16:38
Post: #20
RE: Netgear Readynas Ultra 2 plus
Hi, Claus

Given that MP3Tag has, on its Tools menu, a simple but very effective auto numbering wizard, getting MP3Tag to work better for you would appear to be a priority.

I can think of only three factors that would cause the slowdown, and they could be combined.

Firstly, you may be using MP3Tag over the network. If you are directly accessing the music files on your NAS, and you are trying to open a lot of files at once, this could be part of the problem. More importantly, perhaps, it begs the question as to how you are doing backups. My strategy is to download, rip or edit all music files in the master library on my PC (a backup drive attached to the PC will probably do as well), and then copy all changes (using the Microsoft SyncToy application) to my NAS boxes, and have MinimServer do a rescan. That way I automatically have backups in place.

Secondly, your PC may be a bit old or have limited resources. Again loading a lot of files at once (particularly if the PC is short of RAM) can choke the available memory, leading to a lot of disk swapping.

Thirdly, with a medium sized music collection you can slow down even a high spec computer if you try to access too many files at once in MP3Tag. The art is to access only a few folders at a time. Try loading, say, just a dozen folders (or up to 200 tracks) at one go, and see if you still get the slowdown. If things are set up so that Mp3Tag will try to load everything at once, select a music folder in Windows Explorer, and use its right click context menu to open it in Mp3Tag, then use the 'Add folder' button to include more folders to the selection.

If you can work reasonably quickly in MP3Tag with one or two folders loaded at a time, the auto numbering wizard is your best bet. All this assumes that (as is customary and sensible) you have each album in its own sub-folder. If, for any reason, you have albums all jumbled up together, I recommend that you correct this, and rearrange your folder structure accordingly, before you do anything else.

David
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