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Auralic Lightning DS App (Software) - Impressions and Information


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I have a big problem with QoBuz on LDS - extremely slow to load I.e. 5 minutes, sometime s doesn't load at all. I have reinstalled LDS, restarted Aries lots but same still happening, almost like it is hanging. Radio, and all other local server options work fine but...

 

 

...Since I mainly rely on QoBuz this is getting to be a serious Aries deal-breaker for me.

 

I never thought I'd say that but ...

 

...There's a fair amount of choice out there now and if I can't trust this...

 

If nothing comes back off this post, I'll get in touch with Auralic support.

 

Did you try qobuz in you home with an another device ? iPhone or computer using the same network of the aries ?

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  • 2 weeks later...
Yes, 81.5% of the market in 2014:

Android and iOS Squeeze the Competition, Swelling to 96.3% of the Smartphone Operating System Market for Both 4Q14 and CY14, According to IDC - prUS25450615

 

Auralic is shooting themselves in the keister. And making a lot of customers angry.

 

 

Not so sure ... Develop only on iOS is fare more simplier, because there is a limited number of iOS tablet.

 

How many different android tablet on the market ? With different screens, cpu, ram, os etc ... Too much difficult to ensure a perfect experience with those numerous models. It's not possible to test every version (ask some android developpers ...)

 

So i can understand the decision of Auralic to choose only IOS to ensure a perfect user experience. And you need to have more developers ans more skills to be able to develop 2 versions of the same software products. Auralic is not a big company with 1000 employees.

 

Maybe they will sell less products with that, but maybe they will be better ?

 

And when people have some ultra high end system; i think that they can afford an ipad :)

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A good question is : Will we have the promised functionalities like DSD upsampling, DSP room correction and so on ... ?

 

At this time it's not so sure ... Like the difference between the Aries an Aries Mini in terms of sound quality.

 

The Mini has more functionnalities (Bluetooth, internal HDD, on board DAC) and cost 1/4 of the price of the Original Aries... The main difference in power is the amount of RAM (256MB instead of 512MB), and no special clock or HQ PSU. But does the original Aries will sound 4x better ? I'm not sure ...

 

So more for less with the Mini ... I hope that the actual owner of the Aries (like me) will have a lot of dedicated functionnalities that the Mini will not have.

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+1 I never got the point of DSP and 'audiophile'. The word 'equalizer' springs to mind. ;-) With DSP the original signal that is mostly brought to your ears while running through expensive cables and components is altered. To me that's a contradiction.

 

My point is not to say if DSP room correction is a good thing or not :) i just quoted the futures and promised features.

 

Does auralic will keep their promises regarding the evolution of the Aries ?

 

i still skeptic because of an another story : Aries can output DSD64 to SPDIF output, it' clearly specified in the website. I've an issue with that and my Dac. I've contacted the support who told me that it's not really an official feature. It can work but still untested... The reason : people use USB instead...

 

For me, if the tech specs sheet of the product say : DSD64 output to coaxial or optical, it's an official features and must work ...

 

so can we believe in Auralic promises anymore ?

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Android version of LDS (with full function) was release by summer of this year and have delivered all functions which are same as iOS version by the time it has released.

 

There is no additional development plan based on this version in the future. For all platform except for iOS, we will look for a web browser based solution to avoid all kind of stupid compatibility problem. Again, there is no timeline for new solution at right moment.

 

For anyone whom have back-ordered ARIES MINI, there wont be a Android version of LDS for this device, you will have to use iPhone, iPad or iPod touch to control it. If you feel uncomfortable of this, please cancel your order. There wont be Android version in the future.

 

Android is a master of pain for developer especially for hardware related App. If you are blaming for auralic, you are free to go for any other competitors such as Linn, Lumin, Aurender.

 

Thank you for this honest response ! I can agree more abut the Android development, it's a nightmare ...

 

I can not speak for all the Auralic client, but maybe to have a "Roadmap" with future feature can be a good thing for us. It's shows more transparency about what we can expect. Of course, not all of the roadmap (maybe something for 2-3 months) because of the other competitors and your strategy.

 

Aries Mini with bluetooth is a very good surprise, but actual Aries customers may want to have some good suprises too :) Editing meta-data directly in the Lightning DS app is a good thing to start ... But for the other, (DSP, DSD upsampling or maybe minor features), a clear statement of what can be done, or not, or things abandonned will be a good start :)

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Thanks for the support. Tag editing function (not includes cover art editing) is possible when use Lightning Server because the server software has write permission to operate the file. It is not possible through other UPNP/DLNA serve software. The current version of Lightning Server already supports this function and the API was there for a while, even fully tested. We are waiting for iOS team to finish the iPhone version before we can add this function. So basically, this is close.

 

Can you spoil us with the next Bing features on the road ? :)

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Many thanks. Now giving Lightening Server a go and it seems much better.

 

I've a Synology too and i'm using only SMB Share ... It's easier with Lightning DS. Using Minimserver add some advanced filtering option and transcoding, but it depends what you need ... Lightning DS can be sufficent for a majority ...

 

Why Lightning Server is superior to other server software? – AURALIC LIMITED

 

But everything is not true, like the autodetection of file changes. It's not working (yet) with a NAS, only USB disk.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 1 month later...
Has anyone else had problems with AURALiC's customer service? I recently purchased an Aries streamer,and the Lighting DS and Lighting Server combo is really not much past the beta phase (lots of problems and glitches) IMO. I contacted customer service through the website and it took days for each email to be responded to. After 5 or 6 emails over two weeks, they just quit responding altogether and my problems were never solved.

 

What are you glitches ? I'm using an Aries Full from many months without big issues (just comestic one or UI improvements). I stream from a NAS with ethernet with no flaws, no hiccup, cut or something else for hours with DSD256 and DXD.

 

So what do you mean by lots of problem ?

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I can get ti to work with Minimserver, but really would like the functionality of the Lighting Server.

 

The main problems are...

 

At times, I can not connect at all to the lighting server. (Note: My WiFi network works fine, so it is not that.)

 

The last track on many albums shows as a second album.

 

Playlists add albums that I have not added to the list. Some album covers do not appear in the playlists.

 

Are you using an airport extreme or time capsule as wifi router ?

 

For Lightning Server, it works as expected, so it's troubling that it doesn't work for you. I'm using ethernet and not wifi. Maybe this is why i have less issue :)

 

The last track on many albums shows as a second album. --> I never had those issue, and i've more than 600 albums and all are OK. Maybe a metadata/tag issue. Can you check with a software that everything is OK ?

 

Playlists add albums that I have not added to the list. Some album covers do not appear in the playlists --> I'm not using playlist so i will check

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I was about to rush out and buy a Mini, bummer about LDS not being supported on Android I thought - but I still have my trusty iPod Touch (I thought, patting myself on the back).

But wait - it's an iPad only app!

So I'm stymied. It was going to be used on a ship (I'm a seafarer) as a headless solution with my 5TB WD powered external drive, but I don't feel like investing $$ on another IOS device tied into the world of iTunes pain.

So back to my MacBook Air and Audirvana I go, even though I'm getting the dreaded muting (and my iFi Nano DSD DAC mystifyingly dropping off the system under Audio Midi setup).

Shame!

 

you don't need iTunes anymore to use tour iPad it configure it. Only of you want to put music or other datas. Even the update are done other the air. My wife is using her iPad Air 2 and iTunes is not installed on its computer.

 

Using an iPod touch (depending the generation) can be a pain due to power limitation.

 

And for me it's Android the pain :) I'm using both at home (tablet and shield TV) and omg i love my iPad ! So smooth, ui consistent and stable :), and true tablet app :) but Life is a question of choice :)

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  • 1 month later...
I have Some serious problems with Lightning DS. It sees every song as a separate album.

 

Also when I chose a genre it does not disparate list of artists, it just lists every song from that genre. Is there any way to reduce the numb of genres? When I use foobar I get maybe 10 to 14 genres, lightning DS gives me 37.

 

The app in general is very hard to use. I cannot figure out how it works.

 

Very hard to use ? Where ?

 

You problem is related to metadata issues in your files. You have to tag correctly your file to ensure that LDS handle them correctly in the database.

 

Genre are not invented/created by LDS, but found in your files.

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Compared to Mediamonkey, an app for foobar, the Lightning DS app is difficult to use. I have no clue what the difference is between Library View and Folder View or what the purpose of Collection is.

 

For some songs and albums I used multiple genres. So I could find the same artist under multiple genres. I have a lot of doom metal. So I created a genre Doom. But those same album I wanted to find in the genre metal. So I tagged them doom; metal or metal; doom. In lightning DS I find the genres Doom, Doom Metal, Metal Doom and Metal. This is really annoying. In Lightning DS I also no hwva the genres pop folk, folk pop, pop reggae, pop electro, etc.

 

Also each songs is an album. So if I select an artist I see, 600 albums, 613 songs. I never play separate songs. In foorbar I just selected an album and pressed play. That is why I never use play lists I dislike it a lot when people mix a lot.

 

Did you try to avoid space between genre names ? Like Metal/Doom and Doom/Metal ?

 

Each song is album is clairly a issue with your tags. Can you post some image of some (or your) tag software with many of your tracks to understand the problem ?

 

I've more than 6000 tracks and everything is kept in order, each track is in its own album. And i can choose to play an entire album or some tracks, or mix. So i think we have to check how your tags are handled by LDS. DO you use "group album" or "compilation" or something like that ?

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Two pictures.

 

The top one is from Foobar. It displays the album title. As far as I can tell it only has 1 title.

 

The bottom pic is from LDS it shows each song as a separate album. You can also see that Metallica contains 136 albums.

 

Can anyone tell me how to fix this.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]24480[/ATTACH]

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]24481[/ATTACH]

 

This is my LDS, as you can see no issue. Check your tags, i'm pretty sure this is the issue. Can you post some pics about your tag software (not LDS or there, your tagging soft to edit the metadata).

 

IMG_0316.PNG

IMG_0315.PNG

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here is a picture of the metadata using mp3tag. All the metadata was generated by dBpoweramp when I ripped my CDs.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]24499[/ATTACH]

 

I have been told that there is a setting somewhere, where you can select something like show tracks instead of show albums.

 

Hello, do you have an album view ? Because you have individual tracks, but i can not see something like number of track in an album (2 on 21 for example).

 

See the pics attached.

 

yate2.jpg

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I am using MonkeyMoteHD as control app for Foobar2000.

 

All my files are stored on my Synology DS214 NAS, I use the Lightning DS as media server, I also tried minimserver but that give me the same problems.

 

But I have found the problem. Both Lightning DS Server and Minimserver cannot handle it when the songs of each album are in different folders. My folder structer is more or less as follows:

 

NAS\muziek\artist\album\song name\year of song\song

 

as example

 

\\DISKSTATION\Muziek\After Forever\Decipher\11 After Forever - Forlorn Hope\2001\11.flac

 

However when I have:

 

\\DISKSTATION\Muziek\Metallica\Metallica\my friend of misery.flac

 

LDS does see it as an album.

 

Foobar2000 does not have this problem.

 

good catch. But your way to handle your file structure is very complicated ! What is the purpose ?

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Hi some help here please with setting up after finally getting a iPhone 6S that can run Lightning DS.

 

I updated the firmware, setup the Aries choosing outputs etc. - no problems so far following the step by step instructions.

 

Problem encountered with setting up library from a networked drive - a WD My Book attached to my Macbook via USB. I selected the Network Shared Folder and could see the folders within. However, when I selected the folder, it said:

 

Error

Connection failed with the error

The network name could not be found

 

I have attached screenshots as follows.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]24625[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]24626[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]24627[/ATTACH]

 

Is there some other setting I need to do?

 

The existing Macbook is running LMS and can access the drive with no problems.

 

Any help much appreciated.

 

What is the folder you want to use ? Music i suppose ? Because LDS can have some trouble with space or special characters in folder name.

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