Auralic Lightning DS App (Software) - Impressions and Information

[bmichels]

Yes, mixing Tidal and local music on same playlist is kinda fun. I do that on the Aurender; it is interesting to have a Tidal track followed by a local track (same song) to compare, for example.

 

and so... when you compare 2 same track, does the local version always sound better than the tidal streamed one ? Much better ?

[khollister]

New Minimserver & Aries user here and I am in need of serious assistance. The problem is I am not getting the expected results in LightningDS as far as what tags are displayed nor what I can search for.

 

My setup is ...

* Minim server on QNAP NAS, default properties in Minimwatch on my laptop

* Using Metadatics for editing tags, original tags were created in iTunes

* LightningDS 1.7 (latest)

 

My tag architecture is (in a few test albums) ...

* AlbumArtist = conductor, orchestra

* TrackArtist = soloist (optional)

* Orchestra = orchestra

* Conductor = conductor

* Composer = composer

* Work = oeuvre, e.g. "Piano Concerto No. 5"

 

LDS appears to be displaying only the AlbumArtist and search in LDS only appears to be trying to find all of the search terms in a single tag field.

 

For example, I have a recording of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto. The album and track names contain "Clarinet Concerto" and the Composer tag is "Mozart, W.A.". I thought I could search for "Mozart clarinet concerto" and find the recording but LDS returns nothing. Searching on "Mozart" returns all of the correct albums (including the clarinet concerto) and searching on "clarinet concerto" returns all albums/tracks that contain the string "clarinet concerto" from all composers, but the search seems to be literal not and'ed.

 

Searching the soloist name returns nothing even though it is in the TRACKARTIST tag and PlugPlayer on my laptop does show the TRACKARTIST values in the "All Artists" list. Minimserver has "All Artists" included in the indexTags property.

 

The custom WORK tag I created seems to be invisible to LDS.

 

I assume the basic problem is my limited understanding of Minimserver and tagging in general, but trying to read through the Minimserver manual isn't helping a lot.

 

I think I have 3 general areas of confusion ...

 

1) The LDS search syntax/behavior

2) How to get LDS to see custom tags (and TRACKARTIST, for that matter)

3) Lack of understanding on how Minimserver and LDS are interacting with regards to all of the various artist tags (ALBUMARTIST, TRACKARTIST, CONDUCTOR, ORCHESTRA)

 

Keith

[InfernoSTi]

New Minimserver & Aries user here and I am in need of serious assistance. The problem is I am not getting the expected results in LightningDS as far as what tags are displayed nor what I can search for.

 

My setup is ...

* Minim server on QNAP NAS, default properties in Minimwatch on my laptop

* Using Metadatics for editing tags, original tags were created in iTunes

* LightningDS 1.7 (latest)

 

My tag architecture is (in a few test albums) ...

* AlbumArtist = conductor, orchestra

* TrackArtist = soloist (optional)

* Orchestra = orchestra

* Conductor = conductor

* Composer = composer

* Work = oeuvre, e.g. "Piano Concerto No. 5"

 

LDS appears to be displaying only the AlbumArtist and search in LDS only appears to be trying to find all of the search terms in a single tag field.

 

For example, I have a recording of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto. The album and track names contain "Clarinet Concerto" and the Composer tag is "Mozart, W.A.". I thought I could search for "Mozart clarinet concerto" and find the recording but LDS returns nothing. Searching on "Mozart" returns all of the correct albums (including the clarinet concerto) and searching on "clarinet concerto" returns all albums/tracks that contain the string "clarinet concerto" from all composers, but the search seems to be literal not and'ed.

 

Searching the soloist name returns nothing even though it is in the TRACKARTIST tag and PlugPlayer on my laptop does show the TRACKARTIST values in the "All Artists" list. Minimserver has "All Artists" included in the indexTags property.

 

The custom WORK tag I created seems to be invisible to LDS.

 

I assume the basic problem is my limited understanding of Minimserver and tagging in general, but trying to read through the Minimserver manual isn't helping a lot.

 

I think I have 3 general areas of confusion ...

 

1) The LDS search syntax/behavior

2) How to get LDS to see custom tags (and TRACKARTIST, for that matter)

3) Lack of understanding on how Minimserver and LDS are interacting with regards to all of the various artist tags (ALBUMARTIST, TRACKARTIST, CONDUCTOR, ORCHESTRA)

 

Keith

 

What does your MinimWatch log show? Any errors or are your search issues related only to LDS?

 

John

[khollister]

What does your MinimWatch log show? Any errors or are your search issues related only to LDS?

 

John

 

So I did more experimenting. I deleted the Album Artist tag and just used Track Artist (aka Artist) = soloist, Conductor & Orchestra. LDS appears to correctly assemble the 3 into an Artist string according to the "Artist.displayFormat={$artist$orchestra$conductor}" entry in tagFormat. I deleted the Artist entry in indexTags and just had All Artist. One oddity is that the entry for the Conductor tag created in Metadatics wouldn't show in LDS, but if I used the demo version of Yate to populate the conductor tag, LDS was fine with it. PlugPlayer had the same issue, so I have sent an email to Metadatics about a possible bug there.

 

What I tried next was marking the album as a compilation and setting the Album Artist tag to "Various". What should happen, I think, is the displayed artist should be the All Artist rule, not "Various". PlugPlayer handles this as expected, but LDS doesn't - it displays Various. I recall some discussion about this last year, but was under the impression it was fixed? Maybe not

 

The Minimserver log has nothing but a few "unexpected end of file" errors and "ignoring incorrect DATE format" warnings - nothing else and nothing on the specific files involved in my testing.

 

On an unrelated not, the "artist.ignore.*={The}" trick mostly worked but I still have a few albums that LDS refuses to not use the "The". The funny thing is that in one case, I had 3 albums that were all originally sorted under "The Wrights" - now 1 has moved to "Wrights, The" but the other 2 are still stubbornly listed as "The Wrights".

 

I can only assume LDS still has several bugs in the uPnP syntax parsing.

[baddog]

Well, I don't have a significant number of classical music albums. All my albums have an artist tag. Perhaps a third have an album artist tag. Compilations usually have the album artist tag set to "Various" and the artist tag for each track to the respective artist. When using the album artist tag you do have to ensure all tracks on the album have the same album artist tag.

 

If you find the artist.ignore setting not working on some albums it is because your album artist tag is probably over riding the artist tag, so check that on the suspect albums. Or check the your string, after much work I found this string is required to handle both artists and album artists correctly:

 

Album.sortTags={Album, Artist}, Artist.ignore.*={The}, AlbumArtist.ignore.*={The}

 

Also be mindful that different control points seem to handle the interaction with Minimserver differently, at the risk of driving yourself insane, you might try seeing how the results look on the Lumin application and/or the Linn Kinsky application on a Mac ( or PC).

 

Yes, if you have an album with the album artist tag set, then Lightning DS will display it using the album artist tag ( ie. Various ). In other words the album artist tag takes precedence over the artist tag.

I will look through the rest of your posting to see if anything else comes to mind.

 

Barr

[baddog]

So I found the following with search in this test I did a search on Artist and Track. I found it shows no results if using both the artist name and the track name in the search. It can locate items if using either just artist or just track. So I think it is a limitation that it cannot search multiple tags at once. FWIW, the Lumin application cannot do so either.

[khollister]

Thanks, Barr. I did hear back from Metadatics on the Conductor tag issue. It turns out the tag they are writing for Conductor is different than the one Yate uses (and LDS is looking for). The dev said he would spin up an update to allow remapping of MP4 tags so I can fix it for LDS. So that mystery is solved. I have to get my head around how to use the various artist/credits tags so I get the flexibility in LDS as well maintain compatibility with iTunes for my AppleTV's.

 

The AlbumArtist ignore entry fixed up my remaining artist sorting issues - thanks!

 

I think the biggest concern now is how the search works. It appears it doesn't try to match the terms across multiple tags but only in a single tag. I can imagine the excuse of keeping it simple, but it really hampers the ability to search large classical libraries. It makes it impossible to associate a composer with a performer or a performer with a work because you would never include all of that in an album or track name.

 

Keith

[baddog]

Your welcome, always happy to assist Keith. I understand and concur with the concern regarding search. I am going to look at the Minimserver documentation a bit more to see if there is some way to assemble a tag that uses the various tags you use and allow it to be searched.

 

Barr

[khollister]

Your welcome, always happy to assist Keith. I understand and concur with the concern regarding search. I am going to look at the Minimserver documentation a bit more to see if there is some way to assemble a tag that uses the various tags you use and allow it to be searched.

 

Barr

 

That would be a great idea if not for the 2nd issue I can't get a handle on - I have not been successful at getting LDS to see any tags other than Artist, AlbumArtist, Track, Album, Orchestra, Conductor, Date & Genre. I have tried adding them to the indexTag and itemTag fields in Minimserver but no joy.

[wdw]

Anyone notice that iPad battery use has increased with Lightening DS...I may be mistaken but it appears to me to be so.

[McMaly]

Same with me, battery drains a lot faster now.

[wdw]

Same with me, battery drains a lot faster now.

Interesting...suspect the dialogue between the Aries and the iPad is continual withput a sleep function....or similar. is is bothersome to look down and see the iPad is at a critcally low battery charge.

[Jimmypowder]

Same with me, battery drains a lot faster now.

 

Yeah I think your right . I make my change of music and close the app out .

[Backwell]

Has anyone had any problems with Lightning DS crashing when touching the Que icon , it has happened once before to me about two weeks ago, I noticed it was back again tonight. I cycled the iPad but it made no difference . Suggestions gladly welcomed !

[alandbush]

I do wish Id been more patient trying to work thru other potential ways to fix it....

 

Missing my playlists very much.

 

Yeah that's what is worrying me - I put a lot of time into making those playlists!

 

So did I, but obviously not enough into considering full consequences before doing the radical....

 

I did see some mumbling from Auralic earlier about making an export function for it.

We´d like that a lot wouldnt we...?

 

A little late now, I know, but I have a sort of work around. It will, however, require a certain amount of repetitive actions dependent on the number of playlists you have.

 

It requires using either the Lumin or Kinsky apps and setting the LDS to Openhome mode.

The latter enables the current LDS queue to be accessed by Lumin/Kinsky from where you can save the queue as a local playlist.

 

So, within LDS, select a playlist; add to the queue; switch to Lumin/Kinsky which should display the queue and save as appropriate.

 

Should LDS require re-installing with the loss of its playlists, then perform the above actions but in reverse.

[wdw]

Other than the quite extraordinary sound we are hearing with the Aries, it is the quite unexpected joy of completely removing iTunes from our library....means I am re-ripping most of my library with DSPoweramp...beta...for the Mac....so highly recommended along with Yate....buffing up a library to archival standard....so we can re-rip an album to a drive without having to kiss the azz of iTunes.

Happy to say goodbye to this old friend but it should be said with some regret, Apple/iTunes, is not really in the business of selling music...their business, now, is just money.

[dr.sah]

For normal use, should i have Aries on Ope Home setings?

[wanta911]

For normal use, should i have Aries on Ope Home setings?

 

Yes

[Cebolla]

For normal use, should i have Aries on Ope Home setings?

Yes

Has it been mentioned/discussed anywhere why both the Lightning DS app and the Aries streamer bother supporting standard UPnP/DLNA streaming (so any possible benefits) when they could just stick to supporting OpenHome Media (ohMedia, aka UPnP with Linn extensions) only?

 

John

[Jimmypowder]

Any word on iPhone app promised months ago ? Also any word on full Android app?

[ksalno]

Has it been mentioned/discussed anywhere why both the Lightning DS app and the Aries streamer bother supporting standard UPnP/DLNA streaming (so any possible benefits) when they could just stick to supporting OpenHome Media (ohMedia, aka UPnP with Linn extensions) only?

 

John

 

I suspect it is because most NAS devices support DLNA natively while most of them require installation of a server to support OH.

[tranz]

Has it been mentioned/discussed anywhere why both the Lightning DS app and the Aries streamer bother supporting standard UPnP/DLNA streaming (so any possible benefits) when they could just stick to supporting OpenHome Media (ohMedia, aka UPnP with Linn extensions) only?

 

John

 

That is intriguing. Also interested in what additional hardware and/or software was needed for OHMedia. Extra memory chip to store the playlist data, more processes, more noise?

 

I am certainly not complaining as Bubble UPnP server broke on my NAS and I can still use DS with other renderers.

[Cebolla]

I suspect it is because most NAS devices support DLNA natively while most of them require installation of a server to support OH.

No, there's no such thing as a media server needing to support OpenHome Media. OhMedia controllers and streamers are designed work with, ie support, normal bog standard UPnP media servers - that is their remit. So the support is actually the other way around.

[Cebolla]

Has it been mentioned/discussed anywhere why both the Lightning DS app and the Aries streamer bother supporting standard UPnP/DLNA streaming (so any possible benefits) when they could just stick to supporting OpenHome Media (ohMedia, aka UPnP with Linn extensions) only?

That is intriguing. Also interested in what additional hardware and/or software was needed for OHMedia. Extra memory chip to store the playlist data, more processes, more noise?

It's just odd the none of the regulars on this thread seem to have questioned it. I imagine it must at least feel a bit unnecessay to those who only use the Lightning DS with the Aries.

As to your other interest I can't really say. You could just as easily make the case for less noise using ohMedia if it proves that its processing takes less effort than standard UPnP.

 

 

 

I am certainly not complaining as Bubble UPnP server broke on my NAS and I can still use DS with other renderers.

Ah, that is certainly one advantage of the Lightning DS app supporting standard UPnP as well as ohMedia. If you have both types of streamers on your network, it allows you to conveniently control them with just the one app. Unfortunately, since this aspect doesn't appear to be used much by Aries owners, the Lightning DS's support of standard UPnP is actually quite buggy. It appears to be still at a beta stage.

[ksalno]

No, there's no such thing as a media server needing to support OpenHome Media. OhMedia controllers and streamers are designed work with, ie support, normal bog standard UPnP media servers - that is their remit. So the support is actually the other way around.

 

If this is the case then why did I have to install Minimserver on my NAS? Other streamers such as Squeezebox and Oppo worked fine with the stock DLNA server on my NAS but not the Lightning app.