Auralic Lightning DS App (Software) - Impressions and Information

[Grobec]

Aries 2,3 and Minim on a mac Mini.

When I select a track in Lightning I have a long delay before anything plays. The same if I try to pause a playing track.

good router and wired connection to both mac and Aries. Controlling with an ipad2 IOS 8.2

By the way Kazoo on the ipad2 works like a charm [except for Tidal], thanks for the info.

 

Any suggestions for Lightning?

[AllThatJazz]

Slightly off topic. But for those who from time to time wish to control the Aries from their Mac/PC...

 

Thanks for the heads up, Barr. As a long-time Kinsky user, I've been intrigued by Kazoo but like many others could never get it to work on the Mac, so this is great news.

[baddog]

Aries 2,3 and Minim on a mac Mini.

When I select a track in Lightning I have a long delay before anything plays. The same if I try to pause a playing track.

good router and wired connection to both mac and Aries. Controlling with an ipad2 IOS 8.2

By the way Kazoo on the ipad2 works like a charm [except for Tidal], thanks for the info.

 

Any suggestions for Lightning?

 

Lightning DS Application and/or Linn Kazoo on Mac - Time to pause - about a second, maybe less.

 

Lightning DS Application and/or Linn Kazoo on Mac - Time to start a new track about 3-4 seconds.

 

My setup is Apple Airport Extreme as router, with a separate network for 5Ghz. Aries connected to the wireless network. iPad connected to the same wireless network. Macbook Pro also on wireless network. All 802.11n clients. Music is from my NAS running Miminserver connected to a separate Apple Airport Extreme on a different floor.

 

BTW - when I run the same test using a locally connected USB stick in the Aries, pausing is almost instantaneous. Playback just slightly faster than using the NAS, in the 1- 3 second range.

 

What kind of times are you seeing?

 

Barr

[baddog]

Thanks for the heads up, Barr. As a long-time Kinsky user, I've been intrigued by Kazoo but like many others could never get it to work on the Mac, so this is great news.

 

Thanks, I have played around with Kazoo some more and it is a significant improvement on the Kinsky application which I am now deleting from my Mac. Navigation, user interface, functionality are much improved.

 

Even a basic functions such as browsing albums is much improved, for example if you were browsing albums that start with "C", and choose to open one to view the tracks and then decide to navigate back, it takes you back to albums that start with "C". The Kinsky application would take you all the way back to the beginning of the album lists.

 

Linn did a very, very nice job here.

[Grobec]

Lightning DS Application and/or Linn Kazoo on Mac - Time to pause - about a second, maybe less.

 

Lightning DS Application and/or Linn Kazoo on Mac - Time to start a new track about 3-4 seconds.

 

My setup is Apple Airport Extreme as router, with a separate network for 5Ghz. Aries connected to the wireless network. iPad connected to the same wireless network. Macbook Pro also on wireless network. All 802.11n clients. Music is from my NAS running Miminserver connected to a separate Apple Airport Extreme on a different floor.

 

BTW - when I run the same test using a locally connected USB stick in the Aries, pausing is almost instantaneous. Playback just slightly faster than using the NAS, in the 1- 3 second range.

 

What kind of times are you seeing?

 

Barr

About 15 seconds.

also running Ipad on 5hrz n the rest is hard wired. All is more or less in the same room, by the way so signals are strong.

I re-downloaded Lightning, reset Aries and rebooted the whole gang starting at the cable modem.

[AllThatJazz]

Even a basic functions such as browsing albums is much improved, for example if you were browsing albums that start with "C", and choose to open one to view the tracks and then decide to navigate back, it takes you back to albums that start with "C". The Kinsky application would take you all the way back to the beginning of the album lists.

 

This makes my day. Long have I dreaded the forced relocation to "A" (and subsequent recovery scrolling) after browsing, say, my Zappa collection.

[baddog]

@Grobec, are you using a NAS or networked music server with your Aries? I assume you do not have a locally attached HD?

[keeper]

I installed Kazoo to give it a try, see's my music but i get 'Music Not Available' when i select anything??

[guildenstern]

New Aries arrived today, and playing music within a half-hour (after a few hours yesterday getting ready, installing MinimServer on NAS, etc.) My 1800-plus album music library loaded really quickly -- um, like lightning? Still getting used to Lightning DS controller. Quick question -- is there a one-step way to clear the queue? From what I've figured out so far, one has to open queue, tap Edit, and then tap Clear.

 

Back to the music...

[baddog]

Good to hear that you were up and running on the Aries today. I actually have never used the queue function, so hopefully someone else has the answer. I usually either tap a track to play an album or tap the title of an album to play a track. Or use a playlist I created.

[Grobec]

@Grobec, are you using a NAS or networked music server with your Aries? I assume you do not have a locally attached HD?

 

No NAS.

ext HD attached to Mini by firewire. I have no delays with any other controller SW.

 

Just got home and tapped a track and took 25 seconds to look alive and play.

been having issues since ver 2.2

[baddog]

Snip, snip.... I have no delays with any other controller SW.

 

Just got home and tapped a track and took 25 seconds to look alive and play.

been having issues since ver 2.2

 

Wow, that is crazy. When you say "no delays with other controller software" do you mean if you something like Linn Kinsky or Kazoo, or the Lumin application to start playback to the Aries? If you use a different controller software on the iPad the performance is acceptable?

[Grobec]

If i select a new track from same or a different album it takes the same 25 seconds to play the new track. If a track is playing, I can pause and replay normally.

i will try putting a couple of albums directly on the mini HD and then also durect [usb] to the mini.

this is weird.

[baddog]

If you look in System Preferences on your Mac, and choose Energy Saver, do you have "Put Hard Drives to Sleep when possible" enabled? Do you have Computer Sleep enabled?

[Grobec]

nope, only wake for network access is selected and computer and display sleep are set to never.

I was today running OSX yosimite on an external fireqire drive. Just in case I booted back to the Maverics OS on the actual Mac internal drive to see if there was any difference.

Same delay.

It seems to be having difficulty loading and playing just the new tracks

[baddog]

That is odd, are you running Minimserver on the Mac? Maybe try putting a music file or two on the local Mac HD and see if the response time is better?

[Grobec]

Same issue with files on the Mac HD.

JRMC,Kazoo,all work fine. router speed tests are strong and fine.[ Linksys E-3000] I could try a newer AC but I doubt this is the problem.

I have killed and reinstalled Lightning 3 times [cold boot ipad] and all installs and sets up fine. I have the same issue using the JRMC data base instead of Minim.

 

I guess a call to Auralic is necessary and hopefully will be helpful.

Mac running Yosimite and IOS 8.2 on the Ipad in case there are any reported issues with this?

 

EDIT

The Lightning Server works fine with a USB stick. No delays.

So, has to be something the app doesn't like when streaming from the Mac?

[guildenstern]

Still getting used to my new Aries and Lightning DS. Just noticed that in Library view, multi-album box sets are presented as a single album. For example, Beethoven's Complete Piano Sonatas performed by Alfred Brendel, an 11-CD set. In iTunes, the set displays as 11 separate albums, like this:

 

Beethoven: Piano Sonatas: Brendel [Disc 1]

Beethoven: Piano Sonatas: Brendel [Disc 2]

Beethoven: Piano Sonatas: Brendel [Disc 3]

etc.

 

In Lightning DS library, all 11 albums are grouped as one album.

 

My music is on Synology NAS running MinimServer. Perhaps MinimServer has issues with metadata information in square brackets? (For the Beethoven set and other mutli-album sets, disc numbers are usually typed within square brackets.)

 

As an experiment, I just edited metadata for the album title of Disc 1 of the Complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas by Brendel, changed album title to

 

Beethoven: Piano Sonatas: Brendel, Disc 1

 

I ran "Rescan" on MinimServer, waited for Lightning DS to update Library, and, lo and behold, now Disc 1 of the Complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas shows up as a separate album, while the other 10 albums in this 11-CD set remain clumped as a single album.

 

I'm hoping there's a quick fix in Lightning DS or MinimServer, and that I don't have to edit metadata for all multi-disc sets. Thanks for any help.

[baddog]

The grouping of albums together if they are part of a box set are a feature available in Minimserver. Details on how Minimserver handles Albums and Folders can be found here.

 

In your example, this is due to the following rule that Minimserver is following:

 

 

• The folder album name is suffixed by the string [disc <n>] or (disc <n>), where <n> is a positive integer.
  

 

This document explains further Multi-disc albums as handled by Minimserver.

 

Long story short, I am not certain how one would disable this function within Minimserver short of retagging your albums. I would suggest posting this query to Simon, the developer of Minimserver on his forum, he is very responsive and active there.

 

As an aside, if one uses the Lightning Server as opposed to Miminserver, you will find these albums are sorted individually rather than grouped together. Currently that can only be done if one has a USB drive attached directly to the Aries. When Lightning DS v2.0 is released and one has the capability to use it to directly access the music files on one's NAS, you could use Lightning Server in lieu of Minimserver and you would have the desired result.

 

Barr

[baddog]

Same issue with files on the Mac HD.

JRMC,Kazoo,all work fine. router speed tests are strong and fine.[ Linksys E-3000] I could try a newer AC but I doubt this is the problem.

I have killed and reinstalled Lightning 3 times [cold boot ipad] and all installs and sets up fine. I have the same issue using the JRMC data base instead of Minim.

 

I guess a call to Auralic is necessary and hopefully will be helpful.

Mac running Yosimite and IOS 8.2 on the Ipad in case there are any reported issues with this?

 

EDIT

The Lightning Server works fine with a USB stick. No delays.

So, has to be something the app doesn't like when streaming from the Mac?

 

Ok a couple of thoughts. I apologize if I missed it, but you are running Minimserver on the Mac, correct?

 

So you note that if you use a different control point, such as Kazoo on the iPad, you don't have these latency issues, correct?

 

It sounds alot like this issue that was noted in the Minimserver forum. Obviously this is only a guess.

 

One suggestion was to power down all your devices, including the router, Mac, iPad, and Aries, and then re-start them to see if the issue is resolved.

 

My other suggestion would be to assign a fixed IP address to your Mac and to your iPad and see if that corrects the issue. Again I am only guessing and perhaps Auralic support might have a better suggestion.

 

Oh, and do you have the Aries Lightning DS application configured for OpenHome mode?

 

Barr

[Grobec]

Thanks so much for taking the time with me.

Yes, Minim server on the Mac.

Yes, have powered all down and restarted from the modem forward.

 

Fixed IPs on mac, aries ipad, [ actually they are reserved IPs within the Dynamic address range I set on the Linksys router]

 

Yes, open house

[baddog]

Well, golly, you are two steps ahead of me! If you want to try something crazy to see if it works, put your iPad on the 2.4Ghz network instead of the 5Ghz, and see if that helps.

[guildenstern]

When Lightning DS v2.0 is released and one has the capability to use it to directly access the music files on one's NAS, you could use Lightning Server in lieu of Minimserver and you would have the desired result.

 

Barr

 

Thanks as always for your super-helpful responses. Is there a projected date for release of Lightning DS v2.0?

[Grobec]

Well, golly, you are two steps ahead of me! If you want to try something crazy to see if it works, put your iPad on the 2.4Ghz network instead of the 5Ghz, and see if that helps.

 

Make that 3 steps. :>}

 

Been doing streaming beta work for years so I do recognize your suggestions as very valid and could only have been learned by you also having "suffering" experience on the road to Nirvana.

I've hit a brick wall on this one.

Next move is to borrow another ipad. BBBBBut every other controller works. grrrrrrr

[baddog]

Ok, should we go for four? What about if you change your Mac to wireless instead of wired?

 

And yes, to your point, this ain't my first rodeo either....

 

Barr