Auralic Lightning DS App (Software) - Impressions and Information

[Audio_ELF]

Why DSapp can not make it's own library index like Sonos? In that case you can get fast response, fast app. I believe that hardware is light year ahead of Sonos, and sonos is fast.

I do find some aspects of the App frustrating (mostly that sorting is not to my preference and the inability to utilise "extended" tags in Library mode) but I've not found the App slow (iPad 2). I've also found it quite stable controlling various UPnP devices via OpenHome emulation provided by Bubble UPnP server.

 

Eloise

[dnewcomer]

+1 on the ability to just play the whole album ( Play now ) with as few presses as possible, have never used playlists.

 

* just got my Aries last nite, few things I needed to do before it worked.

1. had to press the reset button, on the bottom, before it would show up on my network, and the LDS.

2. had to find the option to switch the Aries output to USB, it defaults to digital outputs ( spdif ) before it would play to Vega

3. took several tries to load the music library, not sure if its required to have a output device selected , but library would not load, until the aries showed up on network ( after hard reset),

and was able to select it.

 

seems to play redbook flac, HiRez, and Dsd without any problems

(wired connection to minimserver on Synology 412+ )

[jtwrace]

When does the new version of DS Lightning come?

[michaelg]

...

2. had to find the option to switch the Aries output to USB, it defaults to digital outputs ( spdif ) before it would play to Vega

...

)

 

LDS on my iPad just shows "ARIES Digital Outputs" without any option to select individual outputs.

[Distinctive]

+1 on the ability to just play the whole album ( Play now ) with as few presses as possible, have never used playlists.

There might be a slight problem with this.

According to Auralic the Aries support SetNextAVTransportURI in order to obtain gapless playback of an entire album;

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f6-dac-digital-analog-conversion/auralic-aries-universal-plug-dplay-renderer-double-direct-stream-digital-over-wi-fi-18798/index19.html#post318561

If my understanding is correct, this implies that the next track is pushed to the renderer buffer, before the current track has finalized to enable it to commence with gapless playback. In order to do so the album first has to be put in a playlist. So when you intend to Play all tracks, the whole album has to be moved to a playlist. In Lumin app this is done by the system.

Others have to chime in here. I might stand corrected.

[dnewcomer]

that's fine it its required to work like that ( in the background )

it feels a little like your CD player, asking you if want to Play the cd you just inserted.

Let me Select my album, and press Play!

( I want the Play Now, to clear existing queue, ( or give me the option in settings to clear or append to

queue ))

[dnewcomer]

LDS on my iPad just shows "ARIES Digital Outputs" without any option to select individual outputs.

 

do you have a usb cable plugged in the usb output? maybe it senses a cable/dac there .

[jtwrace]

Inside App setting menu

 

Is it possible you can post it on your site somewhere? It would be nice to be able to view on on the computer.

[Cebolla]

+1 on the ability to just play the whole album ( Play now ) with as few presses as possible, have never used playlists.

There might be a slight problem with this.

According to Auralic the Aries support SetNextAVTransportURI in order to obtain gapless playback of an entire album;

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f6-dac-digital-analog-conversion/auralic-aries-universal-plug-dplay-renderer-double-direct-stream-digital-over-wi-fi-18798/index19.html#post318561

If my understanding is correct, this implies that the next track is pushed to the renderer buffer, before the current track has finalized to enable it to commence with gapless playback. In order to do so the album first has to be put in a playlist. So when you intend to Play all tracks, the whole album has to be moved to a playlist. In Lumin app this is done by the system.

Others have to chime in here. I might stand corrected.

A few points here, Distinctive.

 

The Aries has two modes of operation, ohMedia and standard UPnP/DLNA.

 

In ohMedia mode, the mode it's in when using the Lightning DS app, the entire playlist is cached by the Aries renderer. So SetNextAVITransportURI isn't used nor required for gapless playback. In fact the Lumin renderer & app do exactly the same, since they too are ohMedia devices.

 

In standard UPnP/DLNA mode, SetNextAVITransportURI is required for gapless playback, because only the UPnP/DLNA control point has knowledge of the playlist. The UPnP renderer has to be told what the next track is by the UPnP control point before the current track has finished playing, so it can fetch it from the UPnP server and load at least some of the next track into the playback buffer to achieve gapless.

 

Note that in both modes a playlist has to built for any sort of playback, regardless if the source is an entire album of tracks or not. It should therefore be just a programming 'feature' that prevents the entire album's contents to be loaded as the playlist in a seemingly one step process to the user and has nothing to do with gapless support.

 

John

[jtwrace]

Is it possible you can post it on your site somewhere? It would be nice to be able to view on on the computer.

 

Here is the link that DS Lightning uses. You can now use your computer, iOS device or other to view.

[jtwrace]

OK. Since I asked the question and Ted replied. There is even an easier way to just play an album.

 

See the above link that I posted but here is how to easily do it. The more and more I play the more I realize that it's there but not the most intuitive. It's just different and needs some development. If Mr. Wang and company can put the effort into it we'll have something serious.

 

How to play an album without going through menu's.

[jtwrace]

Mr. Wang-

 

Here are my current recommendations to improve software/hardware in no particular order.

 

1) Sorting order needs to be from # to Z and Z to #

 

2) App is slow to update artwork when scrolling

 

3) In album playing now view, the playing track needs to be highlighted

 

4) Auto sleep for the ARIES screen like the Vega

 

5) View on iPad in portrait view

 

6) Text font "bold" option. Some with weak eyes might struggle a little bit.

[Distinctive]

A few points here, Distinctive.

 

The Aries has two modes of operation, ohMedia and standard UPnP/DLNA.

 

In ohMedia mode, the mode it's in when using the Lightning DS app, the entire playlist is cached by the Aries renderer. So SetNextAVITransportURI isn't used nor required for gapless playback. In fact the Lumin renderer & app do exactly the same, since they too are ohMedia devices.

 

In standard UPnP/DLNA mode, SetNextAVITransportURI is required for gapless playback, because only the UPnP/DLNA control point has knowledge of the playlist. The UPnP renderer has to be told what the next track is by the UPnP control point before the current track has finished playing, so it can fetch it from the UPnP server and load at least some of the next track into the playback buffer to achieve gapless.

 

Note that in both modes a playlist has to built for any sort of playback, regardless if the source is an entire album of tracks or not. It should therefore be just a programming 'feature' that prevents the entire album's contents to be loaded as the playlist in a seemingly one step process to the user and has nothing to do with gapless support.

 

John

Thanks for these elaborations, John.

if I am not mistaken the NextAVITransportURI is part of the Linn extensions to the uPnP standard, so a simple Play all command from a CD transport is not as straight forward as one might think on an uPnP music server.

[ted_b]

Jason,

Good recommendations (esp portrait mode), except I am confused about two of them.

3) now playing screen is when you touch album art in upper left corner. The currently playing track is highlighted in blue and a blue playing icon is to the left of it. What do you see? (see my picture)

4) you can turn off Aries screen with remote. What is "auto sleep"? Is it a mode where screen turns off after "x" amount of time?

 

 

 

Thx

Ted

[Cebolla]

Thanks for these elaborations, John.

if I am not mistaken the NextAVITransportURI is part of the Linn extensions to the uPnP standard, so a simple Play all command from a CD transport is not as straight forward as one might think on an uPnP music server.

No. I forgot to mention in my last post that ohMedia (OpenHome Media) is another name for Linn extensions to the UPnP standard. So the SetNextAVTransportURI action is not used by UPnP with Linn extensions aka ohMedia.

 

You are right though in that it is trickier to implement the SetNextAVTransportURI action, in a play all scenario, compared to ohMedia's method which takes advantage of the renderer already having the complete playlist. However, the mechanism does work if coded properly. The main problem is actually finding standard UPnP control points and renderers out there that their manufacturers have bothered to implement it.

 

The real advantage of the ohMedia/Linn extensions method over the standard UPnP one for gapless, is that you don't have to keep the control point running for the renderer to carry on playing. It also allows you to use the same control point to switch to and use it on another renderer on the network, without stopping the playback of the previous renderer.

[jtwrace]

Jason,

Good recommendations (esp portrait mode), except I am confused about two of them.

3) now playing screen is when you touch album art in upper left corner. The currently playing track is highlighted in blue and a blue playing icon is to the left of it. What do you see? (see my picture)

4) you can turn off Aries screen with remote. What is "auto sleep"? Is it a mode where screen turns off after "x" amount of time?

 

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]13914[/ATTACH]

 

Thx

Ted

 

1) See my screen below. This is obviously not your screen...the playing track is not highlighted in bold or even a different color. Just click the album in album view and this is that screen.

 

2) Yes, with the AURALiC Vega the screen will auto shut off after 30 seconds or so.

 

[jtwrace]

Mr. Wang-

 

Here are my current recommendations to improve software/hardware in no particular order.

 

1) Sorting order needs to be from # to Z and Z to #

 

2) App is slow to update artwork when scrolling

 

3) In album playing now view, the playing track needs to be highlighted

 

4) Auto sleep for the ARIES screen like the Vega

 

5) View on iPad in portrait view

 

6) Text font "bold" option. Some with weak eyes might struggle a little bit.

 

7) Put the iPad to sleep after "X"amount of time. It stays on and kills the iPad battery.

[jtwrace]

Mr. Wang-

 

Here are my current recommendations to improve software/hardware in no particular order.

 

1) Sorting order needs to be from # to Z and Z to #

 

2) App is slow to update artwork when scrolling

 

3) In album playing now view, the playing track needs to be highlighted

 

4) Auto sleep for the ARIES screen like the Vega

 

5) View on iPad in portrait view

 

6) Text font "bold" option. Some with weak eyes might struggle a little bit.

 

 

 

7) Put the iPad to sleep after "X"amount of time. It stays on and kills the iPad battery.

 

8) The app locks up occasionally. It requires a press of the home button and then two quick double taps and then kill the app. After that it works.

 

For reference my iPad Air running 7.1.2

[baddog]

8) The app locks up occasionally. It requires a press of the home button and then two quick double taps and then kill the app. After that it works.

 

For reference my iPad Air running 7.1.2

 

As a point of reference to kill off the process for any application on the iPad.

 

Click twice the home button, this will than show all running applications. Swipe up on an application to kill it.

 

Barr

[jtwrace]

As a point of reference to kill off the process for any application on the iPad.

 

Click twice the home button, this will than show all running applications. Swipe up on an application to kill it.

 

Barr

Yes, your explanation is better than mine but you know what I meant. Maybe. :-)

[baddog]

Yes, your explanation is better than mine but you know what I meant. Maybe. :-)

 

Yep, I knew what you meant...just the layman's method to kill a roque app...

 

Keep those tips coming, saves me time when my finally arrives next week.

 

Barr

[ted_b]

1) See my screen below. This is obviously not your screen...the playing track is not highlighted in bold or even a different color. Just click the album in album view and this is that screen.

 

 

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]13918[/ATTACH]

 

Jason,

That is not the now playing screen, but instead the library album screen (i.e a view of all tracks of any given album from the library view, not necessarily what is being played). Now Playing is in the very upper left corner.

[AllThatJazz]

For Minimserver, should I select "OpenHome DS" or "uPnP Renderer"?

[baddog]

For Minimserver, should I select "OpenHome DS" or "uPnP Renderer"?

 

My understanding is that to take advantage of all of the capabilities of the Lightning DS application you would want to select OpenHome DS. Somewhere in this thread the differences were documented.

 

Barr

 

p.s I just checked Auralic recommends setting to "OpenHome".

[AllThatJazz]

My understanding is that to take advantage of all of the capabilities of the Lightning DS application you would want to select OpenHome DS. Somewhere in this thread the differences were documented.

 

Barr

 

p.s I just checked Auralic recommends setting to "OpenHome".

 

Thanks for that.

Fortunately, it defaulted to OpenHome, so I didn't need to experiment.

 

Got it up and running without any issues shortly after unboxing. In the hardware thread, I'll post an observation of USB vs SPDIF connection to my Grace m920 DAC.