The "Official" Aurender Discussion Thread

[HifiVoice]

26 minutes ago, DancingSea said:

 

It's some weird Aurender relationship with Mac permissions....  have been a Mac user for 40 years and have only seen these oddities with Conductor.  

 

I have this very rarely. Sometimes holding the command-option key when deleting a file and emptying the trash helps. 

 

If that doesn't help, start up the Terminal app (it is in the Utilities folder in the application folder), and remove the file with a command. 

 

You can do it with the command rm <path-to-file> and press return, or when that doesn't work rm -f <path-to-file> (which is a forcing a deletion without checking file permissions). 

 

As the path to the filename is not always easy to guess, you can type the command "rm" and a space, and drag the file to the Terminal window. It will then insert the correct file name (which also with spaces can be a bit tricky with all the backlashes that you need to insert). See an example below, where I dragged the first file into the Terminal: 

 

When you want to remove a compete directory, use rm -rf <path-to-directory>

 

Be careful selecting the right files and directory, executing such a command is permanent and irreversible. So if you select the wrong directory or file, it is gone forever after executing the command when pressing return. 

 

[SirAtilla]

18 hours ago, Mazza said:

So that’s it then, the future development of the Conductor App is screwed. A sad day for those of us with absolutely no interest in Roon. 

 

I am not interested in Roon myself however I see this as good thing.  I think Roon is a very nice product it just doesn't offer me my engineering ideal of a music transport.  Some prefer it and that fine with me its chocolate or vanilla and that is a good thing for the industry.

 

Conductor development is ultimately driven by unit sales and the ability to support the costs of the software team.  If more units are sold due to Aurenders being a Roon endpoint it ultimately helps Aurender to cover software costs or even expand their development.

 

When I discussed this implementation with the owner and engineering lead at AXPONA last year Roon ignores one of the primary advantages of an Aurender and that is local storage + local cached playback.  A Roon endpoint is designed to take a stream from a Roon Core and play it back.  It means an Aurender ignores its local cache drive for playback.  This is because Roon has no support for this concept.  Aurender could make the local drive available to Roon as a source but that means the data would go from local storage in Aurender to the Roon Core back to the Aurender and still ignore the cache drive.  That makes little sense.  These are limitations of the Roon implementation framework as I understood it.  Caveat: this was AXPONA 2023 information I plan to discuss if any changes occurred over past year but I suspect not unless Roon/Aurender agreed to add some capabilities.

[SirAtilla]

5 hours ago, grubble said:

 

Nope, just spaces in between. I can't even rename the file on the Aurender so there's definitely some odd permissions issues that I'm not getting access to.

 

I would use the command line as outlined in the follow-up post.  It's likely a hidden file that is causing issues with macOS Finder.  I have seen this a few times.  

 

Whether macOS or Windows I would recommend using a file transfer utility versus graphically interacting with mounted file system mainly because both OSes have a lot of "legacy" stuff and can write out various hidden files to keep track of things like window positions that have zero to do with music playback.  The Aurender will ignore them but just no reason to have them on its filesystem.  

[SirAtilla]

4 hours ago, DancingSea said:

 

It's some weird Aurender relationship with Mac permissions....  have been a Mac user for 40 years and have only seen these oddities with Conductor.  

 

Hello,

 

Conductor is just the app on the mobile device doesn't have anything to do with these particular issues.

 

I have never seen any permissions issues.  While the error messages may say that I have never found it to be the case as you don't have control over permissions in the underlying Linux based filesystem on the Aurender.  Finder on macOS has quite a few quirks that have gotten better over the years but its underlying support of old HFS/HFS+ and now APFS file systems that have different fundamental capabilities leads to some debt.  Items like resource forks, extended attributes, .DS_Store, and various other things can lead to unnecessary items being written to the Aurender file system.

[KenCyclingNYC]

Throughout the weekend, I've been reading all of the posts around Roon and have to say that a good portion of what's been posted is conjecture. Why don't we take a chill pill and wait for the announcement of the implementation and what's to come with the Connector app.  I can give you my thoughts but again, it would be conjecture :-) The first rule of Aurender is to enjoy the music...

[stefano_mbp]

Audiophilia (intendended as disease) brings a lot of anxiety … some benzodiazepines can help … ;-)

[HifiVoice]

13 minutes ago, SirAtilla said:

Finder on macOS has quite a few quirks that have gotten better over the years but its underlying support of old HFS/HFS+ and now APFS file systems that have different fundamental capabilities leads to some debt.  Items like resource forks, extended attributes, .DS_Store, and various other things can lead to unnecessary items being written to the Aurender file system.

 

If you want to get rid of all the "unnecessary" items on you Aurender volume, you can run the following command in Terminal:

 

  dot_clean -n <directory or volume>

 

E.g.   dot_clean -n /Volumes/Music1/

[SirAtilla]

38 minutes ago, HifiVoice said:

 

If you want to get rid of all the "unnecessary" items on you Aurender volume, you can run the following command in Terminal:

 

  dot_clean -n <directory or volume>

 

E.g.   dot_clean -n /Volumes/Music1/

 

Good suggestion but I think this will only merge files in format ._*.  A useful command for sure.

 

Before I sync my library to my Aurender (I never work from Aurender I work from a local copy to computer) I have a few commands in a shell script that my sync program (Chronosync) executes before it syncs the library.

 

For example I use commands to remove things like .DS_Files, Extended Attributes (xattr command), find and remove any empty directories, etc. then the sync program is also configured to ignore these things if one happens to get by.

 

Using a file sync program that is OS aware can be incredibly useful to understand file system differences and give you fine grain control over the sync process.

[SirAtilla]

17 hours ago, Robifabs said:

Hi all,

 

many of the above speculations and attempts to predict the future have been proven right in the past with many other closed systems.

I am currently struggling like hell to get my very very precious playlists from a 12TB ACS10 hosting 5.6TB of music (RAID mount), I have now owned for 5+ years, to a 6GB W20 I acquired second hand 2 months ago. All I am asking for in way, is to be able to access my playlist and all my metadata on the best of the two readers on my main system and for the last two months it has been a headache. With Roon, it would have been completely transparent.  Last email I sent Daniel @support was Friday night asking him if I could clone a 6TB « Disk 1 » from an ACS10 to two 3TB Disks « 1 » AND « 2 » on a W20 ? What matters most in the question is the « AND » !! Isn’t it a bit a 1980’s type of user experience !?! 
 

Even if I am a big fan of Aurender’s hardware and audiophile’s approach, the very poor user experience (not even close to being compensated by nonetheless, one of the best customer services I know in the industry…) has made me consider moving on to anything open and competitive and truly user friendly !!!

No way I will re-do my playlists like another Aurender user I know recently had to…

 

My experience with Roon Nucleus (country house system) is that sound quality is not as good (especially compared to W20) but so much more stable and overall easy. Still clinging to Aurender and to a string of hope but wanted to share my humble and frustrating experience for whatever it is worth…

 

Oh… one last thing: thanks to all for all the valuable info, insights and ideas I get from reading your posts ! 

 

 

 

Hi,

 

If you use the built in backup in Conductor it should create a backup of your ratings, playlists etc. in a backup folder of the ACS10.  The playlists are exported in a subfolder called playlists and are a simple flat file with .m3u extension.  You should able to download that file and open each playlist and edit the file to reflect the locations on the W20 (ie Music1/Music2 and path).  If you simply split your 5.6TB library from Music1 to a dual drive Music1/Music2 should be pretty easy to make the changes.

 

Once you have updated those files do a backup on the W20 and replace the playlists in that backup with your updated files then ultimately restore on the W20.

 

I attached an example small playlist from my W20SE.  It should be as simple as adjusting Music1 to Music2 for the files that were split onto the 2nd drive in the W20.

 

I wrote a blog article about the details of how backups are structured in 2019 and some of the manipulation that is possible - its at this link:

https://www.sound-lab.com/blog/aurender-playlists

 

Hope this helps.ANA[DIA]LOG Reference.m3u

[HifiVoice]

11 minutes ago, SirAtilla said:

 

Good suggestion but I think this will only merge files in format ._*.  A useful command for sure.

 

The -n option will also remove the dot file when there is a matching native file. I always use it when transferring files from the Mac to an exFAT drive. Works well for my use-case. 

[SirAtilla]

1 minute ago, HifiVoice said:

 

The -n option will also remove the dot file when there is a matching native file. I always use it when transferring files from the Mac to an exFAT drive. Works well for my use-case. 

 

Yeah totally get it and exFAT is of course another file system with yet different capabilities.  

[Robifabs]

2 hours ago, SirAtilla said:

 

Hi,

 

If you use the built in backup in Conductor it should create a backup of your ratings, playlists etc. in a backup folder of the ACS10.  The playlists are exported in a subfolder called playlists and are a simple flat file with .m3u extension.  You should able to download that file and open each playlist and edit the file to reflect the locations on the W20 (ie Music1/Music2 and path).  If you simply split your 5.6TB library from Music1 to a dual drive Music1/Music2 should be pretty easy to make the changes.

 

Once you have updated those files do a backup on the W20 and replace the playlists in that backup with your updated files then ultimately restore on the W20.

 

I attached an example small playlist from my W20SE.  It should be as simple as adjusting Music1 to Music2 for the files that were split onto the 2nd drive in the W20.

 

I wrote a blog article about the details of how backups are structured in 2019 and some of the manipulation that is possible - its at this link:

https://www.sound-lab.com/blog/aurender-playlists

 

Hope this helps.ANA[DIA]LOG Reference.m3u

Thanks a lot SirAtilla !!
 

Real nice of you to put so much efforts in trying and help me.

 

Plan is to wait until support@aurender gets back to me and then I’ll try your recommended sequence to get things right. Seems like a very simple option on the paper, at least very easy to understand.
 

‘I will indeed keep the community posted if anything interesting comes from Aurender.

 

Since you seem to be very knowledgeable and generous in sharing what you know, allow me to use the opportunity to ask one more question.

 

My initial idea was simply to swap HDs from one unit to the other.

 

I could not get any reasonably reassuring advice from anywhere (including support@aurender raising the liability flag to cut the conversion short, which I could understand but doesn’t help).
 

I would not call myself a computer litterate but I have already removed/added HDs from units in the past. Never felt difficult nor challenging.
 

What is your take on this option ? Swapping 2 x 6TB HD currently on DCS10 and 2x3TB on the W20 (both original mount)… this would massively simplify my situation. 
 

Thanks a lot in advance for your help. No obligation indeed if the question is far too deeply a dummy’s question. I can understand and take that ! 
 

Fabien 

[DancingSea]

4 hours ago, SirAtilla said:

 

Hello,

 

Conductor is just the app on the mobile device doesn't have anything to do with these particular issues.

 

I have never seen any permissions issues.  While the error messages may say that I have never found it to be the case as you don't have control over permissions in the underlying Linux based filesystem on the Aurender.  Finder on macOS has quite a few quirks that have gotten better over the years but its underlying support of old HFS/HFS+ and now APFS file systems that have different fundamental capabilities leads to some debt.  Items like resource forks, extended attributes, .DS_Store, and various other things can lead to unnecessary items being written to the Aurender file system.

 

To clarify, I've only experienced this with Aurender.  I have several albums that simply cannot be deleted from the Aurender due to permission issues.  The various Aurender ZenDesk help articles do mention the permission issues, and direct to simply change the permissions.  However, I've found that to not be possible.  The permissions in question refuse to allow changes.  The result is that I have a few albums in the wrong folders on the Aurender and there's no way to move or delete them.

 

Another place I've seen this is with ChronoSync which I use for incremental backups for all sorts of stuff, including the Aurender HD.  Worked perfectly.  Then one day, no more due to unchangeable permission issues.

 

It's some weirdness between the Aurender and Mac OS permissions.  The Terminal instructions posted here are well over my head ;)

 

I've resigned myself to simply accept that I'll have a few oddly placed albums, and that ChronoSync will no longer work.  It could be much worse!!

 

As for Roon, I agree, having options is only a good thing.  Marantz/Denon is also adding Roon Ready, it's the current nature of high end audio.  We are the Borg, prepare to be assimilated 😀

[Robifabs]

3 hours ago, SirAtilla said:

 

Hi,

 

If you use the built in backup in Conductor it should create a backup of your ratings, playlists etc. in a backup folder of the ACS10.  The playlists are exported in a subfolder called playlists and are a simple flat file with .m3u extension.  You should able to download that file and open each playlist and edit the file to reflect the locations on the W20 (ie Music1/Music2 and path).  If you simply split your 5.6TB library from Music1 to a dual drive Music1/Music2 should be pretty easy to make the changes.

 

Once you have updated those files do a backup on the W20 and replace the playlists in that backup with your updated files then ultimately restore on the W20.

 

I attached an example small playlist from my W20SE.  It should be as simple as adjusting Music1 to Music2 for the files that were split onto the 2nd drive in the W20.

 

I wrote a blog article about the details of how backups are structured in 2019 and some of the manipulation that is possible - its at this link:

https://www.sound-lab.com/blog/aurender-playlists

 

Hope this helps.ANA[DIA]LOG Reference.m3u

Just had a look at your Blog post. Simply brilliant, highly didactic even thought a bit out of my league (in particular part two on ratings). Well done, congrats and thanks !!
 

I am first going to try and clone my 5.6TB of music from the ACS10 Music 1 disk to the 2 X 3TB on the W20 and if it works (I followed recos from the Help menu on the app and sent an email to support@aurender, still awaiting for them to get back to me with clear instructions), I will have 1- the best of the two players on my main system and 2- all my legacy content and metadata from my main coach right at the main system’s sweet spot. That’s all I am asking for. I don’t need a total of 18TB (12TB currently on ACS10 and 6 on 20) to store my music as much as I don’t see why having purchased a W20, I should not use the ACS10 on my second system rather than on my main system to get that…

thanks anyway Sir (and I mean it !! 👍🤪) Attila ! 

[SirAtilla]

24 minutes ago, Robifabs said:

Thanks a lot SirAtilla !!
 

Real nice of you to put so much efforts in trying and help me.

 

Plan is to wait until support@aurender gets back to me and then I’ll try your recommended sequence to get things right. Seems like a very simple option on the paper, at least very easy to understand.
 

‘I will indeed keep the community posted if anything interesting comes from Aurender.

 

Since you seem to be very knowledgeable and generous in sharing what you know, allow me to use the opportunity to ask one more question.

 

My initial idea was simply to swap HDs from one unit to the other.

 

I could not get any reasonably reassuring advice from anywhere (including support@aurender raising the liability flag to cut the conversion short, which I could understand but doesn’t help).
 

I would not call myself a computer litterate but I have already removed/added HDs from units in the past. Never felt difficult nor challenging.
 

What is your take on this option ? Swapping 2 x 6TB HD currently on DCS10 and 2x3TB on the W20 (both original mount)… this would massively simplify my situation. 
 

Thanks a lot in advance for your help. No obligation indeed if the question is far too deeply a dummy’s question. I can understand and take that ! 
 

Fabien 

 

I have done this only once and it was several years ago where I took a SSD from one Aurender and placed it another.  As I recall there was a little lag at initial boot up and recognition but eventually it did stabilize and worked from that point forward.  I would definitely get Aurender supports take on this change.

 

Best

[DancingSea]

11 hours ago, SirAtilla said:

When I discussed this implementation with the owner and engineering lead at AXPONA last year Roon ignores one of the primary advantages of an Aurender and that is local storage + local cached playback.  A Roon endpoint is designed to take a stream from a Roon Core and play it back.  It means an Aurender ignores its local cache drive for playback.  This is because Roon has no support for this concept.

 

I'm curious about this.  Is it that only music that originates within the Conductor ecosystem gets the cached playback?  What happens with audio that comes into an Aurender via optical to be converted in the Aurender DAC?  Does that also bypass the cache?

[SirAtilla]

1 hour ago, DancingSea said:

 

I'm curious about this.  Is it that only music that originates within the Conductor ecosystem gets the cached playback?  What happens with audio that comes into an Aurender via optical to be converted in the Aurender DAC?  Does that also bypass the cache?

 

As far as SSD based cache/playback I believe that is limited to locally stored content and to some extent TIDAL/Qobuz content.  I have done experiments pulling the ethernet cable after starting a song streaming from Qobuz and it appears to continue playing the song which must mean its caching the file.  This may also be dependent on the streaming service offering the capability to download songs.

 

I have never experimented with Spotify so can't offer much for that implementation.

 

I am pretty certain that digital content coming into a A series Aurender with an onboard DAC via a optical or analog input does not utilize SSD based caching just normal buffering any DAC would do.

[NTWrong]

I bought a used N200 and the former owner’s playlist was still queued up. It included songs from Qobuz. I only played one song from the playlist (which sounded terrific) but it played just fine, even though I am not a Qobuz subscriber. 
 

Maybe I was still logged into his account? But my assumption was that the track was stored in the queue even after the N200 was transported from Vancouver, B.C. to Ottawa, Ontario.

[Arnold Cruz]

4 minutes ago, NTWrong said:

I bought a used N200 and the former owner’s playlist was still queued up. It included songs from Qobuz. I only played one song from the playlist (which sounded terrific) but it played just fine, even though I am not a Qobuz subscriber. 
 

Maybe I was still logged into his account? But my assumption was that the track was stored in the queue even after the N200 was transported from Vancouver, B.C. to Ottawa, Ontario.

Go to the Settings>Streaming in Conductor, you can see if he's still logged in. 

[DancingSea]

On 4/1/2024 at 4:11 PM, SirAtilla said:

As far as SSD based cache/playback I believe that is limited to locally stored content and to some extent TIDAL/Qobuz content.  I have done experiments pulling the ethernet cable after starting a song streaming from Qobuz and it appears to continue playing the song which must mean its caching the file.  This may also be dependent on the streaming service offering the capability to download songs.

 

Out of curiosity, I contacted Aurender to ask if a Quboz song is cached.  Their response:

 

"No, it's not. It requires internet to play streaming song.

 

 

—

Eric Shim

Lead SW Engineer

Aurender Inc."

 

 

Presumably downloaded streaming & bought Quboz songs would be cached because no internet is required.

[DancingSea]

On 3/31/2024 at 5:46 PM, GJo said:

Looking forward to the opportunity, freedom, and choice  of using Roon on my N30SA. 
 

Hallelujah!

 

Thank you, Aurender

 

Based on this page on Aurender's website, it seems Roon is already working on Aurender.  They provide full instructions of how to get going.  Have you tried it?

 

https://aurender.com/home/roon_ready/

[GJo]

7 minutes ago, DancingSea said:

 

Based on this page on Aurender's website, it seems Roon is already working on Aurender.  They provide full instructions of how to get going.  Have you tried it?

 

https://aurender.com/home/roon_ready/

Despite what Aurender’s website says, it’s not working. Roon is not yet an option in Conductor, and the N30SA firmware has not been updated.  
 

[DancingSea]

3 minutes ago, GJo said:

Despite what Aurender’s website says, it’s not working. Roon is not yet an option in Conductor, and the N30SA firmware has not been updated.  
 

I've whipped out an email to Korea for an explanation!

[Anonamemouse]

16 minutes ago, DancingSea said:

I've whipped out an email to Korea for an explanation

Someone probably had a beta version. 

[HifiVoice]

19 minutes ago, DancingSea said:

I've whipped out an email to Korea for an explanation!

 

This is what they mailed me about 2 weeks ago:

 

"While I can't provide a specific timeline, please rest assured that the project is actively under development. We anticipate sharing some positive updates soon, so stay tuned."