Gapless streaming and sorting by folder

[Kenneth Horne]

I have a Musical Fidelity CLiC wired to the network.

 

I would like UPnP software to provide gapless streaming.

 

On the face of it, Asset should fit the bill. It's not resource-hogging, and works well without crashing, and allows viewing by folder, but doesn't provide gapless with the CLiC.

 

https://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showthread.php?34672-Gapless-support&highlight=gapless

 

I gather that changing to a Linn DS or Naim would solve the gapless problem with Asset. Can anyone confirm that? That would be a rather expensive fix.

 

I went back to Twonky (3.1), which does seem resource-hogging and prone to crash, but does provide gapless streaming.

 

The trial use of JRiver seems to show that one cannot do a simple sort by folder:

 

how to get J River to display the albums like windows

 

Album friendly Media Library setup thoughts (long)

 

Is there another easy-to-use system (as user-friendly as Asset, for example) which some kind soul could recommend for me to try out? Any CLiC users with successful gapless streaming?

 

Access through sorting by folder is essential.

 

Thanks

[Audio_ELF]

Try MinimServer ... not as user friendly as Asset perhaps but has been very reliable for me (though not using a CLiC).

[tranz]

Are you sure the Clic handles gapless? Even if you use a server that does gapless (minimserver is the king ), if your renderer (Clic) does not you are out of luck.

 

Although, one additional thing you could try though is in addition to minimserver, run bubble upnp server. This will make your Clic be seen as an OpenHome Media renderer and might help.

[Kenneth Horne]

Try MinimServer ... not as user friendly as Asset perhaps but has been very reliable for me (though not using a CLiC).

 

Thank you - I'll try that tomorrow after I've had a chance to sort out more problems.....

[Kenneth Horne]

Are you sure the Clic handles gapless? Even if you use a server that does gapless (minimserver is the king ), if your renderer (Clic) does not you are out of luck.

 

Although, one additional thing you could try though is in addition to minimserver, run bubble upnp server. This will make your Clic be seen as an OpenHome Media renderer and might help.

 

Yes, the CLiC does handle gapless and shows it can do so with Twonky. Unfortunately, I now remember why I gave up on Twonky - it loses my library and the whole thing needs repopulating every couple of days, so I've uninstalled it.

 

I've now reinstalled a slightly newer version of Asset. My new problem, hinted in the post above, is Asset is now not on the list of media servers. It doesn't show up after reinstallation, rebooting of computer and router and so on.

 

Thanks for the suggestion about minim+bubble - I'll try that in a few days.

 

PS I notice Asset version 5 appeared at dbpoweramp this afternoon.

[paul_riordan]

I have a Musical Fidelity CLiC wired to the network.

 

I would like UPnP software to provide gapless streaming.

 

On the face of it, Asset should fit the bill. It's not resource-hogging, and works well without crashing, and allows viewing by folder, but doesn't provide gapless with the CLiC.

 

https://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showthread.php?34672-Gapless-support&highlight=gapless

 

I gather that changing to a Linn DS or Naim would solve the gapless problem with Asset. Can anyone confirm that? That would be a rather expensive fix.

 

I went back to Twonky (3.1), which does seem resource-hogging and prone to crash, but does provide gapless streaming.

 

The trial use of JRiver seems to show that one cannot do a simple sort by folder:

 

how to get J River to display the albums like windows

 

Album friendly Media Library setup thoughts (long)

 

Is there another easy-to-use system (as user-friendly as Asset, for example) which some kind soul could recommend for me to try out? Any CLiC users with successful gapless streaming?

 

Access through sorting by folder is essential.

 

Thanks

 

The Linn streamers are definitely gapless with Asset. I am surprised that Asset doesn't work with the CLiC - as far as I understand to make gapless work means holding a copy of the playlist on the renderer (which is what the Linn does), therefore I would have expected that if the CLiC works gapless with any server then it would work with all. If you post onto the dbPoweamp forums you might get some help there - maybe there is a fix they could make to Asset?

 

Cheers

 

Paul

[Kenneth Horne]

Thanks for that - I may well raise the topic again over there. Meanwhile, another installation has Asset showing in the list of media servers, and it's currently repopulating the library.

[Kenneth Horne]

I'm not sure what exactly provided the cure! I've now installed Asset v.5 (and Bubble server) - the gapless problem is now solved. Thank you all for your advice.

[Kenneth Horne]

I'm not sure what exactly provided the cure! I've now installed Asset v.5 (and Bubble server) - the gapless problem is now solved. Thank you all for your advice.

 

However, today it's back to square 1. There are gaps between tracks of continuous music.

[Cebolla]

Hi Kenneth,

 

I believe you may be under the misapprehension that the UPnP media server is somehow in involved in the gapless playback process. It is not, so the choice of UPnP media server is irrelevant.

 

For standard UPnP devices, like the CLiC renderer, gapless playback support is provided by both the UPnP renderer and the UPnP control point. However, not all renderers and control points support the gapless playback mechanism specified by standard UPnP. So even if your renderer supports gapless playback it won't work if you don't use a control point that supports it too.

 

What control point are you using with your CLiC?

 

Incidently, as it appears you have installed the BubbleUPnP Server software, it should actually confirm if your renderer supports gapless playback under standard UPnP. If you select the Media Renderers tab in its configuration settings the CLiC should be listed. If the CLiC also supports gapless, then the Gapless playback tick box should be selectable and not greyed out.

 

John

[Kenneth Horne]

John, I did indeed think Asset was involved in the gapless process until the other day, and had begun to think there is a conflict between control points.

 

The Asset edit window says last active control point is auto-selected. I have Asset Control which appears four times, once each for the CLiC, Oppo 105, TM player and on its own. As well as those, other control points are Twonky as part of Windows 6.0 service pack 2, PVConnect and KnOS.

 

I guess one or more of the non-Asset control points gets used for some reason, and has the disadvantage of not enabling gapless.

 

The BubbleUPnP renderers tab shows the CLiC and the gapless tick box is selected.

[Cebolla]

I wouldn't worry about a potential conflict of control points from the information returned by the Asset UPnP media server's configuration settings, if I were you. The Control Point Specific Overide settings show a list of all the control points that have ever been used to browse Asset UPnP's music file library since it was installed. It also highlights one of the control points in the list to indicate it as the last one that you used to browse Asset UPnP's music library, ie, the "last active control point is auto-selected".

 

The reason why Asset UPnP's config selects the last control point used to browse is so you can correctly identify that control point as it's not always obvious from the 'name' identifying it on the list. For example many renderer specific (as opposed to third party) control points share the 'KnOS' text at the start of the control point's ID. Asset UPnP retrieves the control point ID from the User-Agent field contained in the HTTP header of the browse request message sent to it by the control point.

 

The theory is if you can identify the control point used to browse the library, you can then identify the renderer the music files are intended for. Believe it or not that list of control points is meant to be used to (indirectly) identify the list of renderers that have been used with Asset UPnP. So the purpose of the edit box to the left of the control point list is to setup renderer specific rule based profiles, using the control point IDs in the list, in order to override Asset UPnP's default file streaming behaviour rules.

 

You are right in thinking that you shouldn't use more than one control point at the same time with a particular renderer, as it's likely to cause a conflict and affect playback functions like gapless support. However, this is completely under your control as the user.

 

I believe the actual problem is due to you using Asset Control, as it's not supposed to support gapless playback under standard UPnP. It was primarily intended as an OpenHome Media (aka UPnP with Linn extensions) control point so is best used with OpenHome renderers rather than standard UPnP renderers.

 

The good news is that the BubbleUPnP Server helper application you've installed allows the CLiC to be seen as an OpenHome renderer, as mentioned by Tranz, by selecting the Create an OpenHome renderer tick box for it in the Media Renderers tab (make sure the Gapless playback tickbox is also selected). The bad news is that Asset Control is still in beta and has been reported to be quite buggy, so even if gapless works with it in OpenHome mode, you're likely to come across other problems with it.

 

It might be time for you to take a look at alternative control points to use with the CLiC, both standard UPnP and OpenHome (using BubbleUPnP Server). I'd recommend carefully reading this thread as a starting point:

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f22-networking-networked-audio-and-streaming/truly-gapless-digital-living-network-alliance-controllers-22398/

[Kenneth Horne]

Thank you for the info and the link which I'll have a look at tomorrow.

 

Perhaps I ought to delete Asset Control.......

 

It's a shame I can't get JRiver to display my library how I'd want to (by folder), as by all accounts that system does provide gapless playing. I have quite a lot of recordings of continuous music split into tracks so gapless playing really is essential.

 

The only other alternative should all else fail is to join up all the continuous tracks!