Gapless streaming and sorting by folder

[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

[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/