Dbpoweramp Asset UPnP

[sgr]

Hi,

A friend and I were discussing UPnP, DNLA, jRiver, Minumserver, etc.

I remembered reading many favorable posts concerning dbPooweramp's Asset.

There doesn't seem to be much written about this product recently. I wonder why?

 

Is it cost? $40 sounds reasonable to me.

User interface?

Lacking SQ vs other competitors? My friend downloaded the trial and was favorable impressed as compared to Minumserver or jRiver DNLA.

 

Compatibility? The site says its compatible with Windows 7,8, 8.1. There is no mention of Windows Server 2012.

Could Asset work well with JPlay in Dual PC Streamer mode? I use jRiver.

jRiver sounds better than Minumserver in my system.

 

I remember at one time Asset was well thought of.

[Cebolla]

By all accounts Asset UPnP is a pretty decent UPnP media server. Possibly the reason it fell out of favour is that it originally only ran under Windows and therefore couldn't compete with the likes of MinimServer which very early on could also run on Macs & Linux computers and possibly more significantly on some regarded NAS makes (eg Synology, QNAP, etc).

 

Asset UPnP doesn't have music file playback capabilities since it is a UPnP media server and nothing else. So I don't understand why you require it to be used similar to JRiver with JPlay in Dual PC mode.

 

I'm also confused as to how you appear to have managed something similar with MinimServer, as that too is just a UPnP media server if that's what you mean by:

Could Asset work well with JPlay in Dual PC Streamer mode? I use jRiver.

jRiver sounds better than Minumserver in my system.

How exactly did you use MinimServer in this setup when comparing SQ to JRiver?

[sgr]

Hi,

I've not tried Asset yet. It's been a couple of years since I used Minumserver.

 

But this is what I recall. I installed Minumserver on my server. Pointed it to my library. It built the library very quickly as opposed to jRiver. One thing I found immediately I didn't like the way Minumserver sorted my music files and grouped them.

After Minumserver was run it appeared in the list of sources on the left side of jRiver. I would click on it and jRiver could access the Minumserver library.

If I try Asset, I'd assume it would work the same way.

When I played files through minumserver the treble sounded a little more extended than jRiver but to me a little threadbare as compared to jRiver.

 

A friend asked me about Minumserver and I explained how to use it and found it had much the same sonic signature as I'd found. To be fair I didn't discuss the SQ of Minumserver until he tried it himself.

I'm a beta tester for PS Audio. I used to work a lot with Elyric PS Audio's discontinued player. It also compiled the library as it scanned it just a little differently than Minumserver or jRiver. Elyric sounded much more natural than jRiver or Minumserver. It's SQ changed somewhat at each Elyric update. I'm not sure why, (Mr. McGowan blamed software jitter possibly related to the compiler?) but the differences were significant. It is a shame ELyric was abandoned. At its last incarnation it would still only play via DNLA not USB which precluded its use with JPlay. It is still available to download at the PS Audio site I believe.

As for jplay I'm using it in streamer mode. JRiver named it "player" in my system. JPlay uses the "Open Home" technology to make this work which is similar to or an updtated form to UPnP and or DNLA.

At this point I'm not sure if JPlay and Asset are compatible. However to use JPlay Streamer (which was easy to do and sounds great by the way) one either has to install Minumserver or use jRiver and turn on the DNLA setting.

Sorry I'm not at home sitting in front of a PC so my directions might be a little off. I also admit to not completely using correctly all the terms and jargon like renderer, player, etc. associated with this technology the but I can usually get it all working together and help others get up and running.

In my system I can readily hear the differences I've described. (I know some like all the detailed differences music cut by cut but I'm more of a generalist and listen for musicality as my test rather then documenting details.

[davide256]

Asset is a better PC media server because of its library handling capabilities. Minimserver is not that great sounding on a PC OS, far better sounding on a NAS like Synology

[Marcin_gps]

Asset UPnP server should work fine with JPLAYStreamer.

 

Cheers,

Marcin