Search the Community

For years I have used the following system to stream music. I have a fairly large collection in iTunes file on my NAS. It was played by a Mac Mini. The Mac Mini is stored in a cupboard and was steered by the app Remote. Before the upgrade to Catalina all worked perfect. I was warned that Catalina would not play iTunes anymore. Just before the upgrade to Catalina my iTunes file was corrupted to a Music file format that would not play with iTunes. I called Apple Support a few times for several hours and got no solution. They made me upgrade to Catalina. The new OS can't find the Music files on the NAS. It is a bug Apple said. Also the app Remote sees my collection but will not play the songs. It just doesn't work. Is there a way to fix this or do I have to look for another way to stream my music?

@damien78 and others, I've been having problems connecting to Audirvana + running on my macmini (both versions 2 and 3 behaviour the same). Sometime it works flawlessly and yet sometimes Audirvana Remote running on my iPhone 6+ just fails to connect. I exit the app, restart it but nothing helps. And yet, for no apparent reason it eventually connects but after while it disconnects again and fails to connect. I've read a few times in the past people having similar problems but didn't see any solution(s). Is there anything I can do on macmini and/or iPhone that could help the connection problems? BTW, with my wife's iPad 2 I connect every time with no problems, and also using my MAcBook Air with screenshare no problems at all. I'd be grateful for any tips/hints on iPhone 6+ connection problems. Thanks in advance. Best. Mev

Dumb question, I'm sure. I've been using Apple's Remote app for many years to control my Mac Mini, currently running Audirvana in iTunes Integrated Mode. On my iPad2, the app has lately become sluggish (doesn't scroll well) and temperamental. I tried it from my iPhone 5s and not only did it scroll much faster but it has a better look and better functionality (as far as I'm concerned). Why is this app not as good on the iPad as it is on the phone? Why is it not the same? Dan

I stream my music from an Apple Mac Mini, using iTunes and Pure Music. I control the Mini by Apple's Remote App from an iPad. Software is all up to date (latest version). On the Mini is Maverick (OSX 10.9) installed. After the latest updates to Maverick and the Remote App the connection is often broken. I have to start Remote again, select the server and select the music. Ather a while the connection is broken once again. This problem is persistant. Also, recently it occurs that the server does not respond to Remote if I try to pause the music. Does anyone have the same problem? Is this caused by Apple or could it be my system?

Hi all, Thanks for all your help with my earlier thread linked here As I posted on that thread today, I'm finally getting wonderful sound out of my Mini setup. Now I need your suggestions for an elegant way to browse and control the library. At first, iPad Remote seemed like the ideal solution. I like to listen to music while talking/drinking with friends, and it was great to be able to just hand someone the iPad to select music. But after months of using it to access the iTunes library on the Mini I'm giving up. I'm listing the reasons below along with screenshots. I'm just not sure how to replace my iPad with iTunes Remote. I need a simple solution that anyone can use. At this point it seems my only option is to hook up a monitor, mouse, and keyboard to the Mini. But this sucks! I don't want to have to get up and use a computer every time I put on an album. The only other alternative I know of is Apple TV. It would be nice to use a TV interface. But I'm afraid the interface might be cumbersome for browsing through hundreds of albums, and I'm not sure if the Apple TV interface supports playlists? And I don't wish to route the music through the Apple TV at the cost of sound quality. And I use Pure Music- will the music streamed out of the mini to the Apple TV still go through Pure Music? Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks! Derek Why do I find iTunes Remote unusable? First of all, I have over a thousand albums (mostly classical) to which I have spent a lot of time adding metadata and scanning/downloading album covers. The covers are an important way for me to search for the album I want to hear. For instance, when I am looking for a particular recording of Horowitz playing Rachmaninov it's frustrating only to have the album names- they are all pretty much the same. But when presented with a list of album covers I can pick out the right one immediately. Unfortunately, iTunes Remote on iPad doesn't cache album covers. So each time I want to browse the albums I have to wait for each album cover to download. It takes a while, even on a fast wireless network. So I spend a lot of time just waiting for the covers to load. As you can see in the image below, the remaining five album covers haven't loaded yet. It's frustrating! A while ago when switching to iTunes I decided to put the Composer in the Artist field for all of my albums. I know some of you might be against adapting metadata for a particular software program, but I liked the ability to just click on "Artists" in iTunes and see a neat list of composers rather than a haphazard long list of a bunch of performers/ensembles/etc. Unfortunately the Artists tab in iTunes Remote doesn't have the pure Album view I prefer, rather a list of album covers with each title in the album. And once again, the album covers must reload each time! Finally, I've found that iTunes smart playlists are a wonderful way to browse albums on the mini or my macbook pro. They allow you to select the view type, which I invariably set to Album. However, the playlist view in iTunes Remote ONLY has a list view, which is hopelessly unusable for a large number of classical tracks. It takes forever to scroll down and find the right album, if you can find the album at all. And of course there are no album covers shown:

Just discovered this forum (don't really know how I've managed to not find it untill now...). Was surprised to see that there doesn't seem to be a single thread about pianobar, it's an open-source Pandora radio client that removes the ads and is easy to setup with a proxy so you can access Pandora from anywhere in the world. Since I started using pianobar/Pandora I very rarely start up MPD to listen to my FLACs anymore, despite being lower quality audio (192kbit MP3 with a Pandora One account) it's just so handy for a lazy person like me not having to think about exactly what album you want to listen to and search through all the music on the harddrive. Perfect for discovering new music and background listening. Well, too many good things to say about pianobar, just try it out if you haven't already! Since I'm using a headless server I wanted to be able to control pianobar remotely and decided to write an Android app for that purpose, it's free and ad-free, has support for most of the important pianobar functions and supports pianobar running on Linux, Mac (install with Macports or HomeBrew) and theoretically, but barely tested, Windows (pianobar built under Cygwin). See Pianobar (Pandora Radio) Remote Control for Android for setup instructions if you are interested in that.

I'm selling my Plinius 8200 Mk II integrated amplifier. Serial # 1049 Very powerful and always musical. Detailed and lean towards warmth. Wonderful on voices, pianos and double basses (my faves). - Output: 175 w/channel into 8 ohms ...up to 300 w into 4 ohms - Phono section has user selectable gain-setting jumpers for moving magnet or moving coil cartridges - Remote control for Volume up/down and Mute - it's like cast aluminum metal and built like a tank Updated, biased and gone over on 5/11 by Vince Galbo, the original importer and current factory-authorized shop. New they sold for $3,000+ Will ship in original double-boxed foam-cushioned cartons with original manual/instructions. Asking $1500, buyer pays shipping. Luis some reviews: ABSOLUTE SOUNDS - 2002 Golden Ear Award Award Reviews - PLINIUS AUDIO - plinius, plinius audio hifi, plinus, plinius 9200, plinius amplifiers, plinius amplifier, plinius 8150, plimius, pliniusaudio, plinius m14, www.pliniusaudio.com, www.pliniusaudio.nzld.com, plinius 8100, plinius amps, plinius AUDIOGON Best Solid State Integrated Amp AudiogoN Forums: Plinius 8200 MkII -- best integrated ss amp? AudioEnz AudioEnz - Plinius 8200 mk2 (In this review, I love the following description of the Plinius} Within lies the toroidal transformer-that-ate-Manhattan, the main contributor to the weight, and a pre-amp derived from the exoticM16 unit that partners Plinius's class A super-amps. This second edition of the 8200 delivers over 175 remote-controlled watts per channel, with maybe the first couple in class A. Switch the unit on, and the blue power indicator flashes slowly to let you know the amp is muted while it settles down for action. Once stabilised, the LED remains on and you're ready to roll.... This amp tolerates no waywardness on the part of your speakers: they will obey. Will plug in a photo once I've figured out how to do so... cosmetically it is in VG/Exc condition

Hi all, I am writing this post to suggest that Sonic Studio includes in the next release of Amarra a companion App for iOS devices to provide full control of Amarra in a headless mac. I love the sound of current version of Amarra (Symphony) 2.5 I use a headless Mac Pro (tower) exclusively for Audio, and have trimmed down the OS (Mountain Lion) and disabled features as much as I could following many advices from other users. I only use Amarra in cache mode and playlist mode (without iTunes) an I quit the finder. Surprisingly, every single step improves the sound even though the computer is running almost at iddle (from Terminal "top" command). The remaining piece to get rid of is Screen Sharing. I use and iPad to control the headless mac with VNC software iTap. It works perfectly from the user point of view. But if I disable Screen Sharing, the already excellent sound gets even better. The processor does not have to take care of updating the screen and sending over the network to the iPad. However in order to use Amarra in the current setup, I need to have access to the Mac screen (with Screen Sharing). Spotify has two remote solutions (Spot Remote and Remoteless) that use a small server application in the Mac which is much lighter at using CPU resources, and the sound - without Screen Sharing and with the small server app - is better than with Screen Sharing enabled operating directly Spotify on the iPad clone of the Mac Screen. I also own Audirvana+ and even though I personally prefer Amarra Symphony, a remote App for Audirvana+ would be a welcome addition too. My expectation is that getting rid of Screen Sharing through the use of a custom remote App for Amarra or Audirvana+ may bring further improvements in sound quality than another iteration of the already fine sounding engines. Sorry if I became too technical or not too clear but for those avandced users I recommend experimenting at improving the Mac sound if it is used only for computer audio. It costs no money and you are rewarded with better sound. Regards, Jotauve.