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[Vocalpoint]

Howdy,

Getting ready for some changes to my main system and was wondering if anyone has used MC with either the just announced Pioneer unit in the thread title or maybe the Marantz NA-7004 or Cambridge NP-30.

Seems like there is a new flock of audiophile "network" players coming out from the majors - finally in a form factor that interfaces (and looks) nicely within a true "system" and not some el-cheapo plastic box like the WDTV live etc.

I am very interested in the Pioneer since it has it's own control app for Android but I also wanted to know - since it's DLNA 1.5 certified - I should be able to easily "play to" it via MC as a zone? Yes?

Gonna try to score one for a home demo - but thought I would start some conversation here.

Cheers,

VP

[bob]

Go to http://dlna.org and do a product search. I tried with your Pioneer and it couldn't find it. I suspect the actual model number is something different from D-50.
DLNA 1.5 certification says nothing about whether or not it can be pushed to. You need to check it's certification and see if it's certified as a DMR (and if it is you might want to check to see what formats it's certified for).

[Vocalpoint]

Go to http://dlna.org and do a product search. I tried with your Pioneer and it couldn't find it. I suspect the actual model number is something different from D-50.
DLNA 1.5 certification says nothing about whether or not it can be pushed to. You need to check it's certification and see if it's certified as a DMR (and if it is you might want to check to see what formats it's certified for).

Sorry...it's the Pioneer N-30/N-50 And according to that site - it's certified as of 9/22/2011 as a DMP and DMR.

So if it has made DMR cert - I guess that confirms it can be pushed to? All I can see for "media classes" is Audio.

VP

[bob]

Sorry...it's the Pioneer N-30/N-50 And according to that site - it's certified as of 9/22/2011 as a DMP and DMR.

So if it has made DMR cert - I guess that confirms it can be pushed to? All I can see for "media classes" is Audio.

VP

Yup, it should be pushable. Perhaps you can sneak a laptop in and test how well it works?
It claims the usual support of Mandatory audio formats with not much else.
The certification "says" it hasn't been certified for seek support however I've seen that grid for other devices which seeked just fine.

The firmware update log says:
VERSION : 1.009
Fixes the following issues.
- Intermittent sound when playing 192KHz/24bit flac file

So you'd think it supported high resolution FLAC, but perhaps not over DLNA.

I'd give it a test run..

[sorepinky]

That's an N-50 having no trouble pulling from MC18's DLNA media server via a CAT5e cable.  However just like the WDLIVETV it disappears from the Playing Now window in MC18 after a couple of tracks if pushed as a renderer on my system which is an HP PC running Win7/64 Professional and via a Netgear router.

Leave the JRiver PC user interface out of it and the thing keeps playing.

I think JRiver should do something to fix this "vanishing act" routine.  In another thread (re WDLIVETV drop-outs) it seems that JRiver is counting errors and then giving up if there's x number of errors over time t.  I don't understand networks like an IT guy, but why count?

The Pioneer N-50 is "certified" as a DMR.  Is MC18 certified to push to a DMR?

[bob]

We need a way to remove dead zones.
We do this by removing a device is as you say, it get's N errors over time T.
The clock is reset if there is a successful operation.

Try turning off SetNext support, there are many broken implementations of this.
You get there by Right-Clicking on the device in the zone list, then going down to DLNA controller options and clicking on Disable SetNext support.
If that doesn't do it, also click on the second option there, Disable Transport events.

[sorepinky]

Thanks Bob,

I have ticked SetNext.  A tick or check would not appear until build 103 of MC18 was installed on my system to acknowledge that it was selected.  The options just vanished. Anyway a tick shows now.

Well with that SetNexed checked it still fell over after Gizmo was fired up and play o Pioneer was selected.  Then Gizmo lost the network and then MC "Stopped working" and windows closed it down.

Then after a restart there is no Pioneer device showing in the Playing Now list (although it is there under Windows Network).

MC works very well through its own audio engine, but when it comes to playing to a network renderer it is flaky and unreliable in the extreme.

I'm still waiting and it is not there in the list.  Until that happens I cannot try to check the transport events option.

I rebooted the Pioneer.  Several minutes and no sign of it under MC.

I exited MC.  I stopped the MC server and started MC again.

5 minutes and no Pioneer!  It appears in Windows on the network.

OK it's there now... It is not possible to check Ignore Transport Events (use polling mode).  The two options just vanish when an attempt is made to do so.  A further attempt shows no tick - just the one alongside the NextSet shows.

I have no problem with the Pioneer machine using BubbleUPnP with AssetUPnP or the Jiver libraries.

OK I am using Gizmo to the Pioneer and have started logging....

The track appears on the panel of the Pioneer.  It is playing....  track 1 completed.  track 2 playing....

Gizmo loses connection

reconnected it (I'm sitting next to the router with full signal)

It's into the third track...

Gizmo loses connection again

reconnected and still playing...  pressed Playing Now.. it's on track 4

Gizmo loses connection again and auto reconnects...

It's into track 5...

OK getting boring I will press stop on Gizmo...  OK

I searched for a new album in GIZMO and started to play IT.  Gizmo displayed "[Playing 1]" as well as "[Playing 2]".

Pioneer vanished from Playing Now window on the PC.

I have a zip file of the event.  It now contains 3 files: System info, Log and Previous Log .txt files.  I was playing Bach Cello Suites during this post and I see that in the Previous Log file.  Where do I send the zip?

This is driving me nuts, but I'm here to help even though I am running BubbleUPnP with the Bubble UPnP Server that has a feature called “Persistent and shared Playlist for UPnP AV Renderers (OpenHome)” for great stability and an ability to turn off the android device for battery saving and continued play of the play list, I'd love to simplify things since I use Gizmo for the Berkeley Alpha USB/JRiver playback engine for output to another system and that is stable apart from the occasional Gizmo drop-out.

[bob]

lets leave gizmo out of the picture to start with.
those controller options are toggles. when you click on them the check mark should just flip state.
send the zip to bob at jriver dot com.
you may need to catch it disappearing with a wireshark trace. search the wiki for wireshark for instructions.
just push mp3s to the device from mc and try to capture the disappearance.

[sorepinky]

Thank you Bob.  Email sent.  I will study up on wireshark now.

Edit:  I have done a wireshark trace and am now uploading it to DropBox.  It is 312MB.  I ran many traces until I could capture one in which the Pioneer vanished fairly quickly to minimise the trace file size. This occurred without any involvement of Gizmo.  The tablet was off.  However any time that Gizmo is invoked it falls over almost immediately.

312MB is about the best I could do - file size.  I'll email the link to you now, but it will take some time to work as the upload is slow.

I still can't get a tick to appear alongside "Ignore Transport Events (use polling mode)".  The drop-down just vanishes.

[bob]

Thank you Bob.  Email sent.  I will study up on wireshark now.

Edit:  I have done a wireshark trace and am now uploading it to DropBox.  It is 312MB.  I ran many traces until I could capture one in which the Pioneer vanished fairly quickly to minimise the trace file size. This occurred without any involvement of Gizmo.  The tablet was off.  However any time that Gizmo is invoked it falls over almost immediately.

312MB is about the best I could do - file size.  I'll email the link to you now, but it will take some time to work as the upload is slow.

I don't understand the lines of code in the trace ofcourse (I'm a mere mortal), but I do see that most anything in red (= Error) is FROM the PC TO the Pioneer and not the reverse.

I still can't get a tick to appear alonside "Ignore Transport Events (use polling mode)".  The drop-down just vanishes.

If you didn't use the capture filter, you should. It makes the traces much smaller.
In the new windows version the capture filter box has been moved.
You need to do capture->options then double click on the interface you are going to capture on.
Another box pops up which contains a capture filter entry.
Put in there the ip address of your PC and of the renderer, i.e.
host 1.2.3.4 and host 1.2.3.5
hit OK
back to the capture options box, hit start
duplicate the error
hit stop.

[sorepinky]

Have done.  Have sent.  Sorry that even though filtered, this trace took a bit longer (2 full tracks) and is a bigger file than the previous one.  I also sent two screen dumps (before Pioneer vanishes and after) showing the wireshark and MC windows side-by-side.

If you prefer, you could filter the list of the first "smaller" trace to show activity between the two relevant hosts only.  I did it using this syntax:

(ip.src == ***.***.*.10 and ip.dst == ***.***.*.11) or (ip.src == ***.***.*.11 and ip.dst == ***.***.*.10)

I emailed that line to you with the asterisks replaced with real numbers.  

Mere mortal here with vague recollections from FORTRAN77 !!  

Edit next day:  I have just noticed that the Pioneer Network Player vanished from Playing Now even when nothing was playing to it.

[sorepinky]

From my interaction on another site re bubbleUPnP which works with the JRiver library, I have learnt that some Pioneer renderers have a known problem with regular polling.  After some time they refuse http connections and become uncontrollable or unreliably controllable.

To workaround this with the BubbleUPnP Server, there is a setting that can be changed to make the polling interval longer.  It's an entry in their configuration xml file "openHomeTimeTaskPollingIntervalMs", which I changed from 900 to 3000.  This corrected a slight glitch in the BubbleUPnP Android display in which the track progress bar occasionally failed to advance and incorrect lapsed times were displayed.

I guess that this may apply to other renderers too.

Can users adjust the polling interval in MC?

[bob]

Mere mortal here with vague recollections from FORTRAN77 !!  

I did some Microsoft FORTRAN (66 with extensions) on a TRS-80 model 1 with 48K of ram in the early 80's

Edit next day:  I have just noticed that the Pioneer Network Player vanished from Playing Now even when nothing was playing to it.

Is it going into a sleep mode? If so, that's annoying. You may have to turn that off.

If not, we still query it for information in the background. A trace of that simply vanishing might be easier to debug than while playing. I'll see if I can do anything with your traces at any rate.

[sorepinky]

The Pioneer has no sleep mode.

[sorepinky]

OK a counterintuitive breakthrough!

I was considering disabling a lot of software on my PC such as Acronis True Image, DropBox and other things running as services and decided to go back to basics instead.  All other software on my PC (and there's a lot of it including Non-Microsoft firewall etc.) is needed after all.

I figured that maybe the Pioneer is "trying to control" MC and screwing it up in the process, so in MC18 under Options>Media Network>Advanced, I unchecked "DLNA Renderer(Allow other DLNA devices to control Media Centre)" so it doesn't think the Pioneer is saying something like "please let me go now"..  I.e. disallow attempts by the Pioneer to interfere.  I was under the misconception that it was necessary to have that option checked for Gizmo to operate.  And without Gizmo I'm not on the bus so to speak.

Then when I turned the Pioneer machine on, it appeared on the PC under Playing Now in the blink of an eye.  That was promising since it used to take forever.

On the PC MC interface I chose an album and played the whole thing straight through without a single disappearance of the Pioneer from the Playing Now list (19 tracks).

All day so far the Pioneer has not vanished once.

OK that was great, but I figured that Gizmo might not work anymore since I unchecked that option, but Gizmo does work and is stable (none of that disconnect/reconnect carry-on).  The Pioneer comes up on the top line of Gizmo (as well as the Berkeley) and it can be selected and used.

BTW the Pioneer hardware sounds a hundred time better than the WDLIVETV.

I hope I have helped people.

Bob - don't bother with the Wireshark traces unless you are particularly interested in them.  I think they only show a whole bunch of bad checksum errors that don't matter a lot.

[bob]

Sorepinky,
That's fascinating!
The renderer is only used if you were to push something TO MC from somewhere else, like another MC or WMP or a third party control point.
Thanks for the detailed report.
If there is something going on in the discovery process, that might help track it down.

[sorepinky]

The renderer is only used if you were to push something TO MC from somewhere else, like another MC or WMP or a third party control point.

That's what I figured, but maybe MC was accepting some stray data from the Pioneer hardware and misinterpreting it.  I have no idea.

BTW, I returned the WDTVLIVE box to my brother.  I was testing it prior to buying the Pioneer and it had the same trouble.  I would certainly have had "DLNA Renderer(Allow other DLNA devices to control Media Centre)" checked at that time.  He has MC on a desktop as well as a laptop and they talk to each other across his home network well.  He has the default setting "DLNA Renderer(Allow other DLNA devices to control Media Centre)" checked on both of his machines.  In his attempt to help me out with my problem he plugged the WD into his TV and saw no vanishing act with it.  So there's something strange.

[sorepinky]

I'm afraid to report that it has happened again.  After a full day of it working perfectly yesterday, I changed nothing and today it's back to the old tricks.  The only difference is that yesterday I was playing 44.1/16 FLACs.  Today 176.4/24 FLACs.

I did notice very long gaps developing between tracks before it fell over - say 20 seconds.

Pioneer vanished from Now Playing in MC then comes and goes at random.

There is no way of actually getting a tick to appear alongside the use polling option.

[bob]

I'm afraid to report that it has happened again.  After a full day of it working perfectly yesterday, I changed nothing and today it's back to the old tricks.  The only difference is that yesterday I was playing 44.1/16 FLACs.  Today 176.4/24 FLACs.

Do you have audio conversion off? If so, are you certain that the Pioneer can play 176.4/24 flacs? Are any of them multitrack?
Many of these devices, including the WD will do exactly what you describe when they get material they can't play or material with errors.

I did notice very long gaps developing between tracks before it fell over - say 20 seconds.

Pioneer vanished from Now Playing in MC then comes and goes at random.

When that happens, power cycle the Pioneer and check to see if it can play something simple like the 44.1/16 flacs or mp3's.

There is no way of actually getting a tick to appear alongside the use polling option.

That's a bug, I don't know when it crept in since I've used that option sucessfully before. It'll be fixed in the next build. Thanks.

[Carcajou]

Bonjour,

Here is my experience with the JRiver MC17 - Gizmo - Pioneer N-50. This set up is up and running for more than 8 months now and I have not encountered a single issue. I listen music daily.  My wav and flac files are stored on an el cheapo DLink NAS and JRiver runs from an 12 years old 2Ghz AMD PC under XP. The pioneer N-50 (1.009) is linked to the network by a CAT5 cable and takes about 30 seconds to start to play a file after the music selection has been made through by Gizmo on an el cheapo Android tablet. The delay between tracks after the first file is comparable to CD playback.  The only time I do notice a longer elapse time between tracks is when EMC backup software runs to backup my old PC to an USB drive. Then it can take 15 to 20 seconds for the next track to start playing, but it never fail. I play wav and flac file only 16 and 24 bits up to 176Khz (this is due to the limits of my Metrum Octave DAC). In case it could help - these are the setting for the server (I called it N50 server)  I set up in MC17 for the Pionneer N-50:
conversion: never convert
encoder: uncompressed

I have associated that server to the N-50 in the players list in JRiver.  I also use a Sony B590 blue ray disc player to play music into another room through wifi and it work well.

Regards

[sorepinky]

Thanks guys.  

I only have flacs (44.1/16, 44.1/24, 88.2/24, 96/24, 176.4/24 and 192/24).  They are all 2-channel only.  They can all play all day long on the Pioneer using BubbleUPnP with BubbleUPnP Server reading from the JRiver library.  Using that software there is no more than 2 seconds of delay between tracks no matter what.  Here are settings that achieved this:

Pioneer Renderer:  I set it up with a static IP address rather than using DHCP.

Router: Under UPnP settings in my router, I set the Advertisement Period to 1 minute and  Advertisement Time to Live to 6 hops.

BubbleUPnPServer:  I edited the configuration.xml file on the PC in the BubbleUPnP Server folder so that openHomeUseEventing was set to "true" and left openHomeTimeTaskPollingIntervalMs set at the default of "900" milliseconds.

Back to JRiver:

Conversion is set to Never Convert and below that it says Encoder: Uncompressed 24 Bit (I don't know why that shows since it says Never Convert above it so I thought it should be greyed out).  Anyway I just changed it to "Uncompressed" (without the 24).

I posted a photo earlier in the thread of the Pioneer playing a 176.4/24 flac.  This is displayed on its panel.

The Pioneer is on the 009 firmware out of the box.

Just typing this now I have been playing a 44.1 and it just fell off again.

[doulos]

sorry for jumping in - I just went through testing a newly acquired network player myself and would like to throw in a few general findings/precautions:

The device I tested is a Denon DNP-F109, which is marketed, it seems, only in europe. It is acclaimed manyfold as a breakthrough device in the netowrk field, because it supposedly is both affordable (< 400 EUR) and capable. So far the theory.

I was particularily interested because it makes the claim of supporting gapless playback - an absolute must if you have live recordings or like to listen to classical concerts. However, I quickly discovered that the UPnP method SetNextAVTransportURI was not supported, and thus gapless was out of question. Heres the corresponding statement from their Q&A:

Please also note that gapless is only possible if you use the media player function of the device, ie an album go directly to the device by remote control, RS-232C / IP control or via a Web interface. If you use the Windows "Play To" - or other media renderer features (Android music streaming, control by DMC, PlugPlayer, Media Connect, etc.) and use the Denon Remote App, gapless is not available.

Note that this holds true for all Denon devices! Even their own app can't do gapless, neither can stock AirPlay apps. The only way it "works" is when kneeling in front of the built-in display to navigate the media via IR or hardware knobs.

This proves to me that even with supposed "high-end", or at least "HiFi" devices, you have to watch closely what exactly they offer. They often fail miserably on the software side, in particular with UPnP and AirPlay. I have yet to find an affordable player with full gapless over UPnP.

chris

[JimH]

doulos,
Thanks for posting that.

Jim

[bob]

sorry for jumping in - I just went through testing a newly acquired network player myself and would like to throw in a few general findings/precautions:

The device I tested is a Denon DNP-F109, which is marketed, it seems, only in europe. It is acclaimed manyfold as a breakthrough device in the netowrk field, because it supposedly is both affordable (< 400 EUR) and capable. So far the theory.

I was particularily interested because it makes the claim of supporting gapless playback - an absolute must if you have live recordings or like to listen to classical concerts. However, I quickly discovered that the UPnP method SetNextAVTransportURI was not supported, and thus gapless was out of question. Heres the corresponding statement from their Q&A:
Note that this holds true for all Denon devices! Even their own app can't do gapless, neither can stock AirPlay apps. The only way it "works" is when kneeling in front of the built-in display to navigate the media via IR or hardware knobs.

This proves to me that even with supposed "high-end", or at least "HiFi" devices, you have to watch closely what exactly they offer. They often fail miserably on the software side, in particular with UPnP and AirPlay. I have yet to find an affordable player with full gapless over UPnP.

chris

Ugh, it's not really that hard is it??
Thanks for sharing...

[sorepinky]

Pioneer is saying that they will support gapless with a free firmware upgrade soon: http://www.pioneer.eu/eur/newsroom/news/AVR_Firmware_2013/page.html

[doulos]

thats what Denon promised as well - gapless after firmware update. What that brought about is (supposed) gapless when navigating from the device, which is utterly useless. Putting hope in future firmware update is not a wise thing

[sorepinky]

Yeah, it'd be pretty embarrassing if gapless did not work on the Pioneer when used to pull under the remote control of its revised Android ControlApp when the new firmware etc. is released.  Until then we can only speculate.

I'm now trying with V18.0.112 in which a bug fix has enabled a check to be applied against "Ignore Transport Events (use polling mode)" to see if that helps.

And the answer is no.

Edit:

I found the answer.

[sorepinky]

I've left it a few weeks to be absolutely certain.  And yes!  The problem was Zone Alarm Internet Security Suite 2012.  In a previous post I incorrectly wrote that it was not a firewall issue.  That was based on several tests with Zone Alarm completely disabled and with the Router disconnected from tha cable modem for safety.

Well that garbage piece of software had to be completely uninstalled.  It was only by fluke that I figured it out since I was planning to change over to Windows Firewall and Microsoft Security Essentials at the end of my 12-month Zone contract and that came about.   Even when "disabled" it left all manner of crap running in the background and screwing up the PC.  Switched over to Microsoft and Jiver runs well.  In fact the whole PC runs like a rocket.

The only thing I can complain about with the N-50 is the first second or so of any 24/96 or 24/192 FLAC downloaded from HDTracks skipping.  This is not a problem with 24/96 or 24/192 ripped from DVD Audio using DVD Audio Extractor.  It is also not evident when playing with MC's own audio engine.

[JimH]

Thanks for reporting the solution.  It's not the first time that disabling software wasn't enough.

[bob]

I've left it a few weeks to be absolutely certain.  And yes!  The problem was Zone Alarm Internet Security Suite 2012.  In a previous post I incorrectly wrote that it was not a firewall issue.  That was based on several tests with Zone Alarm completely disabled and with the Router disconnected from the cable modem for safety.

Well that garbage piece of software had to be completely uninstalled.  It was only by fluke that I figured it out since I was planning to change over to Windows Firewall and Microsoft Security Essentials at the end of my 12-month Zone contract and that came about.   Even when "disabled" it left all manner of crap running in the background and screwing up the PC.  Switched over to Microsoft and Jiver runs well.  In fact the whole PC runs like a rocket.

good grief!

The only thing I can complain about with the N-50 is the first second or so of any 24/96 or 24/192 FLAC downloaded from HDTracks skipping.  This is not a problem with 24/96 or 24/192 ripped from DVD Audio using DVD Audio Extractor.  It is also not evident when playing with MC's own audio engine.

I wonder if that's an imbedded cover art issue.

[sorepinky]

Well I embed my own scanned cover art images (about 1500 by 1500 pix) using the "import from folder.jpg" feature of dBPowerAmp on the DVD Audio extracted albums.  I'll modify an album from HDTracks to be similar and see if that fixes it.  It's very consistent - never a skip with anything ripped using DVD Audio Extractor (24/96 or 24/192) or from SACDs using the PS3 to DSF then converted with Korg Audiogate to 24/176.  BTW, your ctrl/shift/paste is a prize-winner for transposing the redbook layer meta on these.  

Edit: To give an idea about how much better the PC runs with that ZoneAlarm garbage removed:  with the JRiver's media server closed down, a fresh start of Media Centre used to take 5+ seconds to display the GUI - and that's with an SSD.  Since taking the garbage out and with the Microsoft security and firewall software in its place it takes less than 0.5 seconds.  I reckon ZoneAlarm could possibly be the cause of many of the networking problems raised here by others using different hardware (WDLIVETV etc...).  There have been similar improvements with all other software that I run on the PC - not just media Centre.  Also numerous other gremlin-like behaviours in a lot of other software ceased!

[bob]

...
Edit: To give an idea about how much better the PC runs with that Zone garbage removed:  with the JRiver's media server closed down, a fresh start of Media Centre used to take 5+ seconds to display the GUI - and that's with an SSD.  Since taking the garbage out and with the Microsoft security and firewall software in its place it takes less than 0.5 seconds.  I reckon Zone could possibly be the cause of many of the networking problems raised here by others using different hardware (WDLIVETV etc...).  There have been similar improvements with all other software that I run on the PC - not just media Centre.  Also numerous other gremlin-like behaviours in a lot of other software ceased!

Sigh, there are too many variables in PC security land.

[JimH]

Thanks again for posting about the ZoneAlarm problems.  If you don't mind, please use its full name rather than Zone, since we have a Zone feature and people might get confused about whether it's causing trouble.  I edited your post above to change it to ZoneAlarm.

[sorepinky]

That's OK - so long as everyone knows it wasn't me who called ZoneAlarm garbage right?

Anyway, back to skipping issue.  I changed the cover art of an HDTracks 24/192 to a simple 1000 by 1000 folder.jpg and embedded it using dbPowerAmp's right click/edit meta into all of the tracks as I have on the remainder of my library.  It still skips on every track.  It is not a problem on 24/176 downloads from HDTracks -  just their 24/96 and 24/192 FLACs.  These same files play fine through the Media Center audio engine (WASAPI - Berkeley Alpha USB to another system) so the files seem "OK enough".

Maybe a firmware issue with Pioneer, but that's doubtful too since it plays all of the 24/96s and 24/192s ripped with DVD Audio Extractor without skipping. Very odd.  I think it's still a couple of months before their gapless firmware is to be released - not that I'm holding my breath.

Edit:  The skipping is not JRiver-related.  I tried it with Asset UPnP and the behaviour is the same.  There is an incompatibility between 96 and 192 material downloaded from HDTracks and the Pioneer machine which is not evident with self-ripped DVD-A flacs.

[sorepinky]

Pioneer has now released the gapless firmware 1.020 and it works under the control of their improved Andriod ControlApp.  In this case the Pioneer machine pulls from the JRiver library and plays gapless perfectly.  Just played Peter and the Wolf with Boris Karloff!    They have improved the ControlApp so that all of the tracks are listed (instead of just 4 at once), but there is still no artwork.  Neither BubbleUPnP nor MC can push gaplessly however.  I tried Disable SetNext Support to no avail.  ControlApp it is for me.

[bob]

Interesting, they must have implemented it in a proprietary manner since MC and BubbleUPnP use the two "standard" methods.

[sorepinky]

That's strange.  Despite its instability, I still use Gizmo to control MCs renderer for gapless playback via a Berkeley Alpha USB to a different hifi.  It's the only way I can get gapless to work on that system.  Although Bubble UPnP is more stable than Gizmo on my tablet/WiFi network, it cannot control the MC renderer to work in a gapless manner.

[bubbleguuum]

That's strange.  Despite its instability, I still use Gizmo to control MCs renderer for gapless playback via a Berkeley Alpha USB to a different hifi.  It's the only way I can get gapless to work on that system.  Although Bubble UPnP is more stable than Gizmo on my tablet/WiFi network, it cannot control the MC renderer to work in a gapless manner.

Do you mean BubbleUPnP controlling MC renderer gaplessly ?
In BubbleUPnP, check that "Settings > UPnP Tweaks > Enable gapless control" is enabled.

[sorepinky]

Hi Bubbleguuum.  We know each other from the XDA Developers forum where you have been very helpful with your superb BubbleUPnP software.

Yes.  Using the JRiver's "audio engine" as renderer, gaps are added under BubbleUPnP control (at some places - not all) even with "Enable gapless control" checked in the BubbleUPnP Android interface.  What it does is as follows:

In BubbleUPnP I press Play at the top of an album of say 10 tracks in the JRiver library.  Only the first 2 of these then appear on the main PC where MC is running and these are listed by MC correctly.  They are given Seq numbers 1 and 2.  Transition from 1 to 2 is indeed gapless.

Then at the end of Track 2 there is a gap.  BubbleUPnP shows that Track 3 is playing.  MC replaces the first two tracks with Tracks 3 and 4 and the Seq numbers 1 and 2 are reused for them.  MC only ever shows two tracks at a time and they are always Seq numbered 1 and 2.  The gaps are therefore only after even numbered tracks.  I guess if BubbleUPnP sent a full list of all of the album tracks to MC and MC gave them Seq Nos 1 through 10 it would be better.

Of course there may be settings in both programs to enable this, but it gets a bit confusing.  Gertainly under Gizmo control MC shows all tracks of an album (not just two) with a full set of Seq numbers.  Problem with Gizmo is its temperamental track list button which keeps playing hide and seek and they don't seem to know why.

I am not using BubbleUPnP Server for the above.  I uninstalled it for the time being.

The above description has nothing to do with the Pioneer N-50 on my network.  I am talking about the JRiver renderer.

I can't get BubbleUPnP or Gizmo to control the N-50 gaplessly.  Only the updated Pioneer ControlApp seems to do that properly.  Shame about its crummy artless interface.

Admins. Is there any conflict of interest here?  Would it be better to discuss this over at the XDA Developers forum?

Seems there are many ways of controlling things, but not one is perfect (yet).

Cheers

[bubbleguuum]

@sorepinky


First, using foobar2000 to serve a gapless album played by MC and controlled by BubbleUPnP, I could not reproduce your problem:
it played perfectly gaplessly from start to end.

Then I switched to having the same album served by MC, and bam, the exact issue you described happen.

I found out it seems to be a bug (or regression, because I think it previously worked) in MC, so what follows is for bob:

When MC renderer is playing a file server by MC, the TrackURI parameter of GetPostionInfo() points to a file path instead of an URL:

G:\Music\Lossless\AD Music\[AD16CD] - Code Indigo - For Whom The Bell - 1996\02 - Code Indigo - Part 2.flac

instead of:

http://192.168.1.14:52100/Music/F71.flac

When MC plays an item from another Media Server, TrackURI points correclty to the http URL.

[bob]

Hi bubbleguuum, I'm pretty sure you are right about that. I'll check it asap.

[Carcajou]

Bonjour,

I have also updated my Pioneer N-50 Firmware to 1.020. The playback in DMP (DLNA Media Player) mode is now Gapless whether I use the Pioneer navigation screen to pick music directly from my UNPN NAS or from JRiver server. By the way that firmware upgrade also adds AIFF and ALAC playback capability over Network connection.

The "gapped" playback remains an annoyance when JRiver(MC17) controls the Pioneer Network Audio Player as a DLNA Media Renderer (DMR)

My question: Is there a way to play Gapless in DMR mode with JRiver and the Pioneer N-50 over a Network connexion? - Does an industry standard exist for this ? Is it JRiver that must add this function to MC or is it Pioneer that must provide another Firmware upgrade.

Regards

[doulos]

Hello,

this seems to be common practice: manufacturers tack the "gapless" tag onto their hardware but implement it in an at best half-hearted manner. I have seen this with Denon devices, where gapless only works if you select media using the IR remote and the built-in display (imagine yourself going through a list of 300 albums). Pioneer seems to be a little better, in that at least they deliver an app that can use the gapless feature.

It seems that neither of these manufacturers is able or willing to implement gaplessness the DLNA/UPnP way, using the SetNetxAVTransportURI action. I am sure theres no hard technical reason for this, as there are others that have done it. If it was there, MC or BubbleUPnP (or my upcoming MediaSteersman app) would gladly use it.

[sorepinky]

... BTW, the bad skipping behaviour with HDTracks 96 and 192 flacs is no longer present after the Pioneer firmware upgrade to 1.020.

Edit (6 April 2013):  I must clarify.  Whilst the HDTracks 96 and 192 skipping is no longer present under the control of the Pioneer Android ContrplApp and Pioneer Firmware 1.020, or when using the Pioneer hand-held IR remote, it is still present using Gizmo or BubbleUPnP or any other push controller (with any library that I have tried).  There is something perhaps about the flac encoder that HD tracks is using which is different to DVD Audio Extractor rips which all play fine all the time on the Pioneer.

[JimH]

Thanks for reporting the solution.

[sorepinky]

Using AssetUPnP to serve an album, played by MC and controlled by BubbleUPnP, the same behaviour happens - two tracks only listed then a gap etc.

[bubbleguuum]

Using AssetUPnP to serve an album, played by MC and controlled by BubbleUPnP, the same behaviour happens - two tracks only listed then a gap etc.

I just tested this combination and it works fine here, playing a 44.1/16 FLAC gapless album, using MC 18.0.106 (as renderer) and Asset UPnP 4.1

[sorepinky]

I was on recent build 18.0.146, so went back to 18.0.106 (the latest stable version) and using BubbleUPnP, MC's own library and MC as renderer, the same behaviour happens - two tracks only listed then a gap etc.  I tried it with AssetUPnP as you did and there was slightly different listing behaviour (sometimes 3 tracks, sometimes 1, sometimes 2 but never all), but gaps appeared for me.

Should we start a new thread for this since we're not talking about the N-50 any more?

It would be really nice if the new builds of MC played perfect gapless under the control of third party controllers such as BubbleUPnP when reading from its own library.

[bob]

Hi bubbleguuum, I'm pretty sure you are right about that. I'll check it asap.

It was the url in the resource that was not the same last time, not the trackURL so rolling back versions won't make a difference.
The trackURL is what I would consider to be wrong .
When a controller is used with MC as both server and renderer, MC knows it's playing from it's own database so it shortcuts the URL to get the file locally.
This is good because it means we can play anything we have without conversion.
It's not so good if the controller is relying upon the TrackURL for something.
Adding it to the todo list...

[bob]

The next build will have the trackURI fixed.
There is only one caveat, when you use the same MC for the server AND renderer you MUST choose the first server in your list of DLNA servers on the control point so that the proper data can be returned. The configuration of the server is unimportant to MC in this case since it's bypassing the URL to play the file directly from it's library anyway.

I've tested it with BubbleUPnP and it plays gaplessly.