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[trajanmcgill]

I had high hopes for distributing audio around my house with a JRiver MC -> BubbleUPnP Server -> Chromecast Audio solution, that being a cheap, easy to set up option that can both play unaltered bits straight to a DAC of my choice in the expensive stereo room and spit out a line-level signal for a cheap pair of amplified speakers in the garage, and form into groups for whole-house audio...but I'm having unexpected trouble getting it to work quite right. I set up the Chromecast devices and can stream to them successfully. Installed BubbleUPnP Server, and it was able to see the Chromecast devices and the group I created for them as well. Enabled DLNA renderers for them. But MC doesn't seem quite able to control things reliably.

The first problem I encountered was JRiver MC (24) completely freezing repeatedly. I'd choose the DLNA renderer zone I wanted, and then click on "Audio" to pick something to play, and right away, before I even navigated to anything to play, MC would become completely unresponsive indefinitely. I'd have to shut it down with task manager. This happened a number of times. It seemed like after restarting everything enough times, that problem lessened-- though it did not go away altogether (I later saw MC freeze again, when I tried controlling it from JRemote, the instant I selected one of the BubbleUPnP-created DLNA renderer zones). But then I got another problem.

The second problem was that advancing from track to track on a playlist doesn't always work. After experimentation, I found what seemed to be a pattern: if I play an album to the DLNA renderer zone, and just let it play, it plays from song to song. But if at any point during playback, I jump to another point in the currently playing track, then when it reaches the end of that track, playback stops, and the next one never plays.

I've tried switching to polling mode and with or without both of the "broken renderer" options (one of which seems to be getting selected automatically), and the problem consistently occurs regardless.

It is going to be awfully disappointing if there's no way to do this. Chromecast Audio looks so far ahead (in both convenience and affordability) of all the other potential ways of getting music to more than one room that I'd imagine supporting it directly in MC would be a massive win for the product. But short of that, I'd love to get this functional at least using the BubbleUPnP tool. Anybody else have this working well?

[DJLegba]

I've never tried, but here's something that might work: Use Google's app to link your CCAs, then run Panel on a Chrome browser and have Chrome cast to the linked CCAs.

[JimH]

The freeze is odd.  What version of MC are you using?

Antivirus software can cause problems like a freeze.

[trajanmcgill]

I've never tried, but here's something that might work: Use Google's app to link your CCAs, then run Panel on a Chrome browser and have Chrome cast to the linked CCAs.

I haven't played with trying to cast assorted things using Chrome itself as the in-between, so maybe there's a way to do that. The main reason I've been assuming otherwise is that it would seem to require Chrome/Panel to be the UI, and thus disallow (I think) the possibility of controlling the output from other interfaces. The appeal of MC is that I can have one server which I can connect and control from anything- Theater View on the television, an MC client in the stereo room, JRemote, etc.- and regardless of which controller I'm using, I can send audio to whatever zone I want. So if I can't get a CCA to appear as an actual zone to the server, and have to involve another, new UI that you have to go to for casted zones, whereas all the other zones are controlled by the regular applications, it will add more complexity, when what I'm really trying to do is create less complexity so the system gets used by people in my household other than myself.

[trajanmcgill]

Yes, the freeze very much surprised me, since I would not expect anything on the other side of a connection (a renderer) to completely stop MC from working. I'm on MC 24.0.55 x64 for Windows, on Windows 8.1.

[DJLegba]

what I'm really trying to do is create less complexity so the system gets used by people in my household other than myself.

Well, if you can't get the BubbleUPnP solution working, Chrome does run on all the devices you mentioned, so you'd be using a single interface (Panel) everywhere.

[trajanmcgill]

Well, if you can't get the BubbleUPnP solution working, Chrome does run on all the devices you mentioned, so you'd be using a single interface (Panel) everywhere.

Thanks, I guess that's a thought. I haven't really taken up Panel, because it isn't really a style of interface I prefer, and because it doesn't apply to quite the same use cases as the MC standard view or Theater view for sure (I'm not sure how I'd use it as a ten-foot view with a standard remote). And for a casting solution, it would require leaving a browser window open the whole time and keeping whatever device I used to start the playlist going turned on and within WiFi range. Any other client, I can just use it to tell the server what to do, and then (unless I'm playing to the client device) the client has no need for an ongoing part in the process. Moreover, if it is the server doing the playing, then any client at all can see the current "Playing Now" list and skip a track, pause and resume, add tracks, or otherwise control the ongoing playback. With Panel I'd have to go back to whatever device I used to start the stream in order to see or change it. So it's less than ideal. But maybe.

A technical question on this: Can Panel pull a pure, unaltered bitstream from the server and feed it out to whatever it is using to play (either a local audio interface or a cast)? If I'm playing to my phone, I don't really care, but if I'm going to my good stereo, I want to go FLAC to DAC without alteration, or if I'm at my desk, I want to do more or less the same through my Komplete Audio 6 and studio monitors.

[trajanmcgill]

Antivirus software can cause problems like a freeze.

Oh, and forgot to answer this part. I'm running only the Defender / Security Center built into Windows.

[DJLegba]

A technical question on this: Can Panel pull a pure, unaltered bitstream from the server and feed it out to whatever it is using to play (either a local audio interface or a cast)? If I'm playing to my phone, I don't really care, but if I'm going to my good stereo, I want to go FLAC to DAC without alteration, or if I'm at my desk, I want to do more or less the same through my Komplete Audio 6 and studio monitors.

To be honest, I don't use Panel either. But I see that the latest version has audio quality options that include uncompressed (WAV).

It has been a while since I last used Bubble, but isn't it possible to link your CCA devices using Google's Home app, and then set up the linked group as a single UPnP instance in Bubble?

[trajanmcgill]

It has been a while since I last used Bubble, but isn't it possible to link your CCA devices using Google's Home app, and then set up the linked group as a single UPnP instance in Bubble?

Yes, that's exactly my goal. I've got the devices working and linked, and Bubble can see both the individual devices and the group and create a DLNA renderer that sends to any of them or the group. MC can in turn see the DLNA "device" that is advertised by Bubble and use it as a zone for playback. What seems to be going wrong is in the playback control. Even if the freezing somehow was a fluke (though it happened numerous times), something prevents MC under certain circumstances from continuing from one track in a playlist to the next when playing to one of those zones. It just reaches the end of the song and then playback stops.

[DJLegba]

Yes, that's exactly my goal. I've got the devices working and linked, and Bubble can see both the individual devices and the group and create a DLNA renderer that sends to any of them or the group. MC can in turn see the DLNA "device" that is advertised by Bubble and use it as a zone for playback. What seems to be going wrong is in the playback control. Even if the freezing somehow was a fluke (though it happened numerous times), something prevents MC under certain circumstances from continuing from one track in a playlist to the next when playing to one of those zones. It just reaches the end of the song and then playback stops.

Out of interest, does MO 4Media have any trouble casting to the linked CCAs (directly, not through Bubble)? It works very well casting to a single CCA, and it has really good control over file conversions when casting.

[trajanmcgill]

Out of interest, does MO 4Media have any trouble casting to the linked CCAs (directly, not through Bubble)? It works very well casting to a single CCA, and it has really good control over file conversions when casting.

Not sure. As I said, I'm really trying to get casting to happen from the server rather than from a client app, so I haven't tested casting much from JRemote yet either, but I actually wasn't aware MO 4Media had appeared on the scene, so I would be curious to take a look. Looks like there is a 7-day free trial, so I can give it a try later and report back. I only bought two CCAs to start with, to allow me to test but without too much invested in case they didn't do what I needed, so I won't be able to try out things like multiple groups that contain some of the same devices (does Google Home let you do that? I hope so), but I can see how well it seems to work on a group of two.

[Scobie]

Is there any clue in the error log?

[DJLegba]

I only bought two CCAs to start with, to allow me to test but without too much invested in case they didn't do what I needed, so I won't be able to try out things like multiple groups that contain some of the same devices (does Google Home let you do that? I hope so), but I can see how well it seems to work on a group of two.

I only have 2 CCAs. Your idea got me curious about how to do this. It's very easy in the Google Home app to create a group of devices, and after doing that I see all of the individual devices and the group in the list of available zones in MO 4Media. I used the default group name "Home", and when I selected that I immediately got synced playback from both the CCA feeding my DAC and the CCA feeding a Muso, without any kind of fiddling with buffer sizes or playback delay. However, casting hiccups every now and then, which it doesn't do when I select only one device. I haven't investigated group settings to see if there's a way to fix this. And it seems to be happening with less frequency the longer I listen.

I was faffing around with the Muso and playback stopped after the second track. I started the third, and playback stopped after it finished. So I exited MO 4M and started again and selected a new album. On the fifth track now, so I suspect it will not have a problem completing the playlist. But it doesn't look like there's a way to fix the hiccups.

[trajanmcgill]

Yes, the grouping is remarkably easy. I didn't hear any casting hiccups in the time I was playing with them, and the devices seemed to be synchronized pleasingly well. In my initial tests, both CCAs were in the same room, though, in close range to a fast WiFi access point, and I was casting from a hardwired device (my server running Bubble). If you're casting from MO 4Media, you are pulling a stream from the server over WiFi to your phone or tablet and then pushing the same stream back out over the same WiFi network to multiple other devices, so there's a lot more room for WiFi interference to get in the way, and the phone processor also has to be up to the task of running the stream while doing whatever else the phone is doing.

I might be able to fiddle with things a little more tonight. This will be pretty cool if it can be made to work fully.

[trajanmcgill]

Okay, after some further experimentation, I've continued to have problems. I have not seen the freezing issue again, so maybe it was related to something that went away on reboot or something, but there seem to be consistent issues with playing to a Bubble DLNA renderer from JRiver MC. (Edit: it did freeze again, but may have been related to killing the DLNA renderer that was the actively selected zone.) Here's what I see.

Playing from JRiver MC to a Chromecast Audio wrapped by a BubbleUPnP Server DLNA renderer appears at first glance to work. But one thing fails every time: when playing a full album, if at any point during the playback of a track I click to a different spot in the current track timeline, it will successfully jump to the new spot, then play out the rest of the song as expected...and then stop. The next track never plays. This happens 100% of the time, as far as I can tell. This has been advertised as a working solution here, so maybe someone has gotten it working...or maybe it has never been explored enough to notice this issue. I can't really go with a solution that is so fragile as to stop every time someone navigates within a song, so I'd love to get this resolved. In case there are clues within, I'm attaching a log file that covers the steps of playing an album, jumping to near the end of the song, then letting it finish and fail to go on to the next song on the album. If the fact that I'm playing from a remote library adds too much complexity to the log file, I can create another one where the files played are local ones, since the problem occurs either way.

For comparison purposes, here's the behavior I see with other applications.

1) Windows Media Player playing to the BubbleUPnP Server DLNA renderer: Moves from song to song in a playlist just fine, regardless of whether I've jumped around in the currently playing song. So, not showing the same problem. (It has other problems, though-- I can't actually navigate track to track manually, only by letting one finish and the next begin. In fact, if I try to jump to another track, it weirdly shows the new one as playing, and the time indicator counts along as if it has worked and I'm now starting playback of a new item, but the old track is really still playing.)

2) VLC playing directly to a Chromecast Audio device: seems to work perfectly, at least so far.

Is there anything else I can do to figure out clues here, or does anyone else have JRiver MC talking to a Bubble server who could try duplicating my issue? Thanks.

[Scobie]

Have you tried running Andrew's Whitebear DLNA Renderer Analyser to validate the DLNA settings?

http://www.whitebear.ch/dmra

[trajanmcgill]

Have you tried running Andrew's Whitepbear DLNA Renderer Analyser to validate the DLNA settings?

http://www.whitebear.ch/dmra

I had, but hadn't been able to get it to see my renderer. Thanks to you reminding me of it, I tried again on another machine, and this time it was able to connect and give me its recommendations. I followed its suggestions, but unfortunately still see the same behavior. When playing to a Bubble DLNA renderer, JRiver MC fails to move to the next track in the playlist if at any time during the current track I jumped to a different point in the song.

[Scobie]

I can see you had looked at the DLNA controller settings (disable for broken controller etc) but if you just had a quick look might be worth having a good tinker with those. I had the exact same issue - only 1 track playing - and toggling a couple of these sorted it.

[JimH]

I had, but hadn't been able to get it to see my renderer.

That means something is blocking it, probably a firewall.  If Andrew's program won't work, MC won't.

[bob]

I'll try setting up a test.
I only have an original ChromeCast device.
Are you running the bubble server shim running on Windows, Mac or Linux?
Is that the same machine running MC?

[trajanmcgill]

I can see you had looked at the DLNA controller settings (disable for broken controller etc) but if you just had a quick look might be worth having a good tinker with those. I had the exact same issue - only 1 track playing - and toggling a couple of these sorted it.

Are you playing to BubbleUPnP Server, or to some other DLNA renderer? If you're using Bubble, can you try specifically to replicate what I'm having trouble with? (Start a whole album playing, let it go for 10 seconds or so to confirm it is playing and see the elapsed time synchronize with what is playing, then click on the timeline to jump to maybe 15 or 30 seconds before the end of the track, and see if when the first track finishes it goes on to the second successfully.)

As for the controller options, I don't think the third "disable" option existed when the Whitebear tool was built, so I've tried turning that one on and off as well. The setnext option seems to disable itself regardless of which way I have it set. I think I've tried all the combinations of the other two options.

That means something is blocking it, probably a firewall.  If Andrew's program won't work, MC won't.

Oddly enough, that wasn't the case. It might be that the firewall was blocking one but not the other. In any case, I later got the analyser tool working, also. Either way, MC can see and play to my renderer. That much isn't the problem. It just has this weird issue about stopping after one track...but only if I have navigated within the current track during playback.

Thanks to both of you and everyone else who is reading and helping try to answer this. I'll be really happy if this gets solved and I can deploy a Chromecast Audio solution, which will be hundreds of dollars and many hours of labor cheaper than distributing audio through my house any other way that I can think of.

[trajanmcgill]

I'll try setting up a test.
I only have an original ChromeCast device.
Are you running the bubble server shim running on Windows, Mac or Linux?
Is that the same machine running MC?

I've got the Bubble server running alongside MC on a Windows machine. I don't have a Mac to work with, but I can try several more combinations:
1) Bubble on a separate Windows machine
2) Bubble on Linux, controlled from a Windows MC installation
3) Bubble on Windows, controlled from a Linux MC installation
4) Bubble on Linux, controlled from a Linux MC installation on the same machine
5) Bubble on Linux, controlled from a Linux MC installation on a different machine

As ultimate solutions for deployment, these would be less than ideal for me, though, especially any that involves my main MC server residing on Linux. I use it for TV DVR purposes alongside my music library, and unless I'm mistaken this isn't easily possible with the Linux version.

[bob]

I reproduced it a couple of times, not consistently. Traced it with wireshark.

It looks like there may be an issue with the amount of time the Bubble server takes to report its change of state from the STOPPED state after receiving the PLAY command.

We send the SetAVTransportURI command and right after that, the PLAY command
.1 seconds later we receive an event from Bubble with the metadata
2.5 seconds later Bubble requests the cover art.
.5 seconds later Bubble sends an event stating that it is in the STOPPED state.  (I think this is the issue, I think Bubble should return TRANSITIONING)
.1 seconds later Bubble requests the music track.
2.2 seconds later we request the transport state. It's still in STOPPED state.
.8 seconds later we get an event finally saying Bubble is in PLAYING state.
2 seconds later we ask for the transport state and we get PLAYING
5.6 seconds later we ask for position data and get 00:00:05

It might be possible to work around this but it could probably also be fixed by bubble returning the TRANSITIONING state after receiving the PLAY command.

[trajanmcgill]

Interesting. Thanks for the in-depth scrutiny of what's going over the wire. I've never looked at the DLNA protocol. How does this differ from the communication that happens with other renderers?

And...I wonder why this seems to happen only if the play head has been moved during playback. Any theories?

[bob]

Interesting. Thanks for the in-depth scrutiny of what's going over the wire. I've never looked at the DLNA protocol. How does this differ from the communication that happens with other renderers?

And...I wonder why this seems to happen only if the play head has been moved during playback. Any theories?

I suspect some of the issue here is that Bubble is waiting for the PLAYING state of the non-DLNA chromecast player before it supplies an updated state with its DLNA renderer emulator. To me that's when it should send a TRANSITIONING state.
The protocol has several time sensitive transitions and there are a lot of broken devices to deal with but in general works pretty well.

Not sure specifically about your seek issue. You might want to post a log, the logic on the track transitions is pretty heavily logged. If I were to guess I'd suspect there is some issue keeping the seek position synced between the chromecast and the Bubble DLNA renderer.

Note that MC has an internal seek position that advances even if the renderer isn't supplying a reasonable position until it gets a real position update.

[bob]

Ok, I found your specific issue when seeking. It will be fixed in the next build.

[bubbleguuum]

Ok, I found your specific issue when seeking. It will be fixed in the next build.

Hi bob and thanks for looking into it.

Is it still something that you think should be fixed on the BubbleUPnP Server side ?

[bob]

Hi bob and thanks for looking into it.

Is it still something that you think should be fixed on the BubbleUPnP Server side ?

It should work OK without any changes but you might want to consider putting in a TRANSITIONING state after receiving the PLAY command until it's actually playing. Thanks for your help!
It was really simple to setup the test with the BubbleUPnP Server.

[trajanmcgill]

Wow, this has been responsive- the developers of not one but two of the products involved showing up and getting involved...that's not an everyday occurrence in the world of being a software user. Thanks. I look forward to working with the next release.

[AndrewFG]

Someone mentioned running my DMRA against the Bubble / Chromecast renderer. Out of interest, could someone please post the respective renderer report?

[jmone]

Done - it should be in your inbox

[AndrewFG]

Many thanks.

It looks like a very competent renderer..

The line “Play test file result=Play success => Start Ok / Stop Ok / Muted” indicates that the DMRA does not have the same issues as bob encountered with the STOPPED/ TRANSITIONING/ PLAYING state change sequence.

But I would nevertheless second bob’s suggestion to use the TRANSITIONING state as a means for Bubble to immediately confirm receipt of the Play command during the interval between the Play command and when the ChromeCast players actually confirm their own PLAYING state..

The other take away from the DMRA test is the line “AVT:SetNextAVTransportURI (gapless play)=NOT Supported” which speaks for itself..

[bob]

Many thanks.

It looks like a very competent renderer..

The line “Play test file result=Play success => Start Ok / Stop Ok / Muted” indicates that the DMRA does not have the same issues as bob encountered with the STOPPED/ TRANSITIONING/ PLAYING state change sequence.

But I would nevertheless second bob’s suggestion to use the TRANSITIONING state as a means for Bubble to immediately confirm receipt of the Play command during the interval between the Play command and when the ChromeCast players actually confirm their own PLAYING state..

The other take away from the DMRA test is the line “AVT:SetNextAVTransportURI (gapless play)=NOT Supported” which speaks for itself..

I noticed the lack of ability to do the SetNext option in BubbleUPnP's setup for chromecast devices, I assumed it's because the transfer between the server and chromecast precludes that in some way.

[bubbleguuum]

I noticed the lack of ability to do the SetNext option in BubbleUPnP's setup for chromecast devices, I assumed it's because the transfer between the server and chromecast precludes that in some way.

SetNext is not supported because the underlying Google Cast protocol does not support gapless playback. At least easily, with a simple to use API. There are HTML5 MSE extensions that allow low level audio decoding and that could supposedly be used to implement gapless on
the Chromecast receiver side with a custom receiver but it's way out of my expertise and I've read it doesn't work with FLAC and WAV. Other than that, gapless could be supported on the BubbleUPnP Server side generating a gapless PCM stream sent to the Chromecast (instead of separate streams for each track as it is currently) but would be rather non trivial to implement right.\
Speaking of which, if MC had a mode where it would send such PCM gapless stream to the renderer, it would work too (this is what foobar2000 does with its foo_out_upnp plugin, allowing gapless to work with any renderer).

[bob]

SetNext is not supported because the underlying Google Cast protocol does not support gapless playback. At least easily, with a simple to use API. There are HTML5 MSE extensions that allow low level audio decoding and that could supposedly be used to implement gapless on
the Chromecast receiver side with a custom receiver but it's way out of my expertise and I've read it doesn't work with FLAC and WAV. Other than that, gapless could be supported on the BubbleUPnP Server side generating a gapless PCM stream sent to the Chromecast (instead of separate streams for each track as it is currently) but would be rather non trivial to implement right.\
Speaking of which, if MC had a mode where it would send such PCM gapless stream to the renderer, it would work too (this is what foobar2000 does with its foo_out_upnp plugin, allowing gapless to work with any renderer).

That's a good suggestion, I know we started working on that at one time. Not sure where it's at right now.

[jmone]

@bubblegum & bob,

Have you guys ever thought of collaborating to enable MC natively supporting Chromecast instead of the current DLNA to Chromecast bridge the Bubble gives us?