Good day to you MC World!
If I am not mistaken we have a few different ways to stream audio within MC without 3rd party software such as Whitebear.
1) UPNP/DLNA Serving
2) Library Server (sharing with/streaming to, another instance of MC)
3) WebGizmo/WebPlay
For 1 and 2 we can set up trancoding settings, most importantly to "Never Convert". With 1 we can set-up multiple options and choose the one that works best for the scenario.
Now the crux of the biscuit... Would the MC Brass be interested in giving us similar control over whatever we call #3? This is what JRemote and MyRiver are using along with WebGizmo of course.
I think the devs are able to squeeze a higher bitrate out of the "WebGizmo Server" not unlike we can with 1 and 2, but i dont think this will be user configurable. Some may not be able to stream 256. Others may be able to handle 320. Many more of us (i think) would like to have it send along full flavor FLACs when we are streaming to the device at home. I still have to use PlugPlayer when I do that.
I ask because I have PP use my "remote" dlna server set to convert to Medium Bandwidth MP3. This results in almost no dropouts and decent enough sound. I can tell it is compressed but it is acceptable given the circumstances. With "High" i get about 1 dropout for every three tracks. With "Never Convert" it drops every 30 seconds or so. But on "Low Bandwidth" it is crackley, glitchy and basically unpleasant. I am now seeing that JRemote and WebGizmo both share this sound quality.
Obviously this is all easy to handle with the MC UPNP servers.
It would be sweet to be able to configure this as well.
Thanks for the time,
Patrick
PS- what are the specific definitions/rates of Low, Medium and High Bandwidth MP3s? 128, 256, 320??? I think I read that Low=128 which would stand to reason given the bad SQ.