Topic: DLNA and Denon RCD-N7 (CEOL) (Read 19836 times)

wytco0 · « **on:** March 08, 2012, 04:28:09 pm »

Hi new to both JRiver MC 17 and the Denon RCD-N7

I am trying to get it setup so that I can play music from my JRiver MC PC to the Denon.

I have switched on DLNA in Tools/Options/Media Network. This means (I think) that I should see my Denon on the Playing Now list and sometimes I do however as soon as I press the play icon next to it, it disappears and I get Play Doctor I can briefly still see the Denon label but that is replaced with Media Centre in play doctor.

I am not sure what is going wrong or what I need to do to get it working.

I have not done anything on the Denon other than look though the menus to see if there are any options referring to DLNA but I could not find anything.

Any ideas especially from anyone with this combination working.

JimH · « **Reply #1 on:** March 08, 2012, 05:11:24 pm »

Please try DLNA Extra in MC settings.

wytco0 · « **Reply #2 on:** March 08, 2012, 05:37:44 pm »

Yes I had the checked, I can now play music on the Denon when I select it from the Denon Music server menu and thats working well.

I thought it was also possible to control the denon from MC17 i.e. tell it what to play from MC17? maybe I have missunderstood something here. However when the Denon apears in the playing now menus as soon as i click it it goes away ;-(

Incidentally if my music is stored as lossless flac on my server at full cd quality what actually gets to the player? is ther any loss of quality?

pcstockton · « **Reply #3 on:** March 08, 2012, 06:09:24 pm »

Quote from: wytco0 on March 08, 2012, 05:37:44 pm

Incidentally if my music is stored as lossless flac on my server at full cd quality what actually gets to the player? is ther any loss of quality?

The servers transcode by default (i think). Check out your server settings. Set to "never transcode"

-patrick

AndrewFG · « **Reply #4 on:** March 09, 2012, 06:38:33 am »

Quote from: wytco0 on March 08, 2012, 05:37:44 pm

Incidentally if my music is stored as lossless flac on my server at full cd quality what actually gets to the player? is ther any loss of quality?

In the UPnP/DLNA specifications, the single common obligatory format is linear pcm (L16) which is 44100hz (or 48000hz) 16 bit 2 channel full quality uncompressed lossless data. All renderers must be able to play this format, and all servers must be able to deliver it.

In the UPnP/DLNA specifications all other formats are optional -- but (to coin a phrase) some are more optional than others, because virtually every server and renderer that I have ever come across supports also the "optional" mp3 format, simply because it is now the de facto portable music standard. Note: mp3 was explicitly not included as an obligatory format in the UPnP/DLNA specifications because at the time the specifications were being written there were still quite a few unsolved issues concerning patent licensing of the mp3 format...

Nowadays a few servers and renderers support WMA (because it is Microsoft's "standard"). And a (growing) few now support flac too.

So if your player is indeed one that supports flac, and your whole library is encoded in flac, then you should set MC UPnP/DLNA trancoding options to "Never Convert". However if your player is not able to play flac, or your library includes a mixture of flac and other formats like wav, aiff, alac (m4a) etc. then you should set MC UPnP/DLNA trancoding options to "Always Convert | L16 (no header)" -- this L16 setting will ensure that your player always gets sent the highest quality bitstream.

wytco0 · « **Reply #5 on:** March 09, 2012, 01:28:52 pm »

AndrewFG thanks for that very clear explanation its very usefull. I have checked the documentation for the Denon and it says that it supports "FLAC 96-kHz/24-bit audio format" and indeed it seems to play my 44kHz files fine.

I still can't work out if the RCD-N7 can act as a renderer I was told that it does but the manual says almost nothing bout DNLA only that "DLNA ver. 1.5 supported for Audio Network"

JRiver sometimes lists it in the now playing list but there is something wrong with the configuration as I cant actually control it and when I try and access it it drops out of the list.

AndrewFG · « **Reply #6 on:** March 10, 2012, 05:42:28 am »

Quote from: wytco0 on March 09, 2012, 01:28:52 pm

I still can't work out if the RCD-N7 can act as a renderer I was told that it does but the manual says almost nothing bout DNLA only that "DLNA ver. 1.5 supported for Audio Network"

You can look up your product here: http://www.dlna.org/consumer-home/look-for-dlna/product-search (note that Denon is listed under D&M Holdings). Your product is listed as a DLNA renderer that can play back L16 (LPCM), MP3 and WMA formatted music files (and apparently not flac)

wytco0 · « **Reply #7 on:** March 12, 2012, 03:52:21 pm »

Can anyone tell me how a player appearing in the 'Playing Now' list should operate from within JRiver? Mine appears but as soon as I click on it it disappears. I cant find any documentation about this.

I think that I may need to change some setting for the DNLA config to get my Denon RCD-N7 to work, but I don't know which ones to try.

wytco0 · « **Reply #8 on:** March 13, 2012, 06:56:19 pm »

I am currently about a week into my trial of JRiver and I love it but I am having a lot of trouble getting it to control a DNLA Renderer.

I have a Denon RCD-N7 which I am using as a DNLA renderer, I can stream to it from JRiver when I use the Denon to browse and select music and this works well.

However I want to control the Denon from JRiver or Webgizmo. When I start JRiver after several minutes my Denon appears on the "Playing Now" list as DENON:[RCD-N7] however when I click on it it disappears. From Webgizmo something similar happens and I cannot control the Denon.

I wonder if this could be something to do with the DNLA settings in Tools/Options/Media Network/Add or configure a DNLA Server/Advanced but there seems to be no documentation on this and I am not sure what to look at.

I woudl be gratefull for some advice on solving this or on how to contact support for assistance.

JimH · « **Reply #9 on:** March 13, 2012, 07:00:51 pm »

Quote from: wytco0 on March 13, 2012, 06:56:19 pm

However I want to control the Denon from JRiver or Webgizmo. When I start JRiver after several minutes my Denon appears on the "Playing Now" list as DENON:[RCD-N7] however when I click on it it disappears. From Webgizmo something similar happens and I cannot control the Denon.

I wonder if this could be something to do with the DNLA settings in Tools/Options/Media Network/Add or configure a DNLA Server/Advanced ...

Probably. Did you try DLNA advanced?

Make sure you have the latest build of MC available. 17.0.103 is on the MC17 board at the top.

wytco0 · « **Reply #10 on:** March 14, 2012, 03:39:30 am »

Quote from: JimH on March 13, 2012, 07:00:51 pm

Probably. Did you try DLNA advanced?

Make sure you have the latest build of MC available. 17.0.103 is on the MC17 board at the top.

Depends upon what you mean by DNLA Advanced? I looked into the Advanced Menu (see my post above) however I cannot find any information anywhwre about the settings it contains and which settings may be relevant. Where can I find documentation about these settings?

I have 17.0.99, I will update now and retry.
I have

wytco0 · « **Reply #11 on:** March 14, 2012, 03:58:12 am »

I updated to version 103 and it has not made any difference.

It takes JRiver about 5 minutes to find my Renderer (Denon) and when I click it it drops it from th elist in about 3 seconds.

MrHaugen · « **Reply #12 on:** March 14, 2012, 04:45:30 am »

I do not have a clue when it comes to DLNA. Logs might help in this case? You find this under the help menu. Start logging and post the result here. Perhaps it will give someone else a clue.

wytco0 · « **Reply #13 on:** March 14, 2012, 05:50:33 am »

Ok I switched on logging and ran it until the Denon came up and I clicked on it and it dissapeared but the log is huge, are there any particular events I should log?

I tried to post the log but the forums says it too big, I am happy to email it but I dont know the email address for support.

MrHaugen · « **Reply #14 on:** March 14, 2012, 06:20:41 am »

I'm not sure what's needed or not. You could try to disable things that is pretty obvious should not impact DLNA. But you'll probably not be able to squeeze it in a post here anyway. Do you have any places to post this log file publicly so you can link it on the forums? Like Dropbox or similar services?

JimH · « **Reply #15 on:** March 14, 2012, 06:26:51 am »

Please don't start multiple threads. I don't know the answer to your question. It's spring break here so we have people on vacation.

Make sure all DLNA components are running on the server. Server, Renderer, Controller.

Sandy B Ridge · « **Reply #16 on:** March 14, 2012, 06:41:13 am »

Quote from: wytco0 on March 14, 2012, 05:50:33 am

I tried to post the log but the forums says it too big, I am happy to email it but I dont know the email address for support.

Try to Zip it. It's just a txt file, so zipping it usually compresses it hugely.
Although I don't think anyone would look forward to skimming through a huge logfile!

SBR

wytco0 · « **Reply #17 on:** March 14, 2012, 07:00:01 am »

OK I guessed some logging options that might be relevant and the log is attached.

wytco0 · « **Reply #18 on:** March 14, 2012, 07:16:12 am »

Quote from: JimH on March 14, 2012, 06:26:51 am

Please don't start multiple threads. I don't know the answer to your question. It's spring break here so we have people on vacation.

Make sure all DLNA components are running on the server. Server, Renderer, Controller.

I have just checked the components and Renderer was not running. I ticked it and restarted JRiver and waited (5 mins) for it to appear in the Playing Now list but as soon as I clicked it it disappeared.

Edit: Added updated log now that MC Renderer component is running.

wytco0 · « **Reply #19 on:** March 19, 2012, 04:36:28 pm »

Anyone got any ideas?

bob · « **Reply #20 on:** March 20, 2012, 09:52:11 am »

Go to Media Network options.
Check under Advanced to make sure the DLNA controller and Server are enabled.
Go to Add or Configure DLNA Servers.
Look under Advanced.
Report on what's checked (should probably be DLNA and DLNAExtra. Try with "Enable bitrate Field" on and off).
What format is your music?
Try right-clicking on a track and doing:
Send to->Play (your device name)->Play.

zbih · « **Reply #21 on:** April 29, 2012, 03:16:37 am »

I'm now testing JRiver MC 17.0.140 (and 132 version) with Denon RCD0N7 and here is my input:

Firstly I'd love to see Airplay function in JRiver. I tested Airfoil, but it doesn't show info about playing tune at all on Denon's display.

JRiver doesn't seem to detect Denon straight away. It need some time after turning it on. ITunes see Denon at once and working through Airplay constantly.

I can adding music to Denon's playlist, playing it, controlling volume bar, but position(?) bar sometimes does not work(if I want set to specific minute, it go back to beginning of a track.

If I control Denon by JRiver, Denon's remote control is only for adjusting volume. When I try to push next (or rewind a bit) on Denon's remote control, music stops.

Using JRiver as controller there is missing info on Denon's display about artist:

There is no problem with album's name:

Spectrum analyzer on JRiver doesn't work, when playing music with Denon N7 (if I play music on my laptop it starts working).

When playing music on Denon with JRiver, cross-fade between tracks doesn't work.

"Zoning" works great. I can play the same (or different) music with Denon and WAS7500 at the same time. Controlling it through JRiver.

bob · « **Reply #22 on:** April 30, 2012, 09:44:04 am »

What's the file format for the music you are trying to play?

Things like track transitions / cross fade / etc are not things you can do over DLNA. That's the job of the renderer.
When you are playing in MC, MC is the renderer. When you push something to a DLNA device it's in control of track transitions...

The Denon could be reading the artist from the information provided in DLNA (we provide artist and album artist) or parsing the file tags. If the file is being transcoded, it will have no tags...

zbih · « **Reply #23 on:** April 30, 2012, 03:37:37 pm »

Thanks for the reply.

I've music files in FLAC, ALAC (because of iTunes) and MP3 format. Tags are provided by dBpoweramp.

I checked options settings, and transcoding was turn on. This was the reason of not displaying artist info. I changed it to "never convert" and all info are showing correctly.

I forwarded TCP port, allowed connections from JRiver in ESET and now, in "playing now" Denon show up almost as fast as my Philips WAS7500.

Where are logs of program's crashes and errors btw?

bob · « **Reply #24 on:** April 30, 2012, 03:43:54 pm »

Quote from: zbih on April 30, 2012, 03:37:37 pm

Where are logs of program's crushes and errors btw?

AppData->Roaming->J River->Media Center 17
That's if you have logging turned on under Help->Logging...
You should have logging off unless you are trying to trace a problem.

zbih · « **Reply #25 on:** May 02, 2012, 10:29:26 am »

Unfortunately "seek" function doesn't work with flac files. It does work, when I turn on conversion to encoder: uncompressed - L16 - no header. Strangely when I choose "convert unsupported formats" it encoding flac files, which are supported by Denon N7.

Using encode inclines "artist" is not been sending to Denon's display and my laptop's cpu is more in use.

bob · « **Reply #26 on:** May 03, 2012, 10:07:18 am »

Quote from: zbih on May 02, 2012, 10:29:26 am

Unfortunately "seek" function doesn't work with flac files. It does work, when I turn on conversion to encoder: uncompressed - L16 - no header. Strangely when I choose "convert unsupported formats" it encoding flac files, which are supported by Denon N7.

The "convert unsupported formats" converts everything not required to be supported by the DLNA standard. FLAC is not a required format. Since devices are all over the place in terms of the formats they support, it's not effective to try to tune this to particular devices.

As for seeking FLAC, the renderer decides whether or not to support seeking.
In MC's DLNA server settings, under advanced, there is an option called "enable bitrate field". You could try selecting that. It's not on by default since there are broken renderers that don't like it. That may fix your uncoverted FLAC file seeking issues.

Quote

Using encode inclines "artist" is not been sending to Denon's display and my laptop's cpu is more in use.

"Encoding" to L16 isn't really encoding, it's decoding which isn't a very CPU intensive task. Also, you can get the benefit of volume leveling which is generally not done by the various renderers. The only downside is that L16 requires more bandwidth which may be an issue if you are on a low speed wireless network.

Since your Denon shows the Album name, if it's not a bug in the Denon firmware, perhaps we can fix the artist. It could be that it's just looking for the artist in a different way than what we are providing. If you were interested in doing a wireshark trace while you browse into an album and email it to me: bob (at) jriver (dot) com, I'll take a look at it.

bob · « **Reply #27 on:** May 07, 2012, 01:46:13 pm »

I got your images and traces, thanks!

From the images, I see you have 2 DLNA servers configured in MC. If you are only using the denon profile that you created, I'd remove the generic DLNA profile.

It looks from your image of the Device Spy invoke of the seek function on the flac file that it's not supported by the Denon for flacs over DLNA.

The wireshark traces to try and find the artist issue need to be done somewhat differently than the ones you sent me.
What I need is outlined here: http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Sharing_Plug-in_Debugging_Hints
The pcap file is essential and you want to start the capture right before browsing into an album with the Denon (or pushing a track to the Denon if it supports that) and stop if immediately afterwards. This should be done with always converting to L16 set for audio.

zbih · « **Reply #28 on:** May 15, 2012, 11:52:48 am »

Sorry for late respond, I sent you an email with wireshark's debug file. I hope it help with resoling the problem.

BTW my MC has been updated to 17.0.151 version.

Dunno whats wrong with seeking, but problems occurs now almost every time. It going back to beginning of a track (mp3, flac). I sent you details via mail.

bob · « **Reply #29 on:** May 18, 2012, 05:22:57 pm »

Quote from: zbih on May 15, 2012, 11:52:48 am

Sorry for late respond, I sent you an email with wireshark's debug file. I hope it help with resoling the problem.

BTW my MC has been updated to 17.0.151 version.

Dunno whats wrong with seeking, but problems occurs now almost every time. It going back to beginning of a track (mp3, flac). I sent you details via mail.

Took a look at your trace...

I see you are pushing the music to the Denon with MC.
Is it possible to pull from the Denon instead? I can't see what it wants for Artist when we push.

Also, right-click on the Denon under Playing Now and find the DLNA controller options. Disable SetNext support (your Denon doesn't support it).
You COULD try to ignore transport events but I don't think that will help with the seek. It seems like the Enable bitrate Field option in Advanced should be on to help with seeking (unless the Denon is broken with regards to that field).

Finally, you only have one server in the DLNA servers list right??

zbih · « **Reply #30 on:** May 22, 2012, 09:07:40 am »

I sent you a new log. I hope it's good now

I have only one DLNA server in MC settings.

I did disable SetNext Support as you mentioned (with bitrate filed enabled) and no difference. Seeking doesn't work with mp3 and flac, transcoded or not. Strange, because with earlier version of JRiver it was ok with mp3s.

I'm now on 155 revision of MC.

bob · « **Reply #31 on:** May 22, 2012, 12:17:20 pm »

zbih, sent you an email...

bob · « **Reply #32 on:** May 22, 2012, 05:30:14 pm »

Quote from: zbih on May 22, 2012, 09:07:40 am

I sent you a new log. I hope it's good now

I have only one DLNA server in MC settings.

I did disable SetNext Support as you mentioned (with bitrate filed enabled) and no difference. Seeking doesn't work with mp3 and flac, transcoded or not. Strange, because with earlier version of JRiver it was ok with mp3s.

I'm now on 155 revision of MC.

The dump you just sent me (Tuesday) must have been from a version older than 152 since it's doing a couple of things in the metadata that were removed in 152.
Regardless, the trace is very straightforward. The Denon is just asking for upnp:Artist and upnp:Album. We are sending those values (plus some more complex ones) when we push to the renderer so it really should be showing the artist. I assume it's a bug in the Denon firmware. You should make sure that the version of MC you are using is >=152 since the extra metadata removed in that version MIGHT make a difference (probably not but it's worth a try).

zbih · « **Reply #33 on:** May 23, 2012, 06:48:11 am »

My bad, I was after a disk format and version of new installed MC was 142. I updated it to 155 and something has been moved.

When I play a song now through the MC I can see for a second or two artist on Denon's display. And then it disappear and is blank as on image above.

So probably it is a firmware bug. But I wrote to Denon's support here: http://denon.custhelp.com and they apologized me, they can't help me, because I live in Central Europe. They said: "We're sorry but since we do not support your region you will need to contact Denon UK or Denon Poland for support." So I tried .. The former doesn't have an email to contact them, the latter wrote me, that they aren't responsible for firmwares!

What's wrong with most customer's support these days. Why they can't to approach to customer as personal as you for example.

bob · « **Reply #34 on:** May 24, 2012, 04:22:19 pm »

Quote from: zbih on May 23, 2012, 06:48:11 am

My bad, I was after a disk format and version of new installed MC was 142. I updated it to 155 and something has been moved.

When I play a song now through the MC I can see for a second or two artist on Denon's display. And then it disappear and is blank as on image above.

So probably it is a firmware bug. But I wrote to Denon's support here: http://denon.custhelp.com and they apologized me, they can't help me, because I live in Central Europe. They said: "We're sorry but since we do not support your region you will need to contact Denon UK or Denon Poland for support." So I tried .. The former doesn't have an email to contact them, the latter wrote me, that they aren't responsible for firmwares!

What's wrong with most customer's support these days. Why they can't to approach to customer as personal as you for example.

Sorry to hear that they can't help you. I'm PM'ing you with a test build to try. The fact that it momentarily put the artist up there gave me an idea for a possible workaround...

zbih · « **Reply #35 on:** May 25, 2012, 03:13:57 am »

Tested new build and unfortunately it doesn't show info now at all.

I tried few things:
with option "always transcode" neither mp3 nor flac doesn't show artist info on Denon's display. (I tested it with all encoders)
When I turn it to "never transcode" both are showing info fine.

bob · « **Reply #36 on:** May 25, 2012, 11:17:04 am »

Quote from: zbih on May 25, 2012, 03:13:57 am

Tested new build and unfortunately it doesn't show info now at all.

I tried few things:
with option "always transcode" neither mp3 nor flac doesn't show artist info on Denon's display. (I tested it with all encoders)
When I turn it to "never transcode" both are showing info fine.

I think we might be out of luck. The fact that it displays the info when you are not transcoding means that it's reading the tags and ignoring the fields we are sending it in the uPNP metadata. One last test, then we'll have to wait for new firmware (if they ever get around to it).

zbih · « **Reply #37 on:** May 26, 2012, 04:40:01 am »

No luck Bob .. there is only flashback of artist info again .. (on display is percentage of buffering, during buffering from 0%-100% I don't see any info at all. When it hit 100% for half second artist's info shows up).

I'll try to contact Denon UK to inform them about this bug and seeking problems. But knowing them, they will blame 3rd party software

Ah, btw, and what with supporting airplay? Does it tantamount to gaining a license from creators or you can implement it straight away?

pcstockton · « **Reply #38 on:** May 26, 2012, 07:08:43 pm »

With JRemote App for iOS you can pass along the stream to an Airplay device. I have confirmed it works to a Airport I have plugged into an outside socket in my backyard BBQ area. It is tethered to an inexpensive desktop speaker/sub deal. Sounds great for parties and BBQing.

-patrick

bob · « **Reply #39 on:** May 29, 2012, 11:16:13 am »

Quote from: zbih on May 26, 2012, 04:40:01 am

No luck Bob .. there is only flashback of artist info again .. (on display is percentage of buffering, during buffering from 0%-100% I don't see any info at all. When it hit 100% for half second artist's info shows up).

I'll try to contact Denon UK to inform them about this bug and seeking problems. But knowing them, they will blame 3rd party software

Sorry about that, I was hoping if we gave it only the Artist and not the Artist roles it might behave but I guess not.

Quote

Ah, btw, and what with supporting airplay? Does it tantamount to gaining a license from creators or you can implement it straight away?

I don't think that's on our development horizon right now however that doesn't preclude it from being so in the future...

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Author Topic: DLNA and Denon RCD-N7 (CEOL) (Read 19836 times)

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