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Author Topic: DLNA Issues  (Read 9225 times)

6233638

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DLNA Issues
« on: April 25, 2014, 05:50:01 am »

I just picked up a pair of Sony's new wireless speakers and I seem to be having a lot of trouble using them with Media Center.
 
 
1. The first thing is that Media Center can be very slow at finding the device when it's first turned on.
It shows up on the network fairly quickly after you turn it on. (Windows "Network" folder)
What often happens is that it first shows up as a library server(?) after a minute or two, and another minute or two later it shows up as a DLNA zone.
Once it shows up in Windows, if I restart Media Center it often finds the device right away rather than having to wait several minutes.
 
 
2. I can't seek during playback at all.
I seek in Media Center, and the progress bar jumps to that position for a second or two, but playback on the device is unaffected, and after another few seconds Media Center's progress jumps back to where it currently is on the track.
 
 
3. Playback controls via the Sony app (SongPal) don't seem to work properly.
If I skip the current track, Media Center doesn't always pick up on this change. It plays the next track, but MC still thinks it's playing the previous one. When the previous track ends, MC effectively restarts the currently playing track by going to what it thinks is the "next" one.
If I stop playback via the SongPal app, Media Center just skips to the next track.
 
 
4. Linked zones appear to be totally broken using DLNA. Sound is completely out of sync, with the speaker being seconds ahead of other devices directly connected to the PC. At one point they were playing separate tracks.
 
If I use AirPlay via Airfoil, I was able to sync up four devices perfectly.
I really wish you would reconsider adding native Airplay support - Airfoil works but there are a lot of limitations when used with MC - you can only play audio to a single "Airfoil" device, rather than sending separate audio to each, for example.
 
 
Is this just how DLNA is?
How Sony's implementation of DLNA is?
Something which could be improved?
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AndrewFG

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Re: DLNA Issues
« Reply #1 on: April 25, 2014, 10:03:27 am »

Reply to your numbered points as follows...

1) Upnp discovery can indeed be very slow, and some devices are better than others. In my experience MC is pretty good at discovery. Perhaps the Sony is initializing itself or downloading stuff ?? Or you firewall is blocking it ?? Try waiting a day or two, sometimes these issues just go away...

2) The Upnp Seek function often depends on what type of media you are playing. What are you playing? Try setting MC server to convert to PCM rather than playing the original format.

3) Synchronising the UI display when using two separate control points is notoriously bad in UPnp. It can be done but most vendors (including dare I say it JRiver) will tend to blame the other party. I suggest you ditch the Sony App and just use MC and Gizmo -- then at least if it doesn't work you know who to talk to ;)

4) In Upnp v1 there is no multi player sync capability. It has been added in v3/4 but nobody has really implemented that yet.


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mwillems

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Re: DLNA Issues
« Reply #2 on: April 25, 2014, 10:39:39 am »

4. Linked zones appear to be totally broken using DLNA. Sound is completely out of sync, with the speaker being seconds ahead of other devices directly connected to the PC. At one point they were playing separate tracks.

If the linked zones start playing out of sync, try adjusting the zone link timing in the context menu for one of the linked zones.  You can adjust the sync up to 2 seconds in either direction, so you can at least get them synced from the outset.  Drift is harder to deal with, but making sure things start synced can help a lot.

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6233638

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Re: DLNA Issues
« Reply #3 on: April 25, 2014, 02:54:14 pm »

1) Upnp discovery can indeed be very slow, and some devices are better than others. In my experience MC is pretty good at discovery. Perhaps the Sony is initializing itself or downloading stuff ?? Or you firewall is blocking it ?? Try waiting a day or two, sometimes these issues just go away...
Well it shows up in Windows fairly quickly, it's just that Media Center seems to take its time.
For some reason it shows up as both a server and a zone that can be played to in Media Center, but the "server" often shows up a few minutes before the DLNA device does, even though they show up at pretty much the same time in Windows. (see the attached image)

2) The Upnp Seek function often depends on what type of media you are playing. What are you playing? Try setting MC server to convert to PCM rather than playing the original format.
Unfortunately I've already been converting to PCM for the Volume Leveling feature.

3) Synchronising the UI display when using two separate control points is notoriously bad in UPnp. It can be done but most vendors (including dare I say it JRiver) will tend to blame the other party. I suggest you ditch the Sony App and just use MC and Gizmo -- then at least if it doesn't work you know who to talk to ;)
When I use JRemote to control now/next/stop things seem to work correctly.
The reason I was using the Sony app is because it's the only way to access the speaker's built in DSP controls, and because you get nice large buttons that fill maybe 1/5 of the screen, instead of the tiny ones in JRemote that only appear when my iPad is in landscape orientation.

4) In Upnp v1 there is no multi player sync capability. It has been added in v3/4 but nobody has really implemented that yet.
Is there any way to know what version is being used? They are the new SRS-X7 speakers that were just released here.
I thought Media Center was supposed to do its own synchronization for linked zones though.
 
 
I'm unsure about whether or not I'm going to keep the speakers (bought a pair of them) as this has been quite frustrating. I might post something about them in the speakers forum later.
I see now why people are willing to sacrifice high res support in favor of Sonos/AirPlay because those typically do what you expect of them.


If the linked zones start playing out of sync, try adjusting the zone link timing in the context menu for one of the linked zones.  You can adjust the sync up to 2 seconds in either direction, so you can at least get them synced from the outset.  Drift is harder to deal with, but making sure things start synced can help a lot.
Ah, I'll have to give that a shot. Very frustrating when I can simply play to Airfoil and everything just starts playing completely in sync without any drift. (that I've noticed)
 
I really love Media Center's library management features, but relying on "standards" like DLNA for networked audio seems to be very hit and miss, and it's quite disheartening.
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6233638

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Re: DLNA Issues
« Reply #4 on: May 01, 2014, 11:24:23 am »

Well for what it's worth, the speakers ended up being returned - partly due to the device, but also the poor DLNA integration with Media Center. (and I'm not convinced wasn't at least partly Media Center at fault)
 
The short version is that there's no point in streaming lossless audio to a device like this via AirPlay/DLNA instead of Bluetooth compressed audio, when the device itself doesn't reproduce anything over ~10kHz, if my measurements were correct. That probably explains the pair of tweeters and supertweeters in the X9 - though it's not a portable device like the X7.
 
There are other advantages to AirPlay/DLNA (range, not having to be tethered to a device) but quality was one of the reasons I had avoided Bluetooth speakers.
 
And the advertised battery life was halved when using any of the WiFi connectivity - something they hid in the fine print at the back of the manual.
 
 
Something I had not anticipated was that the lack of physical playback controls was a real problem for me - not that they would have worked correctly anyway, if the SongPal app is any indication.
Without physical controls, it meant that I did need to be running JRemote or Gizmo to have any kind of playback control, so I may as well have been tethered via Bluetooth.
At the very least the option to skip tracks forward/backward, and play/pause is essential on any kind of speaker like this, in my opinion.
That way you could start a Play Doctor playlist on the server, and skip a track if it repeats (I find that Play Doctor has a tendency to repeat tracks quite a few times at the start) or if something comes up that you don't want to listen to.
 
 
And while I had never really considered sync to be a big deal before, it actually was something we wanted to use more often than I expected - the pair of Sony speakers synced together did a much better job filling a room than one on its own.
Unfortunately, Media Center's sync controls seem to be very lacking - and that's really raised a few concerns about relying on Media Center for my audio playback at all.
The only way I have been able to get good syncing via my PC is to use Airfoil and AirPlay devices, but that doesn't integrate well with Media Center.
 
I'm starting to see why people just buy "one box" solutions like Sonos.
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AndrewFG

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Re: DLNA Issues
« Reply #5 on: May 01, 2014, 12:24:03 pm »

Well it shows up in Windows fairly quickly, it's just that Media Center seems to take its time.
For some reason it shows up as both a server and a zone that can be played to in Media Center, but the "server" often shows up a few minutes before the DLNA device does, even though they show up at pretty much the same time in Windows.

FWIW (say next time someone raises the same question) I would suggest installing the UPnP Developer tools applications from http://opentools.homeip.net/dev-tools-for-upnp -- its Device Spy and Device Sniffer applications will enable you to diagnose if a UPnP device is being discovered properly and if it is exporting the correct services.
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6233638

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Re: DLNA Issues
« Reply #6 on: May 01, 2014, 12:54:16 pm »

Ah. I did ask if there was a tool to find out what version these speakers were using, but didn't get a response.
 
Thanks though - I'll keep it in mind.
 
Still, even if the DLNA side of things had worked correctly, the hardware itself just wasn't what I was looking for.
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AndrewFG

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Re: DLNA Issues
« Reply #7 on: May 01, 2014, 02:15:14 pm »

Ah. I did ask if there was a tool to find out what version these speakers were using, but didn't get a response.

Device Spy will tell you which service versions that the respective device exports. (One of the versioning rules of UPnP is that higher version level devices must also export / support all lower versions too..)

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