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[davidw55]

Hi

I presently have iTunes sending music to an Airport Express and I'm testing MC 17 and Air uPNP as a more functional replacement. 

I can get music to stream to the Airport Express just fine, but ..

playing stops about 10 seconds early only on the Airport Zone.   i.e. about 10 seconds before the end of a song, MC will go silent, and switch to the next song.
Also noticed the track duration shown in the info panel at the top (next to spectrum analyzer) is longer than the duration in the music file.

Playing locally through the soundcard doesn't exhibit this behavior.

Hope I can get this working ... I like MC a lot.

Dave

[bob]

Hi

I presently have iTunes sending music to an Airport Express and I'm testing MC 17 and Air uPNP as a more functional replacement. 

I can get music to stream to the Airport Express just fine, but ..

playing stops about 10 seconds early only on the Airport Zone.   i.e. about 10 seconds before the end of a song, MC will go silent, and switch to the next song.
Also noticed the track duration shown in the info panel at the top (next to spectrum analyzer) is longer than the duration in the music file.

Playing locally through the soundcard doesn't exhibit this behavior.

Hope I can get this working ... I like MC a lot.

Dave

I'm just guessing since I know nothing about Air uPNP however with the duration display difference it sounds like perhaps your library is mp3 VBR and Air uPnP is calculating the wrong length based on the average bitrate. You could try setting the DLNA audio conversion option to "Always Convert" and pick one of the MP3 conversion formats which are all CBR.

[davidw55]

Thanks for the advice.

I tried specifying a different audio conversion.  Same problem I'm afraid.

I didn't know that its Air uPNP that's doing the duration and progress calculation .. interesting. I've got a lot to learn about DLNA obviously. 

Too bad that JRiver doesn't build a DLNA->Airport Express adapter that is supported !  There's a lot of Apple AX's out there and many of us would love to ditch iTunes.

Dave

[bob]

Thanks for the advice.

I tried specifying a different audio conversion.  Same problem I'm afraid.

I didn't know that its Air uPNP that's doing the duration and progress calculation .. interesting. I've got a lot to learn about DLNA obviously.  

Too bad that JRiver doesn't build a DLNA->Airport Express adapter that is supported !  There's a lot of Apple AX's out there and many of us would love to ditch iTunes.

Dave

We provide the DLNA renderer with the duration in seconds and the file length. The renderer keeps track of the position. We call the renderer every 5 seconds to sync our displayed position with what it tells us it's position is. If you seek to somewhere within the track the renderer calculates the byte offset based on the time offset we told it and the average bitrate. Pretty complicated.

The only other thing I can think of, you might try turning off events in MC zone for the AirPlay. Right click on the Airplay zone, DLNA controller options, Ignore transport events.

[AudioBob]

Hi davidw55.

"playing stops about 10 seconds early only on the Airport Zone" - I had the same problem using airport express (I use 2 expresses for different rooms).

I looked high and low for someone who had the same prob (let alone the solution) and no-one seemed to be experiencing the early cut-outs.

The fix that worked for me is:

1. Go to Options > Media Network > Add or Configure DLNA Servers

2. click Audio > Conversion > Always convert. For Encoder choose Uncompressed.

You still get a small 'click' sound at the end of the track and at the start of the next, but not enough to be an issue for me.

Hope this helps.

Rob.

[AndrewFG]

The fix that worked for me is:
1. Go to Options > Media Network > Add or Configure DLNA Servers
2. click Audio > Conversion > Always convert. For Encoder choose Uncompressed.

The renderer is probably calculating track duration (resp. position) as being file size (resp. position) divided by bit rate; (most do); and if the track is Variable Bit Rate then this calculation will not be accurate. (If you want to be really nerdy you could check if the behaviour differs for tracks with a busy start and a simple ending, or vice versa). But when you use Always Convert, the output is a Constant Bit Rate stream, so the duration and position calculations are much more accurate...

[davidw55]

Hi  .. I've been busy with work (real work) so haven't been monitoring this thread.

Thanks to everyone who replied. 

Tried the "Always convert" option as suggested ... the result was some distortion although it did seem to fix the stopping early problem.

I just can't seem to get MC to behave well with my Airport even though it work fine locally. 
Not if these problems are peculiar to me, but its not encouraging.  Is DLNA on the bleeding edge or is it just the uPNP program that's behind these problem.

My MC trial has now ended and I'm not sure if I can get another 30 days to play with this.

[rjm]

I got MC to Airport Express working with Airfoil (ok on Vista but not XP).  I don't like the solution because must turn it off when using AirPlay. Hoping MC will support AirPlay some day.

[davidw55]

Don't know why but the recent update to 17.0.125 seemed to fix the stopping early problems.    I'm confused but happy .. I think.