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[AndrewFG]

So the conclusion is that the Maranftz is not fully DLNA compliant?

I would not make that conclusion yet. However the logs you submitted don't show a clear picture and don't even seem to come from a Marantz device so it is hard to say. Is there some way that you can test on a lan where only the HTPC and the receiver are present and nothing else?

[streamerguy]

I'm currently testing with a laptop with a clean JRiver installation directly connected to the Marantz using a switch to test a standalone situation as you asked to do.
After playing about 40 songs without any issues, it keeps repeating the same song. On the JRiver gui it says it's playing the song before this song and this information is on the Marantz as well.

Any idea?

[AndrewFG]

I'm currently testing with a laptop with a clean JRiver installation directly connected to the Marantz using a switch to test a standalone situation as you asked to do.
After playing about 40 songs without any issues, it keeps repeating the same song. On the JRiver gui it says it's playing the song before this song and this information is on the Marantz as well.

Any idea?

It looks as though with this configuration we made some progress.

Just to sure, can you please confirm that the Marantz now continues to be visible in MC's list of players? i.e. Has the prior problem, where the Marantz (or some other device which MC had perceived as being the Marantz) was sending premature bye-byes and going offline, now gone away?

Concerning the freeze after 40 songs, I have just one suggestion. I noticed in your Wire Shark capture that a lot of the HTTP traffic between MC and whatever player was captured, was using "HTTP Connection: keep-alive" so that consecutive HTTP commands were re-cycling the same single TCP socket session. I have seen AV servers and renderers that can't reliably maintain a TCP socket session for an indefinite period of time (perhaps they have a resource leak or something). And so in my case (Whitebear) I have always used "HTTP Connection: close" and force closed the respective socket so that  each subsequent HTTP command must open a fresh new TCP socket. This is only a hypothesis, and to test if the problem applies to your Marantz, it would require bob to modify MC in a test build. The risk is that it might break other renderers...

[streamerguy]

Hi Andrew,

It's still playing without issues (more than 100 songs). Only the repeated song. Let's wait until tomorrow and see if it still plays without stopping.

Thanks.

[streamerguy]

Hi Andrew,

My findings until now with the "standalone" test:
- No stops using the Audiophile DLNA preset (wav 24 bits). 250+ songs without stopping. (only the repeating song issue yesterday). No bye-bye messages in the JRiver logfile.
- Now I changed to original DLNA preset (flac SD and High-res mixed) and now it stopped twice (JRiver only sends about 2MB and I hear 1 or 2 seconds of that song) , but started automatically playing the next song. I have never seen that it moves forward to the next song automatically.
When this happens I see the bye-bye messages in the logfile again.

Thanks.

[AndrewFG]

Hi Andrew,

My findings until now with the "standalone" test:
- No stops using the Audiophile DLNA preset (wav 24 bits). 250+ songs without stopping. (only the repeating song issue yesterday). No bye-bye messages in the JRiver logfile.
- Now I changed to original DLNA preset (flac SD and High-res mixed) and now it stopped twice (JRiver only sends about 2MB and I hear 1 or 2 seconds of that song) , but started automatically playing the next song. I have never seen that it moves forward to the next song automatically.
When this happens I see the bye-bye messages in the logfile again.

Thanks.

I am pleased that you finally succeeded !!

This strongly indicates that your Marantz is choking on something in your Flacs. I am guessing that it is probably something in the meta data (tags) that causes it to choke rather than the Flac compressed music stream. If you want, you could test this by trying to play a tagless Flac file (note that it would have to be a Flac entirely without any Flac-tag elements in it, since a file having null value Flac-tag elements would probably also fail...)

This problem might be a fundamental problem of the Marantz; in which case you should complain to Marantz and send them some of your Flacs as test cases.
Or it might be due to some particularly exotic meta data element introduced by your ripping/tagging software. Did you rip/tag with MC or with something else?

Personally I am always in favour of streaming pure PCM (under pure PCM I include L16, L24, tagless WAV, and tagless AIF) since all these formats contain just audio samples only, and the stream comprises a regular steady data flow at constant bit-rate.

[streamerguy]

Hi Andrew,

And the Marantz finally stopped after around 70 songs using flac (original) playback.......  Again byebye messages in the JRiver logfile and this time it didn't move to the next song.

So it's better to use PCM 24 bit instead of original? Does this not harm the audio quality?

It is still a mystery when I use my HTPC connected to the network that the Marantz stops. Remember, this is a standalone configuration with a fresh JRiver install. Do you think it makes sense to remove JRiver completely from my HTPC and do a fresh installation with the latest version?

Thanks

[AndrewFG]

So it's better to use PCM 24 bit instead of original? Does this not harm the audio quality?

Streaming in PCM 24 bit will certainly not harm your audio quality. At some point in the chain between the original file on the server and the destination DAC in the renderer, some entity has to unpack the Flac data blocks and reassemble them as individual audio samples. If you stream in Flac then the unpacking and reassembly is done within the renderer, whereas if you stream in PCM (L24, AIF, WAV) then it is done within MC. (And indeed, since MC is on a grown up computer with lots of CPU horsepower and RAM, it can probably do the job faster and smoother than the renderer could).

Do you think it makes sense to remove JRiver completely from my HTPC and do a fresh installation with the latest version?

No. I don't think that would make any difference.

[streamerguy]

Hi Andrew,

Currently I'm using PCM 24 bits as I can't use L24. I still see information on the display of the Marantz. I suppose that's because tagging information is still send. I don't understand why I have issues with flac and not with PCM. Or it was just luck that it didn't play songs with "strange" tagging information during my test using PCM 24 bits.

Is there a way that MC can check for "wrong" tags?

Thanks

[AndrewFG]

Currently I'm using PCM 24 bits as I can't use L24.

There are three ways of streaming audio samples as follows; all have exactly the same audio sample content, and all work equally well.

• L24 = 24 bit audio samples sent in high byte, middle byte, low byte order; the HTTP Content-type header gives bit depth, channel width, sample rate
• AIF = 24 bit audio samples sent in high byte, middle byte, low byte order; the start of the stream has a header giving bit depth, channel width, sample rate
• WAV = 24 bit audio samples sent in low byte, middle byte, high byte order; the start of the stream has a header giving bit depth, channel width, sample rate

I still see information on the display of the Marantz. I suppose that's because tagging information is still send.

Correct. The meta data is sent via the UPnP / DLNA commands. If the file is a Flac, Mp3 etc. the meta data might also be duplicated as embedded tags within the stream itself. However in all cases the renderer is required to use the former (UPnP) meta data rather than the latter (embedded) meta data, so essentially this duplicate embedded meta data is just a waste of space and time.

I don't understand why I have issues with flac and not with PCM. Or it was just luck that it didn't play songs with "strange" tagging information during my test using PCM 24 bits.

PCM is pure audio samples only. There is nothing else in the stream that might cause a renderer to choke. Each sample is sent one after the other. All are exactly the same size, structure and tempo from beginning to end. So if the renderer is able to play the first sample it requires no special smarts for it to keep on clocking the samples through to the end of the stream. On the other hand, in Flac, Mp3 and other compressed audio formats, the audio samples are squeezed up into blocks using data compression algorithms so some samples are essentially longer (more bytes) than others. This means that the renderer needs to be cleverer and keep track of what is going on. Also if there is embedded meta data in the stream, the renderer needs to have sufficient smarts to detect that those bytes are not audio samples and to discard them.

Is there a way that MC can check for "wrong" tags?

We don't know if your tags are actually "wrong" -- it could be that the tags are just fine, but that the renderer is "broken". But in any case if you send PCM there won't be any duplicate embedded tags, so the problem does not arise.

[streamerguy]

I'm still having these issues. I hoped that a firmware update from Marantz (if it is a Marantz issue) would fix this. in the meantime I upgraded to MC20, but again, nothing improved.

Someone having an idea or experiencing the same issues with other renderers from Marantz or other brands?

Thanks

[AndrewFG]

I'm still having these issues. I hoped that a firmware update from Marantz (if it is a Marantz issue) would fix this. In the meantime I upgraded to MC20, but again, nothing improved.

When you say "still having these issues" can you please confirm exactly what issues you mean? Is it still the original problem where the Marantz goes bye-bye (goes offline) after playing several Flac tracks? Did you identify a particular Flac track that always causes this problem? In which case can you please upload that file somewhere that I can look at it? And is the problem solved by having MC Always Convert to L24? Or L16? And if so, why aren't you using that solution?

[streamerguy]

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for your reply.

Yes, I still have the original problem where the Marantz goes bye-bye. This is not with one particular flac file, but totally random. Also converting to a specific file type doesn't help.
I send this issue to Marantz support and they are not able to reproduce this (at least that's what they tell me). So I am curious if more people are facing this issue, or do I have a broken device.

[AndrewFG]

I sent you a Private Message...

[streamerguy]

I sent you a PM back...

[Kduff999]

Thanks for this thread. I've seen somewhat similar behavior ("Song Playing Twice" thread) where the display shows a previous song while a new song is playing. The fix recommended in that thread was to disable DLNA Device SetNext (which I've done). From the info in this Marantz thread, I'll also change the audio output from Original to PCM24 in case my renderers are having any issues with metadata tags.

[streamerguy]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know, I will lose gapless playback with this setting.

[AndrewFG]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know, I will lose gapless playback with this setting.

Weell, I would say that you are wrong

As far as I can remember from all your postings, streamerguy, you never complained about a problem with tracks playing twice. And as far as I recall from the report that you sent me by PM via DropBox, that report shows that your player does support SetNextAVTransportURI (please check the report again to be sure). So if those things are true, I would say that the suggestion of KDuff is quite irrelevant to your case.

Of course you are free to try if turning off MC's SetNextAVTransportURI support for your renderer would solve your problem. In which case please let us know. And in that case, it is indeed true that if you would turn off MC's SetNextAVTransportURI support, you would indeed lose gapless playback.

[streamerguy]

I already played with this setting, but it didn't solve the random stops.
And yes, my player supports SetNextAVTransportURI.

[bob]

Are you wired or wireless?

[streamerguy]

Hi Bob.

I'm wired.