Well, actually, yes. The DS upgrade has nothing to do with the gapless issue. The reason to upgrade to a DS is because it sounds better than the PWD. The current Bridge will not play gapless with the DS unless you are using foobar2000 with the required plug-ins. Same as the PWD. There is a new Bridge (referred to as Bridge 2) in the works that will address gapless. If you want to complain about having to pay for a Bridge 2 to address the gapless issue that’s fine, but you might want to wait for PS Audio to release it and find out what terms they offer to existing Bridge owners. Bridge 2 apparently is a few months off (and complaining about how long it is taking to address the gapless issue is something I can easily relate to). In the meantime, if you want to try foobar2000 and are a PC user, there are plenty of people on the forum who will try to assist you.
I’m well aware of the Bridge II. If I recall it was supposed to be near completion at the beginning of the year, and that’s basically my complaint. Believe me, even though I shouldn’t have to I would gladly pay for it. Evidently they have plenty of resources to devote to an entirely new product yet here we PWD owners are. And unless I have my head up my butt, foobar2000 plays the entire album as a continuous stream meaning if you wanted to skip a track you’re screwed. And besides, I thought JRiver (which I’ve paid for, like better and would rather use) and PSAudio had a thing going.
You could also and simply convert your favorite “gapless” albums to one file and play them gapless with JRMC.
I did this almost 3 years ago and have enjoyed gapless , when desired, ever since.
If there is a particular track that you MUST omit then you can do that too.
The concept of gapless is to listen to an artist’s performance as “one” track and without interruptions. To “edit” it in any way defeats the purpose of gapless, unless I am missing something?
Actually, Foobar2000 will play ANY material gapless, not just entire albums. Also, while Foobar2000 is playing gapless you can use scrubbing as well as being able to skip tracks forward and back.
It is obviously a simple task to build a product such as the Bridge. UPnP and DLNA are simple protocols and any programmer can toss off processes and drivers to run DXD and DSD 256 across any Ethernet setup. We all are wondering why it has taken PS Audio more than a couple of months to design Bridge 2 and bring it to production. Many of us also believe that Bridge 2 should be a free upgrade to all current Bridge owners. 
J.P.
gordon said You could also and simply convert your favorite "gapless" albums to one file and play them gapless with JRMC.I did this almost 3 years ago and have enjoyed gapless , when desired, ever since.
If there is a particular track that you MUST omit then you can do that too.
The concept of gapless is to listen to an artist’s performance as “one” track and without interruptions. To “edit” it in any way defeats the purpose of gapless, unless I am missing something?
Well, in most cases you are correct. But I draw the line at ‘Octopuses Garden’…ha ha.
I guess I’ll have to play with it some more. It currently doesn’t display the individual tracks but I’ve only just installed it and tried it briefly.
EDIT: and to add, it could be my imagination but I didn’t think foobar sounded as good as JRiver. I know there are those that say that’s not possible,but…
foobar2000 will play any combination of tracks gapless as long as they are the same resolution. You can skip tracks as you like. It only plays the entire album if you add the entire album to the playlist. There is the same delay in playing the first track as with any other program playing to the Bridge so, if you change resolutions or skip a track, you will get that gap for the next song. If you stick to one resolution, even 192/24, it will play all the songs on the playlist gapless (with the usual delay for the first song; in my case, the first 192/24 track takes about 12 seconds to load). PSA did recommend JRiver for awhile. Not so much recently. There doesn’t seem to be an officially recommended server at this point. You are also assuming the same people at PSA developed the DS as are needed to do Bridge 2. I do not know that to be the case, although I suspect some (like Dennis) are involved in both. That would still not necessarily mean that Bridge 2 was delayed by the development of the DS. It might have been but I’m not prepared to just assume that.
stevem2 said foobar2000 will play any combination of tracks gapless as long as they are the same resolution. You can skip tracks as you like. It only plays the entire album if you add the entire album to the playlist. There is the same delay in playing the first track as with any other program playing to the Bridge so, if you change resolutions or skip a track, you will get that gap for the next song. If you stick to one resolution, even 192/24, it will play all the songs on the playlist gapless (with the usual delay for the first song; in my case, the first 192/24 track takes about 12 seconds to load). PSA did recommend JRiver for awhile. Not so much recently. There doesn't seem to be an officially recommended server at this point. You are also assuming the same people at PSA developed the DS as are needed to do Bridge 2. I do not know that to be the case, although I suspect some (like Dennis) are involved in both. That would still not necessarily mean that Bridge 2 was delayed by the development of the DS. It might have been but I'm not prepared to just assume that.I'll "assume"full responsibility then...ha ha.
Hello,
I was inspired and decided to connect my mac mini to my PWD II Bridge with the method you suggested. I wanted to eliminate packet loss style skipping sounds in super high res audio. If the gapless playback happened too, that would be a plus, but the packet loss skips kill me!
I disconnected the PWD from my network switch where I believe some network traffic may have been the culprit, and connected it directly to the mac mini with a cat6 crossover cable. I was able to set up 2 networks on the mac mini. A private one for the ethernet port for the PWD and a separate network on the wireless card to connect to the router and the rest of the home network. It took some finessing, but it worked. River MC20 can see the PWD with no problem, and plays on its on direct ethernet connection. The mac mini is still part of the larger home network, and can connect to the internet, printers, and other computers on the network with the wireless card.
The problem is, though I get less with this configuration, I still get packet loss skips on 24/192 music from time to time. Either once in a song, or once in 2-3 songs.
Am I crazy to think that I should be able to play to the bridge with Cat6 cable and a direct connection without any ethernet traffic and NOT have packet loss skips on high res music? I think this is a fair expectation of the equipment. By the way, 24/96 music has no such problems. Its only the really high res stuff.
thanks, Mark
This may not help and you may have done but I understand both the DAC and Mini should be set to static addresses.
24/192 seems to be pushing the limits of the Bridge. Some have gotten solid playback with 24/192 but I think that most get occasional skips, anywhere from a few per track to a few per day. I have only a few 24/192 tracks but I can generally play them with rare skips, perhaps once every two or three tracks. It is possible that the Ethernet port on the mAc mini is not an excellent match for the port on the Bridge. I am curious if a good switch dedicated to that connection would be better than a direct connection with a crossover cable. This is just speculation and curiosity, of course.
J.P.
I appreciate all the info Lou shared, thanks Lou. My network performance seems to be working fine, and I’m very happy with how my system sounds with DS DAC and Bridge II. Lou said “Regardless of what Internet provider you use, ensure that your server and renderer are connected to a dedicated switch or router.” Not being very network savvy, I have just one simple question. Would the sound of my system be improved somehow if I added a switch?
I have a Motorola cable modem and a Apple Airport Extreme router. BJ cable from the modem into the Gigabit Ethernet WAN port of the Airport Extreme. There are three Gigabit LAN ports on the Airport Extreme, one connected to an iMac where my server is JRiver MC, and another connected to the Bridge II. Would it be better to use a Gigabit switch connected to one of the LAN ports and connect the server and Bridge II to the switch?
For me - regardless of if I use the Bridge II, or if I use Sonore uRendu, or the SOTM sMS-200 Ultra I bought a separate, 4 port gigabit Ethernet switch that can run off of 6V. It is powered by an Uptone Audio LPS1 made a very noticeable improvement. I haven’t used JRMC in several years, as I moved over to Roon Server with JPLAY (dual PC mode), and then Roon Rock on a dedicated purpose built sever that does not sit in the music room. I’ve also tossed UPNP / DLNA several years ago. I use RAAT protocol to an SOTM SMS-2000 powered by a linear power supply.
Sound wise it’s world class and I would not look back.
So a long winded answer, and of course IMHO - to answer your question - YES - but set the port speed that connects to the Bridge II to 100 MBPS
Thanks Lou, I have a 4 port gigabit switch that’s not being used, don’t remember what brand and what voltage it takes. But I haven’t a clue how to set the port speed. I’ll take a look at it tonight.
I also just bought a pre-owned Uptone Audio LPS1 to use with a mRendu that I hope to find used (version 1.4). A friend has recently set that up in his system and he loves the sound he’s getting with it. He is using a method described in Computer Audiophile to direct connect his Mac Mini to his mRendu powered by an LPS1. Described in “A Novel Way to Massively Improve The SQ Of Computer Audio Streaming.”
I tried this setup with foobar & it work pertly with PCM.
But I am not able to stream DSD file to Bridge 2.
Anyone got experience with playing DSD, please help.
^This article should help.
When I play to the Bridge, I choose DSD: UPnP: BridgeII as the output device.
Thanks for the effort. Interesting post.