I use JRMC’s Media Network as a DLNA control to send audio files via PLCs to my DS with Bridge I. I’m looking forward to getting Bridge II.
The problem that annoys me most is the 12sec delay when playing dsf files (in their DoPE shell). Even if I play a whole album this delay is between all tracks. I hope, but I am not confident, BII may address this problem.
I would think this is not a DS issue, but instead a player/Bridge issue (i.e you would get better feedback on those forums). The DS plays DSD via DoP as it’s natural way (in fact even direct raw DSD via I2S gets DoP’d inside the DS).
Why are you containerizing DSF files? JRMC DLNA does not need wav files with DSF inside; the DoP flags do that automatically in DoP. The only time I’ve seen the need for containerizing is when the transport (like a Squeezebox) doesn’t handle DSD so it is used purely as a PCM transport and the user needs to do the DoP container (which produces a very non-standard file). But Ted has said many times that the Bridge handles DSD (or so I thought).
I play DSD files using JRMC 20 (mostly Mac but occasionally PC) and have not converted the files to DoP (JRMC does that on the fly), just checked the box for bit streaming. Does the DS display show you are playing DSD files (so you know you’re not converting to PCM)? DO you pass the bit perfect test? I’m using Bridge 2, which plays gapless, including DSD files and mixed PCM/DSD playlists. The first track can take a few seconds to start but that’s probably just the hard drive spinning up. I used to get long gaps when playing high res files using Bridge 1 but I don’t recall if that was all tracks or just the first in a playlist. DSD file did not seem to take longer than high res PCM. This may be a JRMC setting as ted_b suggests.
its important to realise that I use JRs Media network & not a direct connection. I play dsf files as DoPE by ticking the Bitstream DSD (requires DoPE compliant renderer). The DS say I am playing DSD & I have successfully run the bit perfect test.
thank you all…bring on Bridge II & hurry up sending them Downunder!
I suspect it’s a JRiver issue. I am a B2 tester, so it’s been a long time since I played DSD over B1; but I do not remember excessively long wait times. With B2 there’s certainly no problem in my setup (NAS running MinimServer), but I don’t use JRiver. Have you ever tried, or could you try as an experiment, some player other than JRiver? It would be disappointing to invest in B2 only to have the problem continue since it’s a software, not a hardware, issue.
Update: I played a bunch of DSD files tonight and paid particular attention to the load times, which I confess I hadn’t thought much about. From MinimServer to B2 via DoP I found considerable inconsistency. Some DSD files took a while to start playing (up to 10 seconds, in some cases) while others were much quicker. There was in general a correlation with file size; big symphonic movements usually took longer than a folk singer with a guitar, but not always. For instance, the first movement of Mendelssohn’s Scottish symphony (London Symphony Live) took 10 seconds, but the fourth movement took only 1 or 2 seconds and it is almost as long as the first movement. I could not see any pattern of songs within an album taking less time than moving to a different album or anything like that. The software programmed into B2 is obviously trying to keep things moving along quickly (sometimes the cover for the next song appears while the previous one is ending) but this did not entirely eliminate slow loading on large files.
Note: I do not have any DSD albums that contain tracks meant to be played gaplessly, so I can’t speak about how well B2 handles such. The PCM gapless tracks that I have work fine.
I don’t know how the use of DoP contributes to loading times. My Synology is a DS213, which is 1/4 or 1/3 of the way up the Synology food chain. In other words, it’s not the cheapest model but there are others with faster processors and more RAM; whether they would give better results I don’t know, but that is certainly possible. And I have no idea what sort of overhead JRiver introduces.
thanks magistar…I have been persevering with BI. As I’m sure you know its kind of flaky. I know you have not used BI for a long time but do you think BII sounds different? I will probably get BII because it does gapless and does not drop out so much(I hope).
As I’m a wombat when it comes to all this, what other players can I try?
Don’t put yourself down, rossop. It looks like you’re giving this a lot of thought!
BTW, the B2 does sound very good with the DS. I always felt that however good the B1 was, in my system it fell just a bit short of the PWT with I2S input. I think now it’s a toss up between the B2 and the PWT, with a slight edge to the B2 - and the final sound optimization of the B2 hasn’t even happened yet.
On a Windows computer, you can try MinimServer (yes, there are versions for Win and Mac computers as well as various brands of NAS) or foobar2000. The former is donationware so you can try at no cost, and the latter is free but is more complex to set up–you need to install additional components for DSD and for UPnP playback. There are instructions here but it helps if you are comfortable with computer stuff.
There are other options on a Mac but I have no experience with them.
The sound of B2 is very good; you will not be disappointed in that regard, I’m sure.
“Flakey” is a good description of B1. Unfortunately, it also applies to a lot of the software, and network hardware, out there and it can be hard to determine where problems originate. Like magister, I’ve been using B2 since the beginning of the year so my memory of B1 is already hazy. There were times in its long life when loading times for high res files could be quite long. I eventually shifted to foobar2000 with the monkeymote4foobar iPad app (foobar and the plug-ins you need are free and monkeymote costs 3 or 4 US$) because it could play gapless when properly configured. Foobar can be very complicated but if you don’t care what the interface looks like and all you want to do is stream to the Bridge, it’s actually pretty straight forward to set up (I have my own steps saved somewhere but don’t have access to them at work). Although foobar can handle DSD files with a direct connection, last I heard nobody had figured out how to stream DSD using foobar to the Bridge, though. (I could be out of date on this.)
tony22 said
I always felt that however good the B1 was, in my system it fell just a bit short of the PWT with I2S input. I think now it's a toss up between the B2 and the PWT, with a slight edge to the B2 - and the final sound optimization of the B2 hasn't even happened yet.
An exciting prospect as the PWT performs brilliantly.
And thank you for reminding us that wombats are people, too.
stevem2 said
"Flakey" is a good description of B1. Unfortunately, it also applies to a lot of the software, and network hardware, out there and it can be hard to determine where problems originate.
Very well put. This accounts for much of the frustration that users (including me) have experienced. That's life on the cutting edge of audio, I guess.
Although foobar can handle DSD files with a direct connection, last I heard nobody had figured out how to stream DSD using foobar to the Bridge, though.
Configure foobar to be a UPnP server/player, then select the Bridge as the renderer. IIRC there are two components to add, foo_upnp and foo_out_upnp (or something like that) along with the DSD component.
You need those plug-ins (I have always used the foo_upnp lug-in but others have said it’s not strictly needed). But have you or anyone else actuallygotten the DSD/SACD component to work using the foo_out plug-in? The SACD plug-in has been updated since I last tried it but in the past it did not seem to be possible to stream DSD to the Bridge.
stevem2 said
You need those plug-ins (I have always used the foo_upnp lug-in but others have said it's not strictly needed). But have you or anyone else actuallygotten the DSD/SACD component to work using the foo_out plug-in? The SACD plug-in has been updated since I last tried it but in the past it did not seem to be possible to stream DSD to the Bridge.
The SACD ASIO proxy (which comes with the foo_input_sacd) is a post processor that only works when foobar2000 is using ASIO as output. (It's what most of us use to wrap DoP around DSD). The same for foo_out_upnp, it's an output plugin. So they can't work together. As far as I know there's no DoP wrapper that integrates in to the processing chain of foobar2000 (it probably would be a DSP plugin.)
There are some ASIO drivers out there that should remap that audio to another input device on the computer then you could use another instance of foobar2000 or JRiver to stream that over UPNP. But the most popular port remappers either don’t do 176.4k or they don’t allow sample rate changes on the fly which sort of negates their usefulness (e.g. you’d need to use DSP to resample all non-DSD outputs to 24/176.4) Also as noted on other posts JRiver doesn’t always work the most gracefully at higher sample rates when streaming via UPNP, so even the portmapping kludge doesn’t work all that will with JRiver.
Pick a basic “appearance” when prompted (doesn’t really matter which).
Go to the components page on the foobar site and download UPnP MediaRenderer Output 1.0 beta 4 and install it. Apply the change and restart foobar2000 when promoted.
In preferences/output, select your PWD or DS and 24 bits.
In preferences/media library, point it to your music folder(s) (loading the library was the only step that took much time and even that is pretty fast).
In my case, I use the monkeymote4foobar iPad controller so I installed its component (when you purchase the app from the App Store, it will tell you where to find the PC component; you get it from the monkeymote site and it installs like other foobar components; you need to restart foobar2000 after installing it).
Note that you can also install the UPnP/DLNA Renderer component but I don’t think it is required to stream to the Bridge.
stevem2 said
You need those plug-ins (I have always used the foo_upnp lug-in but others have said it's not strictly needed). But have you or anyone else actually gotten the DSD/SACD component to work using the foo_out plug-in? The SACD plug-in has been updated since I last tried it but in the past it did not seem to be possible to stream DSD to the Bridge.
Ted knows a lot more about foobar than I do, since I use it rarely nowadays. But last night I fired up foobar and played a DSD file (I know it is really DSD) to the Bridge (I know it was the Bridge because I selected B2 as the renderer; see screen shot). The Preferences/Output was set to foo_dsd_asio. Not just sure why this works but it did. Foobar itself and all components are up to date in my system.
stevem2 said
In preferences/output, select your PWD or DS and 24 bits.
But this means you not streaming to the Bridge, yes? Or am I confused?
And is there any chance that the file is DoP instead of DSD? What does foobar2000 report the sample rate to be? (I know it doesn’t sound likely that you would have a DoP file that you didn’t know about, but the standard foo_input_sacd doesn’t do dop and tho there’s one out there that does, most people don’t use it for other reasons.)
I think I figured out what’s going on. I have MinimServer set to transcode DSD to DoP so that I can play DSD to the Bridge. Since I was using foobar as a UPnP player rather than in its native mode, I suspect that it got a DoP file off my NAS. Does that make sense?
