I have ripped a lot to flac over the years, but now I see that the UPnP server (Twonky) ingnores cover art in the album.jpg and only sees embedded artwork (edit: wrong - found out it looks for folder.jpg, so that is easily dealt with by a script to rename my existing album.jpg in all folders). Also I am quite particular about metadata and it is unlikely that the Unitiserve defaults would make me happy.
Edi: Plus many of those that are not on streaming services are not on metadata servers either - recorded John Peel from the radio and what not
I guess it depends on your collection, but for me, CDs that the Unitiserve couldnāt find were very rare. It uses much the same range of online databases as other rippers. Making corrections using the N-Serve app is as quick and easy as it gets. Of course, if you have much Classical music, itās pretty useless.
Harmonic distortion is not related to music, not directly at least. Harmonic distortion tends to mess with a signal by adding multiples of its frequency. Itās a common problem for many electronic circuits, not only related with music replay.
Thatās why it is related to the music if it occurs in the music signal path (or some kind of analog relationship within the circuits). Any noise induced from FLAC decompression is just random as far as the music is concerned. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the music as such
Thanks, I have ripped and corrected auto-tagged music for over a decade Like I said, much of my stuff on CDs is radio recordings and the like, most of those are decades old and digitized from tape. So it will get ripped, but it is a lot of work that Iād rather spread out without pressure.
Anyways, it was just a side note. We donāt need to discuss my choice, I made it based on experience and fully aware of advantages and disadvantages
I know, though I would simply script it with the metaflac command on the Linux command line, which would be less work. But I amended my above post in the meantime, Twonky in fact finds āfolder.jpgā. My existing cover art is all āalbum.jpgā, so even easier to do a quick script that renames it in all folders.
All of this only takes care of existing rips though and there is much to do
Thanks, I searched for Asset but there is no Qnap package, did find Minim though - thanks for the tip
Edit: oh and now I found the manual Asset install too. Geez, there we are again, fiddling with computers instead of listening to music
Of course, but that doesnāt matter: the streaming board interface sees different incoming data. If you have access to the device, you can by the way monitor CPU load and the overall power consumption by yourself!
If you use non-standard tags (as I do, I fill in values for Composer, Work, Ensemble, Conductor, Director, Period, Form, Genre and some more), you should look at MinimServer. It supports custom tags perfectly and let you browse your data very effectively. It is also very well supported, in contrast to the Naim server.
One point, which to most users here is probably completely irrelevant, is the gap between tracks. My setup doesnāt do gapless playback (Bartok with Bubble) however I found streaming WAV rather than flac reduced the time delay between tracks. Itās still there but gone down from perhaps 3-4 seconds to 1-2 seconds.
Certain valve amplifier stages tend to produce harmonic distortion, and that can colour a sound in an attractive wayā¦ in fact harmonic distortion often produce the timbre on many acoustic musical instruments. However itās personal preference whether you want everything painted this way or not. As you say not all valve stages act this way.
Digital noise is nearly always inharmonic and tends to jarr with our hearing as it sounds unnatural or artificial. One noticeable exception is dither, this is random digital noise deliberately added to sample values to mask quantisation distortion to make digital encodings sound more natural.
Noise from RFI can brighten or harden sound, and on some audio playback systems, perhaps when affecting feedback systems, in small amounts can make a sound in my experience, seem more lively or exciting at the loss of fine detail.
So with all these thingsā¦ noise can mean many different thingsā¦ and some is positive and some negative.
The acid test for me in listening ā¦ if the audio replay system is in the Goldilocks zone of retaining attention and interest and not tiring over a couple of hours, including busy compressed recordings, then it is probably spot on for you.
How can you listen to opera without gapless replay? I am sure that the Bartok supports gapless replay flawlessly as any decent DAC does! Otherwise, I would send it back immediately: I do not know any DAC or streamer that does not support gapless replay apart perhaps from the Chromecast audio.
The time delay between the tracks, no matter whether it is zero (which is typically the case in opera) or greater then zero, is a crucial aspect of a listening experience. It should not be dependent on the data format or on other technical aspects, to the best of my understanding.
Only if you use their control app and that only works with minimserver. Their app is, IMHO, not the best and, personally, I find minim hard to use and lacking some of the better features that asset offers.
On balance, since I donāt play opera, okay I have one cd, I live with the delay.
In hind sightā¦ would I still recommend the Bartok now knowing about these limitations? I donāt know. As a DAC itās very, VERY, good but it is let down by the control software. Only working properly with the dcs app and minim is quite restrictive and, like most high end hifi companies, their attitude is along the lines of āthis is the way we do things and if you want anything different then thatās your problemā.
A well-tagged, high quality music collection is a pleasure that lasts many years. It requires quite some work in the beginning and a bit of discipline every time one buys a new album.
But it pays off. For me, it is much better to have a small collection with perfect metadata than a large collection with inconsistent or poor metadata. I also prefer a small collection with inconsistent or poor metadata to a large collection with inconsistent or poor metadata. Further, being able to open the booklet of a new album in the control point and read the booklet while listening to the music is for me crucial for a good listening experience.
This is shocking, sorry to hear that. I do not know the dCS control software and I am actually very, very happy with MinimServer. Isnāt it possible to support gapless replay by wrapping the Bartok into an OpenHome rederer via the BubbleUPnP server? This should also enforce the correct gap betwen tracks that are supposed to be separated by a short interval of silence, see https://www.bubblesoftapps.com/bubbleupnpserver2/docs/config_media_renderers.html#openhome_gapless.
Minimserver requires Java right? If so make sure to disable Java in your browser(s), which is a setting in the Java setup, because itās a security risk in your browser otherwise.
The best hardware is a scorn when the software is poor and the hardware is not certified for running open source software.
This is the main reason why I have always been very very titubant investing in proprietary streamers, no matter from which manufacturer. Naim do not even offer any longer detailed user guides for their products. Thus, it is meanwhile virtually impossible to know what one actually buys before buying it.
But when poor software comes along with arrogance ā¦ thatās just unacceptable. Have you tried contacting dCS and making them clear how miserable the state of things that you describe actually is?