Asset uPNP & DLNA

[Spoon]

Asset UPnP is a UPnP & DLNA server for Windows XP/Vista/Windows Home Server. The uPNP server will specifically targetted at FLAC.

Asset UPnP is a UPnP Server which runs on Windows. Asset adds extra browse trees (in relation to other servers) and implements multiple (artist/genre/etc support), and also does some clever things such as allow your playing device to play audio types it normally could not (for example mpc and wavpack).


Why?

We are disapointed by the quality of existing uPNP server software, poor tag reading / album art, poor reliability, etc. We need a UPnP server for RipNAS and the current choice is very poor indeed.

How Much?

Free for non-commercial use, commercial users please email: http://www.dbpoweramp.com/email.htm

Asset UPnP is targetted only for audio, and allows for very advanced browsing support (never seen before in a UPnP server, but for now Mums the Word).

=======================
Windows Home Server Installation:

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/asset-upnp-dlna.htm

=======================
XP, Vista, 2000 Installation:

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/asset-upnp-dlna.htm


Configuration:

Start >> Programs >> Asset UPnP

and specify your library location. Asset Runs as a service always when Windows Starts.
-----------------------

Sonos Specifics

Sonos needs to be told to look for Asset, this can only be done only through the Sonos Desktop Controller. Start said program, File >> Preferences >> General Tab >> Advanced Options and check 'Show music from Rhapsody UPnP Servers', instantly Asset UPnP should appear on the remote controller (not iPhone/iPod yet I do not think), just under Music.

[dvdr]

Spoon - you chose your "subtitle" for the right reasons. If you're doing, what I am hoping for, you really are "Da Man".
Please don't forget tags like "composer", "orginal artist", "album artist", and maybe even other tags for making it possible to properly sort huge classical and jazz collections ;-)

[starbuck]

Spoon - Any chance for a Netgear ReadyNas NV+ Version (addon) of Asset uPNP server?
I have a ReadyNas NV+ with my Flac AudioCD Archive (not complete yet but working on it - need cuesheet support in dbpoweramp... ) stored on it.
I am streaming the Flac files to a Denon AVR 4308 AV-Receiver via uPNP over my home network. As mentionend above I am also disapointed by the quality of existing uPNP server software, poor tag reading / album art, poor reliability, etc. If you can't do it on your own, what about working together with the netgear guys? In the readynas forum they are always helpful and cooperative.

It would be nice if such an addon for the nv+ could be released sometime...

[Spoon]

Our programs are very much windows only.

[bsd107]

Asset uPNP sounds like an awesome product.

But will it support only FLAC? Or also WMA Lossless, with conversion while streaming to PCM if neccessary?

I love the description of your product, but FLAC-only support wouldn't work for me.....

[Spoon]

In the medium term yes.

[Spoon]

Asset-UPnP beta 0.1 released.

[bsd107]

Originally Posted by Spoon

Asset-UPnP beta 0.1 released.

Great news - how do we try the beta?

[LtData]

Download link in first post.

[dvdr]

Hi
thanks for the beta! Here is my first feedback.

I succeeded in testing it in a test-enviroinment with about 300 flac's and a few mp3's on my laptop, in conjunction with a LINN DS streaming client.
It plays...
One error message is being repeatedly shown in the asset-upnp.exe's window:

..\..\..\..\Source\Core\NptHttp.cpp(546): [neptune.http] 1228728898:749 [NPT_Htt
pRequest::Parse] FATAL: NPT_CHECK failed, result=-20014 [(stream.ReadLine(line,
NPT_HTTP_PROTOCOL_MAX_LINE_LENGTH))]
..\..\..\..\Source\Core\NptHttp.cpp(546): [neptune.http] 1228728928:752 [NPT_Htt
pRequest::Parse] FATAL: NPT_CHECK failed, result=-20014 [(stream.ReadLine(line,
NPT_HTTP_PROTOCOL_MAX_LINE_LENGTH))]

that's just a small excerpt of the messages, that keep coming up as the exe is running. Seeing "max line length" there: is that referring to the total length of characters used in my paths? I delimit them to 250 characters, is that too much for the http protocol, or is that error message referring to something else?

May I add a suggestion as far as tags are concerned?

I would like to suggest the following, additional tags:

1.) Original Artist (f.e. Ute Lemper sings Songs of Sinatra, Sinatra =
Original Artist, imho important for all those wonderful jazz albums with cover-versions )
2.) Ensemble, orchestra or band - don't know, which tag is "allowed" (I think this is important for classical collections, where I could distinguish between different concertos with a soloist playing with different orchestras or search orchestras)
3.) Lyricist (helpful when indexing Musicals, Shows, classical song, opera, operetta)
4.) Label (same CD, but different pressing, reissue etc.)
5.) Comments

Thanks again for developing this.

[Spoon]

dvdr: do not worry about the messages, they are there all the time.

Other tags are going in with each update. The next update should allow any UPnP device to play any dbpoweramp supported audio format.

[Spoon]

Asset UPnP big update to 0.5

---UPnP Changes----

Added 'Genres'
New [settings] Menu
  Library Details                              displays track, album count, total size and disk free
  Rescan (detecting changes)            rescans looking for changes
  Rescan (refresh all)                       whole database is rescanned
  Options
     Artist >> Album Browsing             when enabled puts albums below Artists when browsing
     Force Streaming To Wave            all audio files are presented as wave which should have universal playback, allows the player to play formats not natively supported

------changes uMediaLibrary-------

BUG FIX: if have no dB (ie run assetupnp first) then even when db is created there is nothing listed in asset
BUG FIX: removing a file might not always remove it from the database

----------

Download as first message.

[dvdr]

Hello Spoon
great advantage, that I now can overcome the file-format limitations of a streaming client.
Tried it, it works, but there's problems, when playing files not supported natively by the streaming client and hence enabling decode to wav (sorry, but that's what betatesters come up with )

Obviously, files are decoded first and placed as wav's into the temp-folder, where they remain, until Asset-UPNP.exe is closed. That leads to the following:

- Temp-folder gets fuller and fuller, the more titles have been played and at a certain time, you run out of space (1 CD holds about 500 - 700 Mb, so after playing 3 CDs, you got quite a load of temp-files around - or: I also have a 88.2kHz/24bit wma-lossless album, playing that 1 hr. 14 min. album would result in 2.2 Gb worth of temp-files!)
- I ask myself, what happens, if the server stays active 24/7, thus Asset-UPNP never being closed? Or do you flush those tmp-files after they reach a certain number?
- there's a longer pause between each title, since Asset-UPNP does not "preload/predecode" the next title in the playlist. So gapless playback is not possible (at least in my setup here, which is a Linn DS streaming client and LinnGUI for controlling it). Live-Concerts and classical music... you know the issue
- Playing audiobooks (I usually encode the several CDs into one large file of about 60-80 Mb in m4b-format) is not working well: decoding this 2/3/4-hour files into wav takes a lot of time a consumed all of my temp-space in one case (not mentioning wav-file-size restrictions on Windows!). I know, that this might not be a common useage, but it's worth mentioning, imho.
- Temp-folder resides on C:, no way of defining a dedicated temp-folder on another partition/drive with maybe more space.

Additionally, here are some questions:
as far as I understood the UPNP-principle, part of the handshake between the server and the client is exchanging information about native filetype-support of the client. Could "force wav" be something like "decode to wav only for nonsupported filetypes"? That would at least take care of the gapless-issue for natively supported file-types...
Or: would some sort of "stream as you encode" be possible to get around the eventual problems with large files / long playlists / highly compressed file-formats?

Thanks for reading this and taking it into consideration - and keep up the great work on this promising project!

[Spoon]

The temp files should be autocleared 60 seconds after the file would normally finish playing (if another file is played).

>Could "force wav" be something like "decode to wav only for nonsupported filetypes"?

With the next update of LinnGUI it will do exactly this, Linn have never had a UPnP server capable of doing this until now, so they can accomadate it.

[dvdr]

Spoon

thanks for the update. Just a curious question about "music nodes" - I'm not really shure, whether this is possible in UPNP-specs
Would it be possible to incorporate multiple nodes on a level? One example, that I had never seen realized that way:

Genre

Classical

Artist (leads to albums, sorted by artist)
Album Artist (leads only to albums tagged with an album-artist, sorted by album-artist)
Composer (leads to composer, then albums sorted by composer)
Compilations (leads only to compilation-albums)

Soundtrack

Composer
Album

etc.....


That way, I would have a more efficient way to browse my collections...