transcoding questions

[spider122]

I'm trying to store my whole cd collection on my whs and play it losslessly through my ps3 and an old Netgear MP101.

I think I have this working ok by ripping the cd's as flac and then converting to lpcm for streaming which should give me lossless quality. This seems to work for both machines, so I think I've found my solution.

I was just playing around and trying to understand what it's doing however and was just curious.

My ps3 will play the flac files via Asset v2 without transcoding, transcoding as wav, and transcoding as lpcm, but not transcoding as mp3. So I have two questions here:

• So my ps3 won't play any flacs through any other upnp without transcoding so is Asset doing something when I don't have the option to transcode selected?

• Also, I wouldn't want to transcode as mp3 when my original is flac, but why wouldn't that work? Seems like it should be able to play mp3's. I tried various qualities.

I tried to play on my MP101 and the only way I could get it to play was through lpcm. Not sure why it wouldn't work for mp3 for this either.

So I guess I can just use lpcm and I have what I'm looking for, but I was just curious why it's behaving the way it is.

Thanks.

[Spoon]

Re: transcoding questions

You would not want the mp3 option for FLACs.

When the transcode option is not selected the flacs are sent as is, the ps3 cannot play flacs.

[spider122]

Re: transcoding questions

When I don't check the flac box, I assume no transcoding should occur. However, it seems to play just fine on my ps3 without transcoding even though ps3 doesn't support flac so I was just curious what it's doing. It seems like it must be converting to something for it to play flac.

Pressing the info button on the ps3 says it's pcm for no transcoding, lpcm, and wav.

Also an oddity is that when selecting transcoding to pcm, it doesn't show the full time length of the song. For example, it will say 00:05/--:-- (on second 5 of a song). When no transcoding is done (or an mp3 is played), it will display as 00:05/02:13 (on second 5 of 2 minutes and 13 seconds). Not a big deal really, but just something I noticed.

Thanks.

[Spoon]

Re: transcoding questions

There is a 2ndary system in operation, for each file we pass out 3 possibilities, one is LPCM so it gets played when the PS3 chooses a format it can play.

[spider122]

Re: transcoding questions

Interesting. If it sends out 3 formats anyway (what are they?), why the need to explicitly change to a different format?

I also have an Net MP101 and I have to force it to lpcm or it won't work which is different from my ps3.

I'm guessing different machines look for all the formats and some don't?

[Spoon]

Re: transcoding questions

Orig
Wave
LPCM
Orig

Not all players walk the list, some take the first, some take the last.

[spider122]

Re: transcoding questions

Thanks very much for the information Spoon.

It's interesting to know why different machines produce different results.

[jemhayward]

Re: transcoding questions

I'm also trying to get transcoding sorted out in my mind:
I have three devices that can stream:
Linn DS
Netgear MP101
Freecom Musicpal
All my files are FLAC
the main priority is sound quality via the DS
I've got LPCM selected in the force streaming section, but none of the formats are ticked.
Is any transcoding going to happen at all? The DS plays fine and Songbook reports a FLAC file is being played.
The MusicPal works, but not sure what its getting.....
MP101 doesn't want to play - "unsupported song format"
so I think that its not transcoding...
but, I don't want it transcoding to my Linn DS!!!

am I missing something?

[Spoon]

Re: transcoding questions

The DS does not support lpcm. Transcoding is only done if you select a format.