Asset 5.1 and chromecast audio

[DaFork]

Hi all,

Just got me a Chromecast Audio. Great little device, for our kitchen radio which used to have an airport express (not in use anymore). In the living room we have a Linn DS, different league. All my own CD albums (some 800) are ripped using dbpoweramp cd ripper in accurate mode, stored in m4a/alac.

Using Asset 5.1 (premium) as my music database. The linn plays everything, the chromecast audio does not play the alac (using Bubble upnp as a control point on my android phone) but it does play internet radio (tunein) using the browse tree if Asset.

For the Linn i would want to play the m4a/alac as is, for the Chromecast (which does not support alac) i would need to transcode the alac to wav on the fly when playing. Can I distinguish transcoding per media renderer? How to do so?

Another thing that puzzles me is that when playing tunein through internet radio in Asset, my radios seem to get a stream from the ip address of the local server running Asset (192.168.0.3/...). Can you also play directly from the source stream that's retreived from the web, other than local caching?

Merry xmas,
DaFork

[mville]

Re: Asset 5.1 and chromecast audio

For the Linn i would want to play the m4a/alac as is, for the Chromecast (which does not support alac) i would need to transcode the alac to wav on the fly when playing. Can I distinguish transcoding per media renderer? How to do so?

Asset UPnP Configuration >> Advanced Settings >> Genereal Settings >> Edit Override settings

Then, in Rule Based Profiles (left-hand window pane) add the following:

=MyDevice
[ForceToWAVE]
.alac

where MyDevice is the name for your chromecast found in Known Control Points (right-hand window pane).

You can also use the following forced streaming options:
[ForceToMP3] [ForceToLPCM] [ForceToSINGLE]

[DaFork]

Re: Asset 5.1 and chromecast audio

Wow, fantastic tip.

The control point in my specific case is 'Android/5.1.1 UPnP/1.0 BubbleUPnP/2.5.5.1'
Do I need to enter that entire string? This app is updated frequently, don't want to change this every time it does update and change this string. Or can one use wildcards?

[mville]

Re: Asset 5.1 and chromecast audio

The control point in my specific case is 'Android/5.1.1 UPnP/1.0 BubbleUPnP/2.5.5.1'
Do I need to enter that entire string? This app is updated frequently, don't want to change this every time it does update and change this string. Or can one use wildcards?

First of all, try it using the entire string, to check it is working.

Hopefully, Spoon can answer regarding the use of wildcards for the control point name.

[Spoon]

Re: Asset 5.1 and chromecast audio

It will match part of it also, so you can specify just the first section until /

An easier option would be to set ALAC to decode 'as wav' for everything.

[DaFork]

Re: Asset 5.1 and chromecast audio

Got it working, great to get perfect feedback.

Related followup question, the chromecast audio supports up to 24/96. Higher sampling frequency does not play back now. Can I cap the samplimg frequency for this device/control point on flac/alac files to 96KHz?