Streaming: Qobuz, DLNA, UPnP etc

[Tony L]

Just restarting this thread as I’ve accidentally deleted the last one. Pretty sure now there is a bug in XF2 as I know what I had selected (a couple of posts) and I ended up losing the whole bloody thread. Second time this has happened now. Annoying as there was some very good information there I was relying on. It has to be a bug as this result from what I actually did is not possible. Apologies anyway, it was one of the more interesting threads of recent years IMHO and I have to take ownership for losing it along with a lot of information I needed to refer back to.

Anyway, to briefly recap:

The big lump on the lower left is a rather wonderful decade or so old Chord DSX1000 (Chord) DLNA/UPnP network player/DAC. It has over the week or so since it landed had problems with my apparently not too great broadband and home network. It works most of the time, but drops out on high res content, and mostly in the evenings, maybe suggesting network contention from neighbours etc is a factor. It seems very critical of latency as I don’t think it has any real buffering ability. I’m also using it as a DAC for the Apollo R next to it which is connected to its coax input (its only other input aside from the cat5 ethernet port).

I found over the course of the last thread:

The DSX really does not like being plugged into a GigE cat 5 port (it‘s ethernet port is 100MBs). This is well documented on other forums from the time the DSX was current (e.g. Minimserver). I used an Apple A1264 Airport Express for a while as that has a 100MBs ethernet port. It was better than a direct connection to the Plusnet Smart Hub Two GigE port, but brought its own issues (the AE is known for latency). I’m amazed the AE worked to be honest, I’d never used it as a remote ethernet port before, and given it was designed just to enable network printing it did a very good job. It could get through an album of 24/48 without the DSX dropping on a good day!

There is very obvious measurable latency under load on my network when using the Smart Hub Two showing as ‘Grade C’ using this waveform.com ‘bufferbloat’ test. The preceding Hub One consistently gets ‘Grade A’ on the same test and seems to perform far more reliably with the DSX. This reinforces my suspicion latency is the underlying issue, or at least a key factor. The bandwidth as is, even if it is far below what I am paying for, should suffice with headroom to spare. I am currently using the Smart Hub One. The overall bandwidth and WiFi range (the latter none of the DSX’s business) are less good than the Hub Two, but it seems lower latency and more stable device in this context.

The network as it stands right now is; Plusnet Smart Hub One, cheap Amazon switch (so the DSX only sees a 100MB port), and from there direct connection with a 15 metre cat5e cable.

The source is Qobuz controlled via Mconnect Pro running on either an iPhone or iPad. This was tested and the stream continues until track end minutes later with the iPad in Airplane mode and MConnect closed, so the stream is not arriving at the DSX via the Apple device. Conversely pulling the cat5 lead makes the DSX drop immediately (it appears to have no buffer beyond a few network frames).

I wanted to understand this as I’m new to UPnP and DLNA and need to better understand the concepts of how a DLNA renderer interacts with a music source and control commands. This was my key question in the opening post of the last thread. I’d still like a lot more information here, but it certainly looks like MConnect passes an address and instruction to the DLNA renderer which then connects directly to the source and carries out that instruction, e.g. ‘go here, play this’. That is how I understand it anyway. Again please correct me if I have this wrong.

The broadband is booked for an upgrade to full fibre 140mbps with a guaranteed minimum of 80mbps in about a week and a half. The current situation is a fibre to box billed at 66mbps, but in reality around 35-40mbps, i.e. at least a doubling of bandwidth is on order. I also have a nice Cisco switch on the way thanks to a very kind pfm member, and I strongly suspect I will be going router shopping fairly shortly, maybe a Draytek.

As to the DSX itself; it is stunning! The best sound I have personally heard from a streaming solution. It has all the clarity, weight and scale of a really good DAC (it is basically QBD76 technology with a clock and DLNA player added) and it lacks that ’dead in the water’ thing so many streaming solutions have to my old-school flat-earth ears! It grooves! It is now very, very close to working. I suspect a couple more small incremental network upgrades will bring the stability it needs. Everything I did during the last lost thread moved it closer (figuring it hated the GigE port, adding a 100MBs switch/removing an Airport Express as substitute, and realising the Smart Hub Two was very poor under load). It is getting there…

The DSX1000 is running firmware version 17.0.4.12 with a date of 2015-08-13. I think this is pretty late for this device, it is certainly after certain comments on other forums regarding previous firmware improvements, e.g. the Minimserver thread linked earlier.

Again my apologies for losing so much good information and experience from so many people.

 

[Tony L]

Reopen, and again apologies. I am so annoyed about this.

 

[jay]

Likewise! I was at the end of page 1

 

[Tony L]

Hopefully folk will add stuff back in. My recap above obviously barely covers it and misses what was an interesting learning curve (still very much in process). There was a lot of information there I wanted to refer back to.

 

[vacuum_tubes]

For your Cisco switch:

sh int status -- will tell you the status i.e connected with speed and duplex
sh vlan br -- will display the VLANs currently configured, by default vlan1
sh int gi0/1 -- will show int counters and stats, good for looking at errors or port flaps etc
sh run int gi0/1 -- shows the current config of an interface

conf t
int gi0/1
switchport mode access
switchport access vlan 1
speed 100
duplex full

If it still has issues connecting or says "100/half" use this instead, some (older) endpoints can only auto-negotiate but this tells them to use 100 only

speed auto 100

 

[Tony L]

Thank you! That was one post I really wanted to refer back to!

 

[Sonority]

I used to run a DSX at work, along with the first Melco.
Before Melco it was a simple Synology NAS thing, running Minim server which seemed to be as good as it got back then.
Internet / router (then current) was a Draytek Vigor 2860n, into a bog standard 16 port D Link switch, which fed 3 offices for computers, printers etc.
It was solid.
Same could not be said for the then Melco, which seemd to need perfection on the network 100% of the time. (I guess that may have changed)
I did not have a music streaming service - so cannot speak for that, but it certainly worked at all the sample rates you are discussing up to 24/192 (I think I only had two files then at 24/192 namely Amused To Death & Crime Of The Century)
Unfortunately, Plusnet totally screwed up and were simply useless at resolving the issue.
Ended up with BT and their 'fail over GPS dongle) which means I am stuck with their router for now, no doubt I could research another.
That being said - it all works just fine as a network again. Fibre to the cabinet, and being the first to uptake, speed was amazing. Less so now a couple of years on with contention I guess, but more than adequate for streaming Qobuz into various Innuos boxes - along with running a business and offices.
Draytek were (and I think still are?) a very high standard router, I could (just about) work with their software and log into the router to update it and also do some WiFi stuff) - it is certainly not particularly easy, but I managed as an interface. I guess it is aimed at a more professional use.

 

[Tony L]

I’m certainly be interested in router recommendations. Draytek would instinctively be top of my list, e.g. this Vigor2866. I don’t really want one of current fad of shiny black alarmingly pointy the ‘gaming’ types that look like something from Darth Vader’s private bathroom cabinet, there have to be sensible looking ones with similarly low-latency.

Any recommendations for a good solid and reliable low-latency WiFi router with a nice selection of ports and configuration options would be welcome. I suspect I’ll be shopping within the month as I’m very far from impressed with either Smart Hub. Budget up to say £300. I don’t want to pay more than that without very good reason.

 

[vacuum_tubes]

For WiFi I'm using an Asus RT-AX86U running the Merlin firmware. That single unit covers the whole of my 3 bed but it's a 90's build so the walls are thin. At the furthest point I get 250 Mbps over 5Ghz which is more then enough for streaming netflix on the bedroom iPad etc.

Really impressed with the Asus, do have an RP-AX56 connected via Ethernet over Power for upstairs but very few clients actually connect to that as the 86U has such a strong signal.

This looks interesting and currently has a launch offer price, I don't do any gaming so have no idea if it's good or not but being aimed at gaming should be suitable for streaming as well.

Netduma R3 - Netduma

The R3VOLUTION is here. With bleeding edge DumaOS 4 features and WiFi 6 hardware, the Netduma R3 changes the meaning of the competitive edge.

netduma.com

 

[Tony L]

As a side-note it will be very interesting to see how this impacts my vinyl buying long term. I suspect it will make me more selective. As it is I tend only to be prepared to pay the now typical £25-32 (delivered) for an album if it is either a proper high-end audiophile cut (Tone Poet, Acoustic Sounds etc) or a very limited signed new band release that may be a good speculative option.

As an example I just bought the new English Teacher album as the DSX is playing it now and it really is rather good (there is some rather decent indie up in that Yorkshire at present), but whether I’d have done so had I not found a signed copy (at Assai) I’m not convinced. It is very seldom IME that modern indie/pop vinyl sounds as good as the high-res digital (not enough good mastering engineers to go around, and often too long playing times; stuff that needs three sides to sound good cut onto two), so I guess I’m now not buying for sonic reasons, more to support a new band and get a nice lasting artefact.

 

[AndyU]

I can’t believe this is taking so long and causing so much aggravation. 14 years ago I bought a Squeezebox Touch. It, and subsequently a secondone, worked faultlessly over Wi-Fi in a large flat with whatever crappy router I had in those days, Only thing that would knock it off was the microwave. Why not try installing LMS on a handy pc or Mac, and use the SqueezeUPnP plug in so it will see your endpoint, and the Qobuz plugin. I would expect it to work faultlessly. Then you’ll get a viewpoint on which bit of your system is weak. You might even decide to stick with LMS as it does a nice job of integrating your local music and Qobuz and has a nice iPad/iPhone remote app called iPeng. Shouldn’t take longer than 15 minutes to be cooking with gas.

 

[Tony L]

I can’t believe this is taking so long and causing so much aggravation.

It really isn’t at all. The only aggravation here is my deleting the thread! The rest is no issue at all. Just a long overdue network upgrade and an opportunity to learn. The DSX is amazing!

FWIW I had a Squeezebox Touch ages ago when first looking at network streaming. No matter what DAC I connected it to (IIRC mainly a MF V-DAC, though I did have others pass through) it sounded poor to my ears/priorities. Just dead in the water streaming lossless music from my Macbook or via (in those days lossy) music from Spotify. It just removed any ‘flat earth’ aspects from the music and sounded so boring compared to actually playing the exact CD the music was ripped from. Qobuz via the DSX is in a whole different ballpark from my perspective. This is actually a viable option for me.

PS The DSX has just this minute finished the aforementioned English Teacher album at 24/41 without the slightest issue. I seriously close to a stable network here. A couple of the incremental improvements that are in the pipeline and I bet it will do 24/192 with no issue.

….Edit: well over an hour of glitch-free high-res now including 24/96. It is very close to being right.

 

[TheFlash]

The network as it stands right now is; Plusnet Smart Hub One, cheap Amazon switch (so the DSX only sees a 100MB port), and from there direct connection with a 15 metre cat5e cable.

Tony, glad you are liking the sound. Humour me one day and you may or may not be surprised by the improvement in sound quality. Instead of using say 1m Cat N cable to cheap switch before your 15m run (Plusnet>1m>Amazon switch>15m>DSX), go Plusnet>15m>Amazon switch>1m>DSX. Digitally it’s identical so the DSX still sees only 100MB, but sonically even a cheap switch should make a nice difference if repositioned to just before the DSX.

 

[Woodface]

As a side-note it will be very interesting to see how this impacts my vinyl buying long term. I suspect it will make me more selective. As it is I tend only to be prepared to pay the now typical £25-32 (delivered) for an album if it is either a proper high-end audiophile cut (Tone Poet, Acoustic Sounds etc) or a very limited signed new band release that may be a good speculative option.

As an example I just bought the new English Teacher album as the DSX is playing it now and it really is rather good (there is some rather decent indie up in that Yorkshire at present), but whether I’d have done so had I not found a signed copy (at Assai) I’m not convinced. It is very seldom IME that modern indie/pop vinyl sounds as good as the high-res digital (not enough good mastering engineers to go around, and often too long playing times; stuff that needs three sides to sound good cut onto two), so I guess I’m now not buying for sonic reasons, more to support a new band and get a nice lasting artefact.

I reckon in 6 months time you will be listening to less vinyl & CD. On the plus side you will be listening to more music.

 

[Tony L]

Tony, glad you are liking the sound. Humour me one day and you may or may not be surprised by the improvement in sound quality. Instead of using say 1m Cat N cable to cheap switch before your 15m run (Plusnet>1m>Amazon switch>15m>DSX), go Plusnet>15m>Amazon switch>1m>DSX. Digitally it’s identical so the DSX still sees only 100MB, but sonically even a cheap switch should make a nice difference if repositioned to just before the DSX.

The Amazon switch is very much a temporary measure, I’ve got a very nice little Cisco managed switch on the way thanks to @beammeup. I’ll maybe try your suggestion as an experiment at some point, but I don’t want a switch in the hi-fi room long-term. The way my network is configured it makes much more sense having everything neatly in the back room near the router.

I reckon in 6 months time you will be listening to less vinyl & CD. On the plus side you will be listening to more music.

I’m sure it will shift things a little, and certainly allow me to explore sample more stuff, but that cute little TD-124 is safe! It will always get use, even if it is a little less. One interesting thing is an annual Qobuz subscription is around a third the price of a new Jico stylus for the V15/III or MP-500 currently in use, so if it does mean I end up buying some vinyl as a collector artefact/to support the artist, and mostly playing the high-res copy that’s another win IMO.

It definitely won’t stop me buying vinyl as in a way that is political. I’m an ex-muso, I have a lot of muso friends, and I know they make jack shit out of streaming. I don’t care about multi-millionaires like McCartney, Pink Floyd, Steely Dan etc, but I fully intend to keep supporting new independent music of all genres. I ask of them a nice collectable and preferably signed copy. Jazz is a vinyl form. I really can’t imagine ever streaming a Blue Note or Impulse title. I’ve got hundreds of them, and I’ll buy hundreds more!

I’ll be interested to see how I get on searching for classical. I’ve not tried that yet. That is often the point digital libraries fall apart as trying to find the exact thing you have in mind can be hard to get into a search engine.

 

[gavreid]

I’m sure it will shift things a little, and certainly allow me to explore sample more stuff, but that cute little TD-124 is safe! It will always get use, even if it is a little less. One interesting thing is an annual Qobuz subscription is around a third the price of a new Jico stylus for the V15/III or MP-500 currently in use, so if it does mean I end up buying some vinyl as a collector artefact/to support the artist, and mostly playing the high-res copy that’s another win IMO.

I bought a streamer and a Qobuz sub and rarely, actually very rarely, use it. I'm really just using the internal dac. I'll choose a record every time.

 

[vacuum_tubes]

I’ll maybe try your suggestion as an experiment at some point,

Don't forget to wrap one end of the cable with blue paper, stick crystals to the other end and align all the screws in the switch first.

 

[Woodface]

The Amazon switch is very much a temporary measure, I’ve got a very nice little Cisco managed switch on the way thanks to @beammeup. I’ll maybe try your suggestion as an experiment at some point, but I don’t want a switch in the hi-fi room long-term. The way my network is configured it makes much more sense having everything neatly in the back room near the router.



I’m sure it will shift things a little, and certainly allow me to explore sample more stuff, but that cute little TD-124 is safe! It will always get use, even if it is a little less. One interesting thing is an annual Qobuz subscription is around a third the price of a new Jico stylus for the V15/III or MP-500 currently in use, so if it does mean I end up buying some vinyl as a collector artefact/to support the artist, and mostly playing the high-res copy that’s another win IMO.

It definitely won’t stop me buying vinyl as in a way that is political. I’m an ex-muso, I have a lot of muso friends, and I know they make jack shit out of streaming. I don’t care about multi-millionaires like McCartney, Pink Floyd, Steely Dan etc, but I fully intend to keep supporting new independent music of all genres. I ask of them a nice collectable and preferably signed copy. Jazz is a vinyl form. I really can’t imagine ever streaming a Blue Note or Impulse title, I’ve got hundreds, and I’ll buy hundreds more!

I’ll be interested to see how I get on searching for classical. I’ve not tried that yet. That is often the point digital libraries fall apart as trying to find the exact thing you have in mind can be hard to get into a search engine.

You can support the artists by buying digital downloads from Bandcamp, that how I do it. I think I’ll get the new Richard Hawley album on vinyl purely for the title & cover. I’ll probably play it once & then stream it.

 

[Tony L]

I bought a streamer and a Qobuz sub and rarely, actually very rarely, use it. I'm really just using the internal dac. I'll choose a record every time.

That’s interesting. You don’t use it as an exploration device? I’m subscribed to many new release emails, e.g. Rough Trade, Assai, Norman, Bleep etc and given vinyl so often lags behind digital due to pressing plant delays, it provides an opportunity to listen properly in high quality before committing to buy that nice limited edition. That is my primary usage intention (along with just exploring a whole world of new music of all eras).

You can support the artists by buying digital downloads from Bandcamp, that how I do it. I think I’ll get the new Richard Hawley album on vinyl purely for the title & cover. I’ll probably play it once & then stream it.

Agreed, but personally I have zero interest in storing digital music locally. It is absolutely pointless IMHO. With vinyl I get an usually appreciating asset, or at least something I can release my money from later via the shop should I change my mind (my collection has always been fluid). The artist still gets paid properly, but I get something out of the deal I wouldn’t otherwise have. My record collection is the best investment I have ever made, and by orders of magnitude.

 

[Woodface]

That’s interesting. You don’t use it as an exploration device? I’m subscribed to many new release emails, e.g. Rough Trade, Assai, Norman, Bleep etc and given vinyl so often lags behind digital due to pressing plant delays, it provides an opportunity to listen properly in high quality before committing to buy that nice limited edition. That is my primary usage intention (along with just exploring a whole world of new music of all eras).



Agreed, but personally I have zero interest in storing digital music locally. It is absolutely pointless IMHO. With vinyl I get an usually appreciating asset, or at least something I can release my money from later via the shop should I change my mind (my collection has always been fluid). The artist still gets paid properly, but I get something out of the deal I wouldn’t otherwise have. My record collection is the best investment I have ever made, and by orders of magnitude.

Very fair point. I do like a digital download though, eaten they are HD.