UPnP vs. SMB for home streaming

[Burnside]

No. If you can hear a difference between different UPnP software, then I’d hazard they’re configured differently.

 

[antcollinet]

So here's the question: Is there a difference in sound between SMB and UPnP? I can even hear differences when using different UPnP software players on the same device.

Almost certainly you are not hearing differences in the sound reaching your ears, but are hearing the differences created by the meatware between them.

(for the purposes of clarity - due to your built in perceptive biases - we all have them, we cannot turn them off.)


Obviously if the players you are using have built in DSP (eg equalisers, tone controls etc) then you could be hearing the effects of that - but it has nothing to do with the protocols - which are required to serve the file unchanged to the renderer)

 

[aagstn]

Some good information in here. I've recently been considering moving to UPnP on my Mac to have more hardware flexibility as I picked up a Yamaha R-N600A and wanted something that could work well with Musiccast and devices like a Wiim in other rooms and USB Audio player on my phone. I also ran into issues though were sorting just wasn't being done the way I preferred and programs like Foobar2000 were not user friendly enough for me to configure them the way I wanted. I ended up going to back to an older program from the people that make DBPoweramp. It is called Asset and has been around forever. It is very customizable and lets me do the kind of genre>album artists sorting I like to make sure things like various artists are handled correctly. I can also get rid of all the sorting I don't like completely and it has built in options to sort by years, decades and so on to set up quick playlists. I'm trying it out now but it is a $37 US program. I'm still looking, but this has been the UPnP that has worked best for me so far. Roon is amazing but that price tag is not something I would pay.

 

[TunaBug]

I‘m currently listening on my new WiiiM Amp Ultra and I can report that LMS works extremely well on this unit.
You cannot control it in the WiiM app but all LMS compatible controllers incuding iPeng will take full control of the WiiM. I am very pleasantely surprised!

A month later... Is this what you settled on? That sounds like a great solution.

It wasn't clear to me in your initial post what the goal was. Using SMB in the solution doesn't mean ditching LMS. I keep my music library on the NAS, and LMS accesses it over the network over, you guessed it, SMB. Even if I were to put LMS physically on the NAS I would have it in a small VM there, and it would still access the music over the network.

 

[Barrelhouse Solly]

I've been using various Raspberry Pis for streaming for over 10 years. I used UPNP/DLNA before that. All of the music I own is stored on an NAS. My requirements are pretty simple because I organize my music by directory. My files are haphazardly tagged and there's a lot of them so directory structure is the easiest way. On the Pi I use both LMS and Moode Audio. Moode is SMB/MPD based although it can also be configured as a DLNA renderer. I use that feature for Qobuz. BubbleUPNP is my favorite DLNA control point on Android. LMS is convenient for a lot of things and can be run on multiple platforms. Both are free and open source. I've also used plain MPD on the Pi. It's flexible and works well but requires fooling around with the command line and configuration files. I also have a WIIM Mini. It's a great appliance solution and puts out great sound through its optical output. Since I use a DAC with the Pi(s) one more device is no big deal. I'm retired so this stuff keeps me from hanging out on the corner and getting into trouble.

 

[scrubb]

How about PiCorePlayer which is based on LMS? I don't currently use PCP (I'm on Roon), but I'm a fan of using raspberry pi's as my streaming endpoints as they are cheap and re-configurable if the current software becomes obsolete for some reason (mine all run Ropieee). The PCP server can also be a RPi.

 

[Barrelhouse Solly]

How about PiCorePlayer which is based on LMS? I don't currently use PCP (I'm on Roon), but I'm a fan of using raspberry pi's as my streaming endpoints as they are cheap and re-configurable if the current software becomes obsolete for some reason (mine all run Ropieee). The PCP server can also be a RPi.

My LMS server is a Pi 3B running PCP with an ethernet connection to my main router. It works well. My living room music source is a Pi running PCP with the Jivelite interface connected to an HDMI input on my AVR. The video appears on the TV and the AVR handles the audio. I can control it from whatever networked device is close by or with one of those miniature wireless keyboards.

 

[Multicore]

I‘m currently listening on my new WiiiM Amp Ultra and I can report that LMS works extremely well on this unit.
You cannot control it in the WiiM app but all LMS compatible controllers incuding iPeng will take full control of the WiiM. I am very pleasantely surprised!

That's the way to do it. Even the LMS web UI is better than the WiiM app, which I have hardly any use for now.

 

[Deleted member 89782]

A month later... Is this what you settled on? That sounds like a great solution.

It wasn't clear to me in your initial post what the goal was. Using SMB in the solution doesn't mean ditching LMS. I keep my music library on the NAS, and LMS accesses it over the network over, you guessed it, SMB. Even if I were to put LMS physically on the NAS I would have it in a small VM there, and it would still access the music over the network.

Yes, this is what I have settled on.