LMS doesn’t see WiiM Amp as player

[Mon]

My WiiM Amp successfully plays music from my LMS library on a raspberryPi. Great!
However the LMS doesn’t « see » the WiiM Amp as a player. Have seen other posts where people say their LMS sees the WiiM Amp as player.
I suppose this is out of the box functionality or is there setup I missed?

 

[d6jg]

LMS discovery is done by the player.
Is the Amp on the same network subnet as your LMS server?
If it is then it should appear with no setup required

 

[Mon]

Thank you d6jg. same subnet (I think) similar ip address bar two last numbers. If no setup is required then I suspect it is related to mesh wifi setup in my home.

My WiiM Amp successfully plays music from my LMS library on a raspberryPi. Great!
However the LMS doesn’t « see » the WiiM Amp as a player. Have seen other posts where people say their LMS sees the WiiM Amp as player.
I suppose this is out of the box functionality or is there setup I missed?

 

[spacegrass]

I have experienced numerous occasions where my Wiim Pro and now my Wiim Amp don't show up as a player in LMS on a Win 10 laptop. They always do show up eventually however. I don't think it is a wi-fi network issue in my case - i think it is a more of a discovery issue, and how that process works as between the LMS server and the Wiim unit. Often power cycling one or the other of the Wiim or the LMS server device will make the Wiim then appear as a player. Maybe d6jg has more insight on the mechanics.

 

[Mon]

Happy to report a renewed attempt with LMS and WiiM Amp resulted in LMS “seeing” the WiiM amp as a player.
This time using LMS 8.3.1 on a Mac.
Already tried this previously with LMS 7.9.1 on raspberry but unsuccessful.
The renewed attempt was successful after having shut down the first LMS on the raspberry.
(I do not intend having multiple LMS’s running at the same time, this case was during testing)
Note:
the LMS library on my Mac doesn’t show up in the WiiM Amp “Home Music Share” section, whereas the LMS library on my raspberry did show up here, and was browsable.

 

[FreakyKiwi]

A renewed attempt was successful after having shut down the first LMS on the raspberry.

the LMS library on my Mac doesn’t show up in the WiiM Amp “Home Music Share” section, whereas the LMS library on my raspberry did show up here, and was browsable.

You should only have one LMS server instance active as the player will connect to the first one it finds.

"Home music share" requires using the UPnP plugin in LMS, I suspect that this was only active on your Raspberry Pi server instance.

 

[Brantome]

"Home music share" requires using the UPnP plugin in LMS, I suspect that this was only active on your Raspberry Pi server instance.

And given that plugin hasn’t been supported for ten or so years (?), it‘s best avoided.

 

[FreakyKiwi]

And given that plugin hasn’t been supported for ten or so years (?), it‘s best avoided.

Even if it was currently supported I'd avoid it. UPnP/DLNA is never reliable in my experience.

Use external LMS control (Material skin web portal or other app) and the built-in player in your WiiM for a problem free experience.

 

[simbun]

Even if it was currently supported I'd avoid it. UPnP/DLNA is never reliable in my experience.

You just chose badly. It's easy to do when there's so many options and such broad hardware support

 

[FreakyKiwi]

You just chose badly. It's easy to do when there's so many options and such broad hardware support

I can't say I've ever chosen a device for its DLNA capabilities but had plenty that worked very badly including several mid-range AV receivers which needed to be power cycled after locking up during DLNA playback.

Using the LMS player plugin my current Marantz receiver works well enough as does my Vero 4K media player, but neither compare to the reliability and responsiveness of a native LMS/Squeezeplayer implementation.

 

[simbun]

I can't say I've ever chosen a device for its DLNA capabilities but had plenty that worked very badly including several mid-range AV receivers which needed to be power cycled after locking up during DLNA playback.

The choice of server and control point is really important so if you hadn't given much consideration to those then that could be a contributing factor.
Historically there have certainly been poor implementations, but like with any product if you research and test then you'll be fine. I returned 2 WiiM minis (orders were 6 months apart) because of improper functionality, but that wasn't a UPnP problem. As of early last year all the issues were fixed with the WiiMs and they've been great since.

Using the LMS player plugin my current Marantz receiver works well enough as does my Vero 4K media player, but neither compare to the reliability and responsiveness of a native LMS/Squeezeplayer implementation.

True, but then you haven't had the "problem" of choice.

 

[FreakyKiwi]

The choice of server and control point is really important so if you hadn't given much consideration to those then that could be a contributing factor.

UPnP = "Universal" Plug and Play.
I have no desire to research and test anything to support a "standard" set of protocols with a working solution.

All good though if you enjoy that or have had a better experience than me.

LMS with WiiM/Squeezelite for my local library, and Chromecast or Alexa cast cover my use cases with perfect results.

 

[simbun]

UPnP = "Universal" Plug and Play.
I have no desire to research and test anything to support a "standard" set of protocols with a working solution.

Wouldn't it be great if life were that simple.

Realistically you just have to check/test that they support your codec of choice, and maybe if they're gapless, just like you would if you were going to use the WiiM in LMS given it doesn't support ALAC.

All good though if you enjoy that or have had a better experience than me.

I absolutely have, and given that it's been the standard on Hi-Fi equipment for many, many years now huge numbers of other people have too.

I wasn't trying to provoke, I've just got bored with LMS users complaining about it like it's some kind of sales pitch.

It's certainly a good time to be self-hosted with the myriad of options/protocols we have available to us now.

 

[d6jg]

Wouldn't it be great if life were that simple.

Realistically you just have to check/test that they support your codec of choice, and maybe if they're gapless, just like you would if you were going to use the WiiM in LMS given it doesn't support ALAC.


I absolutely have, and given that it's been the standard on Hi-Fi equipment for many, many years now huge numbers of other people have too.

I wasn't trying to provoke, I've just got bored with LMS users complaining about it like it's some kind of sales pitch.

It's certainly a good time to be self-hosted with the myriad of options/protocols we have available to us now.

The point @FreakyKiwi is making is that it isn't "standard on Hi-Fi equipment". It might be included by standard but the implementations can be very very different and many are actually awful and not standard at all.

 

[d6jg]

On the question of how @Mon found himself using the UPnP/DLNA Media Interface plugin it was enabled by default back in 7.9.x days but disabled when 8.x got released.

Although this plugin has not had any development for perhaps 10 years it does actually work but with caveats. The Bridge plugin is a different animal.

 

[simbun]

The point @FreakyKiwi is making is that it isn't "standard on Hi-Fi equipment". It might be included by standard but the implementations can be very very different and many are actually awful and not standard at all.

No @FreakyKiwi said it wasn't reliable, which it absolutely is/can be. The biggest problem with ALL of these technologies is discovery.

UPnP is a specification not a certification (unlike DLNA attempted to be) so there's no guarantees. Whilst this can be a problem it's also why it's so widely adopted, but it does have to be taken into account.

The burden of choice is that there are bad choices.

 

[d6jg]

The biggest problem with ALL of these technologies is discovery.

Which is why quite a few have asked WiiM for a "settings" area for Squeezelite. If you can specify the LMS server IP address then you avoid all the nasties caused by failing discovery. It works across subnets and down VPNs.

 

[FreakyKiwi]

No @FreakyKiwi said it wasn't reliable, which it absolutely is/can be.

Not exactly, I did say that my current receiver and media player are reliable renderers, but I have and have had far more devices which were not reliable to the point that I have decided to not even try.

I don't know what the process/cost/resources are to select reliable equipment but even then the functionality is limited compared with other options.

 

[simbun]

Not exactly, I did say that my current receiver and media player are reliable renderers, but I have and have had far more devices which were not reliable to the point that I have decided to not even try.

The thing I took objection to was when you said

UPnP/DLNA is never reliable in my experience.

Which you've just contradicted, but that was the reason for the initial discussion. Ultimately, yes there are bad implementations, but that doesn't make the standard or all the implementations of the standard unreliable because it absolutely can be, and is for the vast majority of people using it.

I don't know what the process/cost/resources are to select reliable equipment

Before I buy a piece of equipment I just check the spec sheet for codec support, then try and find evidence of gapless playback.
Once I have the equipment, the first thing I do is break up a track into 5 second chunks and play it back to check for gapless playback.
Assuming that works I'll generally just put a multi-hour playlist together and leave it playing.

I didn't even manage to test the initial WiiM mini because it wouldn't play from my server, so it went back (after trying to progress it with support). I tried again 6 months later when I had more time available and managed to track down the problem, but because I'd had no useful support from my first WiiM tickets I sent the second one back too, even though I did have a workaround (to transcode everything). I then got a Pro, WiiM eventually fixed the first problem, then addressed the "poor" (fine for real world use) gapless performance and since then it's been perfect (as a renderer).

but even then the functionality is limited compared with other options.

I'm not going to argue that it's technically as sound as modern alternatives, but - ignoring gimmicky features like Plex sweet fades e.t.c. - it's only really missing multi-room playback, otherwise it's still the preferred mainstream choice for local playback, mainly because the modern alternatives have silly limitations like bit rate (Airplay) and gapless playback (Chromecast) e.t.c.
The other reason that I'm in the UPnP camp is because of the servers, as no other system handles the metadata like good UPnP servers can.

At the end of the day you have to identify what's important to you and pick the option with the fewest other restructions, as there's no perfect solution.

 

[jpoet]

Which is why quite a few have asked WiiM for a "settings" area for Squeezelite. If you can specify the LMS server IP address then you avoid all the nasties caused by failing discovery. It works across subnets and down VPNs.

I use opnSense for my firewall. I looked in the past to see if I could forward the "discovery" across subnets and didn't see an option but either I didn't look hard enough or there is a new option: UDP Broadcast Relay. With that plugin installed it is trivial to get the WiiM Squeezelite to work on a different subnet. I am much happier now!