USB Support

Thanks. What USB brand do you use, I just ordered but could stop a Corsair and what format do you use? ALSO I'm not getting categorizing into albums. Or artists. I see name in app. They said problem with metadata. THese were FLAC from BandCamp. I own a bunch and want to down load with full data and categorizing.
 
DougZ said:
ALSO I'm not getting categorizing into albums. Or artists. I see name in app. They said problem with metadata. THese were FLAC from BandCamp. I own a bunch and want to down load with full data and categorizing.
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Check the tags in an application like Mp3tag.

You'll generally want to make sure the following tags are populated as a minimum:

These should be the same across an album
  • AlbumArtist (Album Artist in Mp3tag)
  • Album
  • Date (Year in Mp3tag)
These vary by track
  • DiscNumber
  • TrackNumber (Track in Mp3tag)
  • Artist
  • Title

The folder structure isn't as important to most servers, but the following is good practise:
Code: 
%AlbumArtist%/%Album%/CD%DiscNumber%/%TrackNumber% - %Title%.flac

I'd identify a handful of albums and put only those on a USB key for loading onto the Amp until you're happy with the process, and albums are getting categorised correctly.
 
Is anyone else having problems with the USB being consistently discovered?

Its been a persistent problem for me, even after the supposed bug fix noted in the latest firmware update. Sometimes the USB shows up a few minutes after opening the app, other times it never shows up, even after several hours. Changing USB drives, # of files on the drive, format of drive, 2.4 or 5 Ghz wifi, moving amp in/out of standby, changing sources . . . none of that impacts the issue. Seemed to work really well (USB consistently visible) for a few hours after yesterday's firmware update, but then it reverted back to same/worse behavior.

The wifi connection to the amp has zero problems, its always available to the app, I have zero problems streaming, etc. So it seems to be a problem with how the amp is looking for and/or configuring the USB drive for UPNP service.

I submitted a ticket, but am curious if this is a common problem.
 
My main problem is that the scan process fails - working a little with the WiiM support (and their developer) it seems like the App was running out of memory scanning my large collection of music on the USB, but I believe they have fixed that issue now and it should be available in a new App release next week.

So, if you have a small amount of files on the USB it will be discovered and available pretty quickly but a large number of files may cause the scanning process to fail and it won't become available
 
My initial scan/indexing had no problems. I've done both small (40 files) and large (12,000 files) USB drives, but while both index fine, the problem I'm having in both cases is subsequent visibility of the USB drive.
It doesn't appear to be an app based problem, since the "server" (the Amp essentially configures the USB as a UPnP server) often isn't visible on my network to any app . . . Wiim Home, VLC, Bubble, Windows network device view, etc. The problem seems to be the amp's UPNP service getting onto the network.
EDIT - also, if I enable another media server (not hosted by the Wiim Amp) on my network, the Wiim app has no problem consistently seeing it and playing from it.
 
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Before the recent FW update, I had the identical USB issue that @Inertiaman reports - slow-appearing, and disappearing USB input on the Amp (though only using WHA on Android - USB always appeared in WHA on IOS). However, the most recent FW update has cured the problem - USB always appears now as expected, using a USB stick with about 6000 tracks on it. So, unfortunately no answer for inertiaman - just a data point that the update worked as expected in my case.

To restate the observation of @jeromeof above, I realized my previous concern about the App only scanning a few artists at a time on the USB stick, was just a processing time issue - leaving the Amp/App alone for 20 minutes with a new stick of data results in a full scan in one go - its when i scanned every 30 seconds from the outset that the scans were incomplete.
 
Interesting info @spacegrass, especially that you never had the problem on iOS. That gives me hope this can eventually be resolved. Seems like there may be some sort of interplay between the app and the amp, memory/buffering issues or something. My current situation has deteriorated to no USB visibility at all. Power cycled the amp, the router and did an un-install/re-install of the app, and still no USB. Before I did the uninstall/reinstall, the app was using 1.3GB of storage, which correlated to the size of the wiim_cache file on the larger of my USB drives I've tried. Surprises me a bit that the app seems to be mirroring the cache. After reinstall, that has reduced to 112MB, but a USB drive with only 40 files on it isn't being discovered/displayed after several hours.
 
Just received my Wiim Amp today. Firmware is 5.0.605563 (current I think). I plugged in a 128G USB stick (FAT32) and although the first indexing attempt wasn't complete, the 2nd attempt successfully indexed about 4800 tracks on about 350 albums (all ALAC - ripped by either iTunes or Apple Music). It took less than 5 minutes for the indexing. So I didn't need to do any manual indexing beforehand.

My phone is an older Moto phone running Android 10 and the app is working just fine. "USB Media Library" seems to be showing me all of my albums and tracks - even ones that have a lot of accented characters.

My speakers are over 25 years old - Gallo Acoustics Nucleus Solo (very funny-looking - 12 inch aluminum spheres with a Dynaudio woofer and the special Gallo CDT tweeter). They are not the easiest speakers to drive but this little amp is doing a very nice job. I am pleasantly surprised. So - USB input (pretty important for me) is working very well so far.
 
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and . . . it only took one day for me to see the "Disappearing USB Input" issue ; I did report it as Feedback in the app :( I tried a reboot but that didn't seem to work ; then I unplugged the unit and plugged it back in and then USB reappeared but now it has gone away again (it did not appear to force a re-scan though - so that's good ; all my albums and tracks were still there)
 
SeeRM114 said:
and . . . it only took one day for me to see the "Disappearing USB Input" issue ; I did report it as Feedback in the app :( I tried a reboot but that didn't seem to work ; then I unplugged the unit and plugged it back in and then USB reappeared but now it has gone away again (it did not appear to force a re-scan though - so that's good ; all my albums and tracks were still there)
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What file format are you using? Are you using usb 3 flash drive? I have 128gb formatted on ntfs with flac file and have zero problem.
 
SeeRM114 said:
Yes - usb 3. I could certainly try again with NTFS instead of FAT32. Do you think it would also be better to convert all 4800 of my ALACs to FLACs ?
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Try ntfs and flac. I’m using flash drive with high speed read and write. As soon I click play it’s nearly instant play. I have zero problem maybe I don’t have the same number of file as you have. I have 2000. I also went to big size subwoofer to 12 inch woofer. I set the crossover to 60hz which gave me the most seamless between the main and sub. I tried 80hz default and it did not sound good. The 1hz increment really can fine tune a system.
 
Thanks for the advice, folks. Although I use a Mac and not a PC, I know there is an inexpensive utility ("Paragon" I think) that lets a Mac write to NTFS. And I can use something like XLD to quickly convert everything to FLAC. So I will try that.
 
SeeRM114 said:
Thanks for the advice, folks. Although I use a Mac and not a PC, I know there is an inexpensive utility ("Paragon" I think) that lets a Mac write to NTFS. And I can use something like XLD to quickly convert everything to FLAC. So I will try that.
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Make one change at a time so you know where the problem lies. I'd try writing your ALAC to ext4 (native filesystem to the Amp), or maybe even a different USB stick first.
 
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simbun said:
Make one change at a time so you know where the problem lies. I'd try writing your ALAC to ext4 (native filesystem to the Amp), or maybe even a different USB stick first.
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That certainly makes sense. One issue is that the problem seems oddly intermittent. So it may not show up for a few hours or even a day. I did already save them all locally as FLAC files but that didn't take much time. And I now have software that will write to either NTFS or EXT4 drives from my Mac.

Today I noticed USB had again disappeared from the app but then I opened VLC on my Mac and it did find that UPNP server. And then USB appeared in the app again - and it has not disappeared for a few hours now ; maybe just a coincidence.

So I'll keep monitoring this. Wiim's recommendations (other than proper voltage) were to use either VFAT, NTFS or EXT4. But I had seen others report that FAT32 was working fine for them. I'll also see if they respond to my feedback.
 
SeeRM114 said:
Today I noticed USB had again disappeared from the app but then I opened VLC on my Mac and it did find that UPNP server. And then USB appeared in the app again - and it has not disappeared for a few hours now ; maybe just a coincidence.
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Is there any interface to the indexing server at all, whether it be to initiate a scan or be informed of errors?
 
simbun said:
Is there any interface to the indexing server at all, whether it be to initiate a scan or be informed of errors?
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Under home share for the usb storage, there’s a three dot menu that gives you high level stats in terms of number of songs, artists, album and playlists, as well as an option to rescan.
 
simbun said:
Is there any interface to the indexing server at all, whether it be to initiate a scan or be informed of errors?
Click to expand...
http://192.168.0.100:8200/status did work (I looked up the port number for MiniDLNA) ; it says "LinkplayDLNA status" at the top and has a simple table for "Media library" which says
Audio files 4828
Video files 0
Image files 0
and there is another table for "Connected clients" and that lists the IP for the box itself, the IP for my phone, and the IP for my Mac. The "type" is "unknown" except for VLC on my Mac which is "Generic UPnP 1.0". And it shows "1" for "Connections" when I'm playing a song on VLC. It does not show "1" for "Connections" when I chose a song on the phone app (makes sense because the song is not playing on the phone).

http://192.168.0.100:8200/admin said "Not found" ; not sure yet what else might be available
 
SeeRM114 said:
http://192.168.0.100:8200/status did work (I looked up the port number for MiniDLNA) ; it says "LinkplayDLNA status" at the top and has a simple table for "Media library" which says
Audio files 4828
Video files 0
Image files 0
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I was wondering if they'd exposed that.

SeeRM114 said:
http://192.168.0.100:8200/admin said "Not found" ; not sure yet what else might be available
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I'm pretty sure that's all there is unfortunately, at least from the core project.

Would be nice to get some logging, even if it's only the errors written to a log file on the USB.
 
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