UX improvements for DLNA/Home Music Share

[certainty7078]

Hi,
The vast majority of my WIIM usage with my 3 (soon to be 4) WIIM devices is streaming from mimimserver. It would be really nice if there were a couple of UX improvements in this area:

1. Access a media server directly from the Browse page, alongside other music services, rather than needing to go to Home Music Share first
2. A "tile" view option for browsing, rather than just a list view. Perhaps I'm strange, by my preferred way of choosing an album to listen to is to scroll through a view of large cover images, analogous to flipping through CDs or records.

Cheers!

 

[rccarguy]

Just use a better client front end.
Wiim app is ok but not exactly as good as others

 

[certainty7078]

@rccarguy any suggestions? Everything I've tried on iOS has been no better, or worse, than WHA.

 

[rccarguy]

material skin and lms server. brilliant

 

[certainty7078]

Unless I'm missing something, that's not a UPnP/DLNA front end, is it? I'm not looking to replace minim with lms

 

[rccarguy]

It can be with upnp bridge plugin. Just found upnp clients a bit poor, bubble upnp, etc.

 

[vdp]

Hopefully soon Plexamp (endpoint)

 

[simbun]

Unless I'm missing something, that's not a UPnP/DLNA front end, is it? I'm not looking to replace minim with lms

If you're able to install BubbleUPnP Server then you could take a look at the Linn or Lumin apps. I'm not on iOS but the Android Linn app is ok.
You'll be able to try the UI of both without BubbleUPnP Server but you won't be able to see your WiiM renderers as both apps use the OpenHome protocol.

 

[certainty7078]

If you're able to install BubbleUPnP Server then you could take a look at the Linn or Lumin apps. I'm not on iOS but the Android Linn app is ok.
You'll be able to try the UI of both without BubbleUPnP Server but you won't be able to see your WiiM renderers as both apps use the OpenHome protocol.

Thanks - it seems like a bit of overkill to get a prettier UI, but both Linn and Lumin apps are a bit nicer that WHA so I guess I"ll leave bubbleupnp server running. Ideally, I'd still like WHA to be a touch better, but this will do for now. Cheer!

 

[cottonchipper]

While Plexamp would be great, Plex is working great for me. It includes album covers so you’d be able to browse the way you mentioned.

As you can see in the picture below, you can possibly end up with different images for the same album. Not sure why but it is probably where my files didn’t include an image and Plex went out to find one for each individual track. I could clean this up but haven’t bothered to since it doesn’t affect the way I listen to music (primarily random play).
. Plex

 

[cottonchipper]

Once you select an album you get a screen like this inside the Wiimhome app while using Plex.

 

[certainty7078]

While Plexamp would be great, Plex is working great for me. It includes album covers so you’d be able to browse the way you mentioned.

As you can see in the picture below, you can possibly end up with different images for the same album. Not sure why but it is probably where my files didn’t include an image and Plex went out to find one for each individual track. I could clean this up but haven’t bothered to since it doesn’t affect the way I listen to music (primarily random play).
. Plex

Thanks, but as I mentioned earlier - I'd like the UPnP experience to be better; I don't want to change to a different media server.

 

[vdp]

Thanks, but as I mentioned earlier - I'd like the UPnP experience to be better; I don't want to change to a different media server.

I checked Symfonium as it is nice GUI but seems no willingness to support UPnP (reason provided is claim that UPnP just isn't great protocol wise).

Source:

Minimserver UPnP playback

Do yourself a favor and move away from UPnP and install LMS GitHub - epoupon/lms: Lightweight Music Server. Access your self-hosted music using a web interface. You can run it in 2 seconds in a container on your Synology and will find it’s much better. Anyway this is a duplicate there’s no...

support.symfonium.app

I never used UPnP (Plex user here for a long time) but maybe somebody with experience with both UPnP and a media server like Plex or LMS can give a summary on pro vs cons?

 

[certainty7078]

The main pro is that UPnP is an open standard rather than a proprietary protocol like Plex. It is (maybe, was?) quite widely supported by hardware devices.
Personally, I have no desire to use Plex - one of the joys of self-hosting is that I don't have to be tied to some cloud-based service.

 

[vdp]

The main pro is that UPnP is an open standard rather than a proprietary protocol like Plex. It is (maybe, was?) quite widely supported by hardware devices.
Personally, I have no desire to use Plex - one of the joys of self-hosting is that I don't have to be tied to some cloud-based service.

Plex offers some online authentication services but they can be configured not to be used making it full offline. My understanding of LMS is fully offline/local as well.

But no desire to push you where you don't want to go. Good luck with your request. Can't offer much help then..

 

[slartibartfast]

Plex offers some online authentication services but they can be configured not to be used making it full offline. My understanding of LMS is fully offline/local as well.

But no desire to push you where you don't want to go. Good luck with your request. Can't offer much help then..

Mentioning another LMS which is totally different to the LMS normally discussed here (Lyrion Music Server) might cause some confusion .

 

[vdp]

Not trying to cause confusion. I actually tried Lyrion Music Server few months ago based on the popularity here but didn't go deep enough to see any appeal over Plex... So my understanding is very limited.

The above post was just the cross check on Symfonium support and minimserver. Didn't really post it for the recommendation on Lightweight Music Server (based on the demo on the github wouldn't recommend over Plex ).

I did find the comment on UPnP not being a great protocol interesting and was hoping for some expert opinions/reasoning on that.

 

[simbun]

Didn't really post it for the recommendation on Lightweight Music Server (based on the demo on the github wouldn't recommend over Plex ).

I wouldn't personally use the web ui but it works well with Symfonium. It has disc subtitles too which Plex is sorely lacking (and track artist indexing and free releasetype support).

It's a small scale project (like my UPnP server of choice MinimServer) but it's progressing well.

 

[vdp]

I wouldn't personally use the web ui but it works well with Symfonium. It has disc subtitles too which Plex is sorely lacking (and track artist indexing and free releasetype support).

It's a small scale project (like my UPnP server of choice MinimServer) but it's progressing well.

Does it have star ratings support for tracks and albums? A simple/smooth server end combined with a nice GUI like Symfonium would cover alot of my needs as well. I'm 99% listening to albums or smart playlists.

Not really looking for alternatives. The lack of hardware support of Plex(amp) is currently my only concern. Explaining my activity in those threads here on WiiM forum

Disc subtitles I agree would be nice and missing in Plex but not a breaking point for me.

 

[simbun]

Does it have star ratings support for tracks and albums? A simple/smooth server end combined with a nice GUI like Symfonium would cover alot of my needs as well. I'm 99% listening to albums or smart playlists.

Yes it supports ratings and favourites for tracks, albums and artists.

It doesn't do the sweet fades/playlist generation/metadata scraping that PlexAmp does, but for a local music server - with Symfonium support - it beats the others I've tried.