Wiim Ultra with large powered hard drive

[simbun]

It would be helpful if someone with a decent sized collection on their Amp/Ultra could tell us the size of files.db (I think that's what it's called) in the root of their USB drive, as well as how.many tracks/albums they have indexed.

 

[rccarguy]

tbh I don't think it will be fast enough. I have a AMlogic 905x3 with Coreelec, I have scanned my music (that is stored on a NAS) and browsing via database is MUCH slower than LMS (which is instant)

I doubt the Wiims have the CPU horsepower of video streamers, nor the memory so I think it's really doable with USB sticks, small HD/library etc.

 

[kaidou]

tbh I don't think it will be fast enough. I have a AMlogic 905x3 with Coreelec, I have scanned my music (that is stored on a NAS) and browsing via database is MUCH slower than LMS (which is instant)

I doubt the Wiims have the CPU horsepower of video streamers, nor the memory so I think it's really doable with USB sticks, small HD/library etc.

What is this LMS you refer to?
How do I implement it?

 

[rccarguy]

What is this LMS you refer to?
How do I implement it?

LMS is a alternative music service that is available to be installed on multiple systems, Mac, Windows, various chipset NAS's, Pis.

You can use it with generic UPNP devices, like TV's, AVRs etc, but it performs better when you have native Squeezebox, or a audio streamer that supports softsqueeze so the device is seen by LMS as a Squeezebox. Wiims and Everosolo support this

Once installed, and configure it, you let it scan your music. You then install material skin plugin, and install material skin app on your phone

I've used LMS since using a old 300mhz Qnap NAS. It worked out, but a bit slow navigating- but once starting playing it was ok. Then upgraded to a much faster Synology (quad core) so this has plenty of CPU grunt for LMS. But LMS support ended so recently moved to a Pi5. That's faster again, more memory, plus with picoreplayer it's just stripped down Linus OS with LMS installed. It supports the latest LMS 9.0.2 with added features and improved PERL performance (Synology PERL was a bit slow)

This is worth it for LMS, as it splits music up, using release type tag, so rather than one big list of CD's from that artist, you can have live/single/album/compilations/bootleg etc

Also with LMS it has two seperates branches, all artists where it lists every single artist (even those one hit wonder on 80's compilation ie The Birdie Song by the tweets) and album artists where it's much neater where it displays much fewer big band artists ie AC/DC. For mine the former is 20,000+ artists, compared to 900 for album artists.

The 20,000 artist branch is impossible to navigate.

FYI using a UPNP device means you'll have to navigate the 20,000 branch.

LMS plugins allow other features, ie album art downloader (for albums where I don't have a cover.jpg/attached jpeg) also lyric downloader and artist information downloader where it includes text about that band/singer.

I would never buy another music streamer unless it has softsqueeze support. Not unless a better music management service than LMS comes out.

 

[Steve Woodhouse]

For what it’s worth, I’m going to be adding a drive to my Ultra when it arrives (Saturday) and I’ll let you know.

I have about 500gb of music. I mainly stream.

I’m considering just adding music to the drive which I know isn’t available to stream, or only available in a newer mix. But good grief, it’ll take a while to go through it all.

 

[Burnside]

The 20,000 artist branch is impossible to navigate.

FYI using a UPNP device means you'll have to navigate the 20,000 branch.

Not my experience. Minimserver indexes both artist and albumartist and you can navigate either

 

[Steve Woodhouse]

LMS is a alternative music service that is available to be installed on multiple systems, Mac, Windows, various chipset NAS's, Pis.

You can use it with generic UPNP devices, like TV's, AVRs etc, but it performs better when you have native Squeezebox, or a audio streamer that supports softsqueeze so the device is seen by LMS as a Squeezebox. Wiims and Everosolo support this

Once installed, and configure it, you let it scan your music. You then install material skin plugin, and install material skin app on your phone

I've used LMS since using a old 300mhz Qnap NAS. It worked out, but a bit slow navigating- but once starting playing it was ok. Then upgraded to a much faster Synology (quad core) so this has plenty of CPU grunt for LMS. But LMS support ended so recently moved to a Pi5. That's faster again, more memory, plus with picoreplayer it's just stripped down Linus OS with LMS installed. It supports the latest LMS 9.0.2 with added features and improved PERL performance (Synology PERL was a bit slow)

This is worth it for LMS, as it splits music up, using release type tag, so rather than one big list of CD's from that artist, you can have live/single/album/compilations/bootleg etc

Also with LMS it has two seperates branches, all artists where it lists every single artist (even those one hit wonder on 80's compilation ie The Birdie Song by the tweets) and album artists where it's much neater where it displays much fewer big band artists ie AC/DC. For mine the former is 20,000+ artists, compared to 900 for album artists.

The 20,000 artist branch is impossible to navigate.

FYI using a UPNP device means you'll have to navigate the 20,000 branch.

LMS plugins allow other features, ie album art downloader (for albums where I don't have a cover.jpg/attached jpeg) also lyric downloader and artist information downloader where it includes text about that band/singer.

I would never buy another music streamer unless it has softsqueeze support. Not unless a better music management service than LMS comes out.

It is one of the reasons I use folder mode.

I only use other modes if I’m looking for one of your one hit wonders, and it’s on a compilation, and I can’t remember which.

One folder per artist (and one for various artists and one for soundtracks). You can add an extra layer of folders A-D, E-H, etc.

Navigation is just so easy. It’s the closest thing to storing your CDs alphabetically by artist and browsing them.

 

[rccarguy]

It is one of the reasons I use folder mode.

I only use other modes if I’m looking for one of your one hit wonders, and it’s on a compilation, and I can’t remember which.

One folder per artist (and one for various artists and one for soundtracks). You can add an extra layer of folders A-D, E-H, etc.

Navigation is just so easy. It’s the closest thing to storing your CDs alphabetically by artist and browsing them.

Folder can work but that means it won't show tracks /albums from compilation albums. Then won't have album art ie go into Metallica it won't show the black cover art in the list.

Plus it's slower.

The reason why using folder method is because your music service isnt great (for whatever reason)

LMS offers by folder I sometimes use it when I have added a album but haven't done a music scan.

 

[Steve Woodhouse]

Folder can work but that means it won't show tracks /albums from compilation albums. Then won't have album art ie go into Metallica it won't show the black cover art in the list.

Plus it's slower.

The reason why using folder method is because your music service isnt great (for whatever reason)

LMS offers by folder I sometimes use it when I have added a album but haven't done a music scan.

I’m not sure that’s the case, but I’ll know more when I try it.

 

[simbun]

Not my experience. Minimserver indexes both artist and albumartist and you can navigate either

Just like many other UPnP servers do. Even WiiM offers an AlbumArtist index!

The better UPnP servers can index ANY tag unlike LMS, and without having to install third party plugins! I've been using releaseType for a decade whereas LMS users had to wait till last year, yet they're talking about it as though it's the next big thing; I guess because it is in their world

He doesn't know what he's talking about.

 

[slartibartfast]

Folder can work but that means it won't show tracks /albums from compilation albums. Then won't have album art ie go into Metallica it won't show the black cover art in the list.

Plus it's slower.

The reason why using folder method is because your music service isnt great (for whatever reason)

LMS offers by folder I sometimes use it when I have added a album but haven't done a music scan.

I only use folder mode for stuff I don't want in my library like pink noise tracks etc. I specify the folder but don't scan it.

 

[rccarguy]

Just like many other UPnP servers do. Even WiiM offers an AlbumArtist index!

The better UPnP servers can index ANY tag unlike LMS, and without having to install third party plugins! I've been using releaseType for a decade whereas LMS users had to wait till last year, yet they're talking about it as though it's the next big thing; I guess because it is in their world

He doesn't know what he's talking about.

When I used Minimserver way back, it was rubbish, it did a full rescan after every NAS boot. Was a bug on that version, and a new version was never released for that NAS. It made it unusable. Moved to LMS and it just worked.

 

[Steve Woodhouse]

I used to use a WDTV Live streamer - anyone remember those? Any folder, you put a pic in it and called it ‘folder’ and that’s the icon that’d show up.

If you’d media scraped as you ripped with something like WMP, it did this automatically for albums. I can’t remember if it showed in the artist folder, or if you needed to put one in yourself. I seem to remember it took a pic from the first folder down.

 

[simbun]

When I used Minimserver way back, it was rubbish, it did a full rescan after every NAS boot. Was a bug on that version, and a new version was never released for that NAS. It made it unusable. Moved to LMS and it just worked.

A software package had a bug! What the hell are you doing with LMS then; browse the Lyrion forums are you'll see lots of them!

I don't know when you tried it or what obsolete NAS you were using at the time (probably some cheap WD "NAS") but if you take a look at the documentation you'll notice that it runs on MANY more legacy devices than Lyrion does.

Why can't you just sell LMS and all the things it does well rather than knock everything else e.g. Roon, Plex, WiiM, UPnP e.t.c.?

 

[Mr Ee]

I used to use a WDTV Live streamer

Got one. Still going strong..

 

[rccarguy]

A software package had a bug! What the hell are you doing with LMS then; browse the Lyrion forums are you'll see lots of them!

I don't know when you tried it or what obsolete NAS you were using at the time (probably some cheap WD "NAS") but if you take a look at the documentation you'll notice that it runs on MANY more legacy devices than Lyrion does.

Why can't you just sell LMS and all the things it does well rather than knock everything else e.g. Roon, Plex, WiiM, UPnP e.t.c.?

Nope was qnap decent Nas at the time. Also available on my d link another decent Nas.

Not knocking roon (apart from the price) Plex or wiim, just awful upnp.


Never had any issues with LMS. This is when squeezebox classic was available to buy.

Full rescan on reboot is not a bug it makes it unusable.

 

[Jls]

I used to use a WDTV Live streamer - anyone remember those? Any folder, you put a pic in it and called it ‘folder’ and that’s the icon that’d show up.

If you’d media scraped as you ripped with something like WMP, it did this automatically for albums. I can’t remember if it showed in the artist folder, or if you needed to put one in yourself. I seem to remember it took a pic from the first folder down.

I still have a WDTV. It was one of very few devices that could play DVD ISO files, with menus.

It was painfully slow, had video quirks, like low brightness. But it could directly access shared files on a network. That’s how I used it. Never scanned media. Too slow.

 

[Mr Ee]

Full rescan on reboot is not a bug it makes it unusable.

Only takes a minute or so for me.
And how often do you reboot your nas anyway?!
Not my definition of unusable, and I'm sure others would want / expect a scan on startup.
But as ever, as long as you have a solution you like, all good.

 

[simbun]

Nope was qnap decent Nas at the time. Also available on my d link another decent Nas.

Well it looks like all QNAPs are still supported. The only dependency MinimServer has is Java, so if you QNAP supported Java then you could have updated. Unless you're talking about the time MinimServer transitioned to v2, where some of the functionality transitioned to a licensed tier. It sounds like you could have been "stuck" on the old free version because you're cheap.

Full rescan on reboot is not a bug it makes it unusable.

There is an option (startupScan) to perform a rescan on restarts (including an incremental or full), which might be enabled by default. I can see reference to it in a post from 2015 but I have no idea when it was introduced. Shall I take a look at LMS from back then and use that for current comparisons?

 

[Abdo]

I am impressed with this Ultra, I tested it with a 4TB HD with 60,000 songs, 4600 CDs and everything works perfectly. Fast