iPeng support thread

[Owen Smith]

Did you try the "non-native" menu? That should behave exactly the same as the controller.
What does the Controller do, btw, when you do the Clear&Rescan? Does it back out to the main menu?

I haven't had time to try non native. Also it's been a while since I used the Controller so I don't recall exactly what it does, but it was better than what iPeng is doing.

[DubMarc]

Based on some info in another thread, I added the iPeng Playback. So far, it's not working as I'd hoped, and in the ways it is working, it's not going to do that good a job for me. Some of it is undoubtedly due to my configuration. The big thing is that I'm getting a very poor stream over 3G. I tried at various bandwidths (although no lower than 128k), and lots of stuttering, restart the song, skip to the next, etc. In a test last night on the same wireless network as my server, there were no issues with the stream, so I don't think that this is a server issue (Synology NAS). I may perform a longer test to verify this when I get back home. I toggled the Use small buffer setting, but that didn't make a difference either. I know in the other thread, pippin said he'd work on caching someday...here's a vote for that someday being soon .

Here are some other things that caught me a little by surprise (admittedly didn't read much beyond the blog post, that is not all through this thread):

1. When I did get onto a wifi network away from home, I was going to see if the playback was smoother then. To my surprise, the iPhone player entry was not available. I turned off wifi on my iPhone 4, and the iPhone again showed up as a player. I'm confused if this is intended, although away from home, I would mainly be in listen mode without access to a wireless network anyway, so probably not too big of a deal.

2. I expected that my place in the song (and playlist) would be unaffected by changing players, but they appear to be independent. I kind of think of the music stream as part of the metadata. If listening to a song on the Touch just before I get in the car, I'd ideally like to pick up that song at the same point in the car using my iPhone as the player, with a minimum of hassle.

I haven't tested this out, but am I correct in assuming that at least the playcount would get updated for the song no matter where you played it? I'm guessing there's a plugin -- or some option in the base playlist settings -- that would allow me to remove a song from a playlist once it's been played, even if I had to set the play count to zero when I create the playlist. (I've been doing that in iTunes in my playlists that cycle through my music collection. It's a pain because it only takes effect when you sync the device, but it works as long as I don't bounce around playlists.)

I'm still getting acquainted with the base iPeng app, but I already like it loads better than the stock one. Thanks!

[pippin]

so I don't think that this is a server issue (Synology NAS).

But it is....
The problem is, that the Synology will probably not be powerful enough to do mp3 encoding in time so you get stuttering simply because part of the data is missing. Caching doesn't help if the server isn't up to it. iPeng does already now stretch caching of _streams_ pretty much to what makes sense with the Squeezebox protocol. That other thing was about a completely local playback with playlist syncing/caching.
You could turn off the bitrate limiting altogether over 3g (note that you HAVE to use iPeng's setting, the one in the server's web interface will not work) but that's obviously only good for mp3 since with FLAC the bandwidth requirement is too high.

That's also why you don't have any issues in that foreign WiFi network, there the bitrate limit if off by default.

You could try to replace "lame" with shine on the Synology, that's supposed to have enough performance:
http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.ph...or_transcoding

To my surprise, the iPhone player entry was not available. I turned off wifi on my iPhone 4, and the iPhone again showed up as a player. I'm confused if this is intended, although away from home, I would mainly be in listen mode without access to a wireless network anyway, so probably not too big of a deal.

That works. Does the WiFi network maybe block port 3483 or 9000(1)?

2. I expected that my place in the song (and playlist) would be unaffected by changing players, but they appear to be independent. I kind of think of the music stream as part of the metadata. If listening to a song on the Touch just before I get in the car, I'd ideally like to pick up that song at the same point in the car using my iPhone as the player, with a minimum of hassle.

It's an independent player so it also behaves like one.
To get what you want, you could use the "Switch Player" plugin which will then show up in the player settings. It allows you to move a playing stream to another player while it's playing.
Another option would be to simply sync the players and then turn off the Touch and turn on the iPhone.

I haven't tested this out, but am I correct in assuming that at least the playcount would get updated for the song no matter where you played it?

Yes. iPeng just behaves like another Squeezebox.

I'm still getting acquainted with the base iPeng app, but I already like it loads better than the stock one. Thanks!

I like to hear that

[DubMarc]

But it is....
The problem is, that the Synology will probably not be powerful enough to do mp3 encoding in time so you get stuttering simply because part of the data is missing. Caching doesn't help if the server isn't up to it. iPeng does already now stretch caching of _streams_ pretty much to what makes sense with the Squeezebox protocol. That other thing was about a completely local playback with playlist syncing/caching.
You could turn off the bitrate limiting altogether over 3g (note that you HAVE to use iPeng's setting, the one in the server's web interface will not work) but that's obviously only good for mp3 since with FLAC the bandwidth requirement is too high.

That's also why you don't have any issues in that foreign WiFi network, there the bitrate limit if off by default.

You could try to replace "lame" with shine on the Synology, that's supposed to have enough performance:
http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.ph...or_transcoding


That works. Does the WiFi network maybe block port 3483 or 9000(1)?

It's an independent player so it also behaves like one.
To get what you want, you could use the "Switch Player" plugin which will then show up in the player settings. It allows you to move a playing stream to another player while it's playing.
Another option would be to simply sync the players and then turn off the Touch and turn on the iPhone.

Yes. iPeng just behaves like another Squeezebox.

I like to hear that

Thanks for the the response and the pointers to more info; I'll check them out. I thought the transcoding was triggered by the fact that the iPhone was the player, but it makes more sense that it's the bitrate limiting. I was afraid of that specific issue when opting to use the NAS as a server, but got a model that people generally reported good transcoding performance using Synology's own audio app. I'll have to do some thinking about how to resolve this, or whether to even try. I will try shine. I'll also take a look at continuing to use my iPhone separately and try to sync up rating, playcount, last played, etc. metadata separately.

I'll have to try connecting the iPhone from a different wireless network, since I don't know who the administrator of my first network is. I'm using port 9002, but that shouldn't make any difference, and I can connect to it fine over 3G. It's a guest network setup at work, which I assumed they left relatively open, but possibly not. Thanks again!

[pippin]

I thought the transcoding was triggered by the fact that the iPhone was the player

No, that wouldn't make sense. iPeng can play up to 48kHz, 24 Bit FLAC (output wise) and 96kHz, 24 bit input wise (it can also play that full rate through USB audio on the iPad, read the latest announcement on the web site).
Even when iPeng only actually plays the audio as 44.1 kHz, 16 bit output (when using analog out on iPhone) it still makes sense to be able to use the full stream because that way you can sync it to another Squeezebox (Touch or Transporter) without spoiling the HD sample rate playback.

but got a model that people generally reported good transcoding performance using Synology's own audio app.

Well, maybe Synology uses something like shine, too. There are also commercial mp3 encoders that use fixed point maths to encode mp3, which is what it's needed to make it perform well on most NAS because these lack a floating point processor.
Which model is it, BTW?

I'll have to try connecting the iPhone from a different wireless network, since I don't know who the administrator of my first network is. I'm using port 9002, but that shouldn't make any difference, and I can connect to it fine over 3G. It's a guest network setup at work, which I assumed they left relatively open, but possibly not. Thanks again!

The one gotcha here is that if you use port 9002 internally it's also got to be 9002 on the internet.

[DubMarc]

No, that wouldn't make sense. iPeng can play up to 48kHz, 24 Bit FLAC (output wise) and 96kHz, 24 bit input wise (it can also play that full rate through USB audio on the iPad, read the latest announcement on the web site).
Even when iPeng only actually plays the audio as 44.1 kHz, 16 bit output (when using analog out on iPhone) it still makes sense to be able to use the full stream because that way you can sync it to another Squeezebox (Touch or Transporter) without spoiling the HD sample rate playback.

Well, maybe Synology uses something like shine, too. There are also commercial mp3 encoders that use fixed point maths to encode mp3, which is what it's needed to make it perform well on most NAS because these lack a floating point processor.
Which model is it, BTW?

The one gotcha here is that if you use port 9002 internally it's also got to be 9002 on the internet.

Yes, totally makes sense on the player aspect; my own assumptions were pretty fuzzy. The Synology model is DS212. No idea what they use, and hadn't set up their Audio package to see how it performs myself, so was just going by ratio of complaints to compliments in their forums . It is not their bottom line, but the specs did not seem too robust either, for stuff like transcoding on the fly. I realized in any event, my results could differ with LMS. I was happy with my initial test because of my erroneous assumption that it was transcoding quickly, but of course it was not when I was local.

I did catch that I need to keep the ports identical (which was great to know, since I have intentionally not done that for some other ports).

At this point, I guess I need to decide how important it is to me to keep track of what I play on the iPhone (over 3G) in a unified way with what I play via the Touch. I could solve it with hardware if it's important enough to me. I haven't done anything with the SQL Playlist plugin yet, but if I convert some portion of the library to mp3 to play via iPhone (i.e., replace iTunes with LMS-managed mp3), I wonder if I could cobble together some SQL that matches on album+track. Anyway, more stuff to tinker with.

One question from an earlier post. Your suggestion of player syncing I think will do the trick, and to be honest it didn't even occur to me because I'm still not used to the concept of multiple players to even keep in sync. But you also mentioned a Switch Playlist plugin. I couldn't find it on the slimdevices wiki or erland's wiki. Do you know if it's perhaps called by another name?

[garym]

One question from an earlier post. Your suggestion of player syncing I think will do the trick, and to be honest it didn't even occur to me because I'm still not used to the concept of multiple players to even keep in sync. But you also mentioned a Switch Playlist plugin. I couldn't find it on the slimdevices wiki or erland's wiki. Do you know if it's perhaps called by another name?

in webGUI for LMS, go to settings (lower right), then plugins tab, then make sure show 3rd party plugins is checked. Then you'll see the "Switch PLAYER" plugin that does what you want.

[DubMarc]

in webGUI for LMS, go to settings (lower right), then plugins tab, then make sure show 3rd party plugins is checked. Then you'll see the "Switch PLAYER" plugin that does what you want.

Got it, thanks. Sorry for the typo, that's what I'd noted and pippin provided the correct info...I just mis-typed in the post! And I will check it out tonight at home.

[pippin]

The Synology model is DS212.

Hm. I just took a VERY brief look and didn't find any detail but at first glance that device really sounds like it should be powerful enough for transcoding.
Maybe lame really has a bad implementation for it or doesn't use the processor well. Which could easily be since lame is really made to support a lot of different platforms and to give decent quality in the first place, not for performance.

One question from an earlier post. Your suggestion of player syncing I think will do the trick, and to be honest it didn't even occur to me because I'm still not used to the concept of multiple players to even keep in sync. But you also mentioned a Switch Playlist plugin. I couldn't find it on the slimdevices wiki or erland's wiki. Do you know if it's perhaps called by another name?

The plugin is called "SwitchPlayer" and it should be among the default plugins as long as you enable "Show all plugins by 3rd party providers" at the bottom of the plugin settings page.
EDIT: Just saw that garym beat me to that one....

[05mattjax]

Hi. I have successfully configured my network in order for iPeng to see my music remotely. All done via port forwarding as the instructions indicate. However when playing any track it stutters consistently. The files are flac. Before I investigate further would you say this issue is because of my underpowered Netgear ReadyNAS Duo? Matt.