[Announce] Squeezelite-X

[SamY]

As luck would have it, mine is an AVR-3311CI. I will be doing some testing later today.

Unfortunately, it still doesn't recognize my AVR-3311CI. Any thoughts?

Edit: I am able to stream music to it from my phone via DLNA.

[SamY]

Hey, Greg. While searching the web for info on DLNA networking issues with the AVR-3311CI, I ran across this post from 2011 on the AVSForum. Look familiar?

https://www.avsforum.com/threads/den.../post-20282048

[SamY]

Unfortunately, it still doesn't recognize my AVR-3311CI. Any thoughts?

Edit: I am able to stream music to it from my phone via DLNA.

After streaming music over DLNA from my phone for awhile, I went back to SLX and it now recognizes my AVR. I should say that I never use DLNA to stream to it normally. It actually took me a while to figure out how to do it until I remembered that the Neutron music app on my phone supports streaming over DLNA and it recognized my AVR as a server. Anyway, it works great! Good job. And it integrates well with my "Denon/Marantz AVR Settings" plugin menus too. Here is an example:

[SamY]

Another screen shot:

[rgdawson]

As luck would have it, mine is an AVR-3311CI. I will be doing some testing later today.

Btw, did you ever have a chance to check out the Denon AVR Control plugin's "Denon/Marantz AVR Settings" menus under Material Skin's player settings? While the menus do utilize the telnet protocol, they can be accessed and used independently of the plugin's player-controlled power and volume control functions, although only for AVR's that are associated with an LMS player via the plugin's setup menu. And with the new multi-zone support selected in the setup menu, each zone of the AVR can now also be individually powered on/off and controlled through the menus.

(This is the last time I'll nag you about trying this. I promise.)

Hah, no problem, I'm embarrassed that I have not gotten to it yet. It sounds great and looks great from the pics you posted. On Pre-2016 models, if I am using the DeRemote app on any of my iOS devices, nothing else can use the telnet port as the older models only allow a single connection. So, I'm using http for everything and just providing very basic control. On the other hand, there is no way via http to query certain more advanced things (like Audyssey settings) on pre-2016 models, like you are doing, so I realize you have no choice. And telnet is much faster than http on the older Denon models.


R Greg Dawson

[rgdawson]

Unfortunately, it still doesn't recognize my AVR-3311CI. Any thoughts?

Edit: I am able to stream music to it from my phone via DLNA.

For me SSDP discovery just worked for the 3311. But I did not think check that I have enough time margin for the 3311 when waiting for discovery packet responses. I may need to increase the time window for discovery, maybe I am on the edge there, and your 3311 is missing the window on your network.

I see in a later post you got it to discover your 3311, so that is good. Still, I'll take a look and see if I need to add some margin in my discovery function.

R Greg Dawson

[SamY]

On Pre-2016 models, if I am using the DeRemote app on any of my iOS devices, nothing else can use the telnet port as the older models only allow a single connection.

So my question is "Why do you use the DeRemote app?". Seriously. I know it's supposed to be a very good app but it's just like the AVR-Remote Android app in that it leaves its telnet connection to the AVR open the entire time it's running whereas the plugin opens and closes the connection after each request or command is completed, with timeout retry logic implemented to allow for co-existence with other apps that are similarly less, shall we say, narcissistic in nature. I hardly ever use AVR-Remote any more for just that reason, although it's useful for testing purposes.

Do you have some sort of periodic polling mechanism in your Denon logic? I noticed that the SLX menu dynamically picks up changes made to the Power, Volume, Source and Sound Mode outside of SLX, whereas the plugin currently does not. I'm thinking of possibly adding a conditional polling routine to the plugin for basic settings such as those in order to at least keep the menus in sync with those of SLX. Currently if, for example, the user changes the Source from the SLX menu, the plugin menu will not reflect the change, which can lead to confusion. If you get around to playing with the plugin menus under SLX and have any other suggestions, please feel free to pass them along. Thanks!

[NAG]

New Version 2.11.34 submitted/uploaded

R Greg Dawson

Thanks, Greg. This fixed my display issue, all good now, props for your good work!

[rgdawson]

So my question is "Why do you use the DeRemote app?". Seriously. I know it's supposed to be a very good app but it's just like the AVR-Remote Android app in that it leaves its telnet connection to the AVR open the entire time it's running whereas the plugin opens and closes the connection after each request or command is completed, with timeout retry logic implemented to allow for co-existence with other apps that are similarly less, shall we say, narcissistic in nature. I hardly ever use AVR-Remote any more for just that reason, although it's useful for testing purposes.

Do you have some sort of periodic polling mechanism in your Denon logic? I noticed that the SLX menu dynamically picks up changes made to the Power, Volume, Source and Sound Mode outside of SLX, whereas the plugin currently does not. I'm thinking of possibly adding a conditional polling routine to the plugin for basic settings such as those in order to at least keep the menus in sync with those of SLX. Currently if, for example, the user changes the Source from the SLX menu, the plugin menu will not reflect the change, which can lead to confusion. If you get around to playing with the plugin menus under SLX and have any other suggestions, please feel free to pass them along. Thanks!

I guess I just really like the way the DeRemote app handles Zones and naming things, tailoring things, as well as the rest of the user interface. It really is very good. I had an old iPad magnetically attached to fridge and it worked great for, say turning on the music in the back yard, without having to pick an AVR first, then Zone 2, etc. But, I'm worried DeRemote is no longer being updated as it has not been updated in several years. I honestly don't use it as much as I used to anymore (I don't have that iPad on the fridge anymore). But the issue might remain for others, so I am just trying to avoid it. That said, today I implemented a telnet function to get the current sound mode because it only takes about 15ms vs 2000+ ms for the http/xml function on that receiver. So, the function tries telnet first, but if that is busy/fails then resorts to http/xml. I'm still playing with it.

Yes, I use a polling thread. One thing I like about the telnet interface and keeping it open is that you get updates in real-time. But since I am not keeping a telnet connection open, I need to poll. Yah, I recommend you implement that. Using Telnet, it would take you only a few milliseconds to connect/get data/disconnect. But it is not as simple as it sounds because there will be times when two clients are attempting telnet simultaneously and one will fail (pre-2016 Denon models). So, if using Telnet, you want to dither/randomize the interval a bit and test with several clients hitting the AVR at once, and definitely handle/skip the errors you will get when the AVR is overloaded/busy. You have to be smart about canceling and restarting polling when issuing commands and the first poll needs to wait because certain commands take a little while on the AVR (e.g. power, source, and mode). It was all trial and error for me. I'm willing to share anything I have learned. I do polling in a background thread to prevent the GUI from being affected/freezing while polling. Actually this discussion reminds me I need to do some stress testing on that 3313 given how slow it is sometimes. I'm going to get 4 clients polling it simultaneously tonight and see how well it handles it.

R Greg Dawson

[rgdawson]

Thanks, Greg. This fixed my display issue, all good now, props for your good work!

Excellent! Thanks to singularita for the tip!

R Greg Dawson

[sveninndh]

I found out, that using Squeezelite-X sometimes it needs a connection to Akamai Technologies in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

I use a NAS with a docker container including the LMS.

So Squeezelite-X should use a local connection to my NAS only.

If I block this connection to Akamai Squeezelite-X don't work in some cases, for example if I want to play music from Qobuz.

If I try the same with Squeezeplay it needs only a local connection to my NAS and Qobuz Plugin is working without problems.

Any ideas what happens here?

[mherger]

The players would prefer direct streaming if possible. Unless you enable proxied streaming for all of them. So if Squeezelite-X supports a format which Squeezeplay doesn’t you’d get that different behaviour.

[sveninndh]

In fact, after I enabled proxy streaming for Squeezelite-X, it no longer connects to Akamai. But the LMS on my NAS will probably do that now.
Interesting, I didn't think Akamai was related to Qobuz.

[mherger]

Akamai is a "Content Distribution Network" (CDN), used by many services (similar to others like AWS CloudFront, Cloudflare, and others). See https://www.akamai.com/our-thinking/cdn/what-is-a-cdn

[rgdawson]

Akamai is a "Content Distribution Network" (CDN), used by many services (similar to others like AWS CloudFront, Cloudflare, and others). See https://www.akamai.com/our-thinking/cdn/what-is-a-cdn

Thanks mherger for the explanation, I had no clue.