robertladru

That's spot on. Many audiophiles believe Aurender wrote their own player, which is not the case. They mystify the product and don't get what's under the hood. There are other great music servers that also use MPD, which do not hide that fact: - DIESIS audio - bmc-audio - SOtM SMS100 & SMS1000 - Bryston BDP-1 - AudioGlu - AudioAanZee - totaldac d1 server - any Vortexbox 2.2 based server just to name a few. Regarding the GPL, they should have mentioned it. They should include a statement in the manual / shipping box, much similar to what Olive is doing (the written offer): Page 39 of Olive Media Products Stereo System 4 HD User's Guide | ManualsOnline.com it should be something like: for full GPL compliance. In theory the MPD authors could forbid any further distribution of their MPD package without such compliance.

Aurender is using the open source MPD 0.17 music player daemon as their internal player named "auplayer", and shipping a compiled version of MPD with every Aurender music server. Some years ago we figured this out by the typical queu commands in their ipad client. It looked very similar to mpdroid and mpad. Then we discovered Aurender had a fork of mpd-upnp, so in the end after some suspicion they used MPD, we just asked them. This has been done in according with the license MPD has been distributed with: the GPLv2 As MPD 0.17 is GPLv2 based, the GPLv2 states that Aurender should either A) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code (this means include a cd-rom with the source code in their product box, example: these days some wifi sticks with open source drivers include a GPL cd with the source) B) Accompany it with a written offer (this means anyone can mail them to get the source code at the cost of a cd-rom + shipping) See also https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.en.html As Aurender did not include a CD-ROM with the MPD source code (including their modifications, see below) in their product box, or include a written offer, they are currently violating the terms of the GPL. The MPD team is aware of this. Furthermore as they are not doing (a), they have to comply to (b) which allows any third party to obtain the modified MPD source code (even non aurender customers can do so): "to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code" So in the role of any third party, we asked Eric Shim to get the source code, and he posted it to the following google drive: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz01f7cD7PiIYkJpWnc2N1lLRTA/view I also took the liberty to make a copy, as any modification to GPLv2 software remains freely redistributable, so I also have the right under the GPLv2 to share it: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByPkcbJHiu2gSUh2X2s5SUFaOTQ/view For the technical minded, here's the actual proof auplayer = MPD and the output is a recursive grep for every occurence of the word aurender in their modified MPD source code: ./configure:# Report bugs to <[email protected]>. ./configure:$0: [email protected] about your system, including any ./configure:PACKAGE_BUGREPORT='[email protected]' ./configure:Report bugs to <[email protected]>. ./configure:## Report this to [email protected] ## ./configure:Report bugs to <[email protected]>." ./Makefile:ACLOCAL = ${SHELL} /home/dubby/project/GitHub/mpd/AurenderSystemSW-MPD/missing aclocal-1.13 ./Makefile:AUTOCONF = ${SHELL} /home/dubby/project/GitHub/mpd/AurenderSystemSW-MPD/missing autoconf ./Makefile:AUTOHEADER = ${SHELL} /home/dubby/project/GitHub/mpd/AurenderSystemSW-MPD/missing autoheader ./Makefile:AUTOMAKE = ${SHELL} /home/dubby/project/GitHub/mpd/AurenderSystemSW-MPD/missing automake-1.13 ./Makefile:MAKEINFO = ${SHELL} /home/dubby/project/GitHub/mpd/AurenderSystemSW-MPD/missing makeinfo ./Makefile:PACKAGE_BUGREPORT = [email protected] ./Makefile:abs_builddir = /home/dubby/project/GitHub/mpd/AurenderSystemSW-MPD ./Makefile:abs_srcdir = /home/dubby/project/GitHub/mpd/AurenderSystemSW-MPD ./Makefile:abs_top_builddir = /home/dubby/project/GitHub/mpd/AurenderSystemSW-MPD ./Makefile:abs_top_srcdir = /home/dubby/project/GitHub/mpd/AurenderSystemSW-MPD ./Makefile:install_sh = ${SHELL} /home/dubby/project/GitHub/mpd/AurenderSystemSW-MPD/install-sh ./config.h:#define PACKAGE_BUGREPORT "[email protected]" ./configure.ac:AC_INIT(auPlayer, 6.0420, [email protected]) ./src/mapper.c: /// using /srv/widealab/aurender/aurender.db, we can check the file size ./src/mapper.c: /// In case of no data in aurender.db, it is a new file and we never played ./src/mapper.c: static const char* dbPath = "/srv/widealab/aurender/aurender.db"; ./src/mapper.c: g_set_error(error_r, g_quark_from_static_string("aurenderDB"), ret, ./src/output/osx_output_plugin.c: AURenderCallbackStruct callback; ./src/zeroconf-internal.h:#define SERVICE_TYPE "_aurender._tcp" ./src/zeroconf-bonjour.c:#define AURENDER ./src/zeroconf-bonjour.c:#if defined AURENDER ./src/mixer/software_mixer_plugin.c:#define aurender_castfi "/tmp/.aurender_castfi" ./src/mixer/software_mixer_plugin.c: if(access(aurender_castfi, F_OK) == 0) // Aurender CastFi wifi speaker ./src/mixer/software_mixer_plugin.c: // '15.02.17 Dubby : Skip save_gd_volume fo r aurender cast fi ./config.log:| #define PACKAGE_BUGREPORT "[email protected]" ./config.log:/home/dubby/project/GitHub/mpd/AurenderSystemSW-MPD/conftest.c:56: undefined reference to `faacDecInit2' ./config.log:| #define PACKAGE_BUGREPORT "[email protected]" ./config.log:ACLOCAL='${SHELL} /home/dubby/project/GitHub/mpd/AurenderSystemSW-MPD/missing aclocal-1.13' ./config.log:AUTOCONF='${SHELL} /home/dubby/project/GitHub/mpd/AurenderSystemSW-MPD/missing autoconf' ./config.log:AUTOHEADER='${SHELL} /home/dubby/project/GitHub/mpd/AurenderSystemSW-MPD/missing autoheader' ./config.log:AUTOMAKE='${SHELL} /home/dubby/project/GitHub/mpd/AurenderSystemSW-MPD/missing automake-1.13' ./config.log:MAKEINFO='${SHELL} /home/dubby/project/GitHub/mpd/AurenderSystemSW-MPD/missing makeinfo' ./config.log:PACKAGE_BUGREPORT='[email protected]' ./config.log:install_sh='${SHELL} /home/dubby/project/GitHub/mpd/AurenderSystemSW-MPD/install-sh' ./config.log:#define PACKAGE_BUGREPORT "[email protected]" ./mpd.files:README.aurender ./config.status:Report bugs to <[email protected]>." ./config.status:ac_pwd='/home/dubby/project/GitHub/mpd/AurenderSystemSW-MPD' ./config.status:S["install_sh"]="${SHELL} /home/dubby/project/GitHub/mpd/AurenderSystemSW-MPD/install-sh" ./config.status:S["MAKEINFO"]="${SHELL} /home/dubby/project/GitHub/mpd/AurenderSystemSW-MPD/missing makeinfo" ./config.status:S["AUTOHEADER"]="${SHELL} /home/dubby/project/GitHub/mpd/AurenderSystemSW-MPD/missing autoheader" ./config.status:S["AUTOMAKE"]="${SHELL} /home/dubby/project/GitHub/mpd/AurenderSystemSW-MPD/missing automake-1.13" ./config.status:S["AUTOCONF"]="${SHELL} /home/dubby/project/GitHub/mpd/AurenderSystemSW-MPD/missing autoconf" ./config.status:S["ACLOCAL"]="${SHELL} /home/dubby/project/GitHub/mpd/AurenderSystemSW-MPD/missing aclocal-1.13" ./config.status:S["PACKAGE_BUGREPORT"]="[email protected]" ./config.status:D["PACKAGE_BUGREPORT"]=" \"[email protected]\"" ./mpd.includes:/srv/es/aurenderRelease/auMpd ./mpd.includes:/srv/es/aurenderRelease/auMpd/src ./mpd.includes:/srv/es/aurenderRelease/auMpd/src/archive ./mpd.includes:/srv/es/aurenderRelease/auMpd/src/AudioCompress ./mpd.includes:/srv/es/aurenderRelease/auMpd/src/cue ./mpd.includes:/srv/es/aurenderRelease/auMpd/src/db ./mpd.includes:/srv/es/aurenderRelease/auMpd/src/decoder ./mpd.includes:/srv/es/aurenderRelease/auMpd/src/dsdnative ./mpd.includes:/srv/es/aurenderRelease/auMpd/src/filter ./mpd.includes:/srv/es/aurenderRelease/auMpd/src/input ./mpd.includes:/srv/es/aurenderRelease/auMpd/src/mixer ./mpd.includes:/srv/es/aurenderRelease/auMpd/src/output ./mpd.includes:/srv/es/aurenderRelease/auMpd/src/playlist ./mpd.includes:/srv/es/aurenderRelease/auMpd/test ./doc/doxygen.conf:INPUT = /home/dubby/project/GitHub/mpd/AurenderSystemSW-MPD/src/ ./autom4te.cache/output.1:@%:@ Report bugs to <[email protected]>. ./autom4te.cache/output.1:$0: [email protected] about your system, including any ./autom4te.cache/output.1:PACKAGE_BUGREPORT='[email protected]' ./autom4te.cache/output.1:Report bugs to <[email protected]>. ./autom4te.cache/output.1:## Report this to [email protected] ## ./autom4te.cache/output.1:Report bugs to <[email protected]>." ./autom4te.cache/traces.1:m4trace:configure.ac:2: -1- AC_INIT([auPlayer], [6.0420], [[email protected]]) ./autom4te.cache/output.0:@%:@ Report bugs to <[email protected]>. ./autom4te.cache/output.0:$0: [email protected] about your system, including any ./autom4te.cache/output.0:PACKAGE_BUGREPORT='[email protected]' ./autom4te.cache/output.0:Report bugs to <[email protected]>. ./autom4te.cache/output.0:## Report this to [email protected] ## ./autom4te.cache/output.0:Report bugs to <[email protected]>." You can even figure auPlayer = mpd: ./configure.ac:AC_INIT(auPlayer, 6.0420, [email protected]) I really hope Aurender will include a written offer with their product, or provide the source code on their website, thus giving the MPD team and Max Kellermann credit to the code they reuse in their products. Any Linux device can run MPD these days (even the raspberry pi) so giving back any modification to an open source package used commercially is a normal practice in the OSS world. Futhermore this source tarball is interesting: - you could use the aurender app with the provided MPD source code compiled on other platforms - you can play via wifi - tidal / wimp integration in the source - the MPD team can integrate the improvements made by Aurender (which is common OSS practice)

That can sure be, but they hide it behind a screen. Why can't they put the products visible from the sweet spot? Why are you pasting parts of a PM message intended to another member here?

It's a discussion forum, that means that all opinions are welcome, not only from the Aurender fanboys. The MSB room did not feature Aurender products, MSB works closely together with ReQuest as ReQuest features MSB. Regarding Marten, the Aurender was even not placed in sight .... the Marten room did not have an official affiliation with either MSB or Aurender. http://marten.se/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/system-660x440.jpg Why would they not place such product in sight? I'm not jealous, we outperform the W20 easily, the W20 was reviewed by 6moons it was hardly better than a mac mini. As an open source integrator I'm bothered with the big GPL violation which is Aurender using MPD without offering a written offer to their customers, which is btw illegal. If you don't abide to the GPL, shipping GPL software is a copyright violation.

You are incorrect, MSB used the beast and not aurender on their new select dac demo. I know the MSB guy personally. My product sounds fantastic on the MSB analog dac, in my country the main MSB reseller is using my server on MSB. This guy had an olive 6HD and SOtM SMS1000 and a 9.000 euro cd transport in the past and now my reseller has my server, which says enough. This guy has a ribbon line array that beats most of the systems in Munich, I went 2.5 days and visited all rooms. Now Aurender is not the only company using the free open source MPD daemon, german company BMC also uses MPD internally but doesn't hide it behind their own app and sell it as auplayer. BMC was in the Amphion room. Also auralic is using MPD in their products. And also Bryston is using MPD, but they conform to the GPL. Just to name a few that were in Munich. SOtM no longer uses MPD but has changed to squeezelite which is the default player in vortexbox 2.3. Why do I not like aurender? The only reason is their massive GPL violation. I knew they used MPD just by the choice of typical MPD client commands in their app. If they would have included the written GPL offer which is mandatory if you include the MPD binaries in your product, I would not have started my investigation and exposed them. A GPL written offer is basically a statement included in the product, that you can request any open source code licensed under GPLv2 and GPLv3 from the manufacturer using this code in their products including all their customisations, for the cost of the physical cd + shipping of the cd from them. In the past companies were sued by developers over GPL violations and the devs always won. My past job was 20 years of Linux affiliation and I've committed open source software back into the world, so if a company violates the open source doctrine, that's their fault and they should face the consequences. Even my panasonic 65 inch plasma includes a statement in the menu that it based on GPL software. Aurender lacks all these requirements, which are mandatory if you base your software on GPL. Also Olive includes a written GPL offer in the box. Aurender doesn't. So if Eric Shim is reading this: make sure your company complies to the GPL. Buy an olive, look how they do it, and please comply to the GPL. Or read this manual: http://www.manualslib.com/manual/259225/Olive-4.html?page=39

No it was streaming4home, they do something similar to Audio Aan Zee, but only ask about 2k. S4H had the chance to compare the little Aurenders and the S10 to their server, and found the little Aurender darker sounding less lifelike and even the S10 was no match for their own server. But the S10 was based on a cheap asrock motherboard, some inhouse SPDIF card that is about 200$, an SSD as linux boot drive and for the cache , and a WD green HDD and SMPS for the motherboard, so except for the aesthetics it is very simple to beat soundwise. S4H was removed as dealer because of their competing product

I talked to one of them, they used aurender last year. It frequently failed .... so now he's just using his ps audio cd transport again. This guy produces open dipole speakers and was also present this year in Munich in hall 4 not far from Aurender. Also talked to Eric Shim, and asked for Tidal support and MQA. To see his reaction, I mentioned the words "open source" during the MQA topic and he completely changed and closed and the talk was soon over. They clearly want to hide that Aurender is using open source software like MPD and change the subject. I know some MPD devs are not happy with the open source GPL violation by Aurender. I used to be on of the MPD development mailing list and also submitted some patch to improve MPD. I used MPD in my previous products, nowadays i use another open source player. I must admit the Aurender build quality is impressive, and being able to sell open source software for these amounts ...... furthermore they really hide the motherboards by using large heat sinks, and also not showing the ATX panel but patching ethernet & USB through to the backpanel is very clever to fool audiophiles into thinking it is not a PC, but it still is. I had the chance to make photo's of the internals of all Aurender products. I must admit it is very clever marketing and aesthetics. Also learned from a distributor that dealer margin on the little Aurenders is not impressive and not market conform. Also spoke to another Dutch manufacturer who also was an Aurender dealer was kicked because his 2.000 € music server with a standard SOtM card outperformed the Aurender S10, and told me the little Aurenders are nowhere near. The Dutch distributor doesn't want Aurender products to be compared to the competition at a fraction of the price.

the 9V output will work on any ifi device that needs the wall wart ... on an iPhono the difference was day and night. If your dac doesn't need power on it's USB, you can work without an adapter on the iUSB. My Auralic doesn't need power, and the ifi doesnt make any sound difference with or without the 9V attached. On an MSB analog dac connected to the iUSB, the power was required as not all USB receiver chips are powered internally.

I agree that some details may have been wrong, but the core idea was the fact aurender didn't write their own player, and used mpd and "sold" it as auplayer, seems to be correct. Aurender probably has an internal fork of the mainline mpd, that way they can still merge updates from mpd 0.17.X into their own modified version. But these days, mpd development is 0.19 and some bugs are backported/fixed also in 0.18 I'm on the mpd mailing list

I'm using a more recent build of squeezelite than which vortexbox 2.3 provides, into which I have implemented memory playback. As this will benefit others, I will probably submit our mod to Triode once is has been tested (currently we have three testers), so more can benefit from this. My affiliation: we are one of the many integrators of vortexbox (2.3) into a high-end solution. We don't try to mask it. My account's name is a pseudonym, I will gladly disclose it to Chris.

Breaking news: Aurender uses MPD, but not mpd-upnp, which Eric Shim forked to play with it, but they don't use that version in their products. They use 0.17 with some modifications. Here's their reply sent to my gmail account. I'm taking the liberty to paste it here, as it seems they want to comply with the GPL which is a goog sign, and for me it ends my research. So any Aurender customer can ask them their modifications made to MPD. They don't use mpd-upnp ( a forked version with upnp support ) but appear to have modified 0.17 Who am i? In the past I have integrated MPD in our own product which builds on another opensource project (vortexbox 2.2) and always mentioned it in our manual, and provided info about where to find sources. We have build something on vortexbox and provided more recent MPD builds for our own customers. We did a lot of research into augmenting MPD's sound quality, that's why I was so curious when I found aurender's mpd-upnp on github. I have even submitted patches to the mpd mailing list that improve the sound quality of the 0.19 version. So I rest my case and I'm glad this has been clarified. These days I no longer use MPD, as integration with spotify and qobuz was not optimal, and 0.19 had some serious curl issues that took too long to fix and broke Qobuz and LMS as streaming source, so we jumped to another player that sounds even better. In the meantime, those 0.19 issues have been solved.

We use the 100 Watt linear supply, in the past we had another 12V supply, but most of my customers prefer the hdplex because of it's better looks. Larry is a friendly guy to do business with, and very very fast in his email replies, even when asking more indepth questions, the answers are always straightforward.

Eric Shim of Aurender forked mpd-upnp, and when we asked for any GPL source code used in Aurender products, he took down this fork of mpd-upnp on github and did not even answer our mail. So even though open source means: customers can request access to the GPLv2/GPLv3 source code used and/or modified by Aurender, they will probably deny our request and remain in violation with the GPL. So their platform has been designed with open source products (=benefit from the works of others, like the Linux kernel, the GNU system, the MPD music server) and closed down for users not to find out what's inside the product, which is against the whole idea of FOSS .... So my point: we can use the GPL to open the Aurender platform so it becomes compatible with more than one APP, they will not like it, but to comply with the GPL, they have to .... Otherwise they are in clear violation, as they already are: their product is also based on the linux kernel, which is GPLv2, meaning they have to include a written offer for users to get the code (and it's not restricted to Aurender customers, GPLv2 states any third party can request the code). I have not found any mentioning of the GPL license and/or written offer in their manual/website/brochures. Competitors like SOtM use the vortexbox Linux platform and when asking the vortexbox team for the source code (like their MPD for vb 2.3), they just email back the source RPM, which contains the source coce + build script. That's how open source is supposed to work. Aurender is a massive overpriced GPL violation

Auralic uses MPD just like Aurender MPD supports DSD256 in 0.18.X and DSD512 in 0.19.X, see http://git.musicpd.org/cgit/master/mpd.git/plain/NEWS?h=v0.19.9 But to get DSD256 to your DAC, you'll need another DAC, I have the Auralic Vega and iFI micro iDSD. When the iDSD has been burned in (take several months of playing), it sure is a close call to the Vega. The iFI plays DSD256 and DSD512 ... tbh not all DSD256 material is great, and you'll better have a good DSD128 production (like 2L.NO, just search for the track "living") instead of an average not outstanding DSD256 file. I would certainly not ditch the Vega because of the DSD128 limit, it's still a great dac if you tweak the clock to EXACT and turn the display off. I'm keeping my Vega because the iFI works on a battery, and when you power down the music server, the battery continues to discharger unless you turn the volume knob to off ... which is extra hassle.

Ok I know enough .... just play a shoutcast stream through aurender via the curl libraries (which mpd supports, I helped find a bug in the curl library of mpd 0.19.X ) and tcpdump the user agent ....