Jump to content
IGNORED

Can Cambridge Audio 851N render radio streams that are not triggered by 851N?


Recommended Posts

Since some time I have been using - and enjoying thoroughly - minimserver/streamer on Synology DS214play in conjunction with Cambridge Audio 851n. More recently I did discover the minimstreamer radio features. I then tried to route from minimstreamer radio to 851n, alas to no avail.

I have tried several settings with several radio stations - all are well rendered when streaming is triggered directly by 851n - but have not yet managed to stream radio from minimstreamer (or other Synology packages) to 851n. I have attached copies of:

- m3u files used for testing

- logs from minimstreamer

- screenshots of the minimserver system and package tabs

radio from minimstreamer to 851N.zip

 

From minimstreamer support forum i understood that:

- 851n is trying to play the radio stream send by minimstreamer as if it were a disk file by reading portions of the stream instead of reading the stream continuously from start to end.

- If radio streaming is triggered by 851n, 851n obviously knows it is dealing with a radio stream and presumably doesn't attempt to use byte-range requests.

I thus concluded that 851n is engineered to manage incoming streams solely as byte-range requests - that is unless radio stream is triggered by 851n himself. Is this deduction correct? Are other people experiencing the same issue with 851n or other Cambridge Audio equipment? What is the experience in the community for streaming radio to 851n?

 

Many thanks in advance for your support

 

Eric

PS I have asked Cambridge about one week ago for their support however no response yet and will keep posted here what results from the thread with Cambridge support

Link to comment

Hi Eric

 

I don't have a Cambridge Audio streamer, but I have seen this very issue mentioned on the MinimServer forum & other sites for the NP30, Stream Magic 6 & CXN CA streamer models, so not just the 851n.

 

Is there any reason why you can't use the the 851n's own mechanism for adding and accessing your own radio stations?

The 851n's user manual (p.10) mentions that you can add your own radio station URLs to either its Presets or to Radio via your Stream Magic website account.

 

John

We are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us.

-- Jo Cox

Link to comment

Thanks John for the information that similar issue exists with other Stream Magic 6 & CXN CA streamers.

 

I did use the 851n's own mechanisms for radio streaming and indeed 851n renders very well the radio stations that i add and that are accessed directly by the 851n.

 

My aim was instead to use minimstreamer so to exploit the transcoding features of minimstreamer and thus offloading 851n of mp3 processing but untill now to no avail - perhaps a bit farfetched...

 

No news yet from CA software support team

Link to comment
the information that similar issue exists with other Stream Magic 6 & CXN CA streamers.Qztp3s
Looks like the forum spambot is up to its old tricks again.

We are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us.

-- Jo Cox

Link to comment
I did use the 851n's own mechanisms for radio streaming and indeed 851n renders very well the radio stations that i add and that are accessed directly by the 851n.

 

My aim was instead to use minimstreamer so to exploit the transcoding features of minimstreamer and thus offloading 851n of mp3 processing but untill now to no avail - perhaps a bit farfetched...

You could try MinimServer's URLs for the transcoded streams by adding them directly into the 851n's Preset or Radio settings, for example:

 

MinimServer's 24-bit wav transcoded stream URLs of your Radio test streams would be:

http://aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd:9790/minimstreamer/*/BBC3/$!transcode-24.wav

http://aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd:9790/minimstreamer/*/Linn/$!transcode-24.wav

http://aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd:9790/minimstreamer/*/RAI5/$!transcode-24.wav

 

MinimServer's 16-bit wav transcoded stream URLs of your Radio test streams would be:

http://aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd:9790/minimstreamer/*/BBC3/$!transcode-16.wav

http://aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd:9790/minimstreamer/*/Linn/$!transcode-16.wav

http://aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd:9790/minimstreamer/*/RAI5/$!transcode-16.wav

 

MinimServer's L16 (16-bit LPCM) transcoded stream URLs of your Radio test streams would be:

http://aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd:9790/minimstreamer/*/BBC3/$!transcode.L16

http://aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd:9790/minimstreamer/*/Linn/$!transcode.L16

http://aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd:9790/minimstreamer/*/RAI5/$!transcode.L16

 

where aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd is the IP address of the networked machine that MinimServer is running on and assuming MinimServer's http.port property is set to the default value of 9790.

 

Both my Pioneer N-50 & Denon DNP-F109 streamers are able to stream via their internet radio function using MinimServer's L16 transcoded stream URLs as user added radio stations, but not the wav ones (hence my reason for including them in the above example).

 

Incidentally, only the Linn Classical radio mp3 stream URL in your test m3u files works. The others are the URLs to their web radio player pages, not their mp3 streams. You should use these URLs instead, for the BBC Radio 3 & RAI5 mp3 streams, respectively:

http://www.radiofeeds.co.uk/bbcradio3.pls

http://icestreaming.rai.it/5.mp3

We are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us.

-- Jo Cox

Link to comment

Thanks John for the recommendations.

I have made a first attempt pointing to a minimstreamer IP address along your suggestion but it did not work out. It looks like 851n starts the stream and after a few seconds halts.

 

Unfortunately have been very busy with business matters (far less interesting but unfortunately unavoidable...) but should find more time next WE to deep dive in the matter.

 

I did configure minimstreamer to transcode in the minimwatch system tab; hence, my question:

What is the purpose of the $!transcode.L16 (or 16.wav / 24.wav) part in the http//: line?

Is this necessary?

 

Cheers and again many thanks for the interest and precious advice,

Eric

Link to comment

Eric, those URLs are the ones as supplied by MinimServer to the UPnP control point, with its stream.transcode System property set to the relevant values. For example, MinimServer only supplies the ../$!transcode-24.wav URLs to the UPnP control point, for every music file track/.m3u stream that the control point requests a URL for and its audio type matches those that require transcoding to wav24, as set by the stream.transcode property. Similarly, MinimServer returns the ../$!transcode.L16 URLs to the control point's request for tracks/.m3u streams with audio types that require transcoding to L16, as set by the stream.transcode property, and so on.

 

Since you have set the stream.transcode property to have all the required source audio file types to be transcoded to wav24 by MinimStreamer, MinimServer will only return ../$!transcode-24.wav URLs for all those file tracks/.m3u streams with matching audio types that the UPnP control point requests a URL for.

 

However, regardless of the stream.transcode property setting & the URLs supplied when requested by the UPnP control point, MinimServer has been designed to allow the the UPnP renderer to stream a file from it using any valid URL it requests. This includes any valid form of the 'special' ../$!transcode... URLs and MinimServer will set MinimStreamer to transcode as determined by the URL itself (and not MinimServer's stream.transcode System property).

 

Hence, the reason why you can manually set any of the transcoding settings supported by MinimStreamer for your internet radio streams by using an appropriate valid ../$!transcode... URL in the 851n's Presets or user added internet radio station settings. Of course under normal UPnP control point operation, the UPnP renderer only streams URLs from MinimServer as instructed by the control point.

 

Did you try the ../$!transcode.L16 URLs? As I mentioned earler, my Pioneer & Denon radio functions support L16 streams, but not WAV ones.

We are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us.

-- Jo Cox

Link to comment

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now



×
×
  • Create New...