Frustrated pioneer n-50 owner

[jon c]

Hi all,

im just wondering is there anyone out there that own the pioneer n-50 network player that can honestly say they are happy with it, I've had mine for about six months and I'm getting more frustrated with it everyday and getting to the stage where I might sell it, I wasn't happy with it from the start but avland refused to let me return and got stuck with it. I have carried on using it and slowly converted some of my music to flac but the pioneer is still finding the mp3 version although they have been removed, but also if I try to play them it will say URL not found which is obvious cos I deleted them but it won't locate the flac although they are in same folder, any ideas? This only seems to happen on several albums and not all, some work fine and when they I'm happy with the sound and everything, it's just the files and network that have frustrated me so much over the past six months.

Is it worth selling and trying something else? Or could it be anything to with my nas? But I don't think that's a problem.

Any feedback would be much appreciated.

i knew I should have opted for sonos lol

 

[amcluesent]

WHat DLNA/UPnP server are you using? If it's Windows MedIa Player, then all bets are off... :wall:

Supposedly, there's new firmware in 2013 - with gapless playback! http://www.pioneer.eu/eur/newsroom/news/AVR_Firmware_2013/page.html

 

[jon c]

Hi. I'm using a dlink dns 323 nas drive linked below, which acts as the server I assume, it's been working fine but lately I converted some new music files and it cant even see them, wondering if I'm starting to have compatibility issue now.

http://www.dlink.com/uk/en/support/product/dns-323-sharecenter-2-bay-network-storage-enclosure

anyone use the pioneer n50 with other nas drive?

 

[Andrew Everard]

Two things to check:

1. Are the FLAC files properly tagged? If not, the server software in the D-Link won't be able to see them, and so won't be able to serve them to the Pioneer

2. Have you told the server software to do a re-scan of the content stored on the server? That should flush out traces of the old files and find the new ones.

TBH, I wasn't too sold on the built-in server software on the D-Link I ran as my main NAS device some time back, which is why I hacked the NAS and put Twonky on it, as I explained in this blog a while back.

There's a page on NAS-Tweaks.net on how to do the same thing on the DNS-323 here

 

[jon c]

thanks andrew,

I never thought about tags, most of the music was never originally imported as flac just converted with dbpoweramp, and some of the music has been downloaded from soundsbox.com so im not convinced its taged properly.

Since the 1st day i owned the dlink nas i dont think i can ever remember going into the setup to check anything only when i upgraded the drives about a year ago, so i have never thought about it needing a rescan now and then, so i will try that.

Certainly will have a read about hacking it and useing twonky maybe but since what hifi reviewed synology ds212j ive wanted to change to it but the cost never seems worth when i already havea nas, but maybe if finances are there it maybe a better choice in the long run.

thanks again

 

[Andrew Everard]

Since the 1st day i owned the dlink nas i dont think i can ever remember going into the setup to check anything only when i upgraded the drives about a year ago, so i have never thought about it needing a rescan now and then, so i will try that.

In the D-Link's UPnP AV Server settings, there's a pull-down at the bottom marked 'Auto refresh'. You can set this to rescan automatically from every 5 min to every 24 hours, and there's a manual 'refresh' button up top to use when you have uploaded a stack of new content if required.

The files you have converted using dbpoweramp really weren't worth doing if they were originally mp3 and they're now FLAC – they're now just taking up more space for no gain in sound quality. Might be worth getting a free trial download of the excellent Bliss software and trying this on your library - if it can recognise the tracks, it should be able to tag them for you.

 

[jon c]

ok andrew ive downloaded bliss and i think im currently running it on my nas library,or at least i thin i am as there is nothing to say waht its doing as such, just the icon in tray to tell me program is there.

tbh when i got the pioneer and started converting some of the music i thought i was wasting my time, i originally was listening to music through the computer and was useing media player and all my cd were imported in media lossless format but when i got the pioneer it wouldnt play the files hence the reason i started to convert some of my library and ive only got halfway, as for the mp3's those are more recently acquired and perhaps best left as mp3, to be honest my library is a complete mess but it was too much music to sort out as i only have about 50% of it on cd the rest has been downloaded from various places.

Would be nightmare to start again, maybe thats the answer? and maybe with a better nas

 

[jon c]

ok, seems my computer started bliss several times and after reboot i could use the program properly. So today i started computer up before work and decided to change path name to less folders and let bliss do its work, just got back from work and thought i'd check and its work perfectly just need to fix some file path.

So thank you for andrew for suggested theBliss software, now hopefully i will have more success with the pioneer n-50, hopefully my finance my change and i think a bit more about updating my nas at some point, but this year my target is to save for the panasonic 6000 projector, as im sure it would be a big improvement on the optoma hd20 i currently use but 3grand is a lot to save when work isnt great.

till my next post

 

[jon c]

hello again,

Hopefully andrew you will see this post again, i have one more question after running bliss on one particular folder in my library everything seem to be fine but when i looked closely the pioneer n 50 is now displaying the tracks in the wrong order, but from what i can it still plays them in correct order.......any ideas?

rgds jon

 

[Andrew Everard]

Hopefully andrew you will see this post again, i have one more question after running bliss on one particular folder in my library everything seem to be fine but when i looked closely the pioneer n 50 is now displaying the tracks in the wrong order, but from what i can it still plays them in correct order.......any ideas?

Yes, that was my experience with the D-Link's onboard server software – it shows tracks in alphabetical order, and unless you meddle with them, that's how your Pioneer will play them. But the Bliss software will have tagged them according to track number so they play correctly.

You can go in and rename files as, say 01.Trackname instead of just Trackname, which will get them displaying properly, but that might be something of a faff. Maybe an email to the developer of Bliss, who I've found very helpful, might yield a more elegant solution – you can contact him mp3tag.de, which also works with FLACs, and will let you go in and tag tracks as, Trackname / Totaltracks, so say 01/11, 02/11 and so on as in the example below

 

[jon c]

ok thanks andrew will test things over the next few days although its not a big deal and it performing a lot better than it was before i posted .

rgds jon

 

[jon c]

well after a couple hours testing this morning im not sure im better off than before or not now, after listening to an album with the track list in front of me i found that the pioneer is not playing or displaying any of the album thats bliss supposedly corrected correctly, although it is finding and playing them which was more than before for most of the albums.

So i think it may be time to email bliss software support

 

[jon c]

Just quick reply just to let Andrew@whathifi now that i have been in email contact with dan @bliss who throughout the day has been very helpful and we seem to have got my issues sorted, basically it was all down to track numbers thats all, just needed a custom setting which dan sorted for me, so i have correct one album in the list and now its displaying on the pioneer and also playing in order, so everything is fine and dandy now.

And something else i thought i would just mention, the link to the mp3 tagging software you suggested although it takes you to the site for download they want you to download so much other nonsense and even though i stop it installing some other stuff it still went a head and added extension to my browser that i didnt like and i found a few little programs on computer that i told it not to put on, so in the end after 30mins of getting everything removed i google the prog and found a direct link to the program although i didnt use it in the end. Just thought you would be btter off knowing for the future

rgds jon

 

[Andrew Everard]

And something else i thought i would just mention, the link to the mp3 tagging software you suggested although it takes you to the site for download they want you to download so much other nonsense and even though i stop it installing some other stuff it still went a head and added extension to my browser that i didnt like and i found a few little programs on computer that i told it not to put on, so in the end after 30mins of getting everything removed i google the prog and found a direct link to the program although i didnt use it in the end. Just thought you would be btter off knowing for the future

Weird – having checked it before I suggested it (as I hadn't used it for ages), I just went to the site again and downloaded the software from the 'download' tab at the top of the page, which took me straight to a download of mp3tagv254setup.exe, and it seems to be perfectly clean to me, with no unwanted software being loaded.

 

[jon c]

oh well no harm done

thxs for your help though

rgds jon