Lack of support for Lossless music files over DLNA

[admin_exported]

I had been struggling with getting my Sony BDP-S570 to stream music from my Western Digital NAS hard drive and then I realised what the problem was. I have all of my music in WMA Lossless format, which of course is not supported by the blu-ray player. The player only supports standard WMA files. So then I thought, not to worry, I'm looking to get an AV receiver at some point in the not too distant future and I will go for one that supports DLNA. If I spend a reasonable amount and get a decent one, it would surely support Lossless music. Well it would appear that I was wrong about that one too...

I've been looking at the Yamaha RX-V3067 as I need a fair bit of grunt to run my speakers. I was also looking at the Pioneer VSX-LX83 as the Pioneer gets rave reviews from What Hi-Fi. The Yamaha doesn't seem to specify what specific file formats it supports, other than to state WMA, WAV etc. the Pioneer specifies that it only supports up to 320 Kbps music files. I'm sure an email to Yamaha would clarify if that amp is the same as the Pioneer or if it does actually support Lossless files...

Is it standard for current tech to only support compressed music files over DLNA? It seems a bit backwards to compress the music, stream it, "enhance" the music through the AV amp's onboard DAC and then have it going out to your speakers. If I have the capacity in my 2TB NAS hard drive to store my music uncompressed, and I have a Gigabit home network capable of streaming the files, it seems only appropriate that I have an amp that is capable of dealing with the uncompressed music.

Am I asking too much of the tech? Or am I just looking at the wrong products? It's all very well having"HD audio" but if you can't stream your Lossless media files, what's the point???

 

[Andrew Everard]

IIRC the Yamaha will stream lossless music up to 24/96, but only FLAC. Otherwise you're limited to 320kbps for everything apart from CD-quality WAV files.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for that Andrew. How does FLAC Lossless compare with WMA Lossless in terms of quality and range of support from hardware and/or software. As I'm sure you can appreciate, it's no mean feat loading a CD collection onto a hard drive, and not something I intend on doing on a regular basis. If I was to change my music from WMA to FLAC, would I be likely to regret this at some point in the future due to incomparability with a different product?

 

[Andrew Everard]

Unless you're planning to become an iTunes absolutist convert any time in the future, I doubt you'll regret it for a moment.

 

[Anonymous]

No plans for that... Any suggestions of a good media player to rip my CDs to FLAC?

Thanks again

 

[Andrew Everard]

I tend to use Max on OSX, or a dedicated ripping device, but those on windows tend to suggest dBpoweramp as one of the best.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for that Andrew, will give it a try and let you know how I get on... Any comments on the matching of the aforementioned Yamaha amp with my Dali Suite 2.8 speakers? I have 4 of the beasts, and the C0.8 centre speaker and understand that they're not an easy load to drive at 4 ohms a piece (apart from the centre at 6 ohms).

 

[wireman]

dougolada:

I had been struggling with getting my Sony BDP-S570 to stream music from my Western Digital NAS hard drive and then I realised what the problem was. I have all of my music in WMA Lossless format, which of course is not supported by the blu-ray player. The player only supports standard WMA files. So then I thought, not to worry, I'm looking to get an AV receiver at some point in the not too distant future and I will go for one that supports DLNA.

Now that's odd. As I understand it, your Sony BDP-S570 Blu-ray player is effectively the same as my Sony SMP-N100 Media player, except the N100 doesn't include the Blu-ray drive part (perhaps Mr E can correct me if that's wrong as I read somewhere that he has an N100 too). The N100 is supposed to be DLNA compliant, so I suspect your S570 is too... it's just that others report on the web that Sonys DLNA implementation is a bit flakey.

Yet my N100 does play WMA lossless files, and your S570 doesn't. And yet your S570 does find/connect with your Western Digital NAS hard drive, yet my N100 won't find/connect with my 1TB Western Digital NAS hard drive (yet it'll play most things from my Sony Vaio laptop).

I'm kinda in the same dilemma - most of my audio files are already ripped as WAV files which the Sony won't read. But I read somewhere that Mezzmo transcoding software is probably your/my best bet for reading the (lossless) file in one form and converting to another that the Sony can understand, at least until Sony sort out their DLNA implementation. You can try Mezzmo for free for 15 days to see if it works, and their support is reportedly excellent. It might be a route that works for the time being anyway... I'll be trying it just as soon as my N100 bucks up it's ideas and finds the NAS!

 

[Andrew Everard]

dougolada:Any comments on the matching of the aforementioned Yamaha amp with my Dali Suite 2.8 speakers? I have 4 of the beasts, and the C0.8 centre speaker and understand that they're not an easy load to drive at 4 ohms a piece (apart from the centre at 6 ohms).

Sorry, not a combination with which I have any experience.

 

[FunkyMonkey]

Curiously, the PS3 can do WAV (and lossless WMA) and yet the 2010 crop of Sony Blu Ray players cannot.

 

[Anonymous]

It is your player that doesnt support lossless - not DLNA.

DLNA or UPNP (on which DLNA is based) is just a set of networking protocols. ANY format of file can be transferred but of course the player has to support that format in order to play it.

If u had for example a denon amp like a 3311 or 4311 then they would happily play FLAC via DLNA.

A transcoding mediaserver like Tversity(PC) or iSedora(MAC) will transcode virtutally anything u want to play over DLNA/UPNP, though you'd have it running on your pc.

I suggest any MAC user has a look at iSedora - to add DLNA/UPNP.

 

[The_Lhc]

dougolada:I was also looking at the Pioneer VSX-LX83 ... the Pioneer specifies that it only supports up to 320 Kbps music files.

Page 66 lists the file formats playable via DLNA (a wired connection is recommended), they are:

mp3, up to 320kbps,
LPCM ___b and .wav up to 24-bit 48kHz,
wma up to 320kbps,
AAC up to 320kbps,
FLAC up to 16-bit 48kHz,

it only plays mp3 and wma from USB however, so that might be what you looked at.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for that the_Ihc

Installed dBpoweramp yesterday and uploaded Gerry Rafferty's City to City to trial the software. It seemed to take ages when I had other things running on my computer, but my laptop did seem to be running slowly at the time. It picked it's pace up when I shut other programs and left dBpoweramp to it... We shall see how it goes, but looks good so far...