Marantz MCR603

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[Anonymous]

Hi,

I'm not sure what happened but I'll try to add my post by replying to my original one.

I'm hoping someone could please help?

I've recently purchased the Marantz MCR603 and totally happy with it.

It's all connected and I can play my music from my Windows 7 PC via the Windows Media Player by selecting the option 'Play to' the Marantz.

However, what is really bugging me is that when I select the music server option on the Marantz, it shows empty - why is this?

Why can't it see the music files which is stored in the music folder of my pc?

I'm not sure if I've missed something here bit your help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Rai

 

[Anonymous]

Before I down loaded AirPlay and played everything via iTunes on my current MAC; I used WMP easy enough and the Marantz would find the folders with no issue

Have you set it up correctly (mine asked for a password to gain access to my PC initially)?

If you're still having issues call Jonathan Weston 02890 279830 on the Marantz/Denon helpdesk and he'll sort you out

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks Hifilover1979 for the contact - I did give him a call and he was very helpful.

He advised me not to bother with the WMP as this is not very reliable and download something called Twonkymedia and that hopefully should work a treat.

I've just been on the website and they have a 30 day trial and after that you pay something like £15.

On the website, they have different types ie twonkyserver, twonkmanager, twonkycopy etc - not sure which one I need??

I thought it would be something called twonkymedia and that's it.

 

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I have the mcr603 with a netgear wireless connection, and have twonky manager and twonky beam. It seems that the twonky software is working and yet when i select music server from the stereo I still get "empty". i have turned off the windows firewall and still it doesnt register. Any tips for things i could check on my computer to get it to talk to the stereo?

Thanks

Toby

 

[Anonymous]

Hi toby,

I've now installed the Twonkey Server and mine is working all fine. All I did was just installed the 30 day trial software and put on the music server option and it found the music folder.

My set up has:

1) All my music is in the music folder

2) I've got the music folder as shared on the home network

3) The marantz system must be set as allowed on the home network

Possibly check the settings....

Rai

 

[Fuzzy Bear]

Sorry to hijack thread,

I'm looking at the 603 and will be using a nas with Tonwkyserver.

How fast is it to browse through folders?

I read it can be painfully slow and wondered about your experiences.

 

[LuniCycle]

Sorry to hijack thread,

I'm looking at the 603 and will be using a nas with Tonwkyserver.

How fast is it to browse through folders?

I read it can be painfully slow and wondered about your experiences.

I got an MCR 603 around Christmas and am mainly using it with a NAS ZyXEL NSA310 (see note below about track order) and its built-in UPNP/DLNA for FLAC music. Generally I am extremely pleased with it I do sometimes notice that there are issues around browsing speed but I think this may be more down to my NAS than the MCR 603. Here is my list of pluses and minuses.

Plus

• Excellent Sound Quality
• Lounge/Wife friendly appearance & size
• Fairly intuitive interface
• Very clear display

Annoyances

• Boot up time* see below
• Saying Hello and Good-Bye on screen when turned on and off!
• ‘Play to’ doesn’t seem to work very well, using either WMP or Kinsky, but I only tried it because ‘it was there’. It freezes and I end up having to power cycle the MCR 603.

Minuses

DLNA does not support gapless playback, I somehow managed to miss this in my weeks of research- doh! Having said that I would have still bought it but it does mean that ripping some albums to FLAC it a bit trickier for example Abbey Road, DSOM and The Lamb Lies down on Broadway. I used EAC to rip to FLAC and with Abbey Road I grouped the tracks that merge into each other using the Copy Range function so my track listing looks like this:

01 Come Together

02 Something.flac

03 Maxwell's Silver Hammer

04 Oh! Darling

05 Octopus's Garden

06 I Want You (She's So Heavy)

07 Here Comes The Sun.

08 Because.

09 You Never Give Me Your Money - Sun King

10 Mean Mr. Mustard - Polythene Pam - She Came In Through The Bathroom Window

11 Golden Slumbers - Carry That Weight - The End

12 Her Majesty

I determined these by listening directly to the CD and grouping them as I saw fit.

This probably affects about 15-20 of my albums so is not a deal breaker as I don’t listen to a lot of classical music and I am not a big fan of recorded live performances, another approach I have considered is to have 2 rips of an affected album, one with all tracks separately and the other as 1 file for the whole album, named appropriately this would allow you to decide whether you were sitting down to listen to the whole thing or just ‘snacking’. If I were a classical music listener I think this would have been a deal breaker!

Jumping at the start of some tracks when it doesn’t appear to have buffered sufficiently, this doesn’t happen all the time and I think there could be a number of causes:
[*]The original CD having no gap at the start of the track, I am going to experiment with changing the settings on EAC to put any gap at the start of the track rather than at the end of the previous one, the latter being EAC’s default setting.[*]Poor performance of the NAS[*]Something about the network connection I have yet to determine* See below
*When I 1st set up the MCR 603 I had it connected to my network via a powerline adapter which I have previously used quite happily for a Roberts 83i (which has now been moved to the kitchen). The powerline worked fine with 16bit 44.1 KHz FLAC files and 24 bit 48 KHz for that matter but it could not buffer my handful of 24 bit 96 KHz fast enough to play without skipping so I have now connected it directly to my router which was fine until a few days later when I had to bury my head in my hands again as the newly purchased HD tracks album started skipping. The solution was to re‑boot (unplug wait a few seconds and plug in again) the MCR 603 and to turn off the Network Standby which I had previously turned on to reduce start up time (default is off), keeping this off means that the connection to the network and NAS is reinitiated each time the MCR 603 is turned on. This seems to overcome the problem with 24 bit 96 KHz tracks not buffering properly mid track and in fact the buffer indicator stays at 100% pretty much permanently but I am still left with the occasion skipping at the start of tracks!

Having said all that I would go out and buy it again and very much enjoy listening to it, but I don’t think it is a technology that is ready for your average man or woman in the street as I think it requires a bit too much ‘geekiness’ to get the best out of it!

The Zyxel NAS has an issue with track ordering and wants to render track in the following order 1,2,11,12… This is easily overcome using a tag editor and starting at track 11 for every album, MP3Tag will do this across a directory structure in a matter of minutes.

I might try and get a video of start-up and track selection on YouTube so you can judge yourself.

 

[Fuzzy Bear]

Thank you very much for the detailed reply, very useful.

I think you're right about wifi music, it's very impressive but still at an early stage lots of fixing and fiddling.

Was just viewing another thread and a guy was having problems with a SBT due to his library size. All these devices are good but some way to go before they are seamless.

Which goes back to another thread, haha, I think internet companies supply the bare minimum when it comes to routers but preach a wonderful world of wireless home entertainment. Without kinks or gremlins in the system.

It's down to the Marantz, Denon Ceol atm but DAB is important to me.

 

[LuniCycle]

Don't talk to me about routers! My aging D-Link Router up until 6 months ago had one laptop connecting to it and the occasional Wii connection. But in the last 6 months it has had an Internet Radio (via Powerline), another laptop (wireless), NAS (wired), MCR 603 (wired) added and basically I don't think it can cope! I was just listening to the Marantz and the network connection dropped completely , it transpired someone was downloading a large pdf file elsewhere in the house via a wireless connection. I am going to try rigging up my old wired router with the Marantz and the NAS on and connect that to the D-Link so hopefully nothing can affect the connection between the NAS and the Marantz (not really very knowledgably on networks but I know people who are ). Failing that it’s time for a new router.

BTW Moving the gap to the start seems to have sorted the troublesome tracks, a second or so at the start makes all the difference.

I haven't used the DAB much, I have connected the bit of wire in the pack and it works is all I can say. Network issues aside I think internet radio should give better results.

Have just set up Last.fm with free 30 day subscription but I can't see me paying for 128k mp3 stream!

 

[XMB]

For me it makes no sense to stream from a PC/Mac, except on a very casual basis. The best solution is to use a central NAS (Network Attached Storage) drive that supports media streaming (DLNA).

Now place all your music and other media on the NAS and it is available 24/7 to anyone on your network, including the MCR603.

You then also have the option of using some control point software, such as Kinsky, to select the media and playback device via either some PC software or ideally using an iPod/iPad or iPhone so it is easy to see and make your selections.

If your on a tight budget look at the WD My Book Live, as the 2TB model is about £140. If you need more security (using RAID 1 to ensure you have a copy on a second HDD) then try the Duo version.

If you are on a tight budget then the free PS3 Media Server software may be all you need to get easy streaming to your Marantz and is avaialble for PC and Mac. Don't be fooled by the name it is a DLNA server, not just PS3 specific!