75ZT Community

Have a look HERE Dave.

It's the best of its kind in my view.

Cheers Paul!

I use this one and find it works well.

http://www.mp3tag.de/en/

I think it does the same as tag&rename at the end of the day. Used both in the past and are very good. mp3tag is the current favourite with Acoustica Label maker which allows importing of m3u files to make printable track listings.

I'll have a look at that as well David

Oddly enough, I have mp3 tag already and had forgotten all about it! Doh!

Following on from previous posts, here's some more Twonky observations....

• Put three albums of "Blackmore's Night" on while we put the decs up! It played once again with no dropouts. However, it is still occasionally stopping completely between songs, and it would seem that this is down to the player changing itself from my Denon player to Twonky Player. Not sure why this is or how to stop it
• Album track order. Tried making change to some of the Twonky files, and this might have worked in as much as if you choose albums from either "Album" or "Folder" then they indeed in the correct order. Choose from any other option and they are alphabetical
• Playlists are still not saving, and as I can't find where they are stored, can't really do much about this

All in all though, it's working quite well! Assuming it continues to do so, I'll have to stump up my money for a licence soon!

This is starting to drive me nuts now!

Twonky is serving me fairly well, but still has issues with the selected player (ie Denon hifi) disappearing at random, although the music will often continue when this happens. Sometimes it's still there, but player window reverts to "TwonkyPlayer". Also the NAS drive sometimes vanishes from the list. At other times, the music will play for 5 or 6 tracks with no issue, but at others, a fresh start is required for each song!

Back to iTunes. More research revealed that older versions (10 as opposed to 11) were better at streaming, so "down-graded" to 10, only to hit the same issues, which were dropouts every minute or so, and lock-ups every 5 minutes or so

OK, try something else then.... What about WinAmp? I'd used this years ago and forgotten about it. Turns out it's future is in jeopardy, with imminent axing, but managed to download a copy. Onto this I installed a plugin called "Remote Speakers". For a wonderful five minutes, I thought this was my solution, but then it started all over again! Annoyingly, "Remote Speakers" uses AirPlay and it seems the latter is the cause of the problems. Basically any player on the laptop will play without issue using the built-in speakers, the hifi will stream without issue using it's own interface to select music, and Twonky plays with no stops within tracks (although it may fail to buffer the next one). Bring AirPlay into the equation and the problems begin.

If I was on Windows 7 I could have the latest Media Player and stream from that, avoiding any other programs or servers, but annoyingly, this looks to be something I can't have until I get a new laptop (OK, even that's not guaranteed to work, but how annoying is this whole thing!)

Is everything wired now? I can't remember.

No David, I junked the LAN Powerline adaptor wired setup! TBH, it made no difference overall....

Just found something about "Streaming buffer size" in iTunes, but from the screenshot I have found about it, it would seem this setting is not available in the version I am currently using.

I did read somewhere on a similar matter but different hardware that sometimes the wireless can cause issues. I know its different hardware but I thought it might help. If you've tested it then perhaps not

Now also tried Clementine (http://www.clementine-player.org/) which looked good but doesn't seem to have a setting to send to a Network Player.....

And also Airfoil which seemed to be a good possibility as it promises to stream from any Windows source to a Network Player. Sounds great but can't get it to work at all with Media Player and with VLC or Winamp it breaks up in about 10 seconds.....



Anyone want to buy a Denon Network Player....?

Dave wrote:Anyone want to buy a Denon Network Player....?

No thanks... I heard they weren't that good at what they were supposed to do. I know somebody who has had no end of trouble

TBH, I think it's the laptop end (and in particular, AirPlay )

OK, I've now found this on the Denon website

The following router ports should be open on your router to allow a seamless network communication with a network-compatible Denon device.

Router ports: 3813, 443, 80, 8080, 3689 TCP, 554, 5353 UDP multicast

I think I may have found this before as I have something in the router settings already with regard to these ports. However, I'm not sure on a number points:-

• I have these set in "Port Forwarding". Is this the same as having ports open?
• The list refers to "multicast". In the options I have TCP, UDP and TCP&UDP. Which of these, if any, is multicast?
• In the settings for selecting the Denon's IP address, the first part is pre-populated with "192.168.1" and the final bit needs to be filled in manually. I've looked in Network Places and right clicked the Denon, and the only IP address reference I can see is "192.168.1.41" so I assume this is what I need?

Many thanks for anyone who is sticking with this!!

Internal ports should all be open anyway. Using port forwarding opens ports to the outside world so should make no difference to your local network. Your router firewall blocks incoming requests on those ports but by opening them you allow traffic through.

So is there any setting that I can fiddle with (with these ports) that actually will make a difference?

Been trying with the port forwarding a bit more, changing settings in the router and also, I think, opening ports in the firewall, but now using a Port Open Tester, it's reporting back that they are all closed!

Starting to think that the port thing might be making a difference, that they should be open, but are not!

Just a quick update for anyone that might be still interested......

Wondering now if a change of router would be of any use? We have a TP-Link one that worked well before we changed BB provider and were given the EE Brightbox. I'm going to try it later and see if iTunes/Airplay performance improves, but in the meantime:-

• I've read that you can join two routers together, but not actually sure if this would be of any benefit?
• As the Denon isn't connecting to the Internet (as in doesn't need to be connected), but is linked to the NAS drive via the local network, and also controlled with iTunes from my laptop, would it be possible to set it up on it's own network, not even plugged into the phone line? If so, would I be able to access this from my laptop and still remain online on the current network?

If suggestion #2 would work, it sort of makes sense to use this to avoid any traffic conflicts!

Also been reading that people recommend routers made by Apple for this kind of application, such as this one but wouldn't want to buy one if it was not going to help or messed up regular Internet connecting!

Still following the tale Dave but it's becoming a little beyond my capabilities now.

For a moment then I thought you'd put

"...it's becoming a little boring now"



Not to worry Paul - but thanks for keeping an eye on it!