Post by petea on Apr 18, 2021 10:36:58 GMT
Following on from a post about using BubbleUPnP as a means to render Qobuz to a streamer that does not have built-in support, I thought it might be interesting to explain how I managed to get it work.
In the UK I have a Naim NDX 2 which has a built-in support for both Tidal and Qobuz. However in Germany I have the older NDX which only supports Tidal. While looking at some articles about MQA related to Slinger's post on the 'format' (https://theaudiostandard.net/thread/6243/mqa-fake-fine), I spotted some articles about using BubbleUPnP to render Qobuz to older streamers, including the NDX. This piqued my interest and so I installed BubbleUPnP on one of the Synology NAS units in the studio (a DS1511+). Initially I installed it in a Docker 'container' as the server is only supported up to Synology DSM version 6 at present, but could not get it to run. This turned out to be due to operator error! In the UK I have more recent NAS units and they, like the ones in Germany, are set to auto-update and are running DSM 7. In Germany they are also up-to-date, but what I did not notice was that the older hardware only runs up to DSM 6.2.4! After installing BubbleUPnP as a native application it came up perfectly and found the various music servers available on the network. So, check which DSM is running before you try and install BubbleUPnP on a Synology NAS!
Having got the server to run, I assigned the NDX as an OpenHome renderer and set Qobuz Maximum Audio Quality to FLAC 24 bits / up to 192 KHz. I also set Gapless Playback to 'on' to try and resolve an initial problem (more later). My next problem was how to control the server as BubbleSoft have yet to release their IoS app and I don't have any Android devices. Enter Lumïn. I installed this on an iPad and then slected the NDX as the LUMIN and the MinimServer (which is running on the NAS and at the moment set as a Media Server in BubbleUPnP: as is the Fidata server, but that is not showing for some reason - not really a problem though as I would not stream from this through the NDX anyway). I then entered my account details in for Qobuz (and will do so for my Tidal account later) and searched for a HighRes file pn Qobuz to play: Abraxas as a first try. And play it did, but only for short bursts and it was not streaming contibuously. It was at this point that I turned on gapless playback, but it made no difference even after re-starting the server. So I went back to the main Synology interface to see if it was a CPU / Memory issue. I double-checked the settings in BubbleUPnP and could not see anything that looked wrong, cleared the playlist in Lumïn and then re-loaded Abraxas from Qobuz and, while wathcing the performance meter on the NAS pressed play. And, it proceeded to play through the entire album without a single pause or hitch; I have no idea why unless the stream was buffered in the NDX in an intermittent form and the restart and reload did do the trick after all.
So, success and very simple to install and configure. Lumïn will take a while to get used to and lost its Qobuz login and queue information when the iPad went to sleep which I will have to see if I can resolve. Hopefully BubbleSoft will release an IoS app in the near future though.
In the UK I have a Naim NDX 2 which has a built-in support for both Tidal and Qobuz. However in Germany I have the older NDX which only supports Tidal. While looking at some articles about MQA related to Slinger's post on the 'format' (https://theaudiostandard.net/thread/6243/mqa-fake-fine), I spotted some articles about using BubbleUPnP to render Qobuz to older streamers, including the NDX. This piqued my interest and so I installed BubbleUPnP on one of the Synology NAS units in the studio (a DS1511+). Initially I installed it in a Docker 'container' as the server is only supported up to Synology DSM version 6 at present, but could not get it to run. This turned out to be due to operator error! In the UK I have more recent NAS units and they, like the ones in Germany, are set to auto-update and are running DSM 7. In Germany they are also up-to-date, but what I did not notice was that the older hardware only runs up to DSM 6.2.4! After installing BubbleUPnP as a native application it came up perfectly and found the various music servers available on the network. So, check which DSM is running before you try and install BubbleUPnP on a Synology NAS!
Having got the server to run, I assigned the NDX as an OpenHome renderer and set Qobuz Maximum Audio Quality to FLAC 24 bits / up to 192 KHz. I also set Gapless Playback to 'on' to try and resolve an initial problem (more later). My next problem was how to control the server as BubbleSoft have yet to release their IoS app and I don't have any Android devices. Enter Lumïn. I installed this on an iPad and then slected the NDX as the LUMIN and the MinimServer (which is running on the NAS and at the moment set as a Media Server in BubbleUPnP: as is the Fidata server, but that is not showing for some reason - not really a problem though as I would not stream from this through the NDX anyway). I then entered my account details in for Qobuz (and will do so for my Tidal account later) and searched for a HighRes file pn Qobuz to play: Abraxas as a first try. And play it did, but only for short bursts and it was not streaming contibuously. It was at this point that I turned on gapless playback, but it made no difference even after re-starting the server. So I went back to the main Synology interface to see if it was a CPU / Memory issue. I double-checked the settings in BubbleUPnP and could not see anything that looked wrong, cleared the playlist in Lumïn and then re-loaded Abraxas from Qobuz and, while wathcing the performance meter on the NAS pressed play. And, it proceeded to play through the entire album without a single pause or hitch; I have no idea why unless the stream was buffered in the NDX in an intermittent form and the restart and reload did do the trick after all.
So, success and very simple to install and configure. Lumïn will take a while to get used to and lost its Qobuz login and queue information when the iPad went to sleep which I will have to see if I can resolve. Hopefully BubbleSoft will release an IoS app in the near future though.
