Playing Flac files from LinkstationII

[mbscad]

Hi All,
I’m new to this forum although I have read many of the posts here and obtained some useful help and tips.
Now here is the situation…

I’ve run mt-daapd (Firefly) Build 1359 on Windows XP Home-easy and straightforward plays .WAV and .Flac files to my Pinnacle Soundbridge 1001. Using Netgear DG834Gv2.

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I’ve run mt-daapd (Firefly) Build 1359 on Windows XP Pro-was a bit harder to get streaming working, had some issues with Admin services in XP but now plays .WAV and .Flac files to my Pinnacle Soundbridge 1001.

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I built 1359 to run on my LinkstationII (Mipsel) using Openlink by using the excellent script provided by isimmons dated 13 August 2006. I couldn’t get this to work. (ie wget all tarballs,configure and make,install s/w)

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I built 1441 nightly and configured it without the howl,flac and oggvorbis enabled and it runs like a dream and streams .Wavs to my soundbridge (which I’m listening to now) -Thanks Ron and Team!

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I then tried to configure 1441 with flac and oggvorbis enabled and it seemed to work.
It built songs.db and presents a list of songs to the Soundbridge which I can browse and obtain tag information from (artist,album,size,playing time).
However, when I select the song to play, I just get “unable to play..songname”
The only information I have been able to get using debug=9 is
ssc.sh flac:command not found
ssc.sh wavestreamer:command not found.

So, thinking that perhaps I was missing some vital software, I installed Ipkg on the Linkstation. I used this software to try and install mt-daapd and received the message that it was missing dependencies,
libid3tag
libogg
libvorbis
ivorbis-tools
flac
sqlite2
bash
alac-decoder
sqlite
I went to Mipsel downloads for .Ipk files and performed ipkg install for all the above dependencies which were all successful Apart from libid3tag (wasn’t one in directory) sqlite2 (missing readline +something else)
bash
sqlite
so finally ipkg install mt-daapd (svn 1433-1) gives error couldn’t satisfy dependencies for
libid3tag readline readline readline ncurses.

If Ipkg could be made to work I think I would use it rather than hand building all the modules as its a nice, simple interface for inexperienced unix users…however I digress.

So my question to the team is, I want to use a Linkstation II using openlink and mt-daapd to stream .WAV and .Flac files standalone (without my pc being on all the time)- is this possible?

Kind Regards
Mbscad

[rpedde]

@mbscad wrote:

I then tried to configure 1441 with flac and oggvorbis enabled and it seemed to work.
It built songs.db and presents a list of songs to the Soundbridge which I can browse and obtain tag information from (artist,album,size,playing time).
However, when I select the song to play, I just get “unable to play..songname”
The only information I have been able to get using debug=9 is
ssc.sh flac:command not found and mt-daapd to stream .WAV and .Flac files standalone (without my pc being on all the time)- is this possible?

Sure, using either way — fixing the self-installed build you have by fixing the transcoding script, or by finding the deps you are missing in unslung by adding the right package repositories.

I’d guess the package repos you want are:

http://ipkg.nslu2-linux.org/feeds/unslung/wl500g/

and

http://ipkg.fireflymediaserver.org/mipsel

If you get those two feeds in your sources list, it will probably fire up with a “ipkg install mt-daapd”.

— Ron

[mbscad]

Thanks Ron for your swift reply.
I added the slug reference to my /etc/ipkg.conf file and tried to “ipkg install mt-daapd”…this ran then blew up with error 127 in sqlite (or sqlite2) download.
Further it bricked my linkstation .. probably because of the dependency on bash install.
I’ve spent two days recovering data on hda3 and finally rebuilt Linkstation II today (Wed 29/11).
I tried a complete ipkg install from scratch with just the mipsel development tools loaded and it bricked my machine again!

I started again and rebuilt all modules the hard way …one at a time with wget,configure,make.
Downloaded svn-1441 and all is well and working (except for my wretched .flac files again).
You mentioned fixing up the transcoding script.
Would you please tell me what I need to do to the transcoding script to get it to work?
Do I need to reinstall the nightly again, I currently have enabled,browse,query,mdns,id3tag,sqlite,flac,oggvorbis and ssc.

Debug at level 9 gives no clues as to why the Soundbridge won’t play the flac files

LOG FILE

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2006-11-29 19:10:23 (000a0004): Transcode: 1, flac: O Christmas Tree.flac
2006-11-29 19:10:23 (000a4004): Session 0: Streaming file ‘O Christmas Tree.flac
‘ to 192.168.0.4 (offset 0)
2006-11-29 19:10:23 (000a4004): Transcoding /mnt/hda/audiotron/Christmas_wavs/O
Christmas Tree.flac with ssc-script/svn-1441
2006-11-29 19:10:23 (000a4004): Executing /usr/local/bin/mt-daapd-ssc.sh “/mnt/h
da/audiotron/Christmas_wavs/O Christmas Tree.flac” 0 132.933 “flac”

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It fails to play within a couple of seconds and moves on to try and play the next file which also fails.

Thanks for your help Ron.

[rpedde]

@mbscad wrote:

Further it bricked my linkstation .. probably because of the dependency on bash install.

Eek! Sorry! I was shooting from the hip, as I don’t have one of these. Don’t I feel bad now…

I’ve spent two days recovering data on hda3 and finally rebuilt Linkstation II today (Wed 29/11).

… he says, rubbing salt in the wound.

I tried a complete ipkg install from scratch with just the mipsel development tools loaded and it bricked my machine again!

Which tools? 3.0, or 3.2.3? Just out of curiosity. And the linux libc, or ulibc?

You mentioned fixing up the transcoding script.
Would you please tell me what I need to do to the transcoding script to get it to work?

Can do

Do I need to reinstall the nightly again, I currently have enabled,browse,query,mdns,id3tag,sqlite,flac,oggvorbis and ssc.

No, you should be okay. Find your “flac” binary — that’s the binary the script uses to transcode.

2006-11-29 19:10:23 (000a4004): Executing /usr/local/bin/mt-daapd-ssc.sh “/mnt/h
da/audiotron/Christmas_wavs/O Christmas Tree.flac” 0 132.933 “flac”

if you look at that file, (/usr/local/bin/mt-daapd-ssc.sh), that’s the file that does the transcoding. All it really does is take the file its passed and throws a .wav out stdout.

If you look at the file, it basically boils down to:

flac --silent --decode --stdout "/mnt/hda/audiotron/Christmas_wavs/O Christmas Tree.flac"

Try that command and see if it works. You should get “RIFF”, followed by pages of crap that probably dorks up your terminal. At least I warned you this time.

If you don’t get that, then that’s your problem. You are missing flac, or your “flac” binary doesn’t work, or someting like that.

If it *does* work, then it just isn’t working in the context of your daemon. Maybe you dont’ have it on your path when it’s running as the daemon. Try adding a full path to the binary in the transcode script.

FLAC=flac

becomes

FLAC=/usr/local/bin/flac

Or whatever. Hopefully that will get you going. Although I’d understand if you chose not to listen to me again after last time. 🙂

— Ron

[mbscad]

Hi Ron,
thank you for your help -it’s greatly appreciated.

You were right (again) the problem was the path defined in the mt-daapd-ssc.sh file. I changed the declaration of FLAC but still no sound then I realised it was handing off to Wavstreamer, changed that declaration as well and I’m listening to Christmas music in November!

I am now a very happy bunny having traversed a steep learning curve.

Many thanks for your help.

[g0pkh]

Hi.

For what its worth, I too have come across this exact problem.
I built the 1359 install using rsimmons documentation on my LS11.

I tried a test session the other day using FLAC for the first time, and found that my SB’s failed to play them, it was exactly the same problem, just needed to add the path to FLAC and WAVSTREAMER in the mt-daapd-ssc.sh file.

I am trying to convince myself that FLAC sounds better than 320K mp3, (It certainly should) but alas my ears don’t seem to be able to detect the difference, 🙁

Pete

[rpedde]

@g0pkh wrote:

I am trying to convince myself that FLAC sounds better than 320K mp3, (It certainly should) but alas my ears don’t seem to be able to detect the difference, 🙁

Those of us that spent lots of time in the engine room without hearing protection can only barely tell 192s from flacs. :-/

— Ron

[risimmonsuk]

@g0pkh wrote:

For what its worth, I too have come across this exact problem.
I built the 1359 install using rsimmons documentation on my LS11.

Funny that – I followed the procedure described in those instructions too 😉

And oddly enough FLAC no longer seems to be working on my setup (I’m sure it used to, and I haven’t changed anything!)

I only have one album encoded in FLAC, so I hadn’t got around to investigating the problem. Could well be the same issue – I’ll give it a go.

[g0pkh]

risimmonsuk

Your documentation is excellent. 😀

My server has been working superbly, with the 2 instances, completely stable.

Have you tried upgrading your nightly version yet ?
Just wondered about the best way to do it, presumably we can just download the latest mt-daapd.gz file, and build that.

Pete

[g0pkh]

Just a thought risimmonsuk

Another Roku forum menber Richdunlop has put together excellent documentation for the NSLU2 and Ron has hosted it on the Firefly Wiki.

I think your Linkstation documentation would be good there too. 🙂

Pete

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