Snakeoil Firmware - 1.1.4 (Blind Testing Update 4)

[mkysimes]

This is awesome! Bubbleupnp can now see MPD/upmpdcli on the pi and now I'm having fun switching between all of the different options! 

Thank you for this great update! 

I'll definately be toying around with this for a while, but I did find something kind of strange in BubbleUPNP. When I use it to stream tidal to squeezelite Bubbleupnp correctly reports that flac format is being streamed. When I stream to MPD/upmpdcli it says 320kbps. I did check the renderer settings but there is none available when connected to MPD/upmpdcli. Strange, but it still sounds pretty good. 

I will investigate this and see if I can find anything in why flac wont stream to MPD/upmpdcli. If anyone else has noticed this or knows a workaround I'm all ears. 

in the meantime, I'm loving this software! Thanks again for all of your hard work!

320 kbps could be the compressed bit rate. That could mean FLAC, it could also mean MP3. MP3 at 320 kBps is not really discernable for some people but there is a bit of quality loss with trained ears.

Hopefully your DAC will tell you what it is? e.g. with my DAC I know it's MP3 if the bitrate is 44100, but at 24 or 32 bits (Cannot remember which at this stage). But if playing redbook it will be 44100 at 16 bits.  

Yeah, it's strange the way Bubbleupnp handles streams differently for each renderer. My dac reads 44100 at 24 bits but it doesn't give me any more info like compression rate or container. And that stays static weather Bubbleupnp is showing Flac or whatever. The only time it changes is obviously if I change the sample rate to say 192 khz or something.

What is strange is that using Squeezelite, an Amazon Firestick, or just local (streaming directly to the phone), Bubble is showing as it should: FLAC - 44.1 - 16bit - Stereo. Streaming to Volumio results in a variable (changing) bitrate, usually between 600 and 1200 kbps. Streaming to MPD in Snakeoil shows 320 kbps or below. I had one song report 96 kbps but it certainly didn't sound that low of quality. 

Must be an MPD/UPMPDCLI thing. I'll do some more reading when I get some time and report back.

-Mike