So I thought I’d provide an update on my newbie progress.
I'm using the Kodi player and the QNAP TS-451+ server/NAS as described in the first post. I’ve pretty much given up on using JRiver MC due to the problems it had processing multichannel audio due to buffering issues. Kodi does not seem to exhibit these problems. My assumption is that JRMC needs a more powerful processor than the quad core Celeron in the QNAP. I still keep track of the support page for JRMC in an effort to try and get more answers
(here). It seems they did finally fix the main bug where JRMC required a re-install if the NAS is powered down.
I’m using DVDA Extractor to rip DVDA and DVDV disks to 24/96 flac. Most of my multichannel music collection is DVDA/V of some type. Its working great with no issues. Playback is smooth as silk.
I started ripping music videos from the DVDA/V disks with makeMKV. It seems to do its job. I haven’t tried doing a lot with these yet other than checking for correct playback. They all need to be properly named or tagged and then brought into the Kodi library somehow. Any advise on handling music videos in Kodi would be welcome.
I’m using Exact Audio Copy (EAC) to rip stereo Redbook to flac. Again, no issues.
I’m using Tagscanner to tag all these rips. Excellent utility.
I have about 25 SACD ISO files, some multichannel, some stereo. One advantage with JRMC over Kodi is that JRMC can handle these ISO files directly while Kodi can’t. I started using Sonare’s ISO2DSD software to convert these ISO’s to .dsf files. I soon found out that there was a problem in my system with these transfers producing a loud pop when switching tracks. This was more than a nuisance. It was loud enough to cause speaker damage at high volumes. Research into the limited info on the web indicates it could be an error in the ISO2DSD software (handles the empty space at the end of a track improperly), or it could be the way my prepro (Emotiva UMC-200) handles format changes (although it really doesn’t change formats when playing). My popping problem seems much louder than the reports of the pop produced by the conversion error. In any case I soon found that using the .dff option in ISO2DSD does not produce this result. Playback of .dff/.dsf is smooth and issue free on Kodi, except for the .dsf popping.
For those who don’t know (I certainly didn’t initially), .dsf and .dff are basically the same type of file container for DSD data, the primary differences being .dsf is a Sony sponsored format which supports tagging options while .dff is a Phillips sponsored format which does not support tagging options.
I came upon another solution (can’t remember where). Someone decided that the way to get around the popping issue is to first convert to .dff, and then convert the .dff to .dsf. They put together a GUI to do all this using the base ISO2DSD and DFF2DSF conversion programs. As you might imagine, the conversion time was quite long. I was disappointed trying it because I ended up with the same popping problem.
You might think that converting these SACD ISO’s to .dff’s would be the solution in and of itself. I mean, there shouldn’t be any difference in the sound quality based on format, and I don’t think there is. There is a problem in that .dff doesn’t support tags however. As of this writing, I haven’t found a way to get Kodi to load .dff files into the library (it will however load .dsf's into the library, whether tagged or not). I started a thread on the Kodi support page
here, but it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Note that Kodi will play the .dff’s without issue. It just can’t load them into its library. They have to be played from the file menu. Agggghhhhh….
Probably the most empty ended problem I have is how to deal with the dozen or so multichannel DTS music disks I have. I have found no way as of yet to convert these to anything usable on the NAS. Suggestions would be most welcome.
Lastly, the QNAP app center suggested I upgrade Kodi to the latest available version (Jarvis 16.0.0), which I did. While there might have been some small improvements, the biggest downside for me is that the visualization aspect for music was “moved”. I must say I enjoyed the visualizations Kodi provided before the update. The Kodi people still seem to be sorting this out
here, but until it gets fixed, there are no longer any visualizations in Kodi for me. I get the feeling from reading through the support threads that getting the Kodi development team to look into something like that is not going to happen fast. Kodi for Windows was unaffected, but the QNAP is linux based. I have exactly zero experience with Linux, so it could get ugly getting those visualizations back.
That’s it for now. As always, if you have any comments or suggestions I would be more than happy to hear them.