[geofstro]

I've just discovered the music streaming app called Subsonic and I'm very excited about it, so I thought I'd post my experiences with it here.

What's so great about Subsonic compared with other streaming Apps? Well, it allows you to stream at full CD quality your entire music library, to just about anywhere. At least full CD quality will work reliably, I've found, as long as you're on a WiFi network. One user on the Subsonic forum reported he was even able to stream full CD quality over a 3G network.

Subsonic is really built to handle large libraries of music and allow them to be streamed to multiple users at the same time. I haven't tried with more than 2 -3 users within my family at CD quality; but I don't intend sharing my library beyond a handful of people anyway. On the Subsonic forum you'll see a lot of talk about transcoding. This is because most people want to be able to reliably stream to IOS or Android phones while on the move and the only way they can guarantee reliable streaming in those situations is to have the Subsonic server transcode wav, aiff or lossless formats like flac to MP3.

Turn transcoding off though and Subsonic just streams the original file, whatever format it happens to be in. To guarantee reliable streaming, I'm in the process of creating a copy of my entire library in flac with an ogg wrapper with compression set at max. There is no loss of quality with this method over the original CD files. Flac would probably work just fine without the ogg wrapper and Apple Lossless will work fine too. I just wanted to guarantee that whatever program I use in the future to stream from Subsonic it will probably be able to do so reliably.

As far as I know Subsonic is the only technology that allows streaming at full CD quality. My apologies if it has already been discussed here; but I looked and couldn't see any mention of it and like I said, couldn't contain my excitement. 

Here's a quick summary of it's advantages and limitations:

1/ Runs on any platform as it's written in Java. This includes running directly on a NAS. It's easy to install on a Mac/PC, a bit more challenging on a NAS and won't run on all NAS's.

2/ Connect using a Mac/PC from any location, using a secured web interface, to your Subsonic server and stream to that computer, playing back on any external player which supports streams. e.g. VLC on Mac, or Winamp, Foobar on Windows.

3/ Connect using an IOS or Android device and stream the music to that device for listening on the move. This might involve some transcoding to MP3 as mentioned above. iSub is the best App on IOS.

4/ Connect using an IOS device and onward stream the device to an Airport Express/AppleTV or (I guess) a SqueezeBox; etc device using AirPlay.

5/ If you have SubSonic at home running on a Mac/PC connected to your audio system, the app iSub running on your IOS device can be used as a remote by putting it in JukeBox mode. The Subsonic server must also be put in JukeBox mode via its web interface. Now the audio will play directly from the Mac/PC to whatever DAC you have connected and you can select the music using iSub.

6/ The developer and forum members are very helpful and forthcoming with advice.

Some limitations caveats:

1/ HiRez music above CD standard may not stream reliably. As usual YMMV, so it's always worth a try.

2/ Subsonic is donation ware; but it doesn't work like most donation ware in that you need to donate to obtain a license that will enable all its features, and you will want to do this. Suggested donation is $20.

3/ If using Subsonic in JukeBox mode (playing from the Mac/PC it's running on) you can only play via its web interface. I would like playback via any program I choose to be possible. Sounds pretty darn good via the Web interface though.

If any of you decide to check it out, I'll be interested if you share your experiences here. I really think Subsonic and technology like it is the future for those of us nomads who want to be able to play from our entire libraries wherever we are.

Geoff

[Hank]

forum link?

[charmerci]

Subsonic is really built to handle large libraries of music and allow them to be streamed to multiple users at the same time. I haven't tried with more than 2 -3 users within my family at CD quality;

Hmmm. I wonder how long it will take for the ASCAP/BMI police to come knocking on your door?

[geofstro]

Google is your friend!

...but just go to http://forum.subsonic.org/forum/index.php

As for those guys knocking on my door, it depends how you use it. Like I said, I just share it within my own close family. We have more than one home in different locations. I don't see how that differs from sharing music among a family in the same home.  As with any technology it's open to abuse and it's up to individuals to use it responsibly.

I sense a hint of paranoia in that last post!

[charmerci]

I sense a hint of paranoia in that last post!

I don't pull this kind of stuff out of the air.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2086310/Richard-ODwyer-extradition-Student-faces-10-years-US-jail-echo-Gary-McKinnon.html

[geofstro]

Perhaps I didn't explain Subsonic clearly enough. Your server is secured by user name and password. You can add other users, e.g. Members of your own household and restrict their privileges. It uses a specific port on the machine it's running on which has to be opened up for Subsonic on your router and allowed on any Firewalls you have running.

Optionally a secure ssl port can be used as with online shopping.

So this has nothing to do with: "Mr O’Dwyer is accused of listing places where films and TV programmes could be illegally downloaded"

When I said multiple users I simply meant more than one. I wouldn't want to extend it outside of my household, because I'd be concerned that the streaming wouldn't work well for me if there were more than three of us using it at the same time.

For this to work for a multitude of users you would need some serious hardware, possibly a server farm. I suspect this technology or something very similar is what is used by streaming services such as Qobuz. Of course though, they operate legally with appropriate agreements with the labels.

I'm simply talking about a technology which allows an individual to access his/her own library of legally purchased music wherever she/he maybe and share it with his/her own household. Of course members of a "household" will likely be in different locations at different times.

I hope that makes it clearer.

[JLM]

Not to derail this party, but NuForce has a hardware based solution for streaming CD quality:

http://www.nuforce.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=324:utx&Itemid=398

[geofstro]

I'm aware of those products, since I am a NuForce dealer; but it's not the same thing 

What I'm talking about is a $20 piece of software that allows you to stream from your entire music library at home to anywhere in the world you happen to be.

The NuForce products are great; but they are for wireless streaming within one location. You could probably use the AirDac in conjunction with a computer in one location which is receiving the streams from your SubSonic server in another location, to further send that stream wirelessly to the AirDac, as I mentioned you can do with an Airport Express or AppleTV.

The AirDac is not about global access to your music, it's about the last few feet 

[geofstro]

Now I've had a little more time to experience Subsonic I think I can provide a few more tips to anyone else who wants to experiment with it.

My goal was to stream CD quality sound to a location with a very good system, where there are no CD's stored and no CD player. Just a DAC with a remote volume control, which directly feeds a pair of active speakers.

During the day my wife uses this system and she has her hands full with our 1 month old baby daughter. She is comfortable using an IOS device to navigate to the music she wants to play and the DAC's remote control to adjust the volume.

With one hand free she's able to do this and choose from a library of music I'll know she'll enjoy, which I'm still building up from my ripped CD's.

Subsonic even allows me to see what she's playing while I'm at work, to help me decide what else to add to this library.

The whole idea was to have the best possible sound quality through a system that is as easy and simple to operate as possible.

This is achieved by the IOS app iSub accessing my Subsonic server at work and streaming the music she selects to the apartment. This is then on-streamed within the apartment to an AppleTV via AirPlay.

This system doesn't need any "apparent" computer, which is what I wanted. It's not that my wife isn't adept with Macs and PCs; but for the above reasons it needed to be very easy to operate.

Of course this probably falls somewhat short of the ultimate achievable in computer audio; but it is providing excellent sound nonetheless. I'd be interested if anyone else has set up a similar system using a remote Subsonic server as the source and is able to compare it directly to a no-compromise Computer audio system.

One compromise in this system is that because I'm using an AppleTV, the result won't be "bit perfect" . The AppleTV will change the original sampling rate from 44.1 to 48khz. An Airport Express may work out better for a pure music system; but this system also needs to provide video for films purchased or rented from the iTunes store.

It's also cool to turn on your screen and see the album artwork and title displayed for the file you're streaming from your remote Subsonic server.

I didn't want to encode this library at 48khz just to suite the AppleTV, because I will also want to stream from it through other devices.

If anyone wants to set up a system like this, just make sure transcoding is turned off in Subsonic and in the iSub apps settings "none" is chosen under bitrate at least for wifi (you may even want to try setting it to none for 3g as well).

For the format of the files in the library I ended up choosing Apple Lossless. At first I thought flac with an ogg wrapper (.oga) files would work best, because I read that the ogg wrapper is likely to be supported by more software that handles streaming. The problem is that flac has it's own tagging system and when I encoded some aiff files to flac/ogg I found that Subsonic could not figure out the correct track order for albums. Instead it listed and played the tracks in alphabetical order of the track name. Apple Lossless recognises the track # tags without any problem, so the tracks in each album are played in the correct order. So I've settled on Apple Lossless for this library and it seems to support http streaming just as well.

At weekends I bring my Mac Powerbook home and hook it up to this same system. Then I can use the USB input of the DAC and get bit perfect results; but the question then becomes what desktop player to use out of those which support http streaming of Apple Lossless files. The obvious answer might be iTunes; but what I really wanted was an experience as close to the one described above using an IOS app to select the music.

The answer for me turned out to be XBMC. This is because a Subsonic add-on exists for XBMC which allows it to talk directly to my Subsonic server. All the other players which support http streaming require you to access your Subsonic server from a web browser first, then download a playlist which can be automatically opened by a player such as VLC (or on windows only foobar, J River media and Winamp).

The only other players that can talk to the Subsonic server directly are native Subsonic players. I tried a couple of these; but they just didn't work for me. They seemed to get stuck on trying to buffer the files.

XBMC also has the added advantage of having both IOS and Android remotes available for it. I recommend the free xbmcRemote developed by the XBMC team. So this provides much the same experience as using Apple's Remote to navigate a local iTunes library.

If you use a Mac or PC running XBMC or other software which supports http streaming, you probably don't need to worry about what format your library is in. You should be able to stream aiff, wav, flac; etc without any problems. So you may want to try streaming in the format you have before considering duplicating some or all of your library in Apple Lossless.

The only downsides to XBMC are that the guy who wrote the add-on for Subsonic seems to have disappeared and no one has really taken on board support or development of it.

Additionally you will need to add a custom .xml file into a specific location for it to work.

I am only interested in XBMC as a front end to my Subsonic server. For this purpose I wanted to use the latest unstable version 12 build named Frodo. The stable version 11 release also works with Subsonic; but Frodo has a much improved audio engine with more options. Unfortunately I got a script error when trying to run the Subsonic add-on under Frodo; but I was able to de-bug and fix the errors. My version now runs fine under Frodo. If anybody's interested in this, just PM me and I'll send you a link to the necessary files in my DropBox account.