Reinstalled Slimserver...

ctviggen · « **on:** 22 Jan 2006, 01:27 pm »

First, I moved all my music to one central location (G:). All my music is in FLAC. I then reinstalled Slimserver on F: (my bootable drive) and had it search the new location on G:. Now, all of my CDs are playlists. Why? Do I have to delete every one of these?

This is why I have a love-hate relationship with Slimserver/squeezebox. When it works, it's fantastic. When it doesn't, its inexplicable and irritating.

Carlman · « **Reply #1 on:** 22 Jan 2006, 03:15 pm »

Well, if there were a contest for the person with the most issues with a Slimserver setup, you'd definitely win.

I have yet to have a real problem. I guess I'm just lucky.... and I'm comparing/burning in 2 SB3's at the same time! So I know it CAN work well... and it has for many others. It'll eventually come together for you.

Best of luck,
Carl

zybar · « **Reply #2 on:** 22 Jan 2006, 03:17 pm »

I am also using 2 SB2's with no issues.

What version of the Slimserver are you using Bob?

George

mgalusha · « **Reply #3 on:** 22 Jan 2006, 03:34 pm »

If you just re-installed without deleting the old files, it's possible the old database was just appended to and not replaced. This could cause double entries in the tables. I have moved files around on the disks and if I don't tell it to delete all the old data and do a complete rebuild I end up with entries to the old location and the new one.

You might try telling it to rebuild the index but if you want to be really sure, you could uninstall slimserver, delete the directory if the uninstall doesn't delete it and the re-install.

ctviggen · « **Reply #4 on:** 22 Jan 2006, 06:39 pm »

I'm using 6.2.1. I see what happened. I made the mistake of making the "music" folder and the "playlists" folder be the same folder. Any ".m3U" file is treated as a playlist, and every CD/album has an associated ".m3U" file. When I created playlists with NPR radio stations, these also have a ".m3U" file extension. I thought that the playlists would have a different extension -- like ".pls". So, I should be able to copy the NPR files to a different directory and set up the new directory.

This was a completely new installation of everything -- XP, all programs, etc. I purchased two 320 gb drives and a RAID controller. I'm using RAID 1 (mirroring) and I formatted the drived into two partitions -- one about 50gb for the OS and one of the rest for data. I reinstalled XP on the newly formatted OS partition and installed all programs. I copied all the data from my old hard drive to the data section of the new RAID drive. It took me all day.

Speaking of SB problems, would someone try to select "fade in and fade out" and see what happens. On my system, I cannot do this and must undo the setting and reboot everything.

ctviggen · « **Reply #5 on:** 22 Jan 2006, 07:28 pm »

Making a new "playlists" directory, updating the new server with the new directory, and copying the real playlists (not CD playlists) to this directory worked.

rosconey · « **Reply #6 on:** 22 Jan 2006, 07:40 pm »

for me -its just a whole lot easier to get up change the cd and sit back down,and i just could imagine how aggrivated i would get trying to install it-

zybar · « **Reply #7 on:** 22 Jan 2006, 07:43 pm »

Quote from: rosconey

for me -its just a whole lot easier to get up change the cd and sit back down,and i just could imagine how aggrivated i would get trying to install it-

Well when you have great functionality AND it sounds better AND it is relatively cheap, I will deal with bump or two in the road...

George

jackman · « **Reply #8 on:** 22 Jan 2006, 08:19 pm »

Quote from: rosconey

for me -its just a whole lot easier to get up change the cd and sit back down,and i just could imagine how aggrivated i would get trying to install it-

My experience has not been as difficult as some of the guys in the thread. I just plugged it in, loaded the software (Slimserver) and plugged in my password for the wireless, kind've like setting up my wireless card on my laptop. That's it. Works great, even the internet radio makes nice background music. The SB3 sounds very good and is very user friendly. Unlike a CD player, the SB has open source operating system and will constantly be upgraded. It's very high quality and sounds great, as Zybar and many others have pointed out. Even in stock form, I hear it sounds great.

Mine is from Redwine and I swear by Vinnie's workmanship. The remote is also easy to use and the controls are very intuitive, kind've like an iPod. The SB3 is also designed and manufactured in the USA. Kind've rare for a device of this nature. Maybe the coolest couple hundred bucks I have spent in a long time.

Cheers,

J

jermmd · « **Reply #9 on:** 22 Jan 2006, 08:47 pm »

Quote from: jackman

My experience has not been as difficult as some of the guys in the thread. I just plugged it in, loaded the software (Slimserver) and plugged in my password for the wireless, kind've like setting up my wireless card on my laptop. That's it. Works great, even the internet radio makes nice background music. The SB3 sounds very good and is very user friendly. Unlike a CD player, the SB has open source operating system and will constantly be upgraded. It's very high quality and sounds great, as Zybar and ...

That's my experience as well. My recent problem with the SB3 was because of corrupted data I added to my music folder. I can tell you for sure that once you've experienced the ease of the Squeezeback system, It's very hard to go back to CD's.

jermmd · « **Reply #10 on:** 22 Jan 2006, 08:48 pm »

oops, double post.

jermmd · « **Reply #11 on:** 22 Jan 2006, 08:49 pm »

Quote from: ctviggen

This was a completely new installation of everything -- XP, all programs, etc. I purchased two 320 gb drives and a RAID controller. I'm using RAID 1 (mirroring) and I formatted the drived into two partitions -- one about 50gb for the OS and one of the rest for data. I reinstalled XP on the newly formatted OS partition and installed all programs. I copied all the data from my old hard drive to the data section of the new RAID drive. It took me all day.

Bob,

That sounds like a very nice set up.

RoadTripper · « **Reply #12 on:** 22 Jan 2006, 11:39 pm »

I, too, find the SB3 to be fantastic when it works. And it works most of the time. I have had two FLAC tracks just not play. Stops the whole CD in its track (pun intended). I have also recently discovered that my FLACcing process produces a .wm3 or wu3 or just what I can't remember at the moment that, upon investigation is a playlist file. The presence of these in the directory where a CDs FLAC reside results in a premature termination of the playing of the very last track. I have taken to deleting them. It seems to have solved that problem.

I do have a Slimserver question that I am hoping someone here can answer. What is the 'rescan' function in Slimserver's UI for? I have been adding rips to my directory structure like crazy and have never done a rescan. Why would I ever need to do it?

jakepunk · « **Reply #13 on:** 23 Jan 2006, 12:06 am »

Quote from: Seminarian

I do have a Slimserver question that I am hoping someone here can answer. What is the 'rescan' function in Slimserver's UI for? I have been adding rips to my directory structure like crazy and have never done a rescan. Why would I ever need to do it?.

You have to rescan your library in order for those new rips to be found. If you are seeing them show up magically, then most likely the Rescan Plugin is doing it. Check Server Settings -> Plugins, and scroll down to see if it is enabled.

ctviggen · « **Reply #14 on:** 23 Jan 2006, 04:41 pm »

Joe, I went this way because I was using a 110gb drive as my main drive then a 30gb drive as backup. But then when I started using EAC to burn to FLAC, I quickly outgrew my 30gb backup. When I went to Newegg, it seemed all the cheaper drives were serial SATA instead of IDE/parallel SATA. I also was under the impression that mirroring with RAID would be like making a backup. I guess that's not entirely correct. Now, I have both an OS section and a data section. Personally, I'm going to back up both the OS section and the data section. It took me all day Saturday to reinstall to the new drives, and I still don't have many things reinstalled (such as EAC). It's so much easier to just reinstall the OS (assuming no viruses, etc.).

One question about the ".m3u" files -- don't you need these? Without the ".m3u" files, how does any program know what's on the CD? My EAC program also makes a "log" file, but these I can delete.

As for ease of use, even though I complain about the slimserver at times, it's way easier to use than a CD player. It's just that when it breaks, it's very hard to diagnose what's wrong -- darn near impossible many times. On my HT system, with a modded SB2, I'll likely never have problems, as I don't do anything but play music. On my upstairs, unmodded SB2, I change settings all the time and this causes problems. As for sound, I believe my modded SB2 sounds better than my transport/DAC. I'm not quite sure, because the modded SB2 has a noise issue, and is currently being sent back. Without the noise, I think the SB2 is better, but I need to do more testing -- the noise makes it unlistenable.

RoadTripper · « **Reply #15 on:** 23 Jan 2006, 06:11 pm »

My original laptop installation of the FLAC encoder software did not result (when FLACcing) in putting a .m3u file on the drive. It wasn't until I switched my whole operation to my brand new desktop (where I had to download and install the FLAC encoding software a second time) that these .m3u files showed up at all.

I googled m3u and learned they were playlist files. So, I guess my answer is that they aren't necessary at all, since I am not currently worried about playlisting any tracks and without the .m3u files, things work better than with them.

I still have problems with tracks that will play as long as they are .WAV files but if FLACced they won't work and stop the whole CD in its tracks. It has happened on at least 3 CDs so far.

I also have a SB3 starvation problem, which isn't supposed to occur. Apparently, this system works best with a dedicated music server on which no other computational work takes place.

ctviggen · « **Reply #16 on:** 23 Jan 2006, 06:46 pm »

I guess my question is the following: is the album title hidden in a FLAC file? I have the artist and song as part of the name of the FLAC file. Does Slimserver get the CD/album title from individual FLAC files or from the .m3U file? If from the individual FLAC files, then I could erase all the .m3u files, which might not be a bad thing. I could also figure out why EAC is creating them and turn that feature off, too.

ctviggen · « **Reply #17 on:** 23 Jan 2006, 06:51 pm »

About that starvation problem, have you looked into that? I have a wired network and I've been watching what happens to the network utilization when slimserver is running. What happens is that slimserver will burst (10-12% of 100Mbps) data, then send data out at 1-2% of network capacity. At the end of the song, the slimserver stops sending data (is it picking a new song? I use "random play" a lot), and then bursts data again. This is why you can get starvation -- if an application takes over while slimserver hasn't yet bursted, everything can stall.

dwc · « **Reply #18 on:** 23 Jan 2006, 07:01 pm »

FLAC files contain tag information just like mp3 files do.

If you use something like EAC to rip your files from CD to FLAC, then EAC can go out and grab the artist/track/title/genre information from the open DB and write those tags into the FLAC file at time of creation.
If you need to edit those tags later, you can use foobar 2000.

-Dan

edit: this means you don't need the m3u files.

edit2: EAC options -> Tools Tab -> Uncheck "Create m3u on extraction"

ctviggen · « **Reply #19 on:** 23 Jan 2006, 07:10 pm »

Coolness! Thanks. When I reinstall EAC, I'll make sure that's not checked.