Squeezecenter 7.0 Gold sound quality?

JoshK · « **Reply #20 on:** 15 Mar 2008, 06:57 pm »

Do any of you also find Squeezecenter a total resource pig? Typically when I run SC, and look at the task manager, SC takes up about 80mb of memory but IE is consuming another 300-500mb and the only IE session is the one running the SC interface. That is terrible and makes me think that Slim's programmers need to study up on resource management.

ctviggen · « **Reply #21 on:** 15 Mar 2008, 08:36 pm »

Resource management is a lost art in the computer world -- why become good at this, when everyone has 2gB RAM and 1 TB drives? Or at least that's the thought.

Tweaker · « **Reply #22 on:** 15 Mar 2008, 09:07 pm »

Initial impressions only as I've only been listening for a short while but I've just installed 7.0 Gold and it seems to sound fine. I switched back and forth a couple times between 83 and 86 using the handy dandy Firmware Selector and I'm hard pressed to hear any difference in sound between the two.

larrettp · « **Reply #23 on:** 25 Mar 2008, 10:42 am »

I have successfully installed SC7 and it is working but it is PAINFULLY slow. The speed of the response was my main criticism of the old system and I was hoping for a faster database access path with this release.

There are 7627 songs in my preferred 'standard' playlist. Does this seem like a large amount?

I have a ReadyNas NV with 1gig of RAM.

The home page shows the following:

Hostname: nas-01-1D-C7
Model: ReadyNAS NV [X-RAID]
Serial: 000da20121df
Firmware: RAIDiator 4.01c1-p1 [1.00a041]
Memory: 1024 MB [ 2.5-3-3-7 ]
MAC address: 00:0D:A2:01:21:DF
IP address: 192.168.2.4
Gateway: 192.168.2.1
DNS: 62.6.40.162
194.74.65.69

My SqueezeCenter stats are:

SqueezeCenter Status
Information on all identified devices connected to SqueezeCenter

Library statistics Total Tracks: 20,066
Total Albums: 1,672
Total Artists: 1,033
Total Genres: 75
Total Playing Time: 1475:11:30

Music Scan Details Directory Scan (34 of 34) Complete 00:07:19
Playlist Scan (37 of 37) Complete 00:53:23
Merge Various Artists (1587 of 1587) Complete 00:23:37
Artwork Scan (3 of 3) Complete 00:00:05

Database Cleanup #1 (20151 of 20151) Complete 00:11:26

Database Cleanup #2 ( of ) Complete 00:21:30

Database Optimize ( of ) Complete 00:11:48

SqueezeCenter has finished scanning your music collection.02:09:08

SqueezeCenter Information

SqueezeCenter Version: 7.0 - 17844 - Netgear RAIDiator - EN - utf8
Server IP address: 192.168.2.4
Perl Version: 5.8.8 sparc-linux
MySQL Version: 5.0.24a-Debian_3.infrant1
Platform Architecture: sparc-linux
Hostname: nas-01-1D-C7
Server Port Number: 9000
Total Players Recognized: 2
Cache Folder: /var/lib/squeezecenter/cache
Plugin Folders: /usr/sbin/Slim/Plugin, /usr/share/perl5/Slim/Plugin, /usr/share/squeezecenter/Plugins

larrettp · « **Reply #24 on:** 25 Mar 2008, 10:43 am »

One other thing...

The 'Save Playlist' function doesn't seem to work at all. It just interrupts whatevever is playing, blanks the left side of the browser and, after it has finished whatever buggering about it is doing in the background, allows the players to resume having done nothing.

larrettp · « **Reply #25 on:** 25 Mar 2008, 10:43 am »

OK, I seem to have made some progress regarding the 'Save Playlist' issue:

I re-booted the ReadyNas with the options ticked for checking file status etc.

Now, when I load a playlist, the name comes up in the bottom left hand corner of the window and I can save it as before.

The problem I am finding now is that I can only seem to add one album at a time to the playlist rather than a whole bunch at once. It is also still VERY SLOW. Surely, that was the biggest problem originally and it doesn't seem to have been addressed. A playlist is only a list of file addresses which is added to a text file. These are available in the database and should be retrievable in no time at all. Given that it takes so long to do a library scan in the first place, why can't it build all the information needed for instant playlist generation?

woodsyi · « **Reply #26 on:** 25 Mar 2008, 12:40 pm »

I am not sure if SC7 is a resource hogger. I have been running SC7 on my old ReadyNas with only 256MB memory. I have little over a thousand CDs on it so far and it takes a little time to access the library. Otherwise, it's running fine with firmware 86 on the SB2/3 and firmware 36 on the Transporter. Interestingly Transporter is faster than SB2/3 in these tasks. When I use the remote all three players would respond but transporter consistently brings up the album/playlist faster. I run all three wired.

larrettp · « **Reply #27 on:** 25 Mar 2008, 01:56 pm »

I run my SB3's wired as well but it doesn't make a lot of difference. The fact is that the web interface takes SOOO long to load and that is running on the ReadyNas. This seems to be a universal problem and NOBODY is addressing it. Obviously, the database structure is inefficient (I am a DB2 Database Administrator professionally so I can recognise where the problems lie). If that is coupled with inefficient SQL, the results are bound to be slow. The size of the database should be irrelevant if proper indexing is used.

Why hasn't somebody resolved these problem sooner - they existed in v6. Just making the interface prettier doesn't disguise bad programming.

bpape · « **Reply #28 on:** 25 Mar 2008, 02:03 pm »

I have a hard time believing it's all DB related. It would have to be REALLY REALLY bad. Also, if it was purely DB related, it would show the same issues on the non-web interface.

Bryan

larrettp · « **Reply #29 on:** 25 Mar 2008, 02:23 pm »

I think it is a compatibility problem with ReadyNas and the database. The two sides have never fully co-operated with each other to create a fully integrated product and I was optimistic that the Netgear and Logitec takeovers might resolve this. Let's face it, we are talking about 2 excellent individual products which don't work well when you put them together.

If it is possible to create small playlists and shuffle them easily, then, obviously, size is the issue. Once you try to add to a list greater than 1000 songs or so, it becomes unmanageable.

Functionally, I find the whole thing weak as well. A 'drag and drop' gui solution (as in iTunes) would be a much better solution.

Believe me, I had the system pretty well tuned (but still a bit slow). As I said, I was (naively) expecting wonderful things from what seems like a complete re-write but, as so often happens, I was headed for disappointment.

JEaton · « **Reply #30 on:** 25 Mar 2008, 08:20 pm »

Quote from: JoshK on 15 Mar 2008, 06:57 pm

Do any of you also find Squeezecenter a total resource pig? Typically when I run SC, and look at the task manager, SC takes up about 80mb of memory but IE is consuming another 300-500mb and the only IE session is the one running the SC interface. That is terrible and makes me think that Slim's programmers need to study up on resource management.

SlimServer/SqueezeCenter has always been a bit of a memory hog, but 80-90MB shouldn't tax many modern PCs and certainly shouldn't be a problem if you're running a dedicated server.

The browser memory issues are a different matter. A lot of effort was put into creating a nicer, easier to use, more dynamic web interface. It's an incredibly difficult thing to do when targeting 1/2 dozen or more popular browsers. I know that IE, particularly IE6, gave them a lot of problems. I use IE6 for my daily browser, but even going back to SlimServer 5, have never found the SlimServer web interface to run very well under IE, so have always used Firefox for the web interface, where things are much more well-behaved. I don't see anything like the memory usage that you see when using Firefox - about 75MB usage with a single tab open with the new Default skin.

larrettp · « **Reply #31 on:** 26 Mar 2008, 10:55 am »

'A lot of effort was put into creating a nicer, easier to use, more dynamic web interface.' - JEaton

I'm sorry to say this but a 'nice, easy to use, dynamic web interface' isn't worth a light if the underlying structure of the hardware, the database and the programs are not efficient. It just means that I get prettier colours while waiting for ages for something to happen.

As I said earlier, I'm running SqeezeCenter on a ReadyNas NV and the performance is disastrous! Slimserver blame the ReadyNas and vice-versa while I (the customer) sit in the middle and make system changes which should be fixed at source.

I know this is typical in the retail IT world (Microsoft being the absolute worst offenders) but the issue of performance has been highlighted for so long now it is well past time that one or the other (or preferably both) vendors finally took responsibility for their substandard (expensive) products.

bpape · « **Reply #32 on:** 26 Mar 2008, 11:30 am »

Ya just gotta be realistic. It was designed to work on a PC. Always was. People are trying to shoehorn it onto a NAS device and it's not exactly snappy - and that's Slim's fault? It's a PC app. NAS devices are great for storing the music itself - evidently not so great at running the application.

Bryan

larrettp · « **Reply #33 on:** 26 Mar 2008, 12:08 pm »

OK, so why bother marketing it as such? ...and why isn't anyone TRYING to make the other platforms work more efficiently?

woodsyi · « **Reply #34 on:** 26 Mar 2008, 12:59 pm »

I got my ReadyNas before they were marketing with Slim Device. I am quite pleased that I don't run my PC while the NAS is running the SC. It was never meant to carry full server functionality and I am good with it. I got this combo for the convenience of leaving it on 24/7 and just have music ready whenever I turn my audio on in the evening.

larrettp · « **Reply #35 on:** 26 Mar 2008, 01:24 pm »

Absolutely! That is what I wanted from it and, to a certain extent, it works great like that. The problem is setting it up to perform acceptably. I want to have a random playlist of my favourite music readily available. Admittedly this is very large (currently about 7500 songs) but I don't see why it can't cope.

bpape · « **Reply #36 on:** 26 Mar 2008, 01:28 pm »

Quote from: larrettp on 26 Mar 2008, 12:08 pm

OK, so why bother marketing it as such? ...and why isn't anyone TRYING to make the other platforms work more efficiently?

Agreed. But that's Ready, not Slim/Logitech. Slim designed it to be run on a PC. No, it's probably not the most efficient code in the world, but what is any more. Coders are lazy with resources since there is so much memory and processor available. Yes, the DB could be optimized better but how many people really have 1000+ song playlists? I'd suspect < 0.1% Kinda defeats the purpose of a playlist IMO.

If we really want it efficient, somebody needs to sit down with the API's and code something new. To be the fastest, it'd be in assembler on the back end, but then you lose your cross platform capability. Realistically, if someone were to take the the time, it could be done in Java/Javascript with a MySQL back end and maintain 'freeware' status and it could be much faster, smaller, tighter than it is today. Even then, that doesn't guarantee that the code the API's are accessing isn't going to still slow things down. You'd almost just need to ditch everything and start from scratch only accessing the DB tables such as they are.

Bryan

larrettp · « **Reply #37 on:** 26 Mar 2008, 01:47 pm »

I totally agree with you. That is the only way forward at this stage. As far as the size of a playlist goes, it shouldn't matter in a well optimised and indexed database and my playlist is only a cut-down of my very large (and totally legal) music collection - I'm just very esoteric in my tastes!

However, if Netgear and Logitech want to continue selling their products with good customer satisfaction, they should invest some time and money in the user interface and get it sorted out.

knightbanshee · « **Reply #38 on:** 28 Mar 2008, 07:08 pm »

I'm not using a NAS server, just an older PC and a networked external harddrive. What I noticed on SqueezeCenter is the same as others plus a few additional issues. First, it is really slow, and while my PC is old, SlimServer 6.5.x never updated that slowly (but yes, it was slower than I would have liked). Geez!! Second, I noticed hesitation of a currently playing songs on my player as I added songs to the current playlist?! As irritating as the older stuff was, it *never* did that! The web interface moved me to write my own Windoze application to drive the server. I have no interest in multi-platform support, just want an easy, intuitive playlist builder. I do OK with Windoze app development but I suck at database queries. If I get that straightened out, I prolly won't use the web app at all...well, except for remote-streaming to work.

knightbanshee · « **Reply #39 on:** 28 Mar 2008, 07:18 pm »

Another point: If this was written to be run as a PC app, why a Web App? I've never found any web applications to run all that zippy. Why not a simple GUI exe with DB and slimserver telnet CLI hooks? Is it just for cross-platform capatibility?

P.S. New to this forum, what's the Now Playing textbox for?