Sharing Music and Feedback

[casperes1996]

Hey all!

First time trying this but I thought it'd be fun. Recently restrung my guitar, and wanted to learn something new, so I sat down, learned and recorded Cat Stevens' Father and Son today. - Recording has some rough edges. - I'm not that good at audio engineering and mixing and stuff. Solo part is also a bit eh on the timing and things and I don't have the best voice in the world. But! I thought it could be fun to share, encourage others to share music they've made and perhaps we can all give each other constructive feedback/criticism or something? Just a community idea, feel free to participate as much or as little as you want in any aspect of this or just read along and listen. Here's my cover of Father and Son

https://theparallelthread.com/music/FatherAndSon.mp3

 

[mikzn]

Nice Job 👍 - Great Song 👍

 

[casperes1996]

Nice Job 👍 - Great Song 👍

Ey, thank you very much

 

[Okla]

Pretty good job, sir! Some of the timing is a bit off, but you did this great acoustic tune some real justice!

By the way, do you still receive questions via PM (IAW your signature block)?

 

[casperes1996]

Pretty good job, sir! Some of the timing is a bit off, but you did this great acoustic tune some real justice!

Thank you!

By the way, do you still receive questions via PM (IAW your signature block)?

Always! PM, Discord, email, start a thread and @ me. Whatever you want.
Non-MacRumors contact info can be found on my website:

Welcome to The Parallel Thread

Always happy to help with anything I can here or wherever it's easiest for folk

 

[Okla]

Well, I'll start from the start and see where it goes...Last year, during lockdown, we started thinking about creating a "digital jukebox" for a room we will [eventually] move our A/V stuff into and use for entertainment purposes. At roughly the same time, we began experiencing GPU problems with our old MBP 17, so we started looking for a newer MBP. Fast forward several months and we finally got our hands on a [new to us] mid-2015 MBP-15, so I moved a clone image of the MBP 17 over to the MBP 15, and now both machines share OS X 10.11.6 "El Capitan," which experience tells us is a rock solid O.S.

We received a Linksys Velop WHW03 router with the MBP-15, so we ordered a network switch and began working on ways to employ the router. So, after getting the MBPs to share files and, after a struggle, we figured out how to get them to communicate with the router (wirelessly)...and, after all of that, I can certainly tell you that Linksys leans on the internet...which brings me to the next "thing." We live in a mountainous environment, so we don't have access to anything even resembling "high-speed" internet...and, as a result, we employ cell phone hotspots and "ration" the data out to get our monthly internet service.

Once we were sure that we had our own little intranet LAN up and running, we received the network switch and began adding some playback devices to the network for testing purposes. Not that I intend to misrepresent anything, but we've scrimped and saved for nearly 20 years to put together a decent McIntosh and B&W audio system...and the only reason I mention that is so you might better understand why I'm concerned about the present issue.

You see, we chose JRiver MC28 for Mac as our media server software. Why? Because, by all reports, it can organize and send media from a storage device to playback devices without what G.W. Bush once famously called "the internets." For testing purposes, the storage device in the equation is the older MBP-17. It is also the machine that JRiver presently resides on, so one could say that it's the media server in our proposed "digital jukebox" project.

So I began with MC28 for Mac by ripping some redbook CDs from our [modestly] large music collection and used the same software to convert the raw .cda files to the lossless .flac format....which finally brings me to the issue at hand...somehow or another, the .flac audio that we're sending out over our network is being received by our playback devices -- an Oppo 105D and a Sony X800M2 -- as .mp3 audio that plays at 128 Kbps.

I hate to sound like some kind of an audio aficionado, but we've spent a great deal of time and money on this whole thing to end up playing one of the oldest compressed audio file formats in existence. If you happen to know anything about DLNA compliance -- or, perhaps, a better media server software application for Mac -- I'd really appreciate either your advice or a good pointer.

Thank you for your consideration,
Okla in the States

 

[casperes1996]

Well, I'll start from the start and see where it goes...Last year, during lockdown, we started thinking about creating a "digital jukebox" for a room we will [eventually] move our A/V stuff into and use for entertainment purposes. At roughly the same time, we began experiencing GPU problems with our old MBP 17, so we started looking for a newer MBP. Fast forward several months and we finally got our hands on a [new to us] mid-2015 MBP-15, so I moved a clone image of the MBP 17 over to the MBP 15, and now both machines share OS X 10.11.6 "El Capitan," which experience tells us is a rock solid O.S.

We received a Linksys Velop WHW03 router with the MBP-15, so we ordered a network switch and began working on ways to employ the router. So, after getting the MBPs to share files and, after a struggle, we figured out how to get them to communicate with the router (wirelessly)...and, after all of that, I can certainly tell you that Linksys leans on the internet...which brings me to the next "thing." We live in a mountainous environment, so we don't have access to anything even resembling "high-speed" internet...and, as a result, we employ cell phone hotspots and "ration" the data out to get our monthly internet service.

Once we were sure that we had our own little intranet LAN up and running, we received the network switch and began adding some playback devices to the network for testing purposes. Not that I intend to misrepresent anything, but we've scrimped and saved for nearly 20 years to put together a decent McIntosh and B&W audio system...and the only reason I mention that is so you might better understand why I'm concerned about the present issue.

You see, we chose JRiver MC28 for Mac as our media server software. Why? Because, by all reports, it can organize and send media from a storage device to playback devices without what G.W. Bush once famously called "the internets." For testing purposes, the storage device in the equation is the older MBP-17. It is also the machine that JRiver presently resides on, so one could say that it's the media server in our proposed "digital jukebox" project.

So I began with MC28 for Mac by ripping some redbook CDs from our [modestly] large music collection and used the same software to convert the raw .cda files to the lossless .flac format....which finally brings me to the issue at hand...somehow or another, the .flac audio that we're sending out over our network is being received by our playback devices -- an Oppo 105D and a Sony X800M2 -- as .mp3 audio that plays at 128 Kbps.

I hate to sound like some kind of an audio aficionado, but we've spent a great deal of time and money on this whole thing to end up playing one of the oldest compressed audio file formats in existence. If you happen to know anything about DLNA compliance -- or, perhaps, a better media server software application for Mac -- I'd really appreciate either your advice or a good pointer.

Thank you for your consideration,
Okla in the States

Unfortunately I am unfamiliar with most of the specific equipment in the audio chain and thus cannot really pinpoint where it goes wrong.
All I can say is that any solution that doesn't rely on streaming the audio from outside services should be able to work without internet. And if your setup allows you to pick the audio destination from the Audio MIDI Setup application on the Mac, any audio player will send the audio through it.

My best advice is to create a new thread here and perhaps also on some more audio oriented forums and see if anybody can provide any better help.

My own setup relies mostly on Apple Music and wired audio, and I just play the files through Music, formerly iTunes, where I for lossless rely on ALAC instead of FLAC just because ALAC is natively supported by the application, but being lossless is effectively the same.

I have no idea of the issue actually is with the playback software, but if it is you could try VLC. Mostly known as a video player it also plays FLAC audio just fine and should support DLNA. That said it's not per se a jukebox or media collection program so much; It's not going to give the best organisational experience IMO, but I'd try it as a troubleshooting step to see if it is the playback software. It could very well be your receivers.

All this is a bit of a long-winded "I don't know" I guess, but I hope at least some of it provides a modicum of help, even if that help is just about finding someone else who knows more about these specific topics than I do.

 

[Okla]

Nadda problem, my friend. Your thoughts are very much appreciated and well received...and you were certainly no more "long-winded" than I was. It's the old engineer in me. 📀