BubbleUPnP and playing gapless

Okay… I know that dCS only give support if you’re using Mosaic with Minimserver but, it would help if anyone could offer some words of assistance. For a few months now I’ve been using BubbleUPnP with Asset UPnP for my backend and I’m 99.9% happy with this combination. It offers the ease of configuration and features of Asset, like spotting new albums and album jukebox, etc and, yes, I’ve paid for the new V2 of Minimserver but, at the moment, it doesn’t offer anything better than the old V1 - maybe it will one day. Also the excellent front end of Bubble which really is a dream to use. However what it won’t do is play gapless. I’ve tested using Mosaic and gapless is fine. Can anyone, PLEASE, offer any suggestions to resolve the problem when using BubbleUPnP? btw this is on the Bartok.

AFAIK gapless with dCS and Bubble UPnP is not possible. I think that you may find a reference to this if you search the archives.

The word “support” implies assist. However in this case it really means " the equipment has not been designed to work with…X" Please read the FAQ:

Okay… I’ll keep my fingers crossed for a better version of Mosaic and Minim to appear.

Never mind… :slight_smile:

I guess therefore that I ought to mention that there is a new version of MinimServer, MInimServer 2 which has been around for the last few months. However there is now a formal charging structure and the full version is no longer free/make a donation. Simon Nash (developer) says he has had to make the change as too few were donating and that funding mode was no longer viable. Better? I haven’t yet upgraded so have no opinion however I am a Melco user which has a dedicated version so I guess I could not generalise anyway.

Mosaic is a work in progress and the next iteration of it has been expected since the spring. However it has so far not emerged (perhaps a side effect from measures taken to deal with covid-19). Incidentally what do you not like about the existing version? I have found with most control apps that I have used that none have been better then their predecessor. That us until I get used to them when they then become the standard against which the next one fails. Until I get used…etc.

Yes I know… I’ve got a paid installation of V2 installed - £28. Honestly, so far, it’s no better than V1.

The layout of Mosaic is quite poor when compared to Bubble. tbh I’d have to run it again to highlight specifics. Also Mosaic doesn’t like Asset UPnP. In my opinion Asset with it’s functionality and ease of setup and operation is streets ahead of Minim. However even simply playing a complete album with Mosaic+Asset doesn’t work correctly :frowning: (and dCS and Asset are aware of this).
Another issue with Mosaic is it didn’t seem to like running 24/7. I have a 10" tablet sat on the HiFi rack. Screen is on 100% of the time and all it does is run the control app. I’ve been running Bubble like this for a couple of months and never a crash or anything untoward… simply switch the Bartok on and within 10 seconds of it booting up Bubble is showing the last played item etc… just as if it was never turned off! tbh I never got that degree of reliability with Mosaic.

Andrew has just said that Mosiac v.1.1.1 is to be available “soon” ( whatever that means) and that the discovery code has been completely re-written which may have bearing on the stability issue that you highlight.

I am not sure what you are expecting from Mosaic. dCS has stated that they do not intend to make it a competitor to Roon or similar products. It is for basic control and playing of our music.

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Well for a start something that’s more universal in it’s support for different UPnP servers. A better front end presentation wise would be nice but I can live without that.

Gapless playback with 3rd party control apps will not happen. This feature is in place for convenience but as I’ve mentioned before the methods that we use to manage the play queue are not in any way based on UPnP. I’m not going to go into details here as they aren’t very interesting, but suffice it to say that we would need to rearchitect our entire product in order to support gapless UPnP. Given that gapless UPnP playback is fundamentally flawed that’s not even worth entertaining. Yes, BubbleUP does work, but its one of the only ones that does. Over 70% of our customers use iOS and there is no viable UPnP control point on that platform since a proper UPnP control point breaks all of Apple’s power management rules.

We support servers that follow the UPnP standards to the letter. We strongly recommend MinimServer as it is the only one that we have found that does. Lots of others get close and work in many situations, but they all have quirks which cause them to behave in an unexpected way when issued a standard UPnP command.

Interesting as the Roon team has mentioned that as one on the main drivers of why they developed RAAT and don’t support UPnP in Roon.

That being said, I have Bubble UPnP on my Android phone, and have found the Bubble developer very responsive to queries in the past, have you tried asking him about gapless with minimswerver?

Yes… Bubblesoft have been quite good on other issues I’ve had but on this one it’s a dead end. I’ll carry on with Bubble+Asset for the time being… perhaps a) Mosaic will improve b) Minim will become user friendly. tbh, when choosing the Bartok I wasn’t aware that it was SO finicky re. the control app and UPnP server!

I’m having a brief play with Roon at the moment. I don’t need or want all the ‘extras’ it has but I’m just trying it out as an alternative platform. Struggling at the moment :frowning:

I doubt that we will see Bubbleupnp with gapless on dCS but it would be great if Mosaic could move to a more intuitive interface like Bubble, Roon or Sooloos. Screen grabs below illustrate difference between Bubble and Mosaic - no comparison really in terms of how they serve up my library for view/selection.

Bubble

Mosaic

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Yes…

Bubble on ‘Playing’…

Mosaic on ‘Playing’…

the list goes on… every screen/option on Bubble is presented with more flair and style and usability -bubble isn’t just a pretty face.

As you say no comparison.

Well it is pretty obvious from the image that you post that you haven’t got to grips yet with the different screen views available with Mosaic.

As for the grid view of available albums that has been a request for a while and we will see when v. 1.1.1 is available.

Possibly but for the life of me I can’t see how to change the size of the ‘playing’ window. In fact ISTR asking about this before and being told no, it’s fixed.

You can do it from the normal play screen by tapping the thumbnail in the control area at the bottom:

Then you will see:

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Yes, but this only seems to work in portrait mode. In landscape mode tapping the cover image enlarges it slightly. Still no comparison with Bubble which more logically separates the library and playing now screens and allows swiping between them.

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I was about to say the same… not in landscape mode. It seems mosaic assumes that everyone uses an iphone.

Steve and Keith I really think we are getting into a world of minutiae here.

Mosaic is a work in progress. If you make a request for this feature to be added then dCS can consider it. I do not see any gain to be made from implying that dCS have got it all wrong (strictly from your viewpoint of course).

If Bubble UPnP is your standard for a control app it is unfortunate that it is not reliable to use with the dCS range. As Mosaic and MinimServer seem to be so emphatically not to your taste then it seems that you have unfortunately bought the wrong product and may be happier with an alternative.

tbh the excellence of the products tend to out weigh the niggles with the software front end :slight_smile:

I just think that there are small changes that could be done to the control software to help improve the user experience. Slaving to the idea that all users have iphones and view in portrait format tends to impose compromises in the user interface. These are largely changes to screen layout which are easy changes (for my sins, I used to be a programmer back in the days of DOS and Windows 3 and 95!).

However, as I say, front end aside, once the Bartok starts to play you tend to forgive the process of selecting the album :wink: