[Network Bridge Serial No.455500004555000053068, Mosaic Processor version 1.0.1 (501) and Mosaic Control version 1.0.1 (38)]
I am evaluating the Network Bridge with the intention of buying one to replace the Bridge II renderer in my PS Audio DirectStream DAC. Currently I use MinimServer software on a Synology NAS to serve music and control play using BubbleUPnP software. This setup has been ultra reliable for several years, playing music gaplessly with no dropouts, clicks etc. The great majority of my music library of 100k tracks is CD quality. I had no problems installing the Network Bridge: I am using the single AES output to connect to the PS Audio DAC. My immediate impression was a noticeable improvement in sound quality relative to that from the PS Audio Bridge II renderer: the music was noticeably more involving. Subsequent investigation revealed an issue of major importance to me:
Navigating my library down through Service > UPnP > NAS library > Genre > Albums > alphabetical list > Albums ‘B’ (say) the display shows album title on the 1st line and composer on the 2nd line. A large proportion of my library is classical music so I use the ‘album’ metadata heading to define a classical ‘work’. As I have multiple performances of many works I need a display that has ‘artist’ not ‘composer’ on the 2nd line. Is this a possible option with Mosaic? I have been unable to find any relevant information in the user guide. I have set up the tag options within MinimServer to {Album, Artist} and this is how tracks are displayed by the BubbleUPnP control app. Why does this not work with Mosaic? (Note I very rarely use Playlists, preferring to choose individual works for listening.)
Given this problem I checked using BubbleUPnP control instead of Mosaic. This gave me the Album/Artist display I’ve been using for years. Because the Network Bridge does not support gapless play with BubbleUPnP control I will have to use Mosaic control so it is very important to me to be able to get an Album/Artist listing with Mosaic. It is quite likely that in the 4 days I’ve been using the Network Bridge and Mosaic I may have not found a feature in Mosaic that will give this library listing. If this listing mode is not currently possible I’d be grateful for advice and suggest you address this issue urgently as I suspect there are probably many other users with the same requirement.
The issue that you are seeing with the composer being used in place of the artist name is a bug that was caught just prior to the release of Mosaic 1.0.0. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough time to fix it then. It’s been corrected in the latest development code and will be included with 1.0.2 when it ships (which will be soon).
As for gapless playback with 3rd-party UPnP control points this is a known limitation and we are not planning to make any changes here. With UPnP the control point software owns the play queue and handles the process of advancing to the next track. Although we provide a UPnP renderer interface and interface with UPnP servers for content, the underlying mechanism that we use for playback is proprietary and is not UPnP. Making our playback engine compatible with vanilla UPnP for gapless playback would severely cripple its functionality due to the number of limitations in the UPnP protocol.
Gapless playback is fully supported with Mosaic Control and as mentioned above the issue that you’ve noted with the incorrect population of the artist field will be corrected shortly.
This may be covered by the response from Andrew but in the Mosaic play queue it shows for each track the album artist and not the track artist as such. In Minimserver, I use ‘Artist’ to define track artist and ‘Album Artist’ to define album artist. This is very helpful for compilation albums but in the Mosaic queue I only see ‘Various Artists’ or such for each track. The playing now window though shows the correct track artist. I am getting the feel of Mosaic but hopefully future versions will be more BubbleuPnP like - e.g. larger cover art, track numbers, total playing time and scroll bar.
Album Artist will be shown in the Artist field for lists of albums of other containers. Track Artist will be shown for lists of tracks (album / container contents and the Play Queue).
A few months ago I switched my bluesound streamer with the network bridge. As a result I need to use mosaic. Though sound quality is much improved, I’m finding it clunky after the bluesound app. Specifically:
Artwork correctly sized for bluesound now comes in literally postage stamp size.
search function appears to not work on my NAS storage.
very irritating gaps in playback every few seconds from tidal. This is only intermittent, so far only a few times in a week, but when it happens the network bandwidth is absolutely normal otherwise.
radio paradise can only be rec’d with these intermittent gaps. This is consistent all the time. Other radio stations are fine.
In portrait view if you tap the small artwork icon in the playbar at the bottom of the screen you should find that you now have a full screen view and the artwork will occupy the whole of the upper half of the screen.
The UPnP server software that you use will define how Mosaic displays the data. So your search problem is likely to be due to incompatibility . Please read this :
I understand from other friends here that Asset also functions well. MinimServer can be configured via MinimWatch so that you can devise any permutation of search criteria that you prefer.
If you are referring to gaps when playing MQA files via Tidal there will be no support for gapless replay and this may be the cause of your issue,. Incidentally full MQA replay requires a current dCS DAC as well to fully render the file as Network Bridge only provides decoding i.e the first unfold.
If all other radio stations are fine then the problem is likely to lie with Radio Paradise or with some other external reason . Mosaic does not know which radio station it is playing, it is just a data stream.
no luck - the size of artwork is only about 2-3% larger on full screen view. I guess I’ll have to go back and individually increase the artwork size. That’s a few months work…probably not going to happen.
apologies…I am not a techie so uninformed about server protocols. The NAS is Synology, and it’s just about all I know.
no not only MQA… everything. Am aware that the first unfold is all I get with MQA. The dCS is so superior to bluesound that it’s no sacrifice!
yup I realise it’s the radio station that is for some reason not compatible with that particular radio station.
Reason I brought it up is because none of these issues arise with Bluesound. I do understand that mosaic’s relatively small user base does not allow you to apply the resources necessary to sort out these minor glitches. Not whining. I was just hoping that I was doing something wrong or that someone else had found a workaround. Thanks very much for the effort.
Just to be clear in regard to the use of “you” above, I am not part of dCS. I am just a humble punter like you. When a dCS technician posts they will identify themselves as such in the identity that you see.
Just to add a couple of points hopefully to clarify, given your response.
I do not understand why you are not seeing a large version of the artwork. Mosaic will resize it to fill the field provided:
Yes I am using a Vivaldi Upsampler but the Mosaic software is the same as Network Bridge. NB: this image is from a small Android phone screen. it you have Mosaic installed on a tablet the image will, of course appear larger with relation to the pause button.
Your Synology NAS is like a computer. It needs programs to function and to carry out tasks. NAS is Network Attached Storage. So all that does is store your files. However you will then want to send ( serve) them to applications such as a computer or video replay application or Network Bridge. To do this the NAS has to have server software - that is the program that carries the task out. With most music streaming applications a type of server software known as UPnP ( Universal Plug 'n Play) is used. You will see from the link I provided earlier that UPnP allows for different degrees of interpretation hence not everything is necessarily compatible with everything else - Universal is a bit of a misnomer.
In your case the simplest thing to do is to download MinimServer 2 to your Synology and MinimWatch 2 to your computer so that you can configure it and scan your music files into the server software. There is a dedicated version of MinimServer 2 for Synology:
If you are getting what sound like dropouts on Tidal and some internet radio that opens a number of possibilities other than I have mentioned. It could be problems from you ISP and available bandwidth at times of high demand or ( as so often in these cases) there is some incompatibility between Network Bridge and your router/switch settings. There are experts on the latter here in the community and if the problems persist I would suggest posting the make and model of your router and also advising how you connect to Network Bridge. Some routers have known problem default settings that you may need to defeat. This can be quite a deep rabbit hole but sometimes it is as easy as looking at your router settings and just unchecking a single option.
Magic. Thanks Pete, just installed minimserver. Search function is perfect! And most of the artwork is correctly sized. Your guidance much appreciated.
but sometimes it is as easy as looking at your router settings and just unchecking a single option.
