When you plug a USB drive.
Is there any way to read the full title of the song if it goes off screen in app? Any setting anywhere that scrolls the text, before it is queued?
USB drives such as flash or HDD models are for storage only and do not have the computing ability to support full navigation. so they are really meant for , say, a visitor bring round a few tracks to listen to. What you see will therefore be limited to the maximum characters and spaces provided for .
For more serious use then a media player can be installed on a PC or Mac with e.g an HDD drive feeding it connected by USB to the appropriate dCS port ( make sure you use the correct one - see the user manual if in doubt). Examples include JRiver or Audirvana.
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I guess this is the same for cover art?
My tracks are ripped to wav, there seems to be one Album I can see the cover art the rest no art is visible.
I’m setting up a NAS, so please correct. My understanding is the Mosiac App will run on tablet and likes of JRiver or Audirvana will run on NAS? Then I should get all the ‘bells & whistles’, like scrolling text and art work?
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Yes , it is the same for cover art. for some reason you are able to see one example only but you are unlikely to improve on that.
There is a a difference between a media player such as JRiver and Mosaic. The media player on your computer navigates the storage and actually plays the tracks out from the computer to the dCS DAC via USB. The Mosaic app on an Android or iOS device offers control only allowing navigation. The app does not itself play the track but instead sends a request to a UPnP server device like a NAS to send the track data to the second, hardware, part of Mosaic which is in the dCS unit. This plays the track. Instead of using a media player, the NAS has UPnP software installed to carry out these instructions from the app and the data is sent preferably via the network. This method offers optimum sound quality and you will see much more about the track title ( a ticker tape type display opens at the screen bottom which shows long titles) plus other information such as the cover artwork.
Mosaic is designed to work best with UPnP server software called MinimServer 2 and custom versions are available for various NAS brands. JRiver does have a UPnP function but I have not read great reviews of this. I have no detailed knowledge of Audirvana. Another option is Roon which you might like to google for further information. As you are already setting up a NAS then I strongly recommend the MinimServer2 route as this is what Mosaic was designed for.
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Thanks Pete.
I’ve been using the USB on my Bartok and now my Rossini, just recently purchased a NAS. Bit of a learning curve to get it all set up. I’ve just put the drives in the NAS and I’m going to configure…
I’ll be back on here, as my journey progresses.
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So I’ve set up my Synology NAS with MinimServer this is the light version, you can get the full for 30 days free. From the first usage of MinimServer I’m not impressed, you can now see art work. However the text on a track / artist if it is too long it still doesn’t scroll, it does for the track that is playing (I’m using DCS Mosaic app on my phone). For ones your browsing its still the same. Takes a while to find music, it’s just clunky. Do I need a tablet?
My next move is to download the full version and see what it brings to the party. If it can’t ‘cut the mustard’, then it will be binned.
What is everyone else using, apart from the all singing dancing Roon?
It sounds like you have not yet found all of the attributes that Mosaic has. A common issue is not knowing that there are various screen views and/or how to find them.
Scrolling shows when you have selected a full screen view in portrait view:
To see this you simply swipe up from the controls at the bottom. BTW, this screenshot shows a long track title part way through the tickertape type scrolling ( it continues beyond the word “della”., in fact you can just see the beginning of the next word appearing). This screenshot is from an Android phone, not tablet.
I don’t know what else you may find difficult as there are so many permutations. However be aware of the small icons at the screen bottom especially the furthest to the left showing the service you have selected. Using UpnP as an example, this shows the screen for your library for the service. Next to it is an icon for the play queue ( horizontal lines and “play” triangle). When selected the choice made from your library is shown at track level. Here you can selected various other actions like playing from a track within the album and not from number one.
Note that changing from one familiar control app to Mosaic does not necessarily reveal any actual issues but is often simply unfamiliarity.
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The text scrolls ok when it’s playing as you have pointed out.
However, say for example I wanted to queue up track 4-
04 Tina Turner - Undercove
I can’t see anywhere I can reveal the whole track name before I queue as the next track. Is there a way to show what the full name is-
04 Tina Turner - Undercover Cover Agent for the Blues.
Ignore the bottom left hand corner as I have taken it from my USB drive inserted, it does the same on the NAS.
I told you how to do this earlier:
When I say number one it can be 2, 4 or any other . Alternatively you can stay on the home page ( USB in your example.). Select the Tina Turner album, then tap track 4. This opens a small window giving you the option to Play Now, Add next or Queue. Given your example you just tap " Play Now" and, hey ho, track 4 plays.
Surely you don’t need to see more than "Undercov “to know that the track is called " Undercover Agent for the Blues”? However that leads me to a very important point. The only reason that you cannot see the entire track title is because you ( or whatever source you use) has concatenated the artist name and the track title into a single field. So the available track character length has been partly used up by something which is not actually the track name.So your problem is partly the way the metadata has been prepared.
If you look at the screenshot I posted, the artist name is shown on its own in a different field. Metadata should be based , as in my example, around the industry standard MP3 tagging.
When I say number one it can be 2, 4 or any other . You surely do not need to see the entire track name to choose what to play ? Or you can stay on the home page ( USB in your example.). Select the Tina Turner album, then tap track 4. This opens a small window giving you the option to Play Now, Add next or Queue. Given your example you just tap " Play Now".
Surely you don’t need to see more than "Undercov “to know that the track is called Undercover Agent for the Blues”? in order to cue it?
This brings me to a very important point. The reason that you cannot read those long line lengths is because, instead of using the industry standard MP3 tagging format for the metadata, the artist name and track title have been concatenated into a single field thus exhausting the character length available. Had MP3 tagging been used the track title would probably have been almost readable in full in the static display as the artist name would appear on its own in a separate line.
" However be aware of the small icons at the screen bottom especially the furthest to the left showing the service you have selected. Using UpnP as an example, this shows the screen for your library for the service. Next to it is an icon for the play queue ( horizontal lines and “play” triangle). When selected the choice made from your library is shown at track level. Here you can selected various other actions like playing from a track within the album and not from number one.
When I say number one it can be 2, 4 or any other . You surely do not need to see the entire track name to choose what to play ? Or you can stay on the home page ( USB in your example.). Select the Tina Turner album, then tap track 4. This opens a small window giving you the option to Play Now, Add next or Queue. Given your example you just tap " Play Now"
I understand what your saying above, that is not the issue here.
Got to do with-
"However, say for example I wanted to queue up track 4-
04 Tina Turner - Undercove
I can’t see anywhere I can reveal the whole track name before I queue as the next track. Is there a way to show what the full name is-
04 Tina Turner - Undercover Cover Agent for the Blues."
It might not be a issue here as I know the track / album / artist. I’ve got other tracks on the NAS, I can’t remember which track to select.
e.g.
- Tina Turner - Undercover Cover Agent for the Blues (extended mix)
- Tina Turner - Undercover Cover Agent for the Blue (long night mix)
- Tina Turner - Undercover Cover Agent for the Blues (heaven help me mix)
So from the screen if it just shows-
…Tina Turner - Undercove…
I don’t have a clue to select which one is the ‘long night mix’, if however during the queuing process I could see the whole track name then I can select track 2.
"However that leads me to a very important point. The only reason that you cannot see the entire track title is because you ( or whatever source you use) has concatenated the artist name and the track title into a single field. So the available track character length has been partly used up by something which is not actually the track name. So your problem is partly the way the metadata has been prepared.
If you look at the screenshot I posted, the artist name is shown on its own in a different field. Metadata should be based , as in my example, around the industry standard MP3 tagging."
So I ripped all my CDs with dBPoweramp (CD ripper), does that mean I need to re- rip them all again 
. In the format you describe above? Can this be done in an automated fashion, instead of a tedious manual process.
First I have to apologise for the double posting. I had a difficulty with the forum software ( the first posting “disappeared” while I was editing it and appears to have been posted mistakenly only to be discovered some time later).
There are two basic issues here.
Ripping using dbpoweramp.
This a a wonderful tool and the screenshot example that I posted is of a dbpoweramp rip as are all of my ripped CDs. The basic rips from the program are made according to MP3 tag standards and will normally result in the kind of display I posted without further action except in particular circumstances. So, if you have been using it correctly you should be seeing something along the lines of my screenshot which is not the case from what I see of your Tina Turner screenshot.
dbPoweramp has various user choices available from the drop down menus but they are concerned with type of rip ( e.g. flac or wav) but the offered metadata can also be changed ( I assume if you have dbPoweramp you purchased it with the option of PerfectTUNES - of not there is another thing that you really need to have done). If you do change the information in the various fields then you need to be aware of how that will turn out when displayed in a streamer control app. For example different mixes of albums are best identified in the album title not by track ( in the latter case you need to devise a way within the character and space limit).
II cannot tell from the dialogue so far exactly what you have done and this isn’t an appropriate place to discuss in detail how to use a third party product. However I will mention that I do not know exactly what your screenshot shows me. Is it a rip of “Foreign Affair” or a playlist concocted by you? Is this from an HDD which I have already pointed our will not provide full details or navigation? The dCS units are network streamers and require a network storage system for local files i.e. NAS to work fully. If you use USB HDDs as your main storage method then you will need to use them with a media player app on your computer instead. They are only meant to be used directly into dCS units for limited occasional use such as playing tracks brought round by a visitor.
You can alter rip metadata using something like like MP3 tagger without having to actually re-rip. However we might need to discuss this in detail (PM?) and I have to warn you that one of the first things I read about ripping many years ago now was that when you start ripping be aware that you will have to do much of it again as you will have done it wrong the first attempt 
.
Available characters and Spaces
The Mosaic display has been designed to be read on a standard iOS or Android screen. So that the title line may fit it is limited in length to ( I think) 25 characters and spaces. You raise a valid point IMO that it may be insufficient. I don’t think it can be extended but perhaps there could be an “overspill” second line created for long titles. I don’t have any idea of how practical this may be but you could create a request here for something as a new topic using the dCS Products category - dCS do read these and I can think of amendments to Mosaic that have subsequently been made if they get sufficient supporting requests.
Using a tablet rather than a phone will not improve this. The software is the same, it just appears bigger.
No need to apologise, these things happen.
“type of rip ( e.g. flac or wav)”
Ripped in wav-16 bit, 44.1khz
“( I assume if you have dbPoweramp you purchased it with the option of PerfectTUNES)”
I didn’t purchase PerfectTunes, that was extra. dbPoweramp is the latest version.
“For example different mixes of albums are best identified in the album title not by track ( in the latter case you need to devise a way within the character and space limit).”
Did you mean songs here? They are different mixes of songs rather than albums.
"However I will mention that I do not know exactly what your screenshot shows me. Is it a rip of “Foreign Affair” or a playlist concocted by you? "
Yes it’s a rip of cd- exact copy to wav.
“The dCS units are network streamers and require a network storage system for local files i.e. NAS to work fully.”
All my music is on NAS now.
“I read about ripping many years ago now was that when you start ripping be aware that you will have to do much of it again as you will have done it wrong the first attempt .”
Oh no! It took me forever to rip 
" Available characters and Spaces"
I can raise ‘request for change’, with DCS see if they can implement in their next release.
I’ll PM you, where you based globally?
I’ve attached some photographs of encoding used, tag naming setup (dBpoweramp), how it looks for a track- when you look at the tag properties in Windows.
04 Tina Turner - Undercover Cover Agent for the Blues
Sorry about the delay in responding.
Unfortunately I do not recognise this screen. That may be because the version of dbPoweramp I was using is now a few years old and the format has changed. Nearly all my ripping has been completed so there are a few fairly obscure CDs and any future purchases left to consider but nothing right now that stimulates a new purchase of it. Alternatively it could be that the screens I am used to are tied to PerfectTunes which you do not have.
I therefore have never had hands on experience in using this screen. However perhaps you could enlighten me as to how it functions. There seems to be two sections. The upper being a ( blank) form to be populated in order to create a file in dbPoweramp. Underneath is a list of track attributes ( from where?) with add or clear options. Do you need to transfer these attributes or those relevant to to the upper form or does something happen automatically?
After ripping is the result transferred to your HDD? Is all of the metadata information stored on the HDD or is it edited in some way? You say that you get the same result from using NAS. Which UpnP server software are you using? NAS is a network device ( hence its name) and the dCS units are network devices. Why use USB?
This won’t necessarily solve the line length issue but why you do not see what I do as per my screenshot.
Hi Pete,
Nice to hear from you.
“There seems to be two sections. The upper being a ( blank) form to be populated in order to create a file in dbPoweramp. Underneath is a list of track attributes ( from where?) with add or clear options. Do you need to transfer these attributes or those relevant to to the upper form or does something happen automatically?”
I’m sure the functionality is the same as the version you own.
The top screen shot shows- ripped in uncompressed format- Wav.
The second screen shot is showing how the tagging is getting written during ripping in dBPoweramp.
The third screen shot is the tag properties of a track in Windows Explorer.
No need to transfer any tagging as all done during rip process. However you can specify what is included in tagging (see screen shot 2).
“After ripping is the result transferred to your HDD?”
Ripped all CDs on my Windows laptop then transferred the complete folder of ripped CDs to Synology NAS which I recently built (see my third post above- “…I’ve just put the drives in the NAS and I’m going to configure…”
“Is all of the metadata information stored on the HDD or is it edited in some way?”
Not edited yet.
The tagging metadata is stored in the ripped file structure, the files are now on the Synology NAS. Unlike Naim rips they store metadata in a different place.
“You say that you get the same result from using NAS.”
Yes for this album, I can see the cover art and the rest of the metadata as per NAS. So NAS and USB stick same info displayed via Mosaic software.
“Which UpnP server software are you using?”
Synology NAS, DSM 7.2 (Which is the latest release), running MinimServer 2.2 (latest)
“Why use USB?”
Since I never had a NAS when I bought the DAC, I wanted to listen to music. The easiest way was to rip files and transfer onto USB stick plug it in DAC to get instant music.
“This won’t necessarily solve the line length issue but why you do not see what I do as per my screenshot.”
I do! When playing the songs.
The only issue is when trying to queue a song where the track title goes off screen (as I’ve explained earlier).
I’ve asked a question regarding tagging on MinimStreamer forum to see if they recommend a standard. This will ensure it is as their ask and all will be well when using Mosaic app. I can then re- arrange / add or delete as requested.