Google Media Server

[Briain]

Me too, but I suspect mine's more due to years of substance abuse (the substances abused being active Isobariks and Keltiks); in fact, I only bought 350's because my Keltiks didn't go quite loud enough to drown out all the screeches and whistles and felt really silly when I noticed that it was actually due to an old radio which had been left switched on for years. I've also got a serious Cyrus allergy (they cause severe nausia) and intermittent Sonos syndrome (but I'll fix that one day). I'm told there's a new ointment which helps

NB My Google thing seems to be indexing; see screenshot:
(picture moved to conclusions; 5 posts down)

Not yet sure why it's not showing the images (all tracks on all albums have them embedded in the FLAC's) but I've not yet had time to read how it's supposed to work.

[vicdiaz]

Music Lover Wrote:

vicdiaz Wrote:Talking about tinitus, I've been suffering a bad case for about three weeks due to sinus allergy and have not been able to fully enjoy my system.

Sinus allergy?
Joking, I hope.

Nope...

[Briain]

Nor me, I do actually have mild tinnitus!

Google UPnP:
I’ve just noticed that you can exclude all your local PC drives and also add the NAS media share containers. I’ve also noticed that you can right-click the Google icon in the system tray then select 'Indexing' and 'Re-index' to refresh things but my understanding is that this will not remove the previous stuff (unless you delete it). This means that the only way to purge the database is to uninstall Google Desktop (and select the option to delete the index) then re-install it!

Having done all the above and set it up to point only to the NAS/media/music area, it will hopefully now only index the music as opposed to absolutely everything on the local PC!

Indexing now and it looks like it'll take about 60 minutes to index about 1000 albums. For anyone about to try this out, here's a screen-dump of how I've set up the options for myself. I’m not saying this is correct - I won’t know until it’s finished and I’ve experimented further - but it looks promising:

(screen dump updated and moved to latest post; three posts down)

[Music Lover]

vicdiaz Wrote:

Music Lover Wrote:

vicdiaz Wrote:Talking about tinitus, I've been suffering a bad case for about three weeks due to sinus allergy and have not been able to fully enjoy my system.

Sinus allergy?
Joking, I hope.

Nope...

Sorry to hear that!

[Music Lover]

Briain Wrote:Me too, but I suspect mine's more due to years of substance abuse (the substances abused being active Isobariks and Keltiks); in fact, I only bought 350's because my Keltiks didn't go quite loud enough

As an old Isobarik/Keltik owner I understand...
I play really loud but can’t listen above 95/100 for many minutes, the physical impact in the stomach getting unpleasant.
And you needed more

Why not Komri then?

[Briain]

Results so far:

Google - UPnP Element:
Google desktop has indexed all album folder names and the media server does detect the presence of other UPnP elements - the DS, NAS and Twonky media server - as 'devices'.

Google - Media Server Element:
The media server element of it is functioning, though facilities are somewhat limited. You can narrow the indexing down to your media selection by eliminating other drives and pointing it to the files on the NAS (see 'settings' pic below). If you then 'select all' [folders to share] then 'save', it refreshes to show ticks against only the folders in which JPG's are stored (see 'folders ignored' picture below) the remainder being unticked (all of my FLAC tracks have embedded photographs but not all albums have the separate jpg’s in their directories).

Linn GUI Display:
On the Linn GUI, along with the Twonky server, there is now a Google one shown. On selecting the Google one, it lists 'Desktop' 'Picasa' 'YouTube' & 'PicasaWeb' selection options in the library area, but opening the 'Desktop' option only brings up a 'Photos' option which then lists only the album directories which contain photos (and even then, not the actual FLAC files themselves) which tallies with the activity noted in the previous paragraph. You can then select these directories on the Linn GUI and the GUI then lists the photo's within that directory (see 'Linn GUI' picture below) but, obviously, you can't actually view them on a Linn DS

Conclusion so far:
Both the above two paragraphs indicate to me that the server working fine but is completely unaware of the FLAC files; maybe it only recognises MP3 files? This matters little as in it's current form, the server element is little use for Linn stuff as apart from the lack of FLAC recognition, there are no 'music tree' configuration options. That said, this is only a beta version and the final version might be a very different animal indeed. Obvious but also worth pointing out is that this runs only on a PC (and not a NAS) so requires the PC to be switched on for it to function (I only point this out in case my mentioning the NAS in the above paragraph causes any confusion).

It would be interesting to see how it worked with one of these Loewe TV's (with a network input) but then Twonky does all that anyway (though I've just gone down the Netgear EVA8000 route instead). As Rik said, now the fun really begins and lets see what unexpectedly springs out of the woodwork next!

My Wish List:
If Twonky added UPnP control point functionality to their 4.4.5 web interface (which currently just gives a download option) now that would be quite good fun to use on a Q1 web tablet!!

New tag plug-in:
I've just found a 'Google Desktop Gadgets' plugin which is called 'Mp3tag Audio Indexer 1.05 by Florian Heidenreich' and it claims to index aac, ape, apl, flac, mp+, mp1, mp2, mp3, mp4, m4a, m4b, mpc, ogg, ofr, ofs, spx, tta and is available here: http://desktop.google.com/plugins/search...g&hl=en-GB

I've just installed it (see pic below) and Google indexing process seems to have started again. There's no indication of FLAC recognition as yet but after installing the plugin, it's taking a lot, lot, lot longer to index the same volume so maybe it’ll pick up the FLAC track tags this time; maybe I should read the help files/instructions, but hey, that would seriously conflict with my philosophical belief values if I actually had any
    <<< Click on thumbnail to see settings I've used
    <<< Click on thumbnail to see foders 'ignored'
    <<< Click on thumbnail to see Linn GUI results
Next Action:
I'm giving up tonight and will take a fresh look at all this tomorrow; unless the weather's too nice!

Update:
It doesn't seem to see FLAC files (even with the plugin) so fun over, time to uninstall and await the next toy to appear

Bri

[Rik]

Weather, nice, England !

Keep us informed, I'm too busy playing iPhone to spend too much time on this the moment but your analysis look good [Google only looking at MP3 tags].

Rik

[Briain]

Music Lover Wrote:

Briain Wrote:Me too, but I suspect mine's more due to years of substance abuse (the substances abused being active Isobariks and Keltiks); in fact, I only bought 350's because my Keltiks didn't go quite loud enough

As an old Isobarik/Keltik owner I understand...
I play really loud but can’t listen above 95/100 for many minutes, the physical impact in the stomach getting unpleasant.
And you needed more

Why not Komri then?

Hi

I didn't think the Komri would perch atop my Kan stands quite as daintily as my 350a's do, even with loads of blu-tac! Actually, I did think of getting Komri but I really do like the look/sound of the 350a’s!!

[Briain]

Rik Wrote:Weather, nice, England !

Keep us informed, I'm too busy playing iPhone to spend too much time on this the moment but your analysis look good [Google only looking at MP3 tags].

Rik

Hi Rik

I've updated my post with some screenshots; looks like FLAC's aren't detected even with the new plug-in.

Bri

NB Weather nice in Edinburgh too!!