We Got Served

Today, I am sitting here writing up a review for a UPnP/DLNA media server add-in for WHS (Asset) while listening to the complete AC/DC’s Back in Black album, which was ripped in FLAC, in Windows Media Player.

There are several reasons I am enjoying this.

• I normally do not listen to music while working.  Why?  Next point:
• I detest making playlists.  WMP does this all automatically.
• The Asset UPnP add-in and Windows 7 WMP can talk to each other through the “magic” of DLNA.  FLAC in WMP!  Yes!
• It’s FREE!  Yes, I am cheap…  In this case, however, I should not have to pay for something that should be there.  Click-n-play built in.

hmm. I just moved over to David Bowies’s Ziggy Stardust.  This is so cool!  One click and 61 songs later, I will be able to have listened to the all my Bowie albums.  I am not sure I can handle that much Bowie at one time, but who knows…

Sorry, you can guess “when” my music tastes lie.  My ability to listen to “today’s” music ended about the beginning of the new millennium.

OK, enough of this.  This is supposed to be a review.  Right?

As an introduction to the need for Asset (and similar programs), please read my State of Media Formats article prior to reading this review.

A short bio of Illustrate, the company behind Asset is documented below:

Having spent over 10 years in the audio business, illustrate have a strong working knowledge of: Audio Formats: Standards, Rippers & Encoders. Privately owned, employing staff who understand and are dedicated to audio quality, our products speak for themselves in-terms of quality, depth and usability. Our products include:

dBpoweramp Music Converter: the corner stone of illustrate’s product base with over 20 Million users, stability and compatibility are two of Music Converters defining characteristics. Music Converter appeals to home users, as well as businesses with our flagship Reference version. Used by many top Television and Radio stations world wide as well as most Fortune 100 companies which are multi-media based. Our client list is a who’s-who of the business world.

dBpoweramp’s CD Ripper has an installed user base of over 10 Million and falls in the top 5 of CD Ripping use world wide. That is allot of CDs being ripped, into the 100′s of Millions.

It is safe to say, dBpoweramp is used to encode more multi-format audio files than any other program.

And a description of the Asset program from the company is documented below:

Asset is a UPnP (DLNA compatible) audio server, UPnP is a method of sharing media content between devices. Typically audio files are stored on a server and multiple audio devices around the network can play audio from the server (devices such as Linn DS, XBox 360, PS3, etc). Asset features:

• Designed from the ground up as an audio UPnP server,
• Album Art support,
• Customizable browse tree with advanced search facilities (Album by Release, Style, Composer, Conductor…),
• Configurable Wave / LPCM decoding (no quality loss) for devices which cannot play specific audio types,
• ReplayGain can be applied to Wave / LPCM stream, volume matching across tracks for devices which have no support,
• Extensive tagging ‘standards’ compatibility,
• Wide-ranging audio support: mp3, FLAC, Apple Lossless, WMA (inc Lossless), m4a, AIFF, Wave
• Windows Home Server (WHS) specific install, with WHS Connector configuration,
• Windows 2000 / XP / Vista compatible,
• Apple MAC OS X compatible (when used with CrossOver MAC)
• Runs efficiently in the background detecting new & changed tracks (as service),
• Free

So what does all this mean to you, the user?  That depends on what kind of audio formats you listen to.  Or, perhaps, the better question is whether you have audio files that you have to have a “special” player to be able to listen to these files.  If the answer to this question is yes, then Asset may be the program you need.  In order to use Asset, you must install it.  Doh!

Install the add-in just like any other WHS add-in.  Copy the msi installer to your D:Software/Add-ins folder, open the WHS Settings dialog in the console and install the software from the Add-ins tab, as shown below.

Ah, CODECS.  I knew there was something non-magical about DLNA!

I was not sure why this error occurred and, to tell you the truth, I am not sure if it effected the overall install and/or use of the program at all.  But still…

I did do some checking in the Illustrate forums and this is the answer from Illustrate regarding this error message:

The error is not important (it is the WMA codec trying to register with Music Converter which is not in Asset).

Also, the About page does not specify the location of the company, but the use of the word “whilst” in the preceding window kind of narrows down the location.  hmm, where is that word used?

At that point, Asset finishes and the WHS Console closes.  Reopen the Console, click on Settings, and locate the Asset tab.

Side note: I’m tired of Bowie.  On to Head East.  Never heard of them?  Too bad, so sad.  Excellent good-ol’ basic Rock-n-Roll.  Also, some songs/albums reminds one of specific times in ones’ life.  Ah, too bad one cannot go back in time…

Sorry for the interruption.  You think it takes 10 minutes to do these articles?  Hah!

In the preceding screen, you will notice a few items here.

• Turn On/Off?  Why would one want to this?  Although, iirc, the first time I restarted the machine after installing Asset, the service failed requiring a restart.  Just once.
• Advanced Settings?  Back to that in a minute.
• Rescan Library.  This should continuously do this in the background, however, if one turns Asset off, I suppose you might want to do this.

Back to advanced settings.  Clicking on the Edit button brings up the following screen.  Take note that Asset refers you to the documentation prior to using advanced settings.  I was a bit disappointed that the add-in did not have a link for this in the previous screen.  Or in the following screen.  It is also interesting to note that the “Help” button does nothing.

So, for your viewing pleasure, this is the link to the main Asset page.  And this is the direct link to the manual.  I have no desire to go through all the options here.  Suffice to say, the default setup should work for most users.  If you have special requirements, read the manual and change the options as desired.

Side note: Done with Head East.  On to Michael Jackson, in his memory.  Thriller does have a lot of good songs on it…

To be honest, that is all there is to the add-in itself.  Install it.  Forget it.  It just works.  Right?  Let’s see about that.  After all, DLNA devices requires a compatible receiver.  Right?

Moving over to my Windows 7 machine, I opened Windows Media Player.  Set the View to Library, click on the Asset UPnP: <servername>,

click on the Music item and wah-lah!  Instant music lists by Artist, Album, or Genre.  Actually, if you click on the Music item toward the top of the lists, you get the same thing.  Except it would include anything you have local.  In my case, all my music is on my server.

BTW, before I forget to mention it at all, Asset is an AUDIO UPnP/DLNA compatible program.  It does not do videos.  It does not do pictures.  It does not do Recorded TV.  Just audio.

If you click on an album, WMP brings up nice window with the album details.

OK, enough about WMP.  What can Asset provide for audio codecs for use as a UPnP/DLNA media server?  You had to ask:

Asset       WMP (ref)

AAC         AAC
AIF          AIF
AIFC        AIFC
AIFF        AIFF
APE         UPnP verified
ASF         ASF
FLAC        UPnP verified
M2A
M4A          M4A
M4B
MP+
MP1
MP2           MP2
MP3           MP3
MP4           MP4 & UPnP verified
MPA           MPA
MPC 
MPEG         MPEG
MPG           MPG
MPGA
MPP
MPX
OGA           OGA
OGG           OGG & UPnP verified
W64
WAV         WAV
WMA         WMA
WMV         WMV
WV            UPnP verified

The WMP (ref) refers to corresponding audio file formats that WMP supports.  It is quite interesting to note I could find files that were supposedly supported by WMP that WMP could not play.  While I could play files ripped from an iTunes library, I could not play directly a sample .m4a that Illustrate kindly provided me.  I could, however, play it through the Asset add-in.  I guess not all MP4 files are created equal, which is one of the frustrating things about audio formats.

You might also notice that according to the following picture, WMP supposedly supports OGG files, however, my sample file would not play in WMP without the Asset add-in.  Which is what the “UPnP verified” designation represents: I was able to verify the ability of Asset to play that type of file in WMP.

Finally, in order to actually play “unsupported” file formats in WMP, you must find/play them from inside WMP.  One cannot locate a song from Windows Explorer, double-click on it, and have WMP play it.  Once again, only from inside WMP can one actually play these audio files.

You might be asking by now if I am doing a review for Asset or Windows Media Player.  I am not reviewing WMP, however, UPnP/DLNA requires that both the sender (Asset) and receiver (WMP) be UPnP/DLNA compliant.  In Windows 7, WMP is compliant.  For whatever reason, Windows Media Center is not.  Or at least I could find nothing (that was obvious) in WMC to indicate UPnP/DLNA compatibility.  If you find out otherwise, let me know…

As you can see from the preceding list, I did not check out every file type under the sun.  Some are quite obscure and/or rarely used any longer.  If I missed a popular format, check it out and let me know…

According to the Illustrate Asset webpage, one should be able to play audio files on game consoles.  I fired up one our Xbox 360’s to see what I could listen to.  I could not play a FLAC file on a Xbox 360.  I tried the advanced “force” options in Asset to no avail.  The latest official word that I could find on the Illustrate forums states:

The XBox should accept LPCM, but not currently from Asset, it is something we will have to investigate.

The Asset results on the Xbox 360:

Any files that were seen are all mp3 files.  And perhaps some m4a files, but I did not check closely, so I am not sure about that.

Opening WMC on the Xbox 360 brought up basically the same results.

And finally, the real bummer (Xbox 360 side note).  I can see all my movies in WMC on my workstation, but not on the Xbox.  All my movies are ripped in straight Video_TS folders.  Apparently, the Xbox 360 does not like that format.  Oh, well.  The Xbox’s belong to my boys and are not “normally” available to me, so that is not much of a loss to me.

Anyway, Asset version 2 is currently in beta testing.  Perhaps once it out of the beta stage, we will see better support for the Xbox 360.  From what I have read in the forums, it would appear that the PS3, which is DLNA compliant, mostly works with Asset.

When it comes to media formats, in general, and audio formats, specifically, confusion is the norm.  The DLNA initiative is a step in the right direction to provide a compatibility between sender, receiver, and various formats.  Asset is one program that works in this manner to make life a little easier in the audio format arena.  As long as you have a compatible receiver…  As DLNA is still in it’s infancy, finding both sender/receiver can be a problem IMO.

And finally, there is a version of Asset that can be installed directly on a workstation.  As a WHS owner/user, why would I want to do that???

Is Illustrate the solution for you?  If you have Windows 7.  If you use Window Media Player.  Or if you have a PS3.  Or if …  Lots of ifs there.  I really like the idea behind UPnP/DLNA software and hardware, but it has a long way to go.  I plan on keeping an eye on future versions of Asset and resulting compatibility.  In the mean time, if you have a solution that works for you I certainly would not abandon it for Asset/UPnP/DLNA.  Not quite yet, anyway.

Company: Illustrate

Version Reviewed: 1.1

Release: 03April2009

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