Can I force Firefly to transcode ALAC?

[spl23]

I have a NSLU2 running Unslung 6.8, and the latest stable (not nightly) version of mt-daapd. My music is in Apple Lossless format.

There is currently a bug in the SoundBridge ALAC decoder, which introduces occasional glitches between tracks. Roku are aware of this but have no schedule for fixing it. In the meantime, I was wondeing if it is possible to configure mt-daapd on the slug to transcode ALAC to WAV before streaming to the SB. My slug is running at 266MHz, so I’d hope there is enough power available for the transcode.

Is this possible? What do I need to tweak in the configuration?

Many thanks in advance,

Simon

[fizze]

first you would go ahead and install these:
http://ipkgfind.nslu2-linux.org/details.php?package=alac-decoder&official=&format=

then you have to add .alac (or whatever the extension) to the ssc-codectypes in the mt-daapd.conf file.

Finally, modify the /opt/sbin/mt-daapd-ssc.sh script so it really does transcode the ALAC files to WAV.
Just copy the parts from other codecs, but be sure to use the right decoder binary.

As far as realtime is concerned, Im not able to advise.

[spl23]

Thanks for that – the ALAC decoder has installed fine, and I have added an mt-daapd-ssc.sh script.

However, every time I try to start mt-daapd, I am getting an error along the lines of “Invalid config directive” about the ssc_codectypes line in mt-daapd.conf – I have tried ssc_extension, ssc_codecs and ssc_codectypes, with both underscores and dashes, and none of them seem to be accepted. Any idea what I am doing wrong?

[spl23]

Come to that, it also doesn’t like either ssc_script or ssc_plugin entries in the conf file – they both throw errors too, again with both dashes and underscores.

[spl23]

Ah – ok, I needed to use = signs on those lines, which mt-daapd.conf on the slug doesn’t use on other lines – a bit confusing.

Still isn’t working, though – all files are still playing as m4a audio. I see that the latest nightly has an option for forcing alac trascode – will download that and have a play…

[spl23]

And it is now working – took me a while to work out how to set the new “always transcode” parameter, but I now have properly glitch-free playback on my SB via my Slug. That’ll keep me happy until Roku fix the built-in ALAC codec…

[rpedde]

@spl23 wrote:

And it is now working – took me a while to work out how to set the new “always transcode” parameter, but I now have properly glitch-free playback on my SB via my Slug. That’ll keep me happy until Roku fix the built-in ALAC codec…

Sounds like you have an “old format” ini file. Might try editing it through thew web page (after chmod 666 /opt/etc/mt-daapd/mt-daapd.conf) and saving it to convert it to the “new” format.

— Ron

[spl23]

Yes, Ron – I did have a mismatch between an old .conf and the new format one. I deleted my old one, forced a reinstall of the latest nightly, and edited the new one – all is now working fine.

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