DAAP or UPnP?

[MrE]

Before I start, I want point out that this is not a DAAP vs. UPnP, which one’s better kinda thread? I would like some genuine advice.

I have just been doing some thinking… 💡

I basically want to share my music with my Kubuntu laptop and my girlfriend’s XP laptop (she does not use iTunes). After some reading up on media sharing, I have noticed that the media sharing world is pretty much divided into two camps: DAAP and UPnP. Linux seems to have embraced Apple’s DAAP (Bonjour/Rendezvous) protocol, whereas Microsoft is pushing UPnP. Also, most streaming media hardware, such as the Roku, seem to be based on UPnP (due to DAAP licensing restrictions?).

Now the question is, am I right in saying that I would need a UPnP media server to share my music with the XP machine and a DAAP server to share with my Linux boxes?

If this is true, Firefly may not be what I need; instead of running both a DAAP server (Firefly) and a UPnP server (such as TwonkyMedia) on my slug, I get the impression I’d be better off running just TwonkyMedia and then use djmount (http://djmount.sourceforge.net/) to access the Twonky UPnP server with Amarok.

If I was only sharing with other Linux boxes or perhaps Windows PCs and Macs running iTunes, DAAP seems the way to go.

Are my assumptions correct?
Can anyone offer me any advice on this?

Many thanks in advance

[rpedde]

@MrE wrote:

Before I start, I want point out that this is not a DAAP vs. UPnP, which one’s better kinda thread? I would like some genuine advice.

No problem.

Also, most streaming media hardware, such as the Roku, seem to be based on UPnP (due to DAAP licensing restrictions?).

The soundbridge is also a daap client. In fact, it’s a better daap client than it is a upnp client, although it will do upnp.

Now the question is, am I right in saying that I would need a UPnP media server to share my music with the XP machine and a DAAP server to share with my Linux boxes?

Really, it depends on your clients. For my clients and usage patterns, daap only as a server works okay. Without iTunes on windows, though, you probably will have to find another solution.

UPnP might be it.

At some point I hope to have a UPnP front-end to this server, and then this might be a more viable option for you, but given your constraints, it seems like you’ll need something else for serving windows. And I’m with you — it doesn’t make sense to run two servers, when you could just run one.

If you are interested in the idea of multiple servers, watch the nightlies site – http://nightlies.mt-daapd.org. There is an rss feed there, and watch for upnp developments. If you were interested in testing, I would appreciate a tester for UPnP.

— Ron

[MrE]

I’m happy to do some testing for you, although my requirement for UPnP is solely because of the non-iTunes use of Windows XP.

My personal streaming requirements are at the moment only to my linux laptop and maybe later this year a Roku Soundbridge, finances permitting. On my linux desktop I simply listen to my locally stored files, which I backup to the Slug, which in turn has Firefly installed to stream to my laptop and in the future a Soundbridge,

I’ll have a go at running both Firefly and Twonky or some other UPnP server on the Slug and see how it handles it. The load at the moment is minimal as it’s only running Firefly and CUPS+Samba and it seems that people have running quite a lot of services on a single Slug.

I have subscribed to the feed and will keep an eye on UPnP development.

Cheers

[Ted Harper]

@MrE wrote:

I’ll have a go at running both Firefly and Twonky or some other UPnP server on the Slug and see how it handles it.

On my NSLU2 I run both Firefly (latest nightly) and Twonkyvision (a couple of releases old – their install/upgrade doesn’t go very smoothly on my box). Both look at the same library of about 6000 tracks. I have both Firefly and Twonky set for manual rescanning of the library, as I don’t buy new CDs or edit tags more than maybe once a week, and I didn’t want them to trip over eachother. My NSLU2 is not de-underclocked and it works fine.

BTW I would be very keen if a UPNP AV plugin appeared for Firefly (and I would happily test this for Ron also, especially if it were possible for it to run alongside the Twonkyvision UPNP – to avoid risk/annoyance for my wife and kids who have a lower tolerance of things getting broken/different), as I would like fewer moving parts running on the NSLU2 rather than more.

Twonkyvision is pretty inexpensive to buy (relative to the time you spend mucking around setting things up and tweaking settings and so on), so even if you tried it and bought it as an interim measure before Firefly’s UPNP support appeared and matured to “production quality” I think it would still be worthwhile for you if you need UPNP AV serving right now from your NSLU2.

ted.h.

[bernt]

Last time I checked (a year ago?) there was no good upnp client for Windows.

Firefly and iTunes is the best way to stream music to Windows.

[fizze]

For Windows there are actually other DAAP clients:
First and foremost Id like to mention the excellent
ml-daap plugin for winamp. It integrates well in the winamp Media Library. I’ve been using Winamp since it first came out and always liked it.

There also is Get It Together which is a java client and runs on a variety of platforms.

[MrE]

@Ted Harper wrote:

On my NSLU2 I run both Firefly (latest nightly) and Twonkyvision (a couple of releases old – their install/upgrade doesn’t go very smoothly on my box). Both look at the same library of about 6000 tracks. I have both Firefly and Twonky set for manual rescanning of the library, as I don’t buy new CDs or edit tags more than maybe once a week, and I didn’t want them to trip over eachother. My NSLU2 is not de-underclocked and it works fine.

OK that’s good to hear, although of course it’s best to not run more than you really have to…
As for the installation, I have replaced Unslung with Debian Etch last night for a number of reasons (UTF-8 support, not having to wait for ipkg builds to appear etc.) and I have just installed the little endian ARM build of TwonkyVision. Why on earth it is so complicated to install the Unslung version of Twonky and make the installer all Windows based?

@Ted Harper wrote:

Twonkyvision is pretty inexpensive to buy … I think it would still be worthwhile for you if you need UPNP AV serving right now from your NSLU2.

Fortunately my need for it isn’t that immediate but I will give this 30-day trial version a go. I’m also gonna take a look at Mediatomb, that looks quite interesting too.

@bernt wrote:

Last time I checked (a year ago?) there was no good upnp client for Windows.

Firefly and iTunes is the best way to stream music to Windows.

I agree with what you’re saying, but iTunes is a big no-no in this house 🙂
My girlfriend may be computer illiterate, yes even hate them, but at least she hasn’t succumbed to the whole evil iTunes or Windows Media Player lock-in. She’s using MediaMonkey, the only Windows application I sorely miss on Linux;, not even the brilliant Amarok comes close to that.

Sadly there are no plans to port it to Linux, and currently there is no UPnP and/or DAAP support, although something is in the pipeline apparently.

This leads me to fizze’s reply:
@fizze wrote:

For Windows there are actually other DAAP clients:
First and foremost Id like to mention the excellent
ml-daap plugin for winamp. It integrates well in the winamp Media Library. I’ve been using Winamp since it first came out and always liked it.

MediaMonkey can use (some) Winamp plugins (I have used the last.fm plugin with success) so I’m definitely gonna try this in MediaMonkey. Failing that, if she wants to stream my music, she can always load up Winamp which is what she was using before MediaMonkey,

Thanks all for your replies!

Cheers

[MrE]

I tried the ml-daap plugin with MediaMonkey last night but sadly MediaMonkey doesn’t even see the plugin.

I did install Bonjour for Windows, as mentioned in the readme but I suspect it doesn’t work due to the fact that it is designed for Winamp’s media library.

[Anonymous]

Now as PS3 supports uPNP it would be really cool to get firefly working with upnp as well. As I got a slug and a SB it would be really good to get firefly working with upnp as then I only need to run one server.

How well is uPNP support by firefly right now? Do you need some testing, just let me know what I can do. Will firefly transcode over upnp as well? As PS3 does not support ALAC it would be really cool to be able to play ALAC as well….

[stretch]

http://nightlies.mt-daapd.org/viewrss.php?ENTRY=2007-05-17

read the first dot point.
It pretty much sums up uPNP at the moment

[Author]

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