Home music share search

[nightrhyme]

Hi

Wiim app really need the ability to search "Home music share". And its definitely possible as IOS Mconnect app can do this.

Hope this feature is implemented soon.

Thank you in advance

 

[Mr Ee]

Perhaps you can explain what's not working for you in more detail?
Searching my home music share from the wiim app works for me, from both the 'general' bottom bar search and the top bar search when I've browsed to the share.

 

[nightrhyme]

Ok. I just took for granted it was a known issue as I read about this problem somwhere else.

However my specific case is: I share my flac library from my pc via DLNA Media streaming in Windows 10 to Wiim Pro Home share function. On wiim pro app I can browse and play files fine but I cannot search. Wiim app just hangs.
Doing the same thing from IOS app Mconnect Player works fine. Search works flawlessly

Any ideas ?

 

[simbun]

I tried mconnect to search against Win 10 sharing and all it did was return the matching item of the list I was currently viewing, I couldn't search for an Album Artist from the Music index, I had to select the Album Artist index first, which isn't how it's supposed to work. That was using the Android app.
I then tried searching with BubbleUPnP and it took ages, and a 'Microsoft Windows Search Indexer' process started on the PC taking >85% of CPU!

I think the general advice has been to avoid the Win 10 Media Sharing and instead use a dedicated app like MinimServer/AssetUPnP/Serviio.

 

[nightrhyme]

thank you for reply

I respecfully disagree. Search is blasingly fast on iOS Mconnect which is the equivalent of BubbleUPnP Android. And search doesn’t work at all in wiim app. That must be a. Indication of some kind of problem

I really need response from a fellow iPhone/iPad user.

actually in general the search function in WiiM app is pretty slow. I would like to see a quick search function which the apps tidal and Qobuz and mconnect also have

 

[simbun]

I respecfully disagree. Search is blasingly fast on iOS Mconnect which is the equivalent of BubbleUPnP Android. And search doesn’t work at all in wiim app. That must be a. Indication of some kind of problem

I only tried the free Android app so maybe it's a limitation of that but the only "search" I could find is the bar that's at the top of the screen, which only searches within the current display against both Win 10 and MinimServer (the only ones I tested). In mconnect, if from the top menu you choose 'Music' and then type an artist in the search bar does it find anything?

Any search should be performed by the server with the results sent back to the control point. I've just tried the WiiM app against MinimServer and it's as quick as BubbleUPnP, as expected. The search results include matches for Artists, Albums, Tracks and Playlists.

Win 10 also doesn't sort tracks correctly for multi-disc albums.

 

[nightrhyme]

thank you for reply

No nothing happens when you try search from wiim app it just hangs forever
And the response is instant in Mconnect. So it should be possible for for wiim developers to implement

I read a thread elsewhere, I cant seem to find again, with a user complaining about the inability to search his NAS server so thought it was a genreal problem.

In the wiim help section:

Search music contents on DLNA server Print​

Modified on: Tue, May 30, 2023 at 4:01 PM

---

Some music media servers don't support search capability. To play music files on your server, you can use other media servers like Serviio, Minimserver, twonkey, etc.

But again. Since Mconnect can, the problem shouldn't be severside...

 

[WiiM Support]

thank you for reply

No nothing happens when you try search from wiim app it just hangs forever
And the response is instant in Mconnect. So it should be possible for for wiim developers to implement

I read a thread elsewhere, I cant seem to find again, with a user complaining about the inability to search his NAS server so thought it was a genreal problem.

In the wiim help section:

Search music contents on DLNA server Print​

Modified on: Tue, May 30, 2023 at 4:01 PM

---

Some music media servers don't support search capability. To play music files on your server, you can use other media servers like Serviio, Minimserver, twonkey, etc.

But again. Since Mconnect can, the problem shouldn't be severside...

Hi nightrhyme,

I forwarded your comments to our Eng. team and asked them to compare our APP and mConnect when using Windows Media Player as the media server. I'll keep you posted when I hear back anything from them. Thank you!

 

[nightrhyme]

Thank you very much

I also tried Serviio just now. Here search also doesn't work. Actually It looks like it works but then it returns nothing.

Thank you for looking into it

 

[simbun]

I also tried Serviio just now. Here search also doesn't work. Actually It looks like it works but then it returns nothing.

When attempting to search Serviio using BubbleUPnP the following message is displayed:

This Library does not support UPnP Search ... Only the current folder will be searched

I don't know if this is communicated by Serviio or hard-coded into BubbleUPnP, but I can see a few posts requesting search, so I assume it's never been implemented.

 

[simbun]

But again. Since Mconnect can, the problem shouldn't be severside...

Is it possible to post an image of a search result within mconnect? It looks like the Lite version is only missing a few features (Track Sorting, Folder Bookmarking, and Remembering Renderer) so I don't understand why the Android version doesn't work against servers that do support UPnP search.

 

[simbun]

There's an app called "UPnP Tool" on Android where you can query the capabilties of UPnP devices. If I examine the ContentDirectory service of Serviio and pull the search capabilities it returns an empty resultset (which is what we expect). If I do the same for MinimServer it returns 9 parameters (that mostly appear to relate to tags that can be searched), and with Windows it returns over 40!

Being a bit more patient I performed some more searches:
Hi-Fi Cast returned results after 1m30s of 3 identical artists (even though I only searched for 1).
BubbleUPnP returned 'No search result' after 60 seconds twice, even though 'Microsoft Windows Search Indexer' still continued to run for over another 2 minutes, during which the Win media server was unresponsive.
WiiM returned 'No search result' in less than 17 seconds but the 'Microsoft Windows Search Indexer' had stopped so I don't think it was a timeout.

Whatever it's doing I assume it's not spec compliant. Maybe mconnect on iOS (because I haven't been able to search on Android) knows exactly how to query the Win server to get timely results but none of the other control points seem to, and all this was with Windows indexing less than 30 albums!

Very strange

 

[nightrhyme]

I made a short video showing mconnect search.
It’s the least I can do since you spend so much time diagnosing the issue.
And thank you for that

 

[simbun]

Thanks for that.
Are you browsing Music > Folders? That's just mconnect filtering the contents of the current index listing which is what I said the Android version was doing, and this is control point specific, not something that the media server controls.

A UPnP search of say 'Adele' would return all the Albums that contain the word 'Adele'; the albums where she's the AlbumArtist; the tracks where she's a TrackArtist and possibly playlist entries too, it's a much more powerful search and something that the control point needs to request of the server so you won't have such immediate feedback.

So this request is really for the ability to filter an existing listing, not a search as such, which is where the confusion has come about.

I would highly recommend you to have a look at MinimServer. The free version covers most of the bases although I notice Win 10 includes indexes such as Rating that MinimServer wouldn't offer in the free version.

 

[nightrhyme]

Yeah I guess you are right. But filtering is better than nothing. Maybe I will give minimserver a try later. But I am busy listening to Hifi which is what it’s all about for me
Right now I’m deep into comparing: tidal, Qobuz and local files

 

[Mr Ee]

actually in general the search function in WiiM app is pretty slow. I would like to see a quick search function which the apps tidal and Qobuz and mconnect also have

I just tried a search from the 'general' search in the bottom bar.
The only music service I'm logged into in the wiim app is Tidal.
My nas has both the inbuilt media server and minimserver running, containing about 1,000 albums.
Results returned from all 3 within 3 seconds.

 

[WiiM Support]

I made a short video showing mconnect search.
It’s the least I can do since you spend so much time diagnosing the issue.
And thank you for that

Hi, it's filtering your browsed media content on your mobile device. It's different from the search capability provided by the media server. We'll add this to work around the missing search capability on some media servers. Please stay tuned!

 

[nightrhyme]

Hi, it's filtering your browsed media content on your mobile device. It's different from the search capability provided by the media server. We'll add this to work around the missing search capability on some media servers. Please stay tuned!

Yes I understand. Thank you so much

 

[simbun]

Yeah I guess you are right. But filtering is better than nothing.

Whilst you can't control the app, some media servers allow you to make an initial subset based on the first letter of the item being requested e.g. rather than simply display all Albums/AlbumArtists/TrackArtists you'll be presented with a list of the first letters in the underlying selection.
Serviio appears to do this by default, but the best implementation I've seen is in MinimServer (the paid version) as it allows the user to define the threshold above which the alphabetical grouping will be displayed, on a per tag/index basis. I find this invaluable because if I were viewing the Album index without having made any previous selections (viewing ALL albums) then I'd definitely want the alphabetical grouping, but if I've already chosen an AlbumArtist then I want to see all their albums in chronological order. To enable that I set the album grouping threshold slightly above the number of compilation albums I have (the largest set of albums attributed to a single AlbumArtist).

Right now I’m deep into comparing: tidal, Qobuz and local files

I use a music service mainly for music discovery as I prefer to own the discs as you're then able to control what master you have, but I know I'm in a shrinking minority.

 

[nightrhyme]

Whilst you can't control the app, some media servers allow you to make an initial subset based on the first letter of the item being requested e.g. rather than simply display all Albums/AlbumArtists/TrackArtists you'll be presented with a list of the first letters in the underlying selection.
Serviio appears to do this by default, but the best implementation I've seen is in MinimServer (the paid version) as it allows the user to define the threshold above which the alphabetical grouping will be displayed, on a per tag/index basis. I find this invaluable because if I were viewing the Album index without having made any previous selections (viewing ALL albums) then I'd definitely want the alphabetical grouping, but if I've already chosen an AlbumArtist then I want to see all their albums in chronological order. To enable that I set the album grouping threshold slightly above the number of compilation albums I have (the largest set of albums attributed to a single AlbumArtist).

You are right. I just installed the MinimServer basic version. It is very nice indeed. Thank you so much for recommending it. I will consider getting the paid version.
I also installed Serviio for videos.

I use a music service mainly for music discovery as I prefer to own the discs as you're then able to control what master you have, but I know I'm in a shrinking minority.

I do too. Used apple music discovery. But I just signed up for tidal hifi plus and Qobuz to use with the wiim pro and I soon discovered that there was a general, across the entire platforms, tonal difference in in the sound. A sort of house sound. Where tidal is more neutral, qobuz is slightly rolled off in the upper midrange and and has a much more pronounced low end. My local files sounds similar to Tidal. There is something creamy and tube like about qobuz. But its a little too much for my rather dark tuned system. Btw apple music is far superior to any streaming service when It comes to bluetooth headphones. And yes i tested that too... But that's another discussion