[SOLVED] Sony BX57 support for lossless WMA audio

Visa, Sony bx57 US, serviio .5

I have a 400+- CDs in my music library scanned in using windows media player 11 as lossless WMA. It was the only lossless format that the bx57 supported and the sound quality difference is noticeable (I compared cds in the player to WMA lossless and mp3s scanned at different rates and by different tools). I am currently using windows media player 11 to serve them as LPCM files at 1.4 mbps. At least the bx57 shows them as LPCM even though the windows media player is probably sending them as WMA files since the vista version does not have transcoding support. Sound quality is very good.

I tried to use Serviio for those files (so I could use one server for my audio and video), but instead of passing the WMA format through, serviio seems to be wrapping it as a mp3, at least that is what shows on the tv screen. But the bx57 tells me "the file is corrupted or the music file is not supported" I think that is because they were scanned in as lossless. I got that message a lot when I was testing different scanning rates for mp3s.

I tried turning off transcoding, stopping and starting the server that did not work.

I tried removing the WMA to mp3 lines in profile 11, stopping and starting the server, that broke my ability to play vobs.

Any suggestions?

[Illico]

With Profile 11 (Sony BDP):
<!-- e.g. though renderer should support wma, it only does so when disguised as mp3 -->
<MediaFormatProfile mime-type="audio/mpeg" name="MP3">WMA_BASE</MediaFormatProfile>
<MediaFormatProfile mime-type="audio/mpeg" name="MP3">WMA_FULL</MediaFormatProfile>
Mime-type is changed to MP3 but serviio/ffmpeg must delivered WMA in native format, you should check serviio detailed logging (see signature).

EDIT: Do you have a "Display" button on your BX57 remote control, you will see WMA on screen.

Thanks for the quick feedback.

The display button does not provide any additional information.

In windows media player looks like the following on the TV screen where the date is the scan date

[music icon] song title
LPCM )) 3/1/11

In serviio it looks like

[music icon] song title.WMA
mp3)) 3/1/11

The sony is rendering the LPCM type without error, but not the mp3 because I scanned the WMA in as lossless.

For comparison, I scanned in a song as WMA @ 128kbps. When served by media play, the sony displays it as follows

[music icon] songtitle
wma)) 3/6/11

When served from serviio, the same 128kbps WMA same file works as a mp3.

Is there a way to wrap only the WMA lossless as a LPCM?

[patters]

I think that it's likely that the Sonys don't support wma lossless over DLNA, even though it may work via USB (same applies even for m4a!).
I discovered that the player would play ordinary wma but only when the mime type is disguised as mp3, which is why you'll see that icon for the files.
However, you're in luck. The upcoming version 0.5.1 of Serviio supports audio transcoding, and pretty much any format can be decoded at the server and sent to the renderer as lpcm, therefore in perfect quality. I'm not sure Serviio can identify wma lossless specifically, so when it's released you may need to edit the profile to force all wma to be decoded to lpcm.

Sony does support lossless WMA, just not presented as a mp3, details in the thread above.

I can keep using the media center as my server for audio, but I was hoping to make serviio work.

[patters]

I'm not sure I understand your experiment above. Are you saying that Windows Media Player will present the lossless WMA file as LPCM to the BDP, but will present the normal WMA as WMA?

If that's the case I shall take a closer look with uPnP inspector and see how it does that. In the meantime though, look at the end of the Readme for details of how to force all WMA to be decoded to LPCM which will allow you to use Serviio.

This seems to be the most relevant thread to put my issues in.

I have a 2012 USA Sony KDL-55HX850 TV. I'm using Serviio 1.0.1. I'm attempting to play lossless WMA files over the TV. When I do this, I get an error on the TV that says "Music file cannot be played". The TV correctly identifies the file type as WMA. MP3 and all video files stream fine. According to Sony website, the TV plays LPCM, WMA and MPEG-1 AL3 audio files. It gives no restrictions on bit rate or sample rate. I had a long conversation with their tech support today. The only information they were able to supply was a list of sample rates the WMA file could be made at and played back on the TV.

http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/suppor ... nfo_id=799

At this point, it appears that if the data can be sent as LPCM, they might play. In the post above, there is a link with instructions to force Serviio to play back WMA files as LPCM. I've looked over the link, but the only relevant part is:

"WMA lossless is not supported. If you need this, add asf to the list of audio transcoding matches in the device profile."

This doesn't provide me with enough information to know what changes to make to the XML file. I've read through the stickied How to edit/create a transcoding profile for my device post, but this barely helps.

The relevant section in the XML profile for my TV seems to be:

"- <Audio targetContainer="lpcm" forceInheritance="true">
- <!-- To allow "pause" then "resume" functions and album art for TVs that support it - transcode to mp3 instead
-->
<Matches container="ogg" />
<Matches container="flac" />
</Audio>"

If someone could tell me what changes I need to make to this section to force WMA data to be sent as LPCM by Serviio/FFmpeg, that would be a huge help.

Sincerely,
Jack Hidley

[Illico]

With your model number, ""Sony Bravia TV (2012)"" should be selected on serviio console, check it.

Then edit this section by adding "asf" container, like this:

  Code:

         <Audio targetContainer="lpcm" forceInheritance="true">
            <!-- To allow "pause" then "resume" functions and album art for TVs that support it - transcode to mp3 instead -->
            <Matches container="asf" />
            <Matches container="ogg" />
            <Matches container="flac" />
         </Audio>

You have to restart serviio SERVICE (not server only), or reboot your PC.

Illico,

That fixed it. Thanks!

The comedy of this is that the Sony apparently supports a format (LPCM) that requires 2 or 3X the data input compared to lossless WMA. I guess Sony doesn't want to deal with the decoding overhead of lossless WMA.

Sincerely,
Jack Hidley