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Newbie qustion: is Serviio right for me?

PostPosted: Thu Nov 05, 2020 3:07 pm
by aksarhils53
I've looked at things very carefully on the site but you never know until you try something or talk to other users.

I already have two music servers: Squeezebox for internal use only with my Squeezebox hardware and Madsonic for external use. Squeezebox is continually updated even though Logitech dropped it. However, Madsonic is not being updated very much and the search engine is AWFUL.

I would greatly appreciate it if someone could tell me if my needs are met by Serviio Pro.

At this time, my media collection is all music files: flac, mp3, and a few other types.

I need the following:

1. A robust search engine for a library of about 500,000 files. These are mainly rips from my CD collection. I can send you a picture of my collection if you don't believe me.
2. I would like to be able to share links and access to my music to friends and social media. Madsonic does this very well.

Thanks for reading and letting me know if Serviio is right for me. I think about installing it on my music server computer but with the two other servers, I worry that I might upset the apple cart.

Re: Newbie qustion: is Serviio right for me?

PostPosted: Fri Nov 06, 2020 12:19 am
by atc98092
DLNA servers themselves don't offer search functionality. That is a player dependent feature. With the Pro version of Serviio, it does come with a web based player, and it does have a search function. Whether someone would call it robust is open to interpretation. As I have no music library, I can't speak to how it would handle so many titles. I have just under 5000 video titles, and Serviio handles them without issue. I use PLS or M3U playlist files for grouping media into desired "what to watch" lists. But what you decide to use as a player would decide what search functions you might have. The Serviio web based player might or might not transcode your audio, which introduces the potential for changes to the audio quality. I don't know exactly what the player supports natively. I only know it's based on HTML5.

Serviio Pro supports creating user accounts and limiting access by user. However, that access is rather high level, not at the sub-folder or file level. Shared library Folder locations have access control, but nothing lower level than that. Depending on how you might need/want to restrict access, you might have to restructure your media locations to separate the different files and include folders at the Shared Folder level. I don't believe there's a limit to the number of Shared Folder locations that can be added, but it might become unwieldy if the number gets too large. I have 9 set up on my main server.

I wouldn't expect any issues installing Serviio alongside your other server products on the same computer. I run Plex along side Serviio without a problem. But you could always test it on a different computer, or within a virtual machine. You can test the Pro version for 15 days without buying a license. After that it simply reverts to the standard version, without needing any reconfiguration.