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Roku 4670R Ultra audio

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coasting

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Post Tue Mar 03, 2020 1:04 am

Roku 4670R Ultra audio

I have a Roku Ultra 4670R. Its Media Player (RMP) can play audio files passed by Serviio. It's got
a klunky interface but it allows me to navigate the music library, play songs in track order
and I can follow playing progress on a time bar and move ahead or back in a song using
the Roku remote which is desireable function for me in spite of the klunky style. The killer is
that even though RMP plays .flac files from a USB drive without needing to transpond them
Serviio insists on transponding .flac files when it sends them to the RMP.

Roku's support has been less than adequate. I am asking them to ask someone in engineering
whether the RMP can play .flac files served by a DLNA server and I get nonsense questions
back about have I done this or that irrelevant thing.

Two questions: 1) is it known that RMP cannot play flac when it comes via DLNA to the current
Roku Ultra? 2. How do we test that by telling Serviio not to transcode flac files for my Ultra?

I've tried to study the profiles and the documentation for creating a profile and I find it to be
a difficult haystack of XML variable names in quite a tangle. In spite of almost a 60 year history
of working with computers and programming them it isn't immediately obvious just what the
exact names will fill in the proper variables for the new Roku. On one hand some helpful examples
of starting from a simple file and creating new one with discussion could help. Better yet would
eventually having settings from a setup menu would be a good.
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atc98092

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Post Tue Mar 03, 2020 1:30 pm

Re: Roku 4670R Ultra audio

According to a Roku support page https://support.roku.com/article/208754908-how-to-use-roku-media-player-to-play-your-videos-music-and-photos, their players support FLAC in the .FLAC and .MKV container. However, if these files are some exceptionally high bitrate, there might be problems.

I am the author of the Roku profiles in Serviio. I don't believe there are any Matches lines for FLAC, so Serviio shouldn't be transcoding anything. I'd have to look them over to remember, and I'm not home at the moment. If you can tell me where I can download some test files, I'll see if my 4640 and/or 4670 have any issues with FLAC files.
Dan

LG NANO85 4K TV, Samsung JU7100 4K TV, Sony BDP-S3500, Sharp 4K Roku TV, Insignia Roku TV, Roku Ultra, Premiere and Stick, Nvidia Shield, Yamaha RX-V583 AVR.
Primary server: Intel i5-6400, 16 gig ram, Windows 10 Pro, 22 TB hard drive space | Test server Windows 10 Pro, AMD Phenom II X4 965, 8 gig ram

HOWTO: Enable debug logging HOWTO: Identify media file contents
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coasting

Serviio newbie

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Joined: Tue Feb 11, 2020 1:10 pm

Post Tue Mar 03, 2020 5:51 pm

Re: Roku 4670R Ultra audio

Thanks for the reply. I browsed the profiles a bit and it seemed to me that there were some lines
that seemed like everything audio was being transcoded to mp3 but that may have been wrong
since I did not find the profiles easily readable to the uninitiated like me.

So things are a little more peculiar than I thought.

A sample flac:
https://dl.espressif.com/dl/audio/gs-16 ... 100hz.flac

When I put it on a flash drive and played it first on Roku Media Player it said MPEG 192 Kbps, shocking me.
I checked the file in my AVR and it was 16-bit, 44.1KHz .flac. I rebooted the Roku and the AVR and tried again
and from the flash drive in RMP it now said flac 504Kbps. All other times I put the flash into the Roku that
was what was reported. Where the first info came from is baffling to me.

From my Serviio server down the hall the same .flac says "mpeg 192Kbps" as do all other .flacs I've tried to send
to the Roku.

When I play a .flac from the Roku USB drive it says "flac XYZKbps" but when I check the "information"
page from my AVR it actually says the incoming data is "PCM 48kHz." What stage that is being converted
is a mystery to me.

When I go from Serviio directly to the "net" input of the AVR the Information page of the AVR says
that the incoming data is "FLAC 44.1 kHz/16-bit."

In the process I found that the RMP doesn't navigate a large list of folders very well--requiring a
click for each skip to the next title instead of stepping through them at a reasonable speed as is
the player for DLNA inside the AVR. So all told I'm going to skip RMP and tolerate the less problematic
navigation of DLNA folders and files that the AVR can do.
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atc98092

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Post Tue Mar 03, 2020 7:12 pm

Re: Roku 4670R Ultra audio

I'll look at the profiles when I get home this afternoon. can you tell me exactly which profile you've assigned to your Roku? With the Ultra you should be using the "Roku 4K Media Player w/MPEG2" profile.
Dan

LG NANO85 4K TV, Samsung JU7100 4K TV, Sony BDP-S3500, Sharp 4K Roku TV, Insignia Roku TV, Roku Ultra, Premiere and Stick, Nvidia Shield, Yamaha RX-V583 AVR.
Primary server: Intel i5-6400, 16 gig ram, Windows 10 Pro, 22 TB hard drive space | Test server Windows 10 Pro, AMD Phenom II X4 965, 8 gig ram

HOWTO: Enable debug logging HOWTO: Identify media file contents
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atc98092

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Post Wed Mar 04, 2020 12:20 am

Re: Roku 4670R Ultra audio

OK, I just reviewed the Roku profiles. Only the basic profile touches any audio only files, and it converts them all to MP3. That's a leftover from a basic profile I began working from. All other Roku profiles completely ignore any audio only files. And with your Ultra, you shouldn't be using the basic Roku profile anyway. But that's what is selected by default, so you have to manually change the profile to one that fits yours better. As I mentioned, that's the "Roku 4K Media Player w/MPEG2" profile. Try that and see if your audio files play correctly.
Dan

LG NANO85 4K TV, Samsung JU7100 4K TV, Sony BDP-S3500, Sharp 4K Roku TV, Insignia Roku TV, Roku Ultra, Premiere and Stick, Nvidia Shield, Yamaha RX-V583 AVR.
Primary server: Intel i5-6400, 16 gig ram, Windows 10 Pro, 22 TB hard drive space | Test server Windows 10 Pro, AMD Phenom II X4 965, 8 gig ram

HOWTO: Enable debug logging HOWTO: Identify media file contents
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coasting

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Posts: 6

Joined: Tue Feb 11, 2020 1:10 pm

Post Wed Mar 04, 2020 1:29 am

Re: Roku 4670R Ultra audio

atc98092 wrote:I'll look at the profiles when I get home this afternoon. can you tell me exactly which profile you've assigned to your Roku? With the Ultra you should be using the "Roku 4K Media Player w/MPEG2" profile.


"Assigned to my Roku?" I thought DLNA servers queried players to find compatibilities. Are you talking about "USERAGENT"?
Roku says that for the DLNA server, "USERAGENT" is "Roku/4400X" Are you suggesting I change that or is there some other
way I am supposed to "assign a profile?"

I've looked at the profiles and the haystack of
XML code and the myriad variable names and so far it's pretty impenetrable to me. I've written programs, in a variety of
languages, over 55+ years, but the pages of information about profiles hasn't inspired me to dig deeply into that haystack.

Perhaps you can explain better than the " Editing renderer profiles" page explains what and how to do it with profiles. I get lost in
a seeming sea of similar sections with descriptions of things to equate to variable names with few examples of how exactly what
text gets written as those "things" to get the program to send a file type without transcoding.

As I said, my interest in using RMP has waned with some of its limitations.

My curiosity has been piqued however. At this point, I cannot even convince myself that there isn't an HDMI
limitation that is requiring .flac files to be transcoded just to slip through HDMI ports. So far I've found that the media player
I installed in my Nvidia Shield TV also accepts .flac files by USB (like the Roku) but like RMP, by the time the AVR sees
them via HDMI, they've been converted from 44.1 kHz flac to PCM 48 kHz.

So far I've not found any explanation for what I've found fiddling around with files, USB connections, Serviio serving HDMI transport and
so on. I've given up on getting any answer from support at Roku. Maybe I'll find an answer from Yamaha. My Yamaha can receive
DLNA served files via the LAN (i.e. bypassing HDMI). It plays .flac from Serviio beautifully and the Yamaha Info page states 44.1 kHz 16-bit flac
not 48 kHz PCM.
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atc98092

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Post Wed Mar 04, 2020 1:08 pm

Re: Roku 4670R Ultra audio

I attempted to use the USERAGENT to assign the profiles automatically, but for whatever reason they just don't seem to catch. So you must manually select the correct profile.

Like I said, if you're on the default Roku profile (and it sounds like you are) then all audio files are being transcoded to MP3. But if you change the profile to the one I suggested, your FLAC files will not be transcoded and should play properly. But you MUST change the profile assigned to your Roku manually.

I too was lost at first when trying to decipher the profile construction. But the light finally came on, and for the most part it's all pretty clear now. I still don't understand the media profile lines, but it's really not necessary. There's a Video section, an Audio section, an Online section, and a Generic section. Also at the end you can tag on some things like using HD images for the media icons and some other settings that generally aren't necessary. With inheritance, you can piggy-back on an earlier profile for some of the basics so they don't have to be repeated in every profile.
Dan

LG NANO85 4K TV, Samsung JU7100 4K TV, Sony BDP-S3500, Sharp 4K Roku TV, Insignia Roku TV, Roku Ultra, Premiere and Stick, Nvidia Shield, Yamaha RX-V583 AVR.
Primary server: Intel i5-6400, 16 gig ram, Windows 10 Pro, 22 TB hard drive space | Test server Windows 10 Pro, AMD Phenom II X4 965, 8 gig ram

HOWTO: Enable debug logging HOWTO: Identify media file contents
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coasting

Serviio newbie

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Joined: Tue Feb 11, 2020 1:10 pm

Post Thu Mar 05, 2020 4:37 am

Re: Roku 4670R Ultra audio

atc98092 wrote:I attempted to use the USERAGENT to assign the profiles automatically, but for whatever reason they just don't seem to catch. So you must manually select the correct profile.


Yeah, first thing I tried was to find out what USERAGENT to use for the Roku to whip serviio into shape. Nada from that.

atc98092 wrote:Like I said, if you're on the default Roku profile (and it sounds like you are) then all audio files are being transcoded to MP3. But if you change the profile to the one I suggested, your FLAC files will not be transcoded and should play properly. But you MUST change the profile assigned to your Roku manually.


Correction: I'm not "on" any profile of my choosing. I run serviio and connect from a client and serviio determines the profile (guessing but seems right, if totally useless for some devices). When someone has multiple devices that connect to a serviio server one wants them all to be found compatible. Hint: I've been running serviio for the better part of a decade--first with a Sony BluRay player and right now directly to an AVR, indirectly to the AVR via two streaming devices and to another computer. I might not have understood the advice, but I'm not planning to set up a profile that works for my Roku Ultra but fails to work with my other devices.

atc98092 wrote:I too was lost at first when trying to decipher the profile construction. But the light finally came on, and for the most part it's all pretty clear now. I still don't understand the media profile lines, but it's really not necessary. There's a Video section, an Audio section, an Online section, and a Generic section. Also at the end you can tag on some things like using HD images for the media icons and some other settings that generally aren't necessary. With inheritance, you can piggy-back on an earlier profile for some of the basics so they don't have to be repeated in every profile.


Basically I thought a DLNA server would query the device that contacts it to learn what formats it accepts. That seems ideal but apparently not quite what Serviio does. The idea that every device is mostly on its own is weird. The concept that a user must deal with the tangle of XML code to get a profile that works is only likely to make other devices that connect to that server fail. A setup routine for each new device should be programmable and not require that users dig into the haystack of XML code to define a profile for the specific device and risk screwing up connections to other devices.

I should point out that I have used serviio for more than a few years: first with an older model Sony Blu Ray player, and up to the present with several streaming device clients and a computer client.

The problem with your advice is that it seems to suggest that I customize serviio's server for a single device or family of devices. I'm inclined to abandon Roku Media Player and stick with Yamaha's AVR "Net" connection to serviio which plays music beautifully without transcoding and without forcing a change in sampling frequency that Roku and Nvidia Shield TV impose on the CD quality flacs. An alternative is that Movian media player for Nvidia Shield TV is more friendly in controlling playback and accepts flac from Serviio but it insists on converting it from 44.1 kHz flac to 48 kHz PCM. 44.1 kHz audio is not allowed by Nvidia Shield and maybe also by Roku. It's possible that I'll decide that I cannot hear the difference between the 44.1 kHz audio and the converted 48 kHz PCM audio. We'll see. Serviio is useful to me but it's starting to seem very awkward in establishing compatibility. It can't be so hard to figure out a GUI "setup" mode that allows establishing formats for clients in simple text.
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atc98092

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Post Thu Mar 05, 2020 12:56 pm

Re: Roku 4670R Ultra audio

I'm sorry, but you aren't understanding me. Yes, Serviio attempts to use the USERAGENT to assign a profile to each newly connected device. for whatever reason, it doesn't want to work right with Roku devices. You haven't assigned a profile in the console, but Serviio has. But the profile assigned isn't the best match for your Roku Ultra. You don't need to create anything, you just need to change the profile assigned to your Roku players. That doesn't affect any other device, as each device uses their own assigned profile. Changing the profile assigned to your Ultra does nothing to your Blu Ray player.

Yes, Serviio makes its best attempt to assign the correct profile. That's what DLNA does. With some devices, it does well. But for whatever reason, it doesn't seem to work right with Roku players. That's not the fault of Serviio, but something to do with the way the Roku devices advertise themselves over the network.

So, for best functionality, you have to go into the Serviio console and change the profile assigned to your Roku players. Right now, yours is using the "Roku Media Player". As I've said, that profile transcodes far more than necessary for your Ultra. Please change the profile to the Roku 4K player with MPEG2. Again, this doesn't do anything to any other connected player on your network. That setting is only effective for that one specific player. If you have multiple Roku players, you have to change the profile assignment for each player.

I'm not suggesting you make any customizations to Serviio itself. The profiles are all there already. You just need to assign the best profile for your Roku. Your Yamaha most likely was assigned a well matching profile, so that's why it has worked fine. I have to add that Roku players aren't the only devices that don't always pick up the best fitting profiles. It happens with other devices as well.
Dan

LG NANO85 4K TV, Samsung JU7100 4K TV, Sony BDP-S3500, Sharp 4K Roku TV, Insignia Roku TV, Roku Ultra, Premiere and Stick, Nvidia Shield, Yamaha RX-V583 AVR.
Primary server: Intel i5-6400, 16 gig ram, Windows 10 Pro, 22 TB hard drive space | Test server Windows 10 Pro, AMD Phenom II X4 965, 8 gig ram

HOWTO: Enable debug logging HOWTO: Identify media file contents
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coasting

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Joined: Tue Feb 11, 2020 1:10 pm

Post Thu Mar 05, 2020 2:36 pm

Re: Roku 4670R Ultra audio

Thank you for your help. I still have a question below.

atc98092 wrote:I'm sorry, but you aren't understanding me. Yes, Serviio attempts to use the USERAGENT to assign a profile to each newly connected device. for whatever reason, it doesn't want to work right with Roku devices. You haven't assigned a profile in the console, but Serviio has. But the profile assigned isn't the best match for your Roku Ultra. You don't need to create anything, you just need to change the profile assigned to your Roku players. That doesn't affect any other device, as each device uses their own assigned profile. Changing the profile assigned to your Ultra does nothing to your Blu Ray player.

Yes, Serviio makes its best attempt to assign the correct profile. That's what DLNA does. With some devices, it does well. But for whatever reason, it doesn't seem to work right with Roku players. That's not the fault of Serviio, but something to do with the way the Roku devices advertise themselves over the network.

So, for best functionality, you have to go into the Serviio console and change the profile assigned to your Roku players. Right now, yours is using the "Roku Media Player". As I've said, that profile transcodes far more than necessary for your Ultra. Please change the profile to the Roku 4K player with MPEG2. Again, this doesn't do anything to any other connected player on your network. That setting is only effective for that one specific player. If you have multiple Roku players, you have to change the profile assignment for each player.

OK, you say: "Please change the profile to the Roku 4K player with MPEG2."
So, within "profile.xml" I see a header for "Roku Media Player" code. I see the header for "Roku 4K player w/MPEG2" code.
I see this: "<Profile id="Roku4kMPM2" name="Roku 4K Media Player w/MPEG2" extendsProfileId="RokuMPApp">" OK, I see that it extends Roku Media Player but how is this called by serviio for my Roku device? So am I using the tag "Roku4kMPM2" or the name "Roku 4K Media Player w/MPEG2?"

Give me a hint here: where do I find the assignment statement that needs changing? Somewhere it must say, "If Roku then use Roku Media Player..." I've been having a hard time communicating why this has been so baffling. I'll change the assignment from "Roku Media Player" to "Roku 4K player w/MPEG2" if you would please tell me where and in which serviio file I should make that change. Is it in the config.xml? Somewhere else? So far it's not anywhere near as clear to me as it is to you. How is that assignment made specific to my Roku and not used for other devices? Does it have a basis in the USERAGENT Roku passes?
atc98092 wrote:I'm not suggesting you make any customizations to Serviio itself. The profiles are all there already. You just need to assign the best profile for your Roku. Your Yamaha most likely was assigned a well matching profile, so that's why it has worked fine. I have to add that Roku players aren't the only devices that don't always pick up the best fitting profiles. It happens with other devices as well.


Thanks in advance.
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atc98092

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Post Thu Mar 05, 2020 4:21 pm

Re: Roku 4670R Ultra audio

OK, I see the misunderstanding. :D You don't touch the XML file at all. Go to the Serviio console, select the Status tab (going from memory, I'm at work!), find your Roku player and select Edit. One of the boxes is labeled profile. If you click it, you get a drop down box to select the desired profile. Choose the profile, click OK (or close, or whatever it says), then click OK (or save) at the bottom of the Status page. That profile is now assigned to your Roku and should greatly improve your overall experience.
Dan

LG NANO85 4K TV, Samsung JU7100 4K TV, Sony BDP-S3500, Sharp 4K Roku TV, Insignia Roku TV, Roku Ultra, Premiere and Stick, Nvidia Shield, Yamaha RX-V583 AVR.
Primary server: Intel i5-6400, 16 gig ram, Windows 10 Pro, 22 TB hard drive space | Test server Windows 10 Pro, AMD Phenom II X4 965, 8 gig ram

HOWTO: Enable debug logging HOWTO: Identify media file contents
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coasting

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Post Thu Mar 05, 2020 8:28 pm

Re: Roku 4670R Ultra audio

Aha.

Thanks for your perseverance, Dan. I appreciate it.

As a user of Serviio for years I'm surprised I've never looked at status and thus hadn't a clue what
you were saying. Yes. Immediately I now get flac playing.

As with the other streaming devices I have, I find that the Roku also upsamples the CD
quality, 16-bit/44.1 kHz files to be 16-bit/48 kHz. Unfortunately, not all the devices do
it particularly well. I'll have to do some listening tests to see how the Roku fares on this.

Thanks again for your help.

Don
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siyatalerja

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Post Fri Mar 13, 2020 9:14 am

Re: Roku 4670R Ultra audio

Thanks for the information.

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