I'm watching this forum with great interest. I am currently using SlimServer on WinXP with my Roku because of some difficulties I've encountered using iTunes and I have no interest in WMC or Windows media formats.

I'm very happy with SlimServer, but I really like the idea of using a music server that will ultimately leverage the native protocols that Roku uses, and that I can count on working with the Soundbridge as firmware versions and server versions change.

I'm waiting for some of the dust to settle on Firefly before attempting a switch, but in the meantime, I'm hoping some of you more knowledgeable folks can answer a couple of questions for me.

1) For AAC/m4a playback, will Firefly need to decode/transcode to wav/mp3 before sending the stream to Soundbridge (like Slimserver), or will it send the AAC stream directly and utilize Soundbridge's built-in decoder (like iTunes)?

2) Are .m4a files required to be optimized for "fast-start streaming" to be successfully served up by Firefly to the Soundbridge in the same way as iTunes DAAP requires?

3) Can Firefly stream to other players (Winamp?) via url-based mp3 or other streams?

4) Does Firefly maintain its own database of metadata (tag information)..what type of database does it use? Is album art supported/displayable in the Web interface?

Thanks in advance!

1) Firefly started it's life as an iTunes daap server clone, so yes... M4A is streamed, just like iTunes can. In fact, the Windows version currently can't transcode anything. (Coming soon.) It can also stream WMA.

2) I'm guessing "yes"... but someone else will need to answer.

3) Only if it supports DAAP or Roku Server Protocol (RSP)...

4) Yes, it uses sqlite by default. It scans your content to extract the metadata tags. It's web interface is probably not intended to be a full "music management application." No Album Art currently.

grommet wrote:

1) Firefly started it's life as an iTunes daap server clone, so yes... M4A is streamed, just like iTunes can. In fact, the Windows version currently can't transcode anything. (Coming soon.) It can also stream WMA.

I'd like to drop a first-pass at transcoding tomorrow.

2) I'm guessing "yes"... but someone else will need to answer.

That would be my guess, too, but I can't test that, as i don't have any non-itunes m4a files to test with.

3) Only if it supports DAAP or Roku Server Protocol (RSP)...

Actually, it feeds the songs out via http, so as long as you can make a playlist with http urls, you could feed them from firefly. The problem would be generating those urls. I can see two ways to do it -- one would be an output plugin. You could pretty easily make a plugin that would display all the playlists and make a link to a on-the-fly generated .m3u that could be feed to winamp or another player.

Another option would be to grovel around in the database directly -- it's sqlite, so you could use perl or sqlite+odbc and vbscript to generate playlists from a script.

4) Yes, it uses sqlite by default. It scans you content to extract the metadata tags. It's web interface is probably not intended to be a full "music management application." No Album Art currently.

No, but I've had these conversations before, and once fundamental stuff is done, that's one of the first "neat!" things I want to do.

jtbse wrote:

2) Are .m4a files required to be optimized for "fast-start streaming" to be successfully served up by Firefly to the Soundbridge in the same way as iTunes DAAP requires?

That's actually a SB requirement so it doesn't have to search through the entire music file to find the info.

I'm currently using mt-daapd (firefly's old name) 0.2.something on an NSLU2 and the SB doesn't like AAC files that aren't optimised for "fast start"

stretch wrote:

That's actually a SB requirement so it doesn't have to search through the entire music file to find the info.

I'm currently using mt-daapd (firefly's old name) 0.2.something on an NSLU2 and the SB doesn't like AAC files that aren't optimised for "fast start"

Thanks to you all for your replies! Good stuff.

As far as the above....there may be a SB requirement here, but I *know* that it's an iTunes DAAP requirement as well. All you have to do to see this is to try using iTunes library sharing between two computers without a SoundBridge at all, and with .m4a's that are optimized or not.

I've tested this with various .aac encoders and have a writeup along with sample .m4a files and doc for fixing non-optimized files for anyone who is interested.

If you are interested, just pm me with an email address.

Thanks again!