iFi Zen Stream: Setup, Tips, Tricks...

[twrr]

Am i doing something wrong ?

 

[Mr BubbaHyde]

Am i doing something wrong

The version I posted is a beta version and will not be listed under normal updates. To install a "Beta" version you need to use a browser and follow this video...



These videos are mostly all listed in the first post in this thread...

Cheers!!

 

[twrr]

Thanks, but it's not working, it loaded 14 out of 500 folders

 

[Vangelo]

Thanks, but it's not working, it loaded 14 out of 500 folders

I too had issues with playing files direct from HD drive and reported earlier in the thread. I have about 1TB of material. BTW, the top USB port is designated for the HD...if it makes a difference. There was a ceremony I had to go through to scan the HD so the folders would load. Sometimes they would all load, sometimes they would partially load, and sometimes they would not load at all.....

Since I always switch off my equipment after a listening session, it would be a surprise if any files would be retained next time I switched on. It got quite tedious for me.

What I am doing now is storing the music files on my Tablet/phone, using DNLA option on the ZS, and streaming via Bubble. This works reliably, but limited to the SD card size the tablet/phone will accept, in my case 516gb.

I would say generally this has been my experience with all the Linux based operating systems, be it Raspberry Pi's, Allo Sparky etc. Even my Limetree Bridge all had issues.
My friend with over 5TB of files also could not get ZS to load. He sent his back in favour of his PC based set up, which seems to be the only way to play large file libraries reliably. He did say though, that when the ZS was working, it sounded noticeably better than his PC.

My relationship with the ZS is a bit love/hate. I am annoyed at the marketing/sales tactics which mislead me into buying the unit....in particular the Chromecast option which was being promised. I do not understand how Wiim can incorporate this feature, but not iFi.

I had the 30 day option to return the unit early on, but I kept it and learned to live with it. Like I say, it aint perfect, but the units that are (if they exist) are way more expensive and may not sound better.

In the end, most people keep this unit because the sound is hard to beat at this price point. I now almost exclusively use it only for streaming Tidal Connect in Mode 3 where it works faultlessly and sounds the best. I have duplicated my favourite albums from my HD on Tidal and rarely switch modes. My music listening habits have greatly changed in the past decade. Whereas I was an old-school analogue vinyl guy most of my life, since digital CDs, then streaming came on board I have moved with the times. Vinyl used to be king, but not any more. Collecting records & CDs used to be the thing, but not any more. Do music shops even exist? I have now become an internet streaming/playlist kinda dude and let go of the past. I look forward in anticipation to reviewing my Tidal Discovery selection every day! I am rather priviledged at having braced the technology in my 7th decade of life!

 

[twrr]

I agree, there wouldn't be nearly 50 pages of questions if the device was what it should be. What bothers me are the basic things that should work without any problems. Which device has a better sound regardless of the price and works properly?

 

[Vangelo]

I agree, there wouldn't be nearly 50 pages of questions if the device was what it should be. What bothers me are the basic things that should work without any problems. Which device has a better sound regardless of the price and works properly?

I edited my last post.
The barrier comes because we are trying to embrace this new technology coming from an old school background. Let the files go! A lot of the kids nowadays have never even seen a CD!

 

[Zaurux]

There is also a new "beta" out and available if you would like to see if it can help.
..

A transitional update to facilitate.. new updates ??

 

[simon740]

I too had issues with playing files direct from HD drive and reported earlier in the thread. I have about 1TB of material. BTW, the top USB port is designated for the HD...if it makes a difference. There was a ceremony I had to go through to scan the HD so the folders would load. Sometimes they would all load, sometimes they would partially load, and sometimes they would not load at all.....

Since I always switch off my equipment after a listening session, it would be a surprise if any files would be retained next time I switched on. It got quite tedious for me.

What I am doing now is storing the music files on my Tablet/phone, using DNLA option on the ZS, and streaming via Bubble. This works reliably, but limited to the SD card size the tablet/phone will accept, in my case 516gb.

I would say generally this has been my experience with all the Linux based operating systems, be it Raspberry Pi's, Allo Sparky etc. Even my Limetree Bridge all had issues.
My friend with over 5TB of files also could not get ZS to load. He sent his back in favour of his PC based set up, which seems to be the only way to play large file libraries reliably. He did say though, that when the ZS was working, it sounded noticeably better than his PC.

My relationship with the ZS is a bit love/hate. I am annoyed at the marketing/sales tactics which mislead me into buying the unit....in particular the Chromecast option which was being promised. I do not understand how Wiim can incorporate this feature, but not iFi.

I had the 30 day option to return the unit early on, but I kept it and learned to live with it. Like I say, it aint perfect, but the units that are (if they exist) are way more expensive and may not sound better.

In the end, most people keep this unit because the sound is hard to beat at this price point. I now almost exclusively use it only for streaming Tidal Connect in Mode 3 where it works faultlessly and sounds the best. I have duplicated my favourite albums from my HD on Tidal and rarely switch modes. My music listening habits have greatly changed in the past decade. Whereas I was an old-school analogue vinyl guy most of my life, since digital CDs, then streaming came on board I have moved with the times. Vinyl used to be king, but not any more. Collecting records & CDs used to be the thing, but not any more. Do music shops even exist? I have now become an internet streaming/playlist kinda dude and let go of the past. I look forward in anticipation to reviewing my Tidal Discovery selection every day! I am rather priviledged at having braced the technology in my 7th decade of life!

Are you using WiFi or Ethernet?

 

[Vangelo]

Are you using WiFi or Ethernet?

Ethernet

 

[Mr BubbaHyde]

I agree, there wouldn't be nearly 50 pages of questions if the device was what it should be. What bothers me are the basic things that should work without any problems. Which device has a better sound regardless of the price and works properly?

There also wouldn't be 50 pages of questions if people would read the first couple of pages of any given thread here on Head-Fi.

I have never had any issue with the ZS reading my SSD, as I previously said it only contains about 75 GB of data, but the ZS has read it thoroughly every time I plugged it in. I myself have asked you on two different occasions about your file structure and you have not answered me once. I do not know a ton about "proper" folder structure, but I do know it has to be done in the correct way for any given machine to be able to "read" them, and one machine doesn't always do it in the same way that another one does.

as @Vangelo said perhaps it is an issue with "large" libraries, it very well could be, but I can't help if you refuse to answer any of the questions that I pose to you in regard to any particular issue that you are having.

Perhaps this last suggestion can help,

If all of your folders are just "there" try placing them all inside one general folder like I have, mine is labeled "Music" and then the folders are by artist and albums inside that.

I know there are issues with special characters talked about in the Volumio forums, so perhaps a scan of those forums may help as well.

Cheers!!

 

[Mr BubbaHyde]

A transitional update to facilitate.. new updates ??

You would know way better than I would,

Cheers!!

 

[PeterF6]

Just got a Stream and it turned on, then it turned off and won't start up again. Anyone had any experience with this or should I just consider it DOA? I have a ticket into ifi support...

 

[skrzyp]

I too had issues with playing files direct from HD drive and reported earlier in the thread. I have about 1TB of material. BTW, the top USB port is designated for the HD...if it makes a difference. There was a ceremony I had to go through to scan the HD so the folders would load. Sometimes they would all load, sometimes they would partially load, and sometimes they would not load at all.....

Since I always switch off my equipment after a listening session, it would be a surprise if any files would be retained next time I switched on. It got quite tedious for me.

What I am doing now is storing the music files on my Tablet/phone, using DNLA option on the ZS, and streaming via Bubble. This works reliably, but limited to the SD card size the tablet/phone will accept, in my case 516gb.

I would say generally this has been my experience with all the Linux based operating systems, be it Raspberry Pi's, Allo Sparky etc. Even my Limetree Bridge all had issues.
My friend with over 5TB of files also could not get ZS to load. He sent his back in favour of his PC based set up, which seems to be the only way to play large file libraries reliably. He did say though, that when the ZS was working, it sounded noticeably better than his PC.

My relationship with the ZS is a bit love/hate. I am annoyed at the marketing/sales tactics which mislead me into buying the unit....in particular the Chromecast option which was being promised. I do not understand how Wiim can incorporate this feature, but not iFi.

I had the 30 day option to return the unit early on, but I kept it and learned to live with it. Like I say, it aint perfect, but the units that are (if they exist) are way more expensive and may not sound better.

In the end, most people keep this unit because the sound is hard to beat at this price point. I now almost exclusively use it only for streaming Tidal Connect in Mode 3 where it works faultlessly and sounds the best. I have duplicated my favourite albums from my HD on Tidal and rarely switch modes. My music listening habits have greatly changed in the past decade. Whereas I was an old-school analogue vinyl guy most of my life, since digital CDs, then streaming came on board I have moved with the times. Vinyl used to be king, but not any more. Collecting records & CDs used to be the thing, but not any more. Do music shops even exist? I have now become an internet streaming/playlist kinda dude and let go of the past. I look forward in anticipation to reviewing my Tidal Discovery selection every day! I am rather priviledged at having braced the technology in my 7th decade of life!

This file indexing problem (similar to the cover art issue discussed previously) is likely a known Volumio issue. I realize that any mention of "Volumio" may be considered unhelpful to some, the fact remains that the ZS runs an older version of Volumio - the software changes implemented by iFi seem largely limited to audio playback. Because no software documentation is available from iFi, I have found a lot of helpful solutions to similar issues in browsing online forums dedicated to Volumio. USB indexing failure may be related to problems with individual audio files, power supply or disk format. For some discussion, see links below. Apparently Volumio aborts indexing if a problem is encountered with an audio file. Relevant error messages are kept in system log files (e.g. /var/log/mpd.log) which are accessible to Linux-savvy users via ssh. Also, iFi has retained the "Upload Feedback Log" option in the developer page (see the YouTube video linked to a a previous post to access this), which should send the relevant log files directly to iFi for diagnostics. I have no idea if this works, but it should. In my opinion, iFi should clarify how to use this feature since it's included in the software. I guess the other option is to start a support ticket via their web site. It would be great to hear from them about these issues.

https://volumio.github.io/docs/User_Manual/Sending_logs_for_troubleshooting.html
https://community.volumio.org/t/usb-hdd-not-appear-in-music-library/42767/7
https://community.volumio.org/t/usb-storages-not-recognized-by-volumio/45565/15

My USB device has been consistently indexing properly. It is an external 500 GB SSD powered via the USB port of the Zen Stream. It is formatted as exFAT and the folder organization is Music/Artist/Album, where "Music" is the root folder. I have ~300 GB of tracks, music files are all ALAC (m4a) tagged with metadata including album art, with a separate album cover image ("cover.jpg") included in each album folder (as required by Volumio for local cover are to show up if "Web Album Art" in the "Sources" menu is disabled).

 

[twrr]

There is a solution, but it's pain to do every time, pull out the disk for 1/3 of a second from the usb port and put it back and so on ten times until it loads everything, but that's not the solution. The same thing happened with PI4 + PI2AES until the last volume upgrade and since then it loads everything in seconds.

 

[Mr BubbaHyde]

This file indexing problem (similar to the cover art issue discussed previously) is likely a known Volumio issue. I realize that any mention of "Volumio" may be considered unhelpful to some, the fact remains that the ZS runs an older version of Volumio - the software changes implemented by iFi seem largely limited to audio playback. Because no software documentation is available from iFi, I have found a lot of helpful solutions to similar issues in browsing online forums dedicated to Volumio. USB indexing failure may be related to problems with individual audio files, power supply or disk format. For some discussion, see links below. Apparently Volumio aborts indexing if a problem is encountered with an audio file. Relevant error messages are kept in system log files (e.g. /var/log/mpd.log) which are accessible to Linux-savvy users via ssh. Also, iFi has retained the "Upload Feedback Log" option in the developer page (see the YouTube video linked to a a previous post to access this), which should send the relevant log files directly to iFi for diagnostics. I have no idea if this works, but it should. In my opinion, iFi should clarify how to use this feature since it's included in the software. I guess the other option is to start a support ticket via their web site. It would be great to hear from them about these issues.

https://volumio.github.io/docs/User_Manual/Sending_logs_for_troubleshooting.html
https://community.volumio.org/t/usb-hdd-not-appear-in-music-library/42767/7
https://community.volumio.org/t/usb-storages-not-recognized-by-volumio/45565/15

My USB device has been consistently indexing properly. It is an external 500 GB SSD powered via the USB port of the Zen Stream. It is formatted as exFAT and the folder organization is Music/Artist/Album, where "Music" is the root folder. I have ~300 GB of tracks, music files are all ALAC (m4a) tagged with metadata including album art, with a separate album cover image ("cover.jpg") included in each album folder (as required by Volumio for local cover are to show up if "Web Album Art" in the "Sources" menu is disabled).

Thank you for this post and the links you provided! I cannot remember where I read initially about how to structure the drive, but we have the same "tree" as it were, and although I do not have as many files as you (all of mine are FLAC) mine works as yours does, and the "Music" folder is important.

Thanks again!

Cheers!!