Who has Nuvo Music Port?

[forgets]

Are they still selling these? I can't seem to find one to add to my system.

Thanks,
Mark

no, they discontinued them about a year ago, shortly after the music port elite came out. quite a few people had problems with setting them up it seems, which is understandable in my book seeing as windows pc's can have millions of different hardware configurations and not all would be supported.. and it was easier for nuvo to roll out the music port elite, which is a self contained box that does the same without the need for a seperate pc for about 5x the cost, though i can't begrudge them that either, everyone wants a better profit margin. Every now and then one pops up on ebay, though they usually end up going for more they did when new from a dealer due to the increasing rarity. The music port elite seems great at what it does, it's just a hard pill to swallow in my book when it costs about the same as a new grand concerto.

 

[msudawg]

Are they still selling these? I can't seem to find one to add to my system.

Thanks,
Mark

I bought one used from another forum member as I wanted the features but didn't have the cash to spend on an MPS4 or MPS4-E. While it hasn't been without some growing pains, overall mine works pretty well. If you're interested in buying one used you may contact forum member SoonerDoc. He contacted me recently to ask if I had bought one because I had originally posted a WTB in the for sale section. He mentioned that he had his for sale. Of course, if you have less than 3 posts (which I think I saw was the case) the system won't let you send personal messages. It also won't let you post in the for sale section.

 

[SpeedDemon]

I just checked Nuvo's website and can report that Configurator version 2.66 is out. It fixes the 9:85 time display problem that I and SpeedDemon were experiencing, as well as a host of other issues. A list of problems addressed by the new release is on the download page.

Thanks for the heads-up msudawg. (Didn't get alerted to your msg until yesterday unfortunately). Confirmed, time problem is fixed. Woohoo!! I'm guessing it won't change anything about the Pandora stability issues (which seems to be a part of the Autonomic driver?) but one can hope I suppose

zavodny - it's on the Nuvo Dealer Resource Center site, unfortunately AFAIK unless you have login info already you will need to find an authorized Nuvo dealer who will either d/l it for you or allow you to use their pass.

 

[msudawg]

I'm guessing it won't change anything about the Pandora stability issues (which seems to be a part of the Autonomic driver?) but one can hope I suppose

I wish I could help you with the stability issues you're having. How long did you say that it usually runs before messing up? Pandora is usually what I'm listening to on mine but typically not for long periods of time- usually not more than an hour at one time, typically less. However, each time I turn it back on Pandora is still working fine. For whatever it's worth, I did upgrade to Pandora One paid subscription before I setup my Nuvo. I'm not sure if you are using the free account or have upgraded but I suppose maybe it's possible that might make a difference??? Maybe not. What kind of computer are you using? Are you using the software that came with the NV-MP? Again, for whatever it's worth- when I bought my NV-MP used it didn't come with the software (but I did get the key). I downloaded the current software directly from Autonomics and used the key I got with the NV-MP.

 

[charliebarns]

Haven't touched any config on mine for awhile as it's been pretty stable. I do see there's a new version of Autonomic's MMS software but I'm scared to upgrade! That software seems soooo finicky. What version is everyone else running? My Pandora is stable - no crashes/lockups and I run it for 4-5 hours at a time. Same with Radiotime. My main beef is in adding MP3s or creating playlists. The only way I can get Autonomic to pick up additions is to reboot the machine. No amount of scanning for changes, shutting down and restarting Autonomics software forces it to pick up new songs - only a reboot will do it. Can't figure out why.

CB

 

[SpeedDemon]

I wish I could help you with the stability issues you're having. How long did you say that it usually runs before messing up? Pandora is usually what I'm listening to on mine but typically not for long periods of time- usually not more than an hour at one time, typically less. However, each time I turn it back on Pandora is still working fine. For whatever it's worth, I did upgrade to Pandora One paid subscription before I setup my Nuvo. I'm not sure if you are using the free account or have upgraded but I suppose maybe it's possible that might make a difference??? Maybe not. What kind of computer are you using? Are you using the software that came with the NV-MP? Again, for whatever it's worth- when I bought my NV-MP used it didn't come with the software (but I did get the key). I downloaded the current software directly from Autonomics and used the key I got with the NV-MP.

Machine is a Win7 Ultimate 32 PC, dedicated to all my automation drivers. I think it's an I5-661 CPU, Gigabyte UD4p motherboard. 4 GB RAM. Using a free Pandora account. Software is the latest Nuvo Configurator Software + newer Autonomic Mirage software (latest as of a few months ago anyways).

Usually I get between 1 to 3 days before it messes up. "Stability" was perhaps the wrong word to use; I'm not seeing an actual crash. I'd guess it's about connectivity. Once Pandora has been initiated with the MusicPort (Assigning a Pandora radio station to at least 1 source), after a certain amount of time, I'll get a message on the GC keypad along the lines of "Connecting to Source". It'll just hang there, and I won't be able to access MusicPort functionality anymore for that source, or possibly for all MusicPort sources. Sometimes it happens right in the middle of a song being played; particularly worrisome when we are entertaining guests!.. Anyways, it's almost like there's some sort of brief loss of connectivity when it's streaming songs, which the driver doesn't gracefully/quickly recover from. It's specific to the Pandora functionality -- for the past couple months I gave up on Pandora entirely and was just using MusicPort to play Windows Playlists and I didn't hit the issue at all.

Time to see how things currently stand. I started using Pandora again 24 hours ago (after installing the Nuvo Configurator upgrade). I assigned and played 1 Pandora station yesterday. This morning I assigned a Pandora station to each of the 4 MP sources. As of tonight, one of the stations is stuck in the middle of a song. Pause/unpause has no effect, and using the right-arrow to "Skip" has no effect. Hitting Menu from the keypad and selecting "Radio" (to choose a different Pandora station) has no effect. The other 3 MP sources with Pandora stations assigned to them are still playing however. Also, on the "stuck" channel, I am able to change sources including selecting another MusicPort source that has a different Pandora station playing.

So far no "Connecting to Source" message, just the 1 of 4 source-stations is frozen. No idea if the 2 issues are related. Let's see how the other 3 MusicPort Sources with Pandora stations assigned will fare in the next couple days and/or if the frozen one recovers or starts giving the "Connecting to Source" message...

 

[msudawg]

Machine is a Win7 Ultimate 32 PC, dedicated to all my automation drivers.........

SpeedDemon- you're obviously way more experienced and knowledgeable with the setup than I am based on your description. I'm currently only using an Intel Atom N450 based netbook (xp) with my music port and am only using 1 source (although my eventual plan is to build a dedicated PC with 7.1 sound card so that I can take advantage of the 4 separate sources capability).

So right now I have no experience with having multiple Pandora instances running on different sources and, like I mentioned previously, I haven't tried leaving Pandora running for days at a time. I have left the source selected to Pandora over-night with all zones turned off and have no problems with it working when I turn a zone on the next day.

I'm out of town this week but when I get back home I'll experiment with it some, leaving Pandora playing. I'll leave one zone turned on selected to that source and see how long it will play. I'll also do an experiment- with Pandora playing I'll intentionally interrupt the network connectivity to make it stop playing and then see if it recovers once the connection is restored.

 

[SpeedDemon]

I'm out of town this week but when I get back home I'll experiment with it some, leaving Pandora playing. I'll leave one zone turned on selected to that source and see how long it will play. I'll also do an experiment- with Pandora playing I'll intentionally interrupt the network connectivity to make it stop playing and then see if it recovers once the connection is restored.

Thanks, it'll be interesting to see what happens.

I was going to report back on my Pandora/Musicport status a day after my last post, but unfortunately the server crashed and I had to reboot, so I'll have to "reset the timer" and start testing again fresh. I'm not sure what the crash problem is, I wonder if it's related to the Nuvo/Autonomic drivers, or the CQC automation software (seems unlikely as plenty of folks run it for months w/o issue I think), or maybe the Avermedia surveillance camera software, or some hardware driver... Other than those I don't have much else running on the server so I'm really not sure.

On a side note, I've had the crash occur maybe 2 times in the past 3 months. I get a dialog box "Windows Media Player Database Corrupted... ...When you exit and restart a new database will be created." I noticed that RAM utilization was at 75% (I have 4 GB installed!) and trying to use even small apps like Wordpad resulted in "Insufficient system resources exist to complete the requested service." LAN connectivity from the other PC's to the server seemed to go away. Desktop resolution decreased and wouldn't go back up even when I tried putting it back to where it should be. Maybe some sort of memory leak from somewhere? Everything is fine after reboot. Ah well, off-topic I know, but just in case anyone has seen something like this before..

 

[jautor]

Machine is a Win7 Ultimate 32 PC, dedicated to all my automation drivers. I think it's an I5-661 CPU, Gigabyte UD4p motherboard. 4 GB RAM. Using a free Pandora account. Software is the latest Nuvo Configurator Software + newer Autonomic Mirage software (latest as of a few months ago anyways).

Usually I get between 1 to 3 days before it messes up. "Stability" was perhaps the wrong word to use; I'm not seeing an actual crash. I'd guess it's about connectivity. Once Pandora has been initiated with the MusicPort (Assigning a Pandora radio station to at least 1 source), after a certain amount of time, I'll get a message on the GC keypad along the lines of "Connecting to Source". It'll just hang there, and I won't be able to access MusicPort functionality anymore for that source, or possibly for all MusicPort sources. Sometimes it happens right in the middle of a song being played; particularly worrisome when we are entertaining guests!.. Anyways, it's almost like there's some sort of brief loss of connectivity when it's streaming songs, which the driver doesn't gracefully/quickly recover from. It's specific to the Pandora functionality -- for the past couple months I gave up on Pandora entirely and was just using MusicPort to play Windows Playlists and I didn't hit the issue at all.

I rebuilt my server recently (Win7, dedicated to Music Port and related SW), and have been having similar trouble with the "Connecting to Source" issue. I worked with Autonomic to do a remote support session, and we learned a few things, although no resolution yet.

The "Connecting to Source" message is the NuVoBridge service being unable to connect to the Mirage Media Service. You'll see a similar result if you use the PC-based (flash) Mirage application or the web GUI - none will be able to talk to Mirage. What appears to be happening is that one of the services/processes is crashing, and not restarting properly (or at all?). Why it crashes in the first place is still a mystery, and why it doesn't come back up is another. We were able to reproduce the restart failure by manually stopping/starting the service from within the MCS Config app.

Autonomic poked around for quite a while, and is off thinking about the possibilities. The only thing "odd" on my server is the AVG anti-virus app (which I've just uninstalled for now to test the theory) - although we didn't see anything in the AVG logfiles to indicate that it had taken any (false positive) action against the Mirage application/service...

So the good news is that this problem doesn't appear to be NuVo-related, but in the Mirage application (or something conflicting with it), so it doesn't require Autonomic to chase down something with the NuVo hardware.

Jeff

 

[Neurorad]

Jeff, I recently posted in your Autonomic thread, trying to bump the gapless playback issue to the top.

From what you describe, this seems like it would be an easy fix for them - not sure why they are dragging their feet.

 

[jautor]

Jeff, I recently posted in your Autonomic thread, trying to bump the gapless playback issue to the top.

From what you describe, this seems like it would be an easy fix for them - not sure why they are dragging their feet.

You mean the gapless part? I'm not sure it's an easy fix, as they're likely using WMP functions to control playback. The ~1 second delay between tracks (my theory here) makes me think they're getting notified of a track completing (or detecting idle) and then starting another track. So it's possible it's not a bug to fix, but rather a large change to use perhaps a completely different/independent playback engine...

I've worked around that issue now for my primary listening area by using iTunes/Airplay/AirportExpress and the Apple Remote app. But now I have an enhancement request with Autonomic to NOT scan iTunes libraries, as they're finding my Apple Lossless-encoded files, which they can't play... (no one can play them except iTunes).


Jeff

 

[Neurorad]

Does WMP natively have a gap? I don't use it much for albums, and haven't noticed.

Man, sorry about your Apple woes. Maybe you should switch to FLAC or wma lossless. Can you use a mix?

 

[jautor]

Does WMP natively have a gap? I don't use it much for albums, and haven't noticed.

Man, sorry about your Apple woes. Maybe you should switch to FLAC or wma lossless. Can you use a mix?

WMP doesn't (usually) have a gap, but I don't use the PC normally for playback.

I'm actually switching from WMA lossless (supported by Firefly and my Roku Soundbridge) to iTunes/Airport for the primary listening system. So I'll eventually have an Apple Lossless main library in iTunes (for the main system) and a ~192k MP3 downconversion copy for the iPod and Mirage to use for the NuVo.

I'm switching to the Airport Express/iTunes for the main system to get:

1) Apple Remote - much easier to navigate with an iPod Touch than even the Roku
2) Sort Order tags - everything will show up in alphabetical order!

I've told Autonomic that I'd really prefer to use their setup for everything, but the gaps between tracks is unacceptable for 'real' music listening... For the NuVo background / whole house, not such a big deal, and I find myself using the Radiotime/Pandora features a lot anyway.

I'm also looking for the Apple DACP (digital audio control protocol) spec, which is what the Apple Remote uses to drive iTunes. Wondering how hard it would be to build a NuVo keypad app to run on an iTunes PC, get all of the above and metadata/control from the keypads...

Jeff

 

[js19707]

I'm also looking for the Apple DACP (digital audio control protocol) spec, which is what the Apple Remote uses to drive iTunes. Wondering how hard it would be to build a NuVo keypad app to run on an iTunes PC, get all of the above and metadata/control from the keypads...

have you seen: http://dacp.jsharkey.org/ ? looks like he reverse-engineered enough to build an android app and has released his source code.

 

[jautor]

have you seen: http://dacp.jsharkey.org/ ? looks like he reverse-engineered enough to build an android app and has released his source code.

I knew there was an Android remote, but didn't know about that site, thanks! I was under the assumption that Apple released a spec for the protocol - but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Jeff