Has anyone tried this, and if so what is the process and sound-wise, how does it compare to Squeeze?
Maestro âhands off the stream and gets out of the way entirelyâ. On Antipdodes, it hands off the stream to the MPD player app. This is similar to JPlay so thatâs its true competitor.
Squeeze relies on the Squeezlite app for playback. My ears have told me that Squeezelite does a better job of getting out of the way than MPD, but maybe Maestro can help close the gap. Hopefully some JPlay fans will try it and let us know.
Not entirely true, JPLAY uses MinimServer on the Antipodes and MPD player on the Antipodes.
Maestro cannot connect to the UPnP server on the Antipodes, and must be added as a network share, so for local files uses your laptop or desktop and even then the network share is aâŚ: Coming soon. Weâre laying the groundwork for network shares. Once the Connector adds SMB/NFS mounting, this form will start working immediately â weâll save what you enter and try to connect.
Currently works great on Qobuz, less than average on local files stored on my laltop IMHO.
Cannot comment on sound quality as it is my desktop workstation system only, my gut tells me MinimServer+JPLAY will superior by a long stretch.
So it isnt a competitor, what it is now, is for someone who has music stored on their computer who want to stream to an ethernet endpoint, thats it.
Iâve shot off some questions via their Help on Maerstro, will be interesting to see if I get a responce.
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Look forward to hearing back how you go @MarkCole .
Paul M did respond pretty immediately to me a few weeks back, but it was clear that he didnât have much understanding of the Oladra software stack and options, and it wasnât particularly helpful at the time.
He said âMaestro can control any Roon enabled device. If I am understanding correctly you can turn that on. No?â
Iâm a Squeeze user for ultimate sonic reasons as most who use it are, so Iâm most interested in Maestro as a player front end with more functionality than the current Squeezelite UI.
All my streaming is via Qobuz, and while I have a bunch of stuff on disks in the Oladra, I donât recall the last time I accessed a song from it, so donât really âneedâ that functionality.
I have been on the Beta Program for this and have happily pushed all the usual streams of FLAC and DSD files from Maestro hosted on a Windows PC and looking at local files to the K50 with MPD and MiniDLNA configured. It definitely a work in progress with Paul making changes almost daily to improve the local file support experience. As others alluded to Paul is aiming to get away from any intensive in-app processing by Maestro and using it more like a traffic cop directing flows (from Quobuz etc.). It doesnât support DSD playback (yet) locally on the PC but streaming is working fine. Currently I still prefer local file playout via Squeeze and USB from the K50 to my DAC compared to Maestro guided streams to either the K50 or directly to my PMG512 DAC
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I donât get it.
There is no way in Maestro to select the Music library hosted on the K50.
If you are streaming from your PC then you are just using the Player in the K50 and the server in the PC
Hi Mark,
I am not suggesting I am using Maestro to access the library on the disk in the K50. I am playing tracks out locally on the K50 via Squeeze over USB to my DAC and I was saying I currently prefer the sound of that to playing the same tracks / playlist hosted on my PC via Maestro over UPnP to the K50 or to the DAC directly
Best regards
ahhhh my apologies, I understand now, having a senior moment :)_
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After downloading the app from their website and consulting Gemini, I did get Maestro operating today using MPD with Minimserver in the Playback Method dropdown thatâs in the Solution Dashboard.
Unfortunately that stack doesnât come close to Squeeze in sound quality - itâs loud, pretty brash, and effectively chucks itself at you, in other words, a lot of what weâre all trying to get away from in digital music.
Thatâs as opposed to the polished, calm, sophisticated and very analogue sound that squeeze produces.
Of course I have absolutely no technical knowledge to inform what parts of the chain might have been the weak points, and whether thereâs further fine tuning that could be done that might result in a better sonic outcome.
@MarkCole not sure if youâve anything else to add here, or whether we just wait for further software developments down the track?
No, nothing to add, they never responded to my email enquiry.
Itâs not for use on our servers is my only conclusion.
Maestro is very much a work in progress and Paul has taken to sandboxing it to fix and iterate the app faster. There should be a new version any day now or possibly after the HiFi show here in Europe where the PSA team are attending. You might drop your thoughts and feedback on the PSA community page as well where Paul is pretty responsive and I suspect he would be mortified to hear your observations thus far in terms of how Maestro sounds for you. I tested it to see it working but havenât really spent any time with it as I want them to fix the local file elements (including DSD playback) on the PC [in my case] that is hosting Maestro