Lumin issues with USB SSD drive?

A

alvinnir

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I am considering upgrading to a Lumin U1 Mini from my Bluesound Node 2i (with an external tube DAC that I like very much)

Currently i use a 1TB portable SSD drive connected directly to the Nose 2i rather than via networked computer because it is convenient, indexes music quicker, yet still retains all metadate and album cover art for the BlueOs app.

I have read that the Lumin, when connecting an SSD USB directly, you only get a folder view and no album art. Is this the case?

Also read that if I do hook up that drive to my Mac desktop I need to use Minimserver. I tried to run it, but I could not get it to see the attached drive. Now I can't get it to launch at all. Seems very buggy.

Any advice on how to get this to work would be great. I do look forward to what I hope will be a sonic improvement with the Lumin but don't need any more tech headaches in the process. Open to suggestions of other network streamers than Lumin if they are more user friendly for me. Thanks for your help.
 
Lumin in general are some of the consumer tech-friendliest solutions I've tried (in general, not just audio). The sound imo will be a very significant step up from Bluesound.

I'm not sure of the answer to the direct-attached SSD (others here will know), but I can say that setting up Minim on my NAS and Windows PC were both super easy and worked almost instantly with very little effort. No experience with Mac though.

That said, if it's in the budget I highly recommend looking at a L1 - it is what it says it is: virtually plug and go. You power it up, attached it to your computer (Windows at least, has been super easy), copy your music files and cover art over, then plug it into your network and the U1 will just see it as your music library. Couldn't possibly be easier, performs reliably, and looks great, but comes at an additional cost. You can get 2TB and 5TB models.
 
When I plug a usb drive into my Lumin A1 or X1, the album art is there just as I'd expect it be and the drive shows up as a source next to Qobuz, Tidal or whatever service you have enabled.
I don't have the faintest idea how I'd connect to the same files on a computer in the house. It's so easy to to use a portable drive plugged into the Lumin, that's what I'd do.
 
Rnrmf said:
I don't have the faintest idea how I'd connect to the same files on a computer in the house.
Click to expand...

This is where a music server comes in, like Minim or Roon. At least in the case of Lumin. I’m not sure if there are streamers that can see files on a network share (which is the native Windows way of other devices seeing files on your computer, but comes with it’s own set of headaches).
 
Well thank you Christian. So now I'm good to go on the u1 Mini only to hear Lumin has discontinued it due to a chip supply issue. Wonder if they are going to come out with a replacement soon and what changes there will be. Another streamer i have heard good things about is the Moon Neo 2, made by Sim Audio in Canada. That unit does not have a USB input for a drive so you have to run it through your network, something I am trying to avoid.
 
alvinnir said:
That unit does not have a USB input for a drive so you have to run it through your network, something I am trying to avoid.
Click to expand...

Note that control is through the network anyway, so even if your music comes from a USB drive, LUMIN still has to be on the network so that your tablet/phone can control it.
 
Just bought a u1 Mini and it's on it's way. The BlueOs system with the Node 2i required cover art to be a file that was named"cover.jpg". If I use a USB drive direct to the Lumin, according to the manual, the cover art has to be a file named "Folder.jpg". Manually changing every album art cover will be very time consuming. I wonder if there is a program that will batch change all my cover.jpg files to folder.jpg. I know I can use the drive with Minimserver but I don't want to have a desktop computer set up for that purpose only. Any suggestions?
 
alvinnir said:
Just bought a u1 Mini and it's on it's way. The BlueOs system with the Node 2i required cover art to be a file that was named"cover.jpg". If I use a USB drive direct to the Lumin, according to the manual, the cover art has to be a file named "Folder.jpg". Manually changing every album art cover will be very time consuming. I wonder if there is a program that will batch change all my cover.jpg files to folder.jpg. I know I can use the drive with Minimserver but I don't want to have a desktop computer set up for that purpose only. Any suggestions?
Click to expand...

Check to see if MP3 Tag can do it - e.g. rename *.jpg cover files to folder.jpg within directory - Support - Mp3tag Community
 
alvinnir said:
Just bought a u1 Mini and it's on it's way. The BlueOs system with the Node 2i required cover art to be a file that was named"cover.jpg". If I use a USB drive direct to the Lumin, according to the manual, the cover art has to be a file named "Folder.jpg". Manually changing every album art cover will be very time consuming. I wonder if there is a program that will batch change all my cover.jpg files to folder.jpg. I know I can use the drive with Minimserver but I don't want to have a desktop computer set up for that purpose only. Any suggestions?
Click to expand...

Just try it with cover.jpg first without doing anything to rename the files.
 
Thanks. That is what I was going to try to do, Peter. I'm not sure Mp3tag can do that but I just found another program called Bliss that apparently can.
 
Easiest way to do that is a bulk file rename utility. One I've used many times and works well is Bulk File Renamer. As always triple check the legitimacy of any 3rd party software download site and be sure you're running antimalware etc.
 
So I have received the U1 Mini and am having a tough time getting it to work with my music files. With the SSD drive attached directly to the Lumin I get some album art but not all. And playback is very inconsistent. Sometimes the music files show up, sometimes they don't. So I have tried to get things going on my I Mac with mininserver. got a download error 3 message with Safari but did get it to download with Opera and installed it. In configuration, I could not seem to point it to the external drive, it only seems to see anything on the internal drive of the IMac. Additionally, it does not seem to relaunch, does not populate my applications folder like a normal program. This is driving me crazy, all I want to do is play my local flies. this was so easy to do with my Bluesound Node 2i. Would appreciate any help, I'm not all that computer savy. Is there another uPNP music server that works with Lumin for Mac? Is there something I can do with my files on the SSD to get that to work better. Tidal works fine.
 
alvinnir said:
got a download error 3 message with Safari but did get it to download with Opera and installed it. In configuration, I could not seem to point it to the external drive, it only seems to see anything on the internal drive of the IMac. Additionally, it does not seem to relaunch, does not populate my applications folder like a normal program.
Click to expand...


I just tried downloading in Safari and didn't run into any problems. I just had to click "allow" when asked by Safari if I wanted to allow downloads from the MinimServer website.

After opening the disk image, I drag-and-dropped MinimServer.app into my /Applications directory and it stayed there. To make it automatically start when I log in to my account, I added it to my user's Login Items (System Preferences > Users & Groups > Login Items).

To access your external USB hard disk, try looking for the "Volumes" folder.

But if you're still having trouble accessing a USB-connected external hard disk, you could try creating a folder shortcut/alias to the USB drive's music folder in your home folder or desktop. Then navigate to there in the MinimServer properties dialog and it should find it okay. I did that with a network mounted music folder. Alternatively, you could manually enter the folder location into the "contentDir" value of the properties dialog, or in the web interface on localhost:9790.

It make take a few minutes for MinimServer to complete scanning your music files, at which point the menubar icon will change from yellow to white. After which you should be able to see it in the Lumin app or other apps, like Linn Kazoo.
 
The issue I am having is that I can't even get mininserver to launch. I double click on it and nothing happens. I am trying to use the USB input directly again and this time I have formatted in ex FAT and so far it seems to read the files I have put in so I will add files and see how it goes. Is there a limit to the size of the drive or number of files on that drive. Sure would be nice to get minimserver to work though.
 
Update ....I did finally get minimserver to launch and I did direct it to Volumes and there was my usb drive with all my music. However, I don't seem to see any interface for this minimserver app, no idea how to get it to do a scan, no ikons, nothing. Even when I do a force quit, it does not show up on my list od apps running so I suspect there must be something I am missing to actually get it to run and do what it's supposed to do.
 
You need to install "MinimWatch" on your computer:

MinimServer Downloads

With the basic version you got under configuration only a "Default" profile. If you want more features of the server you need a license. Then you can add profiles of your own.

Under "Properties/Server" or "Properties/Advanced" you can configure the MinimServer to your likes. Most likely you can find in MinimServer Forum most answers. Especially take your time with the index tags. The "Show log" is helpful to solve problems that belong to wrong tagged data. The "Rescan" function is really fast in comparison to the Lumin app.

Here the "indextags" i am using:

Albumartist, Album, Albumsort, Artist, Title, +Date, Decade, Country, City, Genre, All Artists, Composer, Mood, BPM, #AudioData, #AudioFormat, #AudioQuality, #AudioDuration

tagoptions:
Album.sortTags={Date, Artist}, Decade.decade.index, Date.yearOnly.*

tagValue:
Decade.default={Date}

serverOptions:
recentAdded=1000, recentPlayd=1000
 
alvinnir said:
Update ....I did finally get minimserver to launch and I did direct it to Volumes and there was my usb drive with all my music. However, I don't seem to see any interface for this minimserver app, no idea how to get it to do a scan, no ikons, nothing. Even when I do a force quit, it does not show up on my list od apps running so I suspect there must be something I am missing to actually get it to run and do what it's supposed to do.
Click to expand...

If you click on the MinimServer menubar icon, when either yellow or white in color, a popup menu appears with access to the properties dialog box. If you access localhost:9790 you will get a basic web interface to show the status, refresh/reload MinimServer. But you really should read through the MinimServer online documentation. This is all covered there.

MinimWatch is only necessary if you are installing MinimServer on a computer other than the one you are sitting in front of.
 
alvinnir said:
Update ....I did finally get minimserver to launch and I did direct it to Volumes and there was my usb drive with all my music. However, I don't seem to see any interface for this minimserver app, no idea how to get it to do a scan, no ikons, nothing. Even when I do a force quit, it does not show up on my list od apps running so I suspect there must be something I am missing to actually get it to run and do what it's supposed to do.
Click to expand...

When it's running it should show a status icon the Mac menu bar at the top. It changes color after it's done scanning.

Then in Lumin app, select MinimServer as the library.

Whenever you add some music to the MinimServer music folder (USB drive), you can use Lumin app to invoke MinimServer Rescan. After the rescan is finished, Lumin app may automatically detect the new addition. In case you don't see that happening, please invoke Update Library in Lumin app, or swipe away the Lumin app and relaunch it.
 
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