*Official* Pioneer N-50 Network Audio Player Thread - Page 2

I just got this player. Anyone know if Pioneer is planning to upgrade firmware to support ALAC?

Is anyone having issues with FLAC files showing album art?

I just got this player. Anyone know if Pioneer is planning to upgrade firmware to support ALAC?

Is anyone having issues with FLAC files showing album art?

The album art never works with any lossless format for me. I was surprised to see mp3 actually showing it...

I haven't got WAV to work yet with album art. The player doesn't play AIFF so I guess I may be out of luck.

Hi
I have all my music stored in FLAC and I have had no issues with artwork not displaying properly.
Check that you have the artwork embedded in each audio file/track and not just embedded as the whole album, and also ensure that the artwork is only a small size and resolution. Any large JPEG files can cause problems.
What software are you using to convert your music?
I tend to use XLD which is a free converter for both Mac (as I use), and PC which works fine with the Pioneer.
Hope this helps and let me know how you get on?
Mike

Great advice Kimberz, will try the converter!

Thanks Mike. I use xld and have the settings set as you mentioned with embedding onto files. The Flac files show artwork on my iPhone using the Capriccio player. Just not on the n50.

I also have the option to scaled-down artwork to 500 pixels.

I found out there there is a multiple format option in the XLD converter which is very handy. It may be redundant but I'm making FLAC, ALAC, WAV and AIFF with one rip. My options are really open for which player, devices etc that I will be using in the near future so at least this way I have multiple formats that I can use.

Glad you like XLD. Yes it's multi format conversion feature is very useful. I've saved my audio in FLAC, Apple Lossless (m4a) and mp3.
That way I have it stored so that it's compatible with iTunes as well as streaming lossless over my network. Oh and mp3 which is fine for my iPod.
Still not sure why your N50 isn't displaying your album art though.
The only other thing I can think of is the actual method of streaming.
How are you streaming it to the N50?
I'm using an Iomega Home Network 2TB NAS.

The sound is awesome by the way.

I actually am using a USB right now. Still have to get a wireless adapter.

This thing doesn't have a pre-amp does it?

No pre amp

Does anyone know when or if there is a pending firmware update on its way?
I've contacted Pioneer and waiting their reply but just wondering if anyone else had already asked the question?
A couple of things I would really like to see is gapless playback and being able to 'pause' when streaming. At the moment the Play/Pause only works as Play when streaming. It works fine for USB and Airplay.

I've had mine for 6 months now and have had no issues at all. I use it to stream flacs and mp3s and the sound quality is amazing. My only complaint is the poor Android app- it would be nice to see more than 4 lines in the display.

I have an N-50-K. It works well for FLAC files indexed in the music library created under JRiver MC. It works reliably with a terrific Android App called BubbleUPnP. It does NOT like the JRiver Gizmo application. BubbleUPnP is a superior piece of work with good cover art display and user-configurable options and costs less than $5. The Pioneer controlApp is not very useful to me although it controls the Pioneer machine directly. On the other hand Bubble has the Pioneer run as a DMR. Problem with BubbleUPnP is that the Android tablet must remain switched on during playback for track-advance triggering and this depletes the batteries. This can be fixed by installing Bubble UPnP Server on the PC. It has "Persistent and shared Playlist for UPnP AV Renderers (OpenHome)" which takes the playlist from the Android tablet to the PC and keeps on controlling if the tablet is switched off.
Edited by sorepinky - 12/29/12 at 7:13pm

Update coming OFFICIAL

I was in a Tokyo electronics store today ( I live here) looking at the N50, the lack of gapless has put me off.

However on all the N50s on display there are now official pioneer shelf talkers (signs) that say an update is coming in Spring 2013.

It will be:

Gapless
AIFF
Apple Lossless
Update to the iOS / android pioneer control app

you can check at

pioneer.jp/components/

and click on n50

I asked for date but the sales guy could not give me one, however it is definitely coming.

I may hold off until it is released but tempted now........

Unit looks sexy but (and im not trying to be a douche - I just dont know much about audio) but ultimately aren't you just playing a compressed mp3 file? so how much better can that sound?

Fantastic news!
My wishes have been granted and the best Christmas present ever!
Being able to play Apple Lossless (m4a) is also good news as it means i will no longer have to keep converting my music from iTunes to FLAC prior to saving on to my NAS drive.
Can't wait!

Mine does not like 192/24 FLACs. On 1.009 firmware and any controller, it puts out a crackle at the start of any 192/24 track. 176.4/24 FLACs and below are OK. That's using the network input.
Edited by sorepinky - 1/6/13 at 11:13pm

Fantastic news indeed.

And here is the firmware update coming soon announcement in English on pioneer eu site

http://www.pioneer.eu/eur/newsroom/news/AVR_Firmware_2013/page.html

pionner europe is going to update the streamer n30 n50 with support to AIFF e ALAC files, confirmed by pionner.

Hi , I was wondering if you can help me.

I have had my N 50 for 3 weeks now, and although I can get it to play via AIRPLAY from my ipad, there is no way to get it to "see" my home server. My home server uses windows server 2008 and for 2 years now it works perfectly well with two $ 80 WD media players and my Xbox 360 . All three devises operate perfectly on the network, and it took them seconds to discover the server and stream from it. Not however with the $ 700 pioneer .

Although the pioneer has a " network setting " menu I cannot make heads or tails out of it because there is no relevant chapter in the manuals !

The N 50 drivers do not install with windows server 2008 and in general, although I have windows media server 2011 installed and the N 50 is supposed to be DLNA enabled I cannot get it to speak to the server and all I get is a " please wait "...

I bought this machine in order to upgrade from WD and all I got is a means to play lossy music via Ipad ...

Not too impressed .. Any help welcome

Thanks in advance

You may want to try posting on http://www.computeraudiophile.com/.

Thanks.... After fiddling with it for a few hrs, eventually I installed a media server other than Microsoft's and boom ! The server and the N50 started talking to each other....

Still, there is no artwork, plus the N 50 makes a humming noise when turned on... It's software is crap and the I pad control application hopeless ...

I am not very happy ... This thing cost me 10 times the Western digital and I am not even certain that it sounds all that better...

It looks expensive though...

Hi

Purchased a Pioneer N 50 a few weeks ago and am quite pleased with it. However I am looking forward to the new firmware download to sort out the flac 24bit problems.

I wanted to know whether anyone had tried out the Pioneer ControlApp for iPhone and what they thought about it. Also are there any third party apps out there that are as good or better.

Also to use the Pioneer ControlApp do I need to purchase the Pioneer AS-WL300 receiver / adapter. Currently I use a cable connection with good results.

Look forward to some replies.

Hi,

In order to use the app you don't need the wireless adapter. If you connect your N50 to the home network by wire the control app ( iPad & iPhone ) work more or less ok ... I have experienced communications problems and it takes some time for the control app to connect with the N50 but that's because the app itself is poor, and maybe the firmware ....

Hi Dstav

Thanks for the info. I will give it a go.

Best regards

One more thing.

In my house I operate wireless router for such devices as iPad, iPhone and other wireless enabled devices.

The N50 is connected by wire and of course the iPad running the control app is connected on the home network.

The two devices communicate OK once they manage to discover one another .

Take care

D

Hi

Have any of you guys from Europe installed the latest N-50 firmware yet?

http://www.pioneer.eu/eur/support/software/N-50-K/page.html#download_321

Full details:

Support for the following features with music server and front USB.
1. Apple Lossless Audio Codec (up to 96 kHz/24bit)
2. AIFF (up to 192 kHz/24bit)
3. Gapless Playback (Supports Only WAV, FLAC, ALAC, AIFF format)

Expansion of supported frequency of front USB from 96 kHz to 192 kHz.

Operability improvement of "Pioneer ControlApp"

Performance Improvements:
1. Problem measures becoming unstable at the time of choice in "all music" in Music Server.
2. Improve of Pause function for some DMS which do not function.
3. Improve of skip back function to back to the head of playing song.
4. Improve of the movement by DMC.


I'm curious to how know good the gapless playback support is. For example, does it work when the N-50 is behaving as a DMR, with the music pushed to it from a DMC (s/w on a pc or app on a cellphone/mobile) or does it only work when the N-50 is used as a DMP with the music selected by using its own remote control?

Thanks