Music Player
Use with Windows, Apple Mac, Linux, USB memory
The Music Player allows you to play audio files which are stored on a computer on your network or on a USB memory device plugged into the sound system.
In order to play files from a computer on your network, your sound system must connect to a file server application which uses the Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) protocol. If your computer uses Windows XP or Vista, then it is likely that your computer already has a UPnP server application available. Windows Media Player version 11 has this capability, and it is able to make your MP3 and WMA files available to your sound system. It also allows you to select files by Album, Artist, and so on.
Windows Media Player is only able to serve MP3 and WMA files to your sound system. If you have your audio files in either AAC or FLAC formats, or if you are an Apple Mac or Linux user, there are other UPnP server applications which you may use with your sound system.
The Music Player on the sound system can playback audio files in MP3, FLAC, AAC and WMA formats. WMA Lossless files can also be played when using Windows Media Player 11 as it will convert these to a PCM format before streaming them to the sound system. Note that the playback of files encoded using WMA Voice, WMA 10 Professional, and files which have DRM protection is not supported.
When using a UPnP server, the search and selection criteria are determined by the server software, but typically include Artist, Album and Genre. Many server applications also allow you to access your files according to the folders within which they are stored as well as other criteria. Windows Media Player 11 is less flexible than some other UPnP servers, but is generally easy to set up. It is supplied as a standard component of Windows XP and Vista.
Many UPnP server applications are also capable of sharing pictures and video files to other network connected devices. If this is the case (as it is with Windows Media Player 11) you may see the option of choosing between 'Music', 'Video' and 'Pictures' on the Music Player's menu. Clearly you should only select the 'Music' option. Content offered via the alternative options will not be playable on your sound system.
Some third party server applications allow customisation of the search criteria and indexing methods. This can be useful if you have a very large collection of stored music files.
Here is a short selection of alternative UPnP server applications, although many others are available:
Twonky Media Server (Windows, Apple Mac, Linux)
TVersity (Windows) *
Elgato EyeConnect (for Apple Mac OS X) *
MediaTomb (Linux) *
* = free of charge versions available at the time of writing
Please refer to the documentation for your chosen server application for full details of its configuration and usage.
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