T3 Support for Music?

scho · Post by **scho** » Sat Apr 12, 2014 15:06

I was wondering if there has been any testing of T3 audio / music support?

The P2 used to cop a lot of criticism for not being able to play FLAC files and not supporting a random or shuffle play feature for MP3 files. Times have changed since the P2 was new and Apple dominates the music player market. I suppose for many people all that's required is to be able to stream music from your iPod/iPhone. Can the T3 emulate an Apple TV for this? Many people have extensive music libraries on NAS devices. Can the T3 access these direct and support play lists and random play?

sub3R · Post by **sub3R** » Sat Apr 19, 2014 14:31

scho wrote:I was wondering if there has been any testing of T3 audio / music support?
...
Many people have extensive music libraries on NAS devices. Can the T3 access these direct and support play lists and random play?

I would also like to know this – especially random play (shuffle).

dddp · Post by **dddp** » Mon Apr 21, 2014 11:21

given the reference to apple decices above, can the T3 handle the apple lossless format?

scho · Post by **scho** » Tue Apr 29, 2014 13:53

Still waiting for my unit - apparantly it has shipped...
Will test music when it arrives...

Chuckles · Post by **Chuckles** » Wed Apr 30, 2014 00:02

The T3 definitely plays FLAC - I've pointed it at my FLAC collection on my server (which normally feeds my Sonos) and it can play the tracks.

Unfortunately, the music player doesn't seem to recognise them when it comes to building the database, but then again its called MP3 player and wants to build the MP3 database...I haven't pointed at my MP3's yet. Given it can play FLAC files it would be nice if it could also catalog them as it does for MP3s.

The database is presumably similar to the movie database the T3 can build - for the movies it provides a nice graphical browser with background art based on the movie, IMDB info, etc. Pretty slick in its own right, but I'll probably stick with Plex which allows me to browse by genre, director, actor, etc. rather than just by title.

When it comes to ALAC, I've noticed there is an ALAC codec available in the plugins/extensions downloads. I've not tried it yet, though.

scho · Post by **scho** » Sat Jun 28, 2014 13:38

OK - So I have finally had a chance to explore the T3 MediaPlayer functionality for music and the good news is that I think it does everything I want.

I worked out how to point it to the root directory of my iTunes library on my Synology NAS. From there it can create a playlist of every music file in every sub directory (which is effectively my entire music collection). You can then shuffle the playlist to randomise it (by a long press of the red circle button - took me a while to work that one out!)

The MENU and HELP buttons in the MediaPlayer allow you to set preferences and work out how to navigate and control it. Things like using the Channel Down button to toggle between the directory list and the play list take a bit of getting used to - but all up I'm pretty impressed and music support is much better than the DP-P2.

I'm not an audiophile or expert on music file formats and codecs but I have not found a file format it can't play yet. Most of my music is MP3. It seems to play MP3, M4a & wav OK. I need to do some testing with FLAC files to see if they appear in the playlist - sounds like this might be a problem. (I downloaded the ALAC codec plugin but still trying work out how to confirm if I'm actually using it).

You can not stream from the iPhone direct to the T3 via AirPlay. You get an error on the screen that says "AirTunes audio streaming is not possible on this boxtype" so I guess we hit a (not unexpected) proprietary issue there - but by accessing the iTunes library directly from the NAS (and avoiding wireless issues) that's not such a big problem.