Beosound Moment in 2019

I've never been a fan of the Beosound Moment. I am taking a fresh look now and it may be a nice addition to my B&O home ;-) Particularly in absence in any big launches this year so far.

I am currently using Plex and Glider to play music across several B&O speakers using Airplay-2; sometimes also via the B&O app.

I am thinking to buy a Beosound Moment basically as replacement for the B&O IOS app. I see the following pros and cons:

+++ The Moment caches and allows DLNA search. This should make DLNA much more useful. The B&O app does not allow search and does not locally cache, which makes it slow and cumbersome

+++ The Mood wheel also seems nice and I could have all my DLNA songs on the mood wheel

+++ Support of M3U playlists (maybe the app can this, too?)

+++ Full native DLNA integration. I.e., I don't need to go through menus, but the artists show nicely in the main screen without the need to go through complex DLNA menus

 

--- No longer being updated? Still bugs and potential issues with future B&O products

--- Low performance / less compelling form factor compared to ipad (it still looks like a cheap android within a beautiful case

--- Large, chunky charging station (aka as "heart")

 

Questions:

* Possible to use the Moment completely without the "heart"?

* Any recommendations on wall brackets for the Moment (just the display, not the "heart")

* If I had to keep the "heart", does it have a line-out that I can play via NL to non-B&O devices?

* How "fast" is the GUI assuming a massive DLNA library (> 100k songs)

 

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

Hi! Some answers/comments

+++ The Moment caches and allows DLNA search. This should make DLNA much more useful. The B&O app does not allow search and does not locally cache, which makes it slow and cumbersome

Search is really the top feature, specially when you have Deezer activated too. A shame that the app does not leverage the Moment search engine when controlling the Moment.

Note: I’ve not been able to leverage the PLEX DLNA server as songs over 44,1kHz cannot be inserted in my B&O products, Moment included, when using the B&O app as the DLNA controller, so I guess the same would happen when using the JukeBok to do the same, to be confirmed.

+++ The Mood wheel also seems nice and I could have all my DLNA songs on the mood wheel

MoodWheel is a great feature too, but you’ll never have ALL your DLNA songs available through the MoodWheel, only a subset and I don’t know what limits the number. What I definitively know is that when I launch songs through the inner ring, so amongst my DLNA songs as well as my Deezer favorite songs, after a while, songs not belonging to any of my collections are played while I have >45k DLNA songs and a lot in Deezer too. I cannot believe that the MoodWheel is running out of local songs knowing the diversity of my songs.

+++ Support of M3U playlists (maybe the app can this, too?)

It supports the playlists that your DLNA server exposes and does not have its own playlist management.

+++ Full native DLNA integration. I.e., I don't need to go through menus, but the artists show nicely in the main screen without the need to go through complex DLNA menus

“Full native DLNA integration” is a dream , but yes it groups songs behind artists tiles assuming your DLNA metadata are present, clean an accurate. Arists’ image management is far from being perfect, reason why they introduced customer self management of artists’ images. As a Glider or PLEX user, you’ll be disappointed by the poor options the Moment offers to order albums .... it has none ! And even the default sorting pretending to be by date is wrong.

--- No longer being updated? Still bugs and potential issues with future B&O products

Agreed

--- Low performance / less compelling form factor compared to ipad (it still looks like a cheap android within a beautiful case

Jukebox Performance is sufficient for the task it has to perform, honestly, and it now gives a legacy look and feel that is perfect for collectors’ addicts

--- Large, chunky charging station (aka as "heart”

The SoundHeart is .... the heart. The tablet (Jukebox) is useless without the heart. You have to see It as the perfect app to drive your Moment, and without the heart charging it, the tablet dies very quick!

Questions:

* Possible to use the Moment completely without the "heart"?

See above

* Any recommendations on wall brackets for the Moment (just the display, not the "heart")

See above

* If I had to keep the "heart", does it have a line-out that I can play via NL to non-B&O devices?

It has PL an WPL out, that’s it.

* How "fast" is the GUI assuming a massive DLNA library (> 100k songs)

GUI is not the CPU dog here but the heart is.

It can take up to 2 days to finish processing a 45k DLNA collection, which includes collecting, indexing, grouping, looking for images, looking for mood and building the xml files, stored in heart, and leveraged by the tablet to drive the music playing.

The Moment is reactive to any DLNA / Deezer (parking TuneIn here) collection change so you need to activate the Moment Expert mode to control yourself the refresh of the Moment database otherwise it may spend its time processing changes and you should expect strange behavior with large collections like yours such as no more DLNA songs available through the tablet .....

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

Conclusion: I like my Moment, initially a perfect good companion of my BeoLab, now working side by side with my Core and other B&O products. It took time to get use to its immaturity, its issues, its imperfections and I know nothing will change now, but I’m still fan of its unique features and I has his place in my music ecosystem.

I have a dream: PLEX app running into the Moment!

Just wrote a very long answer through Beoworld app, not sure where the post went ...

steve1977:

* Possible to use the Moment completely without the "heart"?

Not possible. It need the ”heart” for charging and the “heart” have all communication with eg NAS and internet.

steve1977:

* If I had to keep the "heart", does it have a line-out that I can play via NL to non-B&O devices?

No

Hi Steve - few comments/answers:

I am currently using Plex and Glider to play music across several B&O speakers using Airplay-2; sometimes also via the B&O app.

FYI: The Moment does not support Airplay, nor Chromecast

I am thinking to buy a Beosound Moment basically as replacement for the B&O IOS app. I see the following pros and cons:

You cannot see the Moment as a replacement for the App. The Moment heart (SoundHeart - SH) is the NL processing/streaming unit and the tablet (JukeBox - JB) is the Moment controller and nothing more. The SH is the one collecting DLNA songs metadata from your DLNA server, which means that you must have a very well curated collection to avoid surprises, it organizes the songs, collects their mood and the artists images from third party internet services - when they are available -  and builds its database for the JB to "play" with. What the JB sees is what the SH has processed.

+++ The Moment caches and allows DLNA search. This should make DLNA much more useful. The B&O app does not allow search and does not locally cache, which makes it slow and cumbersome

The Moment DLNA/Deezer search is one of the best features.

+++ The Mood wheel also seems nice and I could have all my DLNA songs on the mood wheel

Don't expect ALL your DLNA songs being accessible through the MoodWheel (MW). I don't know the exact logic behind the MW process, but what I definitively know is that when playing from the inner ring, i.e. your collection (DLNA + Deezer), after some playing time, songs are no longer coming from your collection but from B&O selected Deezer songs ...... with >45k tracks in my DLNA collection, I doubt that the Moment was not able to find more songs corresponding the the Mood selected.

That said, it does the job for 3 to 4 hours, Moods are usually well managed, and it is always great to listen to songs you'll don't think to listen too when you have a large collection.

+++ Support of M3U playlists (maybe the app can this, too?)

The Moment will only display playlist exposed by your DLNA server or Deezer, it does not manage playlists itself.

+++ Full native DLNA integration. I.e., I don't need to go through menus, but the artists show nicely in the main screen without the need to go through complex DLNA menus

With some limitations, e.g. album sorting is crap, artists images if far from being perfect. As Plex/Glider user, you may be quickly disappointed by the song selection options and the UI.

--- No longer being updated? Still bugs and potential issues with future B&O products

Correct

--- Low performance / less compelling form factor compared to ipad (it still looks like a cheap android within a beautiful case

JB has enough performance for what it has to do, i.e. control the SH

--- Large, chunky charging station (aka as "heart")

 But required as it is the heart of the system and the only way to charge the JB

Questions:

* Possible to use the Moment completely without the "heart"?

No, see above

* Any recommendations on wall brackets for the Moment (just the display, not the "heart")

Not applicable

* If I had to keep the "heart", does it have a line-out that I can play via NL to non-B&O devices?

The only output are PL and WPL.

* How "fast" is the GUI assuming a massive DLNA library (> 100k songs)

As stated above, the JB is not the processing bit, the SH is. For a collection like yours, count at least 3 days to complete (fetching metadata, moods, artist images, organizes and store).

They are many other things to know to properly adopt the beast, including patience, but at the end of the day it is a really nice kit unfortunately stuck while immature. I like mine.

Thanks for your long and thoughtful reply. Very helpful.

My library is perfectly organized, so i’m sure the moment can deal with it.

I don’t mind not having airplay/googlecast.

There seems to be one point that seems to be missing and would be really important for me. I cannot control other NL devices or b&o multi-room setup? So, i’d still need to use the b&o app (i.e., two devices to control my music experience). so, glider/plex may still be superior?

steve1977:

There seems to be one point that seems to be missing and would be really important for me. I cannot control other NL devices or b&o multi-room setup? So, i’d still need to use the b&o app (i.e., two devices to control my music experience). so, glider/plex may still be superior?

Correct, from the JB you can only join other products, full point. The App is still required for other products management such as product configuration.

FYI: I was not able to leverage the Plex DLNA service for songs higher than 44,1 kHz with any of by B&O products, including the Moment.
I use Twonky with the Moment as it also provides photo management that I leverage for my own artists images that are exposed by the JB.
When I want to use the PLEX instead (on computer or mobile devices), I leverage the Chromecast feature to stream from PLEX to my all B&O products but the Moment.

 

Interesting post.

I remember going to the launch/training on this.

At the time it seemed amazing, totally B&O (although I have never really used the mood adjustments on any device). It really looked to be an amazing piece of kit.

Never owned/sold one though.

It does not seem to get much love/support?

For the high price tag I wonder what B&O’s original concept and idea was for this device and did they anticipate just how dropped it is now?

Can’t help wondering why they do not put the same energy into the app and utilise the iPad etc.

Anyone got more input/info?

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Can i turn off deezer and run the wheel solely on dlna?

Not overly interested in google cast as i cannot join speakers, but am limited to speaker groups.

steve1977:

Can i turn off deezer and run the wheel solely on dlna?

I think so, there is no valid reason to prevent you running the Moment without Deezer, other users in this forum do have it running without. Personally I never tried.

In this case you should only have the inner ring active which should provide you enough songs for several hours considering your large library and assuming enough songs have a mood registered. It would be interesting to see how far the MoodWheel can play from a single point against a single DLNA source.

FYI: by starting playing with SongKong which can look for songs’ moods and add them as metadata, i realized that not all songs have a registered mood.

The outer ring is limited to deezer? How does it visually look if i only have an inner ring?

Where does the moment get the mood tag? From my embedded tags or pulls it from another source?

steve1977:

The outer ring is limited to deezer? How does it visually look if i only have an inner ring?

Where does the moment get the mood tag? From my embedded tags or pulls it from another source?

Outer and middle rings are songs not belonging to your collection, so Deezer songs that are not in your favorite list.

If Deezer is not a active, outer and middle ring should show with faded colors.

I think Moment is relying on Gracenote for artists images, I guess for moods too.

mbolo01:

If Deezer is not a active, outer and middle ring should show with faded colors.

Is anyone using this setup and can confirm how this looks like? Maybe even send a screenshot?

mbolo01:

I think Moment is relying on Gracenote for artists images, I guess for moods too.

Can anyone confirm that mood tags are also taking from Gracenote. Gracenote is quite reliable, so this would be great!

By looking at the Moment database raw data you can see (1) images & moods are fecthed from Gracenote, (2) the first track has no mood while the second has one which gives a null Moodwheel position for the 1st one ("moodWheelItem":{"id":"0-0")

{"id":"237","name":"!!!!!!!!","artistName":"The Roots","artistNameNormalized":"Roots","artist":[{"id":"195","name":"The Roots","nameNormalized":"Roots","dlna":{"id":"195"},"image":[{"url":"http://192.168.xx.xx:80/api/stream/gracenote:image?t=artist&id=WEcxA67md8ElHVHt%2BQ7EwlO1HLnwm5ktAn%2Bo3KnhjiV1qLr8ts8qQlV8Z2XiLVLLhUMChejE4H%2FhPM4ya3RPTowedqTNDSfKIs%2FHIG%2FnFSALd1VkYCiYLxBlbWeZylzbIedVEc0BdPGvTXXpEpEnekarg4DFBFJ5y1BTNlZlqFsqvnUYng%3D%3D&tr=197","size":"large","mediatype":"image/jpg"}]}],"trackNumber":3,"genre":"","duration":24,"parentAlbum":{"id":"236","name":"Phrenology","releaseYear":0,"isCompilation":false,"genre":"","dlna":{"id":"236"},"image":[{"url":"http://192.168.1.52:9000/disk/DLNA-PNJPEG_TN-OP01-CI1-FLAGS00d00000/defaa/A/O0$1$8I2327563.jpg?scale=ORG","size":"large","mediatype":"image/jpg"}]},"moodWheelItem":{"id":"0-0","ring":"core","mood":{"name":"","graceNote":{"id":0}}},"mood":{"name":"","graceNote":{"id":0}},"dlna":{"id":"237","url":"http://192.168.1.52:9000/disk/DLNA-PNAAC_ISO_320-OP01-FLAGS01700000/O0$1$8I2327563.m4a","mediatype":""},"image":[{"url":"http://192.168.1.52:9000/disk/DLNA-PNJPEG_TN-OP01-CI1-FLAGS00d00000/defaa/A/O0$1$8I2327563.jpg?scale=ORG","size":"large","mediatype":"image/jpg"}],"_links":{"/relation/album":{"href":"/BeoContent/music/dlnaProfile/album/236"},"self":{"href":"./237"}}},

{"id":"51195","name":"¡Happy Birthday Guadalupe! (feat. Wild Light, Mariachi El Bronx)","artistName":"The Killers","artistNameNormalized":"Killers","artist":[{"id":"1411","name":"The Killers","nameNormalized":"Killers","dlna":{"id":"1411"},"image":[{"url":"http://192.168.xx.xx:80/api/stream/gracenote:image?t=artist&id=WEcxA9zFa39BQ5K%2FXdtpu9pf6%2Bt9lDftLtdjOBuyDofZxweng%2BYWIvHm4WtP%2BxuO0R7AqgZkME1lhG7ya5GxMY6nwfdBlVS94O%2BXJNGenwh8q0g1ir14Jqf%2FS53%2FeSOdviwuKkocoZyECgXoAmUVOXCL4Sef8%2FCl8kbOocOa2yJxt31ZnQ5Nrnw%3D&tr=1413","size":"large","mediatype":"image/jpg"}]}],"trackNumber":4,"genre":"","duration":273,"parentAlbum":{"id":"1412","name":"(RED) Christmas - EP","releaseYear":0,"isCompilation":false,"genre":"","dlna":{"id":"1412"},"image":[{"url":"http://192.168.1.52:9000/disk/DLNA-PNJPEG_TN-OP01-CI1-FLAGS00d00000/defaa/A/O0$1$8I7303947.jpg?scale=ORG","size":"large","mediatype":"image/jpg"}]},"moodWheelItem":{"id":"0-43057","ring":"core","mood":{"name":"Powerful / Heroic","graceNote":{"id":43057}}},"mood":{"name":"Powerful / Heroic","graceNote":{"id":43057}},"dlna":{"id":"51195","url":"http://192.168.1.52:9000/disk/DLNA-PNAAC_ISO_320-OP01-FLAGS01700000/O0$1$8I7303947.m4a","mediatype":""},"image":[{"url":"http://192.168.1.52:9000/disk/DLNA-PNJPEG_TN-OP01-CI1-FLAGS00d00000/defaa/A/O0$1$8I7303947.jpg?scale=ORG","size":"large","mediatype":"image/jpg"}],"_links":{"/relation/album":{"href":"/BeoContent/music/dlnaProfile/album/1412"},"self":{"href":"./51195"}}},

et voilà :-)

Thanks. I've been seeing the prices drop and it may well be realistic to pick one up for 800-1,00 Euro, which doesn't seem too bad.

The thing holding me back is that I'd still need two devices though, which is a pain. Would have been nice if the Moment would have allowed to play to NL speakers. Also, having read the long story of many bugs, I am still a bit concerned. How does the Moment deal with files being removed, added or changed on the DLNA server? I remember seeing bug reports about the Moment keep reading & reading from the server (without ever idling). Etc.

One hopefully last question: does the Moment take info from the tags or reloads all from gracenote? For exampled, I have perfect coverart embedded. Also, I changed the artist name of some of my artists, which I'd like to have the way how I manually changed them (not overwrite these changes by new scraping of artist name from gracenote). And lastly, does it support several DLNA servers / libraries?

The thing holding me back is that I'd still need two devices though, which is a pain. Would have been nice if the Moment would have allowed to play to NL speakers. Also, having read the long story of many bugs, I am still a bit concerned. How does the Moment deal with files being removed, added or changed on the DLNA server? I remember seeing bug reports about the Moment keep reading & reading from the server (without ever idling). Etc.

You could link your Moment to another B&O NL product so that when you start playing on the Moment sounds comes out of the linked product which holds the speakers. For the other not linked products, you could join them to the Moment, physically by pressing buttons or touch areas, or via the app.
Real case: My Moment has no speakers attached to it but is linked to my Core which has the Beolab speakers. I can start any source on the Moment and stream will go through the Core to the Beolabs. I guess it should work the same with other NL products.

Regarding bugs, the Moment is quite stable now that there is no further development. The latest bug is very specific to some setups including ML.

For DLNA refreshes, the best way is configure the Moment in "Expert" mode so you manually control the updates, i.e. once you have added/deleted/modified your DLNA collection, you then manually trigger the DLNA collection database refresh on the Moment.
If you let it do by itself, it will trigger a refresh automatically at each DLNA server change which may not be sustainable for large collections and may result in some temporary inconsistencies.
The continuous refresh issue you mention arises when you have a DLNA server with playlist containing recently played songs as the playlist is updated as you play, which triggers a DLNA status changes so a Moment refreshes ........ "Expert" mode, that a few of us had suggested to the B&O team in the course of the development, solves that.
In normal situations, DLNA collection does not change every day, so manual updates is acceptable IMO, this the way my Moment is configured.

One hopefully last question: does the Moment take info from the tags or reloads all from gracenote? For exampled, I have perfect coverart embedded. Also, I changed the artist name of some of my artists, which I'd like to have the way how I manually changed them (not overwrite these changes by new scraping of artist name from gracenote). And lastly, does it support several DLNA servers / libraries?

So except standard tags such album name, album artist, artist, cover image, track number and a few other, the Moment does not leverage useful tags  such "Genre", "BPM", "Composer", "Sampling Rate", etc... which is a shame. Even the date is not managed properly. I tried to have them to better manage these tags, but development drop came.

The only thing they get from Gracenote is what I put in my previous post, the rest is sourced from your DLNA server. Other information are not overwritten. For example, you can see in the raw data I shared that the image is a URL to the DLNA server.

Be aware that using different artists name may have an impact on the Gracenote scan for artist image which is used for the artist tile.

The Moment supports only one DLNA server at a time. Changing to another DLNA server in the Moment setup triggers a database rebuild from scratch.

I'm open to other questions, no worries.

mbolo01:

By looking at the Moment database raw data you can see (1)...

Dear mbolo01, how can I look at my Moment database?

I am wondering why some songs are played often using the mood wheel and other never. I guess the problem lies in my music tags. I hope when I look at my Moment database I can figure it out.

Thanks a lot. Let take your invite for my questions ;-) Much appreciated!

mbolo01:

You could link your Moment to another B&O NL product so that when you start playing on the Moment sounds comes out of the linked product which holds the speakers. For the other not linked products, you could join them to the Moment, physically by pressing buttons or touch areas, or via the app.

Real case: My Moment has no speakers attached to it but is linked to my Core which has the Beolab speakers. I can start any source on the Moment and stream will go through the Core to the Beolabs. I guess it should work the same with other NL products.

First of all, why don't you attach the BLs to the Core instead of to the Moment? If I had stand-alone BLs, it would be much clearer and easier to buy the Moment as I'd attach my BLs to it.

Linking the Moment to a NL speaker "permanently" is a good idea though. Curious though how a "link" is different from a regular "play-to"/"join". I may still want to use airplay-2 to play to my NL speakers or use their line-in. In this case, How does the use differ with "link" vs. "join".

Unfortunately, my BLs are connected to old ML BVs. I bought two NL/ML conveters, but the B&O app does not seem to properly support them in a way that I can join/link the Moment.

mbolo01:

If you let it do by itself, it will trigger a refresh automatically at each DLNA server change which may not be sustainable for large collections and may result in some temporary inconsistencies.

Can you elaborate a bit more what the issue with large collections is (mine is huge). I'd prefer to have the "automatic refresh". I don't need to have "recently played" playlist if that's the "only" issue. But I ocassionally add new albums to my DLNA server and prefer not to have to manuall trigger updates.

On related note, does the Moment have a recently added albums feature or would I need to configure the DLNA to feed this as a playlist?

mbolo01:

Even the date is not managed properly

That may be yet another big issue for me. When selecting an artist, in what order does it show the albums? I'd love to have it by year (decreasing). Alphatically would be really odd...

mbolo01:

Be aware that using different artists name may have an impact on the Gracenote scan for artist image which is used for the artist tile.

I hope this should not be a major issue. Basically the only relevant Gracenote info will be the "mood". So for the albums where I edited the artist manually, the Moment would follow my edits and show artists and covertart correctly. It would likely not identify the mood tag from Gracenote, which would eliminate these albums from the mood wheel. This should be fine for me.

Thanks again!!!

HH1971:

mbolo01:

By looking at the Moment database raw data you can see (1)...

Dear mbolo01, how can I look at my Moment database?

I am wondering why some songs are played often using the mood wheel and other never. I guess the problem lies in my music tags. I hope when I look at my Moment database I can figure it out.

Not having some songs played using the MW is not due to your tags imo but to either the absence of a mood for this song in Gracenote or the absence of a match for this song in Gracenote (low probability)

To access the Moment « database » content, use the following URL with any browser:

http://1 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx /BeoContent/music/dlnaProfile/track/?offset= n &count= m

Where "xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx" is the IP address of your SoundHeart , "n" is the starting point from the first track in your database (0 is the default), "m" is the number of track per page (default is 50)

Note: Tracks are not sorted by name or album, but by processing order, so (if you are patient) you can copy the output of the command(s) in a file to then search for the information you need.

First of all, why don't you attach the BLs to the Core instead of to the Moment? If I had stand-alone BLs, it would be much clearer and easier to buy the Moment as I'd attach my BLs to it.

My BLs used to be attached wireless (WPL) to the Moment.
I then acquired a Core as I wanted my Samsung TV sound into the BLs. I now have:

TV -- Optical --> Core -- PL --> Transmitter 1 -- WPL --> BLs
Record Deck -- RCA --> Moment -- NL --> Core
Beocenter 2500 -- PL --> Transmitter 1 -- WPL -- BLs (for the fun ...)

As both my Core and my Moment can play DLNA/Deezer/TuneIn, they cover each other in case of hardware or software issue as I cannot live without music :-)

Linking the Moment to a NL speaker "permanently" is a good idea though. Curious though how a "link" is different from a regular "play-to"/"join". I may still want to use airplay-2 to play to my NL speakers or use their line-in. In this case, How does the use differ with "link" vs. "join".

I think "join" is not "play-to" but "play-from". Linking product A to product B is adding the linked product A sources to the product B local sources.

Example: My Core (NL product) which is linked to the Moment has the Moment sources in its local sources list (I can send a screenshot if needed) I can then start a record and listen to it from the Core, AND, my Moment can also send its music flow to the NL linked product's speakers (I can't tell you if it is by design though). Note that you can only link the Moment from a NL product, but you cannot link the a NL product from the Moment.

In you AP2 scenario, you can only join the Moment to the NL product A and have the Moment leveraging linked NL product B speakers  .... but I don't see a benefit here as you'd better have A and B in multiroom and let the Moment sleep.

But if you start a Moment MW session, NL linked product B will be the Moment's speakers and you can join A to the Moment or even to B.

Unfortunately, my BLs are connected to old ML BVs. I bought two NL/ML conveters, but the B&O app does not seem to properly support them in a way that I can join/link the Moment.

I have no experience here, sorry.

Can you elaborate a bit more what the issue with large collections is (mine is huge). I'd prefer to have the "automatic refresh". I don't need to have "recently played" playlist if that's the "only" issue. But I ocassionally add new albums to my DLNA server and prefer not to have to manuall trigger updates.

The issue with large collection and DLNA playlists server continuously updating, is that the Moment after 3 or 4 auto-refresh cycle goes crazy and restarts a from scratch database rebuild, no more DLNA songs are displayed on the JukeBox the time of the rebuild, frustrating.

On related note, does the Moment have a recently added albums feature or would I need to configure the DLNA to feed this as a playlist?

The Moment does not manage its own playlists, it fully leverages the DLNA server's one. Note: The playlist processing is the latest step in the database update, so be patient!

That may be yet another big issue for me. When selecting an artist, in what order does it show the albums? I'd love to have it by year (decreasing). Alphatically would be really odd...

B&O pretends that albums are sorted by date, my experience is that there is no order at all, I guess the "sort order" is the discovered one. I escalated this many times but it was never fixed.

I hope this should not be a major issue. Basically the only relevant Gracenote info will be the "mood". So for the albums where I edited the artist manually, the Moment would follow my edits and show artists and covertart correctly. It would likely not identify the mood tag from Gracenote, which would eliminate these albums from the mood wheel. This should be fine for me.

If you have renamed "Jimi Hendrix" to "Jimi Great Hendrix", the artist tile will stay grey.

Thanks again!!!

You are welcome!

 

mbolo01:

My BLs used to be attached wireless (WPL) to the Moment. 

I then acquired a Core as I wanted my Samsung TV sound into the BLs. I now have:

TV -- Optical --> Core -- PL --> Transmitter 1 -- WPL --> BLs
Record Deck -- RCA --> Moment -- NL --> Core
Beocenter 2500 -- PL --> Transmitter 1 -- WPL -- BLs (for the fun ...)

Interesting setup. Why did you not connect your Samsung to your Moment via line-in? And then your BLs via WPL?

mbolo01:

B&O pretends that albums are sorted by date, my experience is that there is no order at all, I guess the "sort order" is the discovered one. I escalated this many times but it was never fixed.

This indeed is a very major bug. Is there still some hope or for sure no more bug fixes?

mbolo01:

If you have renamed "Jimi Hendrix" to "Jimi Great Hendrix", the artist tile will stay grey.

What you mean by "grey"? Does it still show as "Jimi Great Hendrix" in the artist list? But no mood associated with it?

Summing it up, I see the following things that may bother me:

1) No recently added albums

2) No proper album order

3) No change to select speaker groups / still need to use the B&O app

4) Potentially issues with auto-update of the server or need to use expert mode

5) No airplay 2

 

Your help is great and gets me thinking to buy one. But also point me to some very significant short-comings....

Interesting setup. Why did you not connect your Samsung to your Moment via line-in? And then your BLs via WPL?

My Moment Line In is already used by the record deck and the Samsung TV is optical out only. The Core helped the for connectivity and the redundancy at the same time.

This indeed is a very major bug. Is there still some hope or for sure no more bug fixes?

Don’t expect any improvement/fix for the Moment unfortunately.

What you mean by "grey"? Does it still show as "Jimi Great Hendrix" in the artist list? But no mood associated with it?

By grey I meant that the artist’s tile will have no image which is a pity. You could solve that by managing your own artist images if your DLNA server used for music is also managing photos.

Your help is great and gets me thinking to buy one. But also point me to some very significant short-comings....

You are welcome

PS: I like my Moment !

mbolo01:

By grey I meant that the artist’s tile will have no image which is a pity. You could solve that by managing your own artist images if your DLNA server used for music is also managing photos

What about embedded coverart? Most music tracks by now embed the photo. Does the Moment read embedded photos? If not, this would be a huge huge loss (even bigger than the random sort order of albums).

Glad to see you like your moment. I am still tempted, but still very undecided...

steve1977:

What about embedded coverart? Most music tracks by now embed the photo. Does the Moment read embedded photos? If not, this would be a huge huge loss (even bigger than the random sort order of albums).

Glad to see you like your moment. I am still tempted, but still very undecided...

Embedded cover art are correctly managed by the Moment. To summarize, the collection entry point in the Moment user interface is the Artist Tile which image is fetched from Gracenote using the artist name as the key search (I’m guessing), then, behind the Artist Tile, you’ll find the artist’s album(s) which cover art is/are the embedded ones.

Ah got it... Coverart is fine. Artist art will only work if the artist is correctly identified or the DLNA server is somehow providing it.

Two other points to note when you have a well curated collection and a Moment:

(1) the Moment is using the track artist instead of the album artist for the tiles. Good choice for some, bad choice for others ..... e.g. "John Doe" and "John Doe feat. Paul Smith" are two different tiles even if these tracks are coming from the same album.

(2) if you have compilations, you must set all tracks with album artist = "Various Artists" so the Moment correctly group them under "Various Artists" (yes they contradict their own logic in previous point) and so you don't multiply the number of tiles with all different artists found in the compilations, unless you wish it. In other words, they don't use the "compilation" tag ...

 

mbolo01:

Two other points to note when you have a well curated collection and a Moment:

(1) the Moment is using the track artist instead of the album artist for the tiles. Good choice for some, bad choice for others ..... e.g. "John Doe" and "John Doe feat. Paul Smith" are two different tiles even if these tracks are coming from the same album.

(2) if you have compilations, you must set all tracks with album artist = "Various Artists" so the Moment correctly group them under "Various Artists" (yes they contradict their own logic in previous point) and so you don't multiply the number of tiles with all different artists found in the compilations, unless you wish it. In other words, they don't use the "compilation" tag ...

Thanks that you brought this up. I almost pulled the trigger, but this may well be a show-stopper for me...

Do I understand you right that the artist view in my case will include thousands of artists? Probably 10,000+ artists. This basically makes the artist view useless and reduces the functionality to search.

Is there absolutely no way that the Moment can use "abum artist" in the artist view?

Use Bliss Music Tagger and all will be fine

Varry

steve1977:

Do I understand you right that the artist view in my case will include thousands of artists? Probably 10,000+ artists. This basically makes the artist view useless and reduces the functionality to search.

Is there absolutely no way that the Moment can use "abum artist" in the artist view?

If you have 10,000+ distinct artists or artists combinations, and your are not coding "Various Artists" as Album Artist for your compilations, then yes you are supposed to have 10,000 + artists tiles .... which I doubt the Moment will/can handle properly and within a reasonable processing time. I currently have 1473 artists for 47352 tracks and it takes quite a long time to process.

Album artist v.s. track artist is not customizable unfortunately. I recently refreshed some albums with SongKong and I didn't pay attention that many artist tracks name were changed for "xyz feat. abc" which triggered new artists' tiles apparition in the Moment.

Thanks. I well depends on your collection. For example, classic albums have different track artists from album artists, so an album of 6 tracks would be split across several artists. Same for rap albums, where basically every track has a different “feat”.

I have a hard time to imagine how anyone is using the artist view of the moment with this shortcoming. it basically means that you easily have thousands of artists if you have a large collection. and also you chop your albums into several pieces and cannot even listen to the whole album as one.

Talking about listening to albums, is the moment playing them gapless?

Really no hope / work-around how to prevent fragmenting the artist list with thousands of artist (with largely greyed our artist covers as classical and feat artists won’t have art on gracenote). You using twonky and does it have options to configure how things are presented to the moment?

For example, classic albums have different track artists from album artists, so an album of 6 tracks would be split across several artists. Same for rap albums, where basically every track has a different “feat”.

You got it ....

I have a hard time to imagine how anyone is using the artist view of the moment with this shortcoming. it basically means that you easily have thousands of artists if you have a large collection. and also you chop your albums into several pieces and cannot even listen to the whole album as one.

I bet not a lot of Moment users have a large DLNA collection or even a DLNA collection, otherwise you would see more discussions in this forum about different DLNA servers, etc...

Talking about listening to albums, is the moment playing them gapless?

No, this was requested several time to B&O but never came to a reality. This would have been a +++ for them as this is not so frequent and IMO they had the capable hardware.

Really no hope / work-around how to prevent fragmenting the artist list with thousands of artist (with largely greyed our artist covers as classical and feat artists won’t have art on gracenote). You using twonky and does it have options to configure how things are presented to the moment?

The Moment collects the tracks information (a few only as discussed earlier) from the DLNA server and does its own classification, grouping. They don't rely on the way DLNA servers are exposing the songs. I guess they do a "read all songs" and process their metadata as they come and group/expose according to their own logic which is far from being the best one.
The only way to keep a multi-artists album un-split is to flag it "Compilation" and set the album artist to "Various Artists" which is not really the way we want to see our classical albums organized. Don't even think about looking for "Composer" .....

I think B&O initially targeted an online music listener population (Deezer, Tunein) and did a very light DLNA integration to provide a "complete" service portfolio, that's it. Using the Moment since day one, I can tell you that many of us contributed to enhance the DLNA side of it as it was a real failure at the beginning, specially for large collections. Now it "works" but there was still a huge space for improvement at the time B&O stopped the product, a pity, a shame for owners.

 

mbolo01:

I think B&O initially targeted an online music listener population (Deezer, Tunein) and did a very light DLNA integration to provide a "complete" service portfolio, that's it. 

That is exactly what they did - a proper integration of a DLNA-based collections is a tough task.

IMO they should have let it stay as initially intended........a MoodPlay and PatternPlay machine for the Deezer music service and the Netradio/TuneIn service. They might even have reached a broader costumer base as what became the result in the end.

For playback of (large) DLNA-based collections there are far better solutions out there.

This said - I know - does not help you solve the ‘problems’ - as of now it’s a device that you either choose to live with or not!

MM

Millemissen:

...a MoodPlay and PatternPlay machine for the Deezer music service and the Netradio/TuneIn service.

Well I am exactly that type of user and I can't be happier with my Moment. You're spot on with your comment. For me, the added value of Moment vs Core+App combo is MoodPlay, PatternPlay, WISA and physical interaction rather than mobile app.

Millemissen:

For playback of (large) DLNA-based collections there are far better solutions out there

Which one are you thinking of? I like Glider, but development may have stopped. No other comes anything close to me. But I may not know the right DLNA players.

mbolo01:

The Moment collects the tracks information (a few only as discussed earlier) from the DLNA server and does its own classification, grouping. They don't rely on the way DLNA servers are exposing the songs. I guess they do a "read all songs" and process their metadata as they come and group/expose according to their own logic which is far from being the best one

Are you sure that there is no way? The Moment can only read the info that is exposed by the DLNA server? Wouldn't this be the XML info exposed by the DLNA server? So if I were to change this, the Moment may pick up the albumartist? Or is the Moment somehow getting the info form the file name (I doubt as this is too messy) or have a way to access the actual MP3 tag (which I don't know can be done?).

 

Are you sure that there is no way? The Moment can only read the info that is exposed by the DLNA server? Wouldn't this be the XML info exposed by the DLNA server? So if I were to change this, the Moment may pick up the albumartist? Or is the Moment somehow getting the info form the file name (I doubt as this is too messy) or have a way to access the actual MP3 tag (which I don't know can be done?).

There is no way that I know about.
The Moment has no configuration option on this front, it does not read the file system storing the songs but behaves like any DLNA controller/renderer with on top the ability to store the collection information/tags for local processing/indexing, like Glider does.
BUT, as you could see in the Moment database raw data I posted the other day, song/album TAGs collected & processed are very limited (I posted an excerpt below with relevant information) and there is no miracle to expect when: "Album artist" is not collected, "Genre" is present and empty while the info is definitively present in the song (Rock), "releaseYear"  (which is stored in the album index) is present and = 0 while the info is definitively present in the album songs (2011-11-29) .... how can they sort the albums then ???, "DiscNumber" is not captured so in a two discs album you'll have track 1 disc 1 followed by track 1 disc 2 in the Moment UI (Twonky is also bad at that, but I guess that B&O have mimicked what Twonky does more than leveraging what Twonky exposes, i.e. we would have see something like "DiscNumber":0 or "").

"name":"¡Happy Birthday Guadalupe! (feat. Wild Light, Mariachi El Bronx)",
"artistName":"The Killers","artistNameNormalized":"Killers",
"trackNumber":4,
"genre":"",
"duration":273,
"parentAlbum":{"id":"1412","name":"(RED) Christmas - EP","releaseYear":0"isCompilation":false,"genre":""

Just realized in another thread that you are also using Minimserver parallel to Twonky.

Have you tried Artist.displayFormat={$albumartist}? This would make Minimserver display the artist as albumartist in the XML tag from Minimserver. More context: https://forum.minimserver.com/showthread.php?tid=5340

steve1977:

Just realized in another thread that you are also using Minimserver parallel to Twonky.

Have you tried Artist.displayFormat={$albumartist}? This would make Minimserver display the artist as albumartist in the XML tag from Minimserver. More context: https://forum.minimserver.com/showthread.php?tid=5340

Thanks Steve.

I’m not using Minimserver with my Moment (lack of Photo support to manage my own artists images) but with the App as you have a better and customizable collection navigation tree.

mbolo01:

steve1977:

 

Just realized in another thread that you are also using Minimserver parallel to Twonky.

 

Have you tried Artist.displayFormat={$albumartist}? This would make Minimserver display the artist as albumartist in the XML tag from Minimserver. More context: https://forum.minimserver.com/showthread.php?tid=5340

 

 

Thanks Steve.

 

I’m not using Minimserver with my Moment (lack of Photo support to manage my own artists images) but with the App as you have a better and customizable collection navigation tree.

Have you ever tried to use Minimserver with the Moment and configure alrtists to be served as albumartist? Minimserver allows to do so via a special setting: Artist.displayFormat={$albumartist}

Some context on: https://forum.minimserver.com/showthread.php?tid=5340

Also, it seems to work with the Beomaster 5 to have Minimserver change that albumartist are being indexed: https://forum.minimserver.com/showthread.php?tid=2665&page=7