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LMS 7.9 Large library scanning improvement?

108.169.2.66
Posted on November 11, 2014 at 12:56:32
Sordidman
Audiophile

Posts: 13665
Location: San Francisco
Joined: May 14, 2001
 Has anybody upgraded yet? Any other benefits besides...

""In addition to faster scanning for large libraries, a bit more sophisticated artist/album artist display (if wanted), 7.9 now has finally implemented a long requested modification. That is the the ability to scan a music folder for a track/set of tracks and play them without them being added to the database permanently.""



"Asylums with doors open wide,
Where people had paid to see inside,
For entertainment they watch his body twist
Behind his eyes he says, 'I still exist.'"

 

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RE: LMS 7.9 Large library scanning improvement?, posted on November 11, 2014 at 14:26:01
E-Stat
Audiophile

Posts: 37584
Joined: May 12, 2000
Contributor
  Since: April 5, 2002
 I have upgraded, but have no idea as to what constitutes a "large library". I suspect mine would not fall into that category with a reported 7591 tracks across 816 albums.

I'm not aware of having any issues now or on earlier versions.

 

Thanks much, posted on November 11, 2014 at 14:34:28
Sordidman
Audiophile

Posts: 13665
Location: San Francisco
Joined: May 14, 2001
 Did you notice any difference in selecting music? When did you do the upgrade?

Thanks again,

Cheers,


"Asylums with doors open wide,
Where people had paid to see inside,
For entertainment they watch his body twist
Behind his eyes he says, 'I still exist.'"

 

Perhaps I should have, but, posted on November 11, 2014 at 14:54:43
E-Stat
Audiophile

Posts: 37584
Joined: May 12, 2000
Contributor
  Since: April 5, 2002
 Did you notice any difference in selecting music?

honestly didn't. With earlier versions, there was a change log document in the download folder. I just navigated the folder structure and found one that does detail quite a few changes, most of which to the Web UI interface that I rarely use. I generally use either my phone or tablet to control my players using iPeng8. One performance improvement for Win users is utilizing more memory for buffer use. Since my server has 12 GB of memory, that is a welcome change.

Server install and re-indexing took about five minutes. Local player update took a few minutes each.

 

RE: LMS 7.9 Large library scanning improvement?, posted on November 11, 2014 at 17:00:07
Cut-Throat
Audiophile

Posts: 18285
Location: Minneapolis - St.Paul Area
Joined: September 2, 2000
Contributor
  Since: May 16, 2021
 I'm on Logitech Media Server Version: 7.7.3 - 1375965195 @ Mon Aug 12 11:14:33 CUT 2013

It takes me about 20 minutes to scan my entire library. which is

4312 albums with 55143 songs by 1641 artists.

I only scan it once in awhile. Is speed the only reason to upgrade? I don't need it any faster.



 

RE: LMS 7.9 Large library scanning improvement?, posted on November 11, 2014 at 17:55:17
cfraser
Audiophile

Posts: 3208
Location: Pickering, Ontario
Joined: April 30, 2000
 Same here, it's fast enough.

The thing is, I have very specifically tagged all my albums so that they show up *exactly* how I want them to show up. This is especially important (to me) for albums that have multiple artists on them. And for how multiple-volume albums, or sets, show up.

That was a bit time-consuming. I don't want to risk potentially undoing all that with the new server display features. You do have to choose the settings carefully, plus there's also the potential change in interaction with iPeng re display. I'm using an iPeng version for an older iOS so it will never be updated to match a new LMS.

 

Here is the 7.9.0 Changelog, posted on November 11, 2014 at 22:36:58
J.Mac
Audiophile

Posts: 3553
Location: Colorado
Joined: November 6, 2002
 This is the 7.9.0 Changelog. I can't find a version of it online, or I'd just link to it. I'll post comments in a separate reply.
  • New Features:
    • Add option to use two browse modes for Album Artists and All Artists instead of one single, configurable list.
    • Add "Random Album" browse mode, to give access to a random selection of albums.
    • Add a "Browse Filesystem" mode to access files outside the music folder, without storing them in the database.
    • Fulltext search: when searching music the results are no longer limited to a simple title or name search.
    • Fulltext search includes a lot mor data like artist names, lyrics (if available), file type etc. in the evaluation of the search term.
    • Allow the web UI to be opened with a given navigation for the left hand navigation panel (eg. start with Album Artists).
    • Add infrastructure to allow plugins to easily create "Virtual Libraries" or custom library views.
    • Add Extended Browse Modes plugin to further configure the library browsing experience.
    • Add new, fast live search to the web UI.
    • Improve "Advanced Search": allow searching for ratings, ranges of years, save results, use results as virtual library etc.
    • Add support for DSD/DSF files on some platforms.
    • Allow browsing your music folder while the scanner is running.
    • Allow the web UI's right hand side panel with player control and current playlist to be hidden.
    • Add an option to disable automatic rescans on certain preference changes.
    • Browse favorite Artists/Genres/Albums instead of just playing them when selected.


  • Bug Fixes:
    • #596 - Display total duration of a playlist in the web UI.
    • #709 - Add support for "Browse Composers".
    • #2333 - Play music outside the music folder without storing it in the database.
    • #5108 - Track artist roles become artist roles when COMPILATION=0.
    • #5715 - Advanced search doesn't limit results, can freeze the server.
    • #9671 - Enable browsing from favorites.
    • #9687 - Add option to opt out of automatically triggered library scans.
    • #11556 - Resizing of left/right pane doesn't work in IE8.
    • #15604 - Provide a Browse Compilations browse mode.
    • #16506 - Honor read access given by ACLs (thanks htgoebel!).
    • #17474 - Can't browse music folder during scan.
    • #17526 - Push any firmware found in cache/updates to players, even if "Check for Updates" is disabled.
    • #17770 - DISC and DISCC TAGS in cue sheets are not recognized (thanks mrthreeplates!).
    • #17795 - Missing cover blocks real artwork from being found.
    • #17863 - No display of "Comment" Tag when special characters are used.
    • #17953 - Wrong transcoding settings to MP3 in default install.
    • #18107 - Various Artists not include among Album Artists when separate Album Artists and Artists
    • lists are enabled.
    • #18112 - Tracks with double DATE tags get the wrong year assigned by the scanner.


  • Other:
    • Restore the ability to run a single folder scan even if the external scanner needs to run
    • Use VACUUM to reorganize library files when appropriate. This should help performance with larger collections and libraries which have been updated a lot. Cache files use auto_vacuum, as they change a log more often.
    • On Windows and x86 CPU based systems we're going to use more memory for buffers etc. to improve performance.
    • Improve My Music browsing performance in the web UI.
    • Improve Browse Music Folder browsing performance.
    • Tweak the web UI to use less graphics and simpler HTML structure. Please note that MSIE users will require version 9 or later, or one of the alternative browsers.
    • Remove SlimService specific code. 7.9 will never be run on mysqueezebox.com.
    • Re-factor preference migration code. Only load migration handlers if needed.
    • Add ALBUMARTIST tag support for Cue files (thanks mrthreeplates!).
    • Disable cross-fading between tracks with different sample rates (thanks hickinbottoms!)
    • Enhance string substitution to improve 3rd party transcoding support (thanks LMS0815!)
    • The "mediafolder" query for music files optionally returns coverid (if available). Use the new 'c' tag.



 

RE: LMS 7.9 Large library scanning improvement?, posted on November 11, 2014 at 23:05:11
J.Mac
Audiophile

Posts: 3553
Location: Colorado
Joined: November 6, 2002
 I've been running 7.9 since the earliest betas. It would be difficult to list and describe all of the improvements. Since 7.9 is unofficial and purely a community branch of the server, the lone developer - Michael Herger - has pretty much taken off the gloves and gone with whatever he felt or was convinced was a worthwhile idea.

Scanning is definitely faster, but may only be significantly so with a large library. If I'm not mistaken, there's been a new memory setting to permit use of more memory for the DBMS code, as well as many other optimizations in the code.

Album artwork scanning and caching are hugely improved. There had always been bugs in artwork handling that often required a full library rescan whenever you changed an album cover. That's pretty much a thing of the past now.

An improvement for browsing has been the ability to designate in the settings if you'd like to see two artist lists: One of Album Artists and one of All Artists. The 'All' list gives you every little guest artist and one-track artist from compilations, while the 'Album Artists' list excludes these. The old behavior was that through the library options, you'd designate the single artist list to be one or the other. This is an option, however, so you can opt to have the old behavior if you like. Doesn't require a library rescan to switch back and forth.

The ability to browse a directory structure and files which are NOT added to the permanent library is a big change. Previously, if you could browse to it in any of the user interfaces, the content was added to the library and you'd have to do a library rescan to get rid of it. Now, you can plug in a USB drive or flash stick or place some oddball files in a directory and you can browse to them and listen to them, without having them become part of the library.

Browse Random Albums is simple, but you may like it. It just presents you with a list of randomly selected albums from your library. Don't see anything you like? Refresh the page/list.

Be aware of:

The fulltext search, instead of the old basic search that simply found substrings within a name or title. Still a little raw in its implementation. It's implemented as a plugin, however, so it's easily disabled, giving the old behavior. But you may find it handy because it indexes things like comments and lyrics.

Another plugin, shown as "Sub-library demo" shows how some newly added hooks can be used by third-party plugin developers to create browsable sub-libraries out of the main library. I think it's enabled by default, so you'll probably want to disable it.

Another new plugin is called "Additional Browse Modes", which lets you create some (relatively simple) new browse modes by designating contributor roles and genres. Can be used, for example to browse conductors. One important thing to note about the options here is that they are per-player. That is, the browse mode menu can be customized for each Squeezebox on your network. So, you'll want to go to Settings > Player > [player_name] > Additional Browse Modes and configure it for your player(s).

 

I just downloaded and gained over 12,000 more artists!....., posted on November 12, 2014 at 06:02:57
Cut-Throat
Audiophile

Posts: 18285
Location: Minneapolis - St.Paul Area
Joined: September 2, 2000
Contributor
  Since: May 16, 2021
 According to the Scan Stats my Artists went from 1,641 to 13,954. for about 4300 Albums, which is what I had before.

Some Ting Wong !!




 

RE: I just downloaded and gained over 12,000 more artists!....., posted on November 12, 2014 at 06:45:25
J.Mac
Audiophile

Posts: 3553
Location: Colorado
Joined: November 6, 2002
 In the web interface see Settings > My Music > Browse Artists. I believe that by default it will be set to show the two artist browse lists. You can switch it to one list and achieve the old behavior. if you like.

When configured to use the two browse lists, the artist count shown will be that of all artists rather than just album artists, as before. If you have the server configured to let you browse either 'Album Artists' and 'All Artists', you should see the old count if you browse into Album Artists.

One thing that I don't think has been finalized in 7.9 is that when you have the two artist browse lists, whether or not 'All Artists' (I believe) will show contributors holding any possible contributor role in the library, including conductors and composers.

 

Thank you -t, posted on November 12, 2014 at 10:07:16
Sordidman
Audiophile

Posts: 13665
Location: San Francisco
Joined: May 14, 2001
 .

"Asylums with doors open wide,
Where people had paid to see inside,
For entertainment they watch his body twist
Behind his eyes he says, 'I still exist.'"

 

DSF playback, posted on November 12, 2014 at 16:58:41
Daverz
Audiophile

Posts: 2104
Location: So. California
Joined: September 24, 2002
 Has anyone figured out how to get DSF playback to work? I have the DSDPlayer plugin installed and the latest nightly of 7.9 (1415623187), the server won't even scan the DSF files, and -- when I find them in Music Folder -- won't play them back.

 

Great question!, posted on November 13, 2014 at 14:11:17
E-Stat
Audiophile

Posts: 37584
Joined: May 12, 2000
Contributor
  Since: April 5, 2002
 I downloaded some free content from 2L and added it to the library. It is visible at both the server and player level even to the point of knowing it is a DSD track and displays the runtime. Like, you, I don't know how to get the DSF file to play.

 

RE: LMS 7.9 Large library scanning improvement?, posted on November 13, 2014 at 15:28:45
Daverz
Audiophile

Posts: 2104
Location: So. California
Joined: September 24, 2002
 Thanks! I did not know about the new memory setting (Maximum). Makes a huge difference in Custom Browse performance.

Also, the new Composer menu is a huge boon to classical fans. It's too bad Logitech gave up on the platform.

 

RE: DSF playback, posted on November 14, 2014 at 21:39:58
PaulN
Audiophile

Posts: 1412
Joined: January 13, 2000
 I got a 64x file to play, but it isn't yet capable of 128x or 256x.

 

Installed it last night: Thanks for all of the comments, posted on November 20, 2014 at 11:15:23
Sordidman
Audiophile

Posts: 13665
Location: San Francisco
Joined: May 14, 2001
 It's a lot faster, and a lot faster in calling up albums from the NAS.

Cheers,


"Asylums with doors open wide,
Where people had paid to see inside,
For entertainment they watch his body twist
Behind his eyes he says, 'I still exist.'"

 

RE: LMS 7.9 Large library scanning improvement?, posted on December 18, 2014 at 00:03:27
soundchekk
Audiophile

Posts: 2426
Joined: July 11, 2007
 I'm running 7.9 - nigthly builds - pretty much since it came up long time (a year??) ago.

It's IMO dead stable.

On Debian/Ubuntu Systems just get the Debian package file (.deb) and install it.
http://downloads.slimdevices.com/nightly/index.php?ver=7.9

On several ARM Systems go for Squeeze On Arch (SOA)
http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?101624-Announce-Squeeze-on-Arch-developer-version

On SOA the LMS (most parts of it) will be compiled from sources on your ARM machine!! It can take a while (couple of hours) to get it installed. However. From a performance perspective it's always better to get your apps compiled on your particular HW, on your particular OS and your compiler (matches Gentoo philosophy).
I'm running SOA with LMS 7.9 on a Cubitruck (Sata/2GB Ram/GB Ethernet/Dual Core/@100$ €) and I'm more than happy.


The changelog has been posted already.

My favorites:
* Database handling and overall performance got improved.
* Community patches got introduced (Triode - DSD for squeezelite clients)


Cheers


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