TOPIC:

While I love the sound- and built quality and the room correction solution of the SHD, in some ways the development process of Volumio on SHD has made serious steps backwards:

1. App-Support: the official Volumio App in the Android App Store does not recognize Volumio on the SHD anymore as it used to do in earlier versions. Is Volumio on SHD considered an unofficial fork? (Entering the IP-address manually is not a solution, since I wouldn’t be able to control my “official” Volumio on a Hifiberry in another room or on multiple SHD’s)

2. Volume control: every streamer controlling app that I can think of, is able to control the volume with the volume rocker of a phone or tablet. For some apps the volume rocker works, even with the phone’s display off (bubble upnp, google music etc.) which is of course the best solution, since volume control is such a common task. The SHD in earlier versions was at least able to use Volumio’s built in software volume control. Albeit less elegant than hardware volume control, this option was now disabled and the only way of controlling the volume is with a separate infrared remote. If MiniDSP is serious about having a built in, integrated streamer and not just a botched on external source, one should be able to control the SHD volume (the master volume that is on the display of the SHD itself) with the volume rocker of a phone or tablet like everyone else does.

3. The new custom MiniDSP- Volumio skin on the SHD does look much worse than Volumio’s original skin. Please at least provide an option to use the original skin.

4. Source switching: if I hit play on the Volumio app or generally if sound starts on the Volumio part of the SHD, then the source should switch to Volumio / LAN automatically.

While the SHD is a good device in general, it’s Volumio part feels unfinished and unintegrated. The internal Volumio is being treated like any other external source. There are multiple disadvantages of using the internal Volumio instead of hooking up another external Volumio-streamer via coax or optical in: lack of official app-support, lack of volume control, slower software updates of Volumio, lack of Wifi etc.
Everything could be corrected in software, but recently it seemed that time was spent into forking the SHD away from Volumio, instead of focusing on actual problems like proper volume control via an app like in every modern streaming solution. I hope this can be corrected in the longterm.

Thank you for your post. I had emailed support about volume control a month or two back. It is not practical to use volumio without volume control in the volumio app. Hopefully they will get this fixed as it is an important feature.

@Runlonger

Thanks for your feedback and we're happy to listen... We always try to clarify product dev decisions made by our engineering team without steering away from our policy of never releasing information before it's ready. There are few things worth noting here that should clarify maybe some misunderstanding...

- Sometimes engineering decisions are made based on engineering reasons... e.g. the statement that we're taking all our energy to "fork" Volumio is incorrect I'm afraid. Volumio has an OEM program that they push. We're just following their branding plans/rules.
- When Volumio makes volume control inside the GUI (as per previous version) it's simply at the wrong place. (also the case if you were to do it for a DIY volumio Streamer). Volume control is to be done at the master volume at the DAC. Not before hand else you're throwing away dynamic range of the high end DAC. So as much as we'd love to give options, we prefer to lock something (in the short term) but no sacrifice audio quality by using a digital volume control inside the ARM Core. It's a limitation but it's for the good. Not because we're trying to become a pain.. Please trust us for a little while as in the future update, it will be done the right way when all the communication is actually taking place correct.
- App support: You should talk to "Volumio team" about this as I'm afraid it's not an app under our control and that decision wasn't under our control. We did suggest they provide support for SHD in the future and they say they will consider for the future upgrade. Make sure to remind them as a customer of the app..

It's a shame that you're seeing the work we're doing for the SHD here so negatively (not much positive comments if you read it from our point of view).. We hope to prove to you in the future that indeed, there are some specific roadmap (that we're not going to divulgue as per our policy) and specific plan to make the product even better than it is..

DevTeam

Devteam,

I appreciate the update and look forward to the upcoming updates on the SHD.

Dear Devteam

Sorry about being so negative, this wasn’t my intention. I appreciate your work and especially your comment above, where you hinted at master volume control from within Volumio. That would indeed be the best solution, as I have also stated in my first post. I’m more than happy to wait for this, now that I know that this is on your roadmap. But before your post, I had no idea and therefore you also have to understand my user standpoint of being unhappy with the current situation. Please put pressure on Volumio with their app support for the SHD. Using the volume rocker of the phone or tablet is the best way of controlling volume.

Please also consider switching inputs automatically if new sound is being detected internally. It would be very convenient.

Generally I’m really happy with the SHD, hardware and sound quality are superb, but the streaming user experience with the webinterface and app is not up to today’s standard.

@Runlonger

No worries, we take all feedback to make things better and always appreciate improving ourselves..
- The volume control API is already in the hands of the Volumio team so we'll see how long before we can get an update. We're trying to combine it together with a major new feature. Stay tuned.
- App support / We'll indeed make sure to remind them about it.

Have fun with your unit!

It is good to hear that there are plans for a master volume control. Ideally, the master control can be used on the volume of both analogue and digital outputs simultaneously (plan to output analogue and digital at the same time). As well, a Upnp app e.g. BubbleUpnp can control the master volume.

Sounds interesting. When can we expect will be the big reveal? This board doesn’t give date and time so I don’t know if this was teased a day or a year ago!

Thanks.

In desktop view one can see that devteam replied 9 months and 3 weeks ago.

I'm interested in this too. Today I checked and I didn't see any metion to any kind of API in the SHD manual (updated in august). The WI-DG is out and it's got a mobile app for remote control. I hope this is not all there is to SHD API.
Volumio has API (websockets and REST API) for remote control over LAN. Are these APIs usable to control SHD volume? Or is there something similar we could use?

As a programmer I've made use of similar APIs for networked audio devices of other brands to create software for remote control to suit my needs. I really hope I can do the same with the SHD. We don't need much: volume, mute, input selection and preset selection would be mostly all we need. These are similar commands that a physical IR remote control does.

- Jukka

Ivanovich wrote:

This board doesn’t give date and time so I don’t know if this was teased a day or a year ago!

I'm guessing you're browsing on a phone? Try rotating your phone 90 degrees

How’s this “major new update” coming along?

Thanks,
Ivan