TOPIC:

Proud owner of a miniDSP SHD here, having an issue with Volumio. Everything is updated to the latest version.

The issue is the following: On page 25 in the SHD series manual, it reads: "Insert a USB stick containing music files into the USB HOST port on the rear panel, next to the Ethernet port. Volumio will start indexing the USB stick. Click on the Browse tab at the lower left: (picture). You can either browse the stick directly by going to “Music Library,” or view by artists or albums. Click on an album artwork and then press the Play button (triangular icon)."

Pretty clear instructions, only thing is that when I insert a USB stick, Volumio acts as if nothing happened. No indexing, no nothing. The USB stick is of 8GB capacity, formatted in FAT32. The unit was "On", I inserted the USB stick and no matter how many times I clicked on "Browse" and then "Music Library" or anyone of the other options, the music files in the USB were not shown.

One other detail, if it matters, is that I had connected the unit via a USB cable to my laptop, for streaming music via YouTube. I don't know if that played a role in the malfunction described above.

What am I doing wrong?

Suggestion: remove the stick, turn off the SHD, plug the stick in, turn on the SHD.

@jaaptina: Thanks for the suggestion, will give it a try at first chance. In the meantime, I reformatted the USB stick to NTFS.

I suffered this problem after a firmware update ages ago. I quickly set up a DLNA server on a Raspberry PI and still use it so both of my SHDs can see the same USB stick.

@entripy: Thanks for the input. Unfortunately, I am not that computer literate in order to put your solution in practice - I don't even own a Raspberry Pi.

I just bought a device and I was waiting to do what it says "on the tin" - in the user's manual, in my case - and it doesn't. I have yet to try jaapatina's solution, I'll report back to the topic when I do.

Nevertheless, if anyone has any other solution to add, feel free.

Hopefully what was suggested above will work but if not contact miniDSP support directly to try to get this resolved. It clearly should be possible without the need to do something like buying a Pi.

I tried @jaapatina's suggestion and it did not work. I also formatted the USB stick in FAT32, retried the suggestion and it still didn't work. - no indexing whatsoever. It is as if there is nothing plugged in the USB port.

I'm taking this issue to the support team. I'll update the thread if and when a solution is found.

OK, time for an update.

First, I want to state that I created a ticket for the support team on a Friday afternoon (after working hours) and they replied Monday morning. So, the support team's response was fast (kudos to you people!) - my application of the proposed solution was slow and my reply here, delayed by me, even more.

I described the problem (as stated in the first post of the thread), and the reply was the following:

"It may be caused by some files have corrupted headers or are just damaged and the file scanning stopped. Please try to check in: http://<IP address of your volumio>/dev

Type your problem in the textbox under "Send Log or bug report" section and click "Send" button, wait a bit and an url will be generated in the textbox. Copy and paste this url in the web browser to access the web page**. Try to identify the file at which it stops, it can be done by looking /var/log/mpd.log and see where the scan ends, delete the file and restart.

Hoping this info helps and feel free to contact us if you have further questions."

To be honest, for the past 20+ years, I've been listening my mp3s using a PC/laptop and everything worked fine (=every mp3 was playable), so, at first, I was caught by surprise starting to think that there might be a problem with my mp3s. Then, I searched around the internet for "mp3 corrupted headers fix" (or something like that) and I came across a freeware called MP3val . I scrolled down to the last line of the web page (** see above paragraph) - where /var/log/mpd.log can be found - left the mp3s which appeared there on the USB stick and cut/past the rest to my laptop.

I inserted the USB stick to the SHD and surprise, surprise, Volumio indexed the drive and it was able to reproduce the files! I scanned the mp3s on my laptop with MP3val and - no surprise there - they all had some sort of a problem/error (see the end of the post for those) which MP3val repaired. I then cut/paste them to the USB stick and they were as well indexed and reproduced by Volumio.

So, for the past days, I've been scanning and repairing my entire mp3 collection with MP3val. I've been adding repaired files to the same USB stick and they have been flawlessly reproduced by Volumio each and every time.

So, I would suggest to anyone interested in playing music through the SHD via a USB stick/USB hard drive/NAS drive, to have their collection scanned for errors (there are other ways and/or software out there that do the job, MP3val just suited me), repair them and then play them.

The most common problems/errors that MP3val discovered were the following:

1) Wrong number of MPEG data bytes specified in Xing header
2) It seems that file is truncated or there is garbage at the end of the file
3) MPEG stream error, resynchronized successfully
4) Garbage at the beginning of the file
5) Garbage at the end of the file
6) Non-layer-III frame encountered.
7) Different MPEG versions or layers in one file.

For all the above errors, the end result read "File was rebuilt". For the below:

8) VBR detected, but no VBR header is present. Seeking may not work properly.

no result was given and I have yet to try to reproduce these files (very few, to be honest, I might not even bother to do it).

A word of caution: If your mp3s have any special character (like ä, ö, ë, è, é etc) in their name and/or ID3 tag, they will not be scanned by MP3val - scanning will pause. You then will have to abort the scan, replace the special characters (e.g. replace "è" with "e") and then rerun the scan. Once scan and repaired (if needed), you can replace the previously changed special characters (if you want to).

Hope the above post helps.

I've been suffering with this issue for quite some time now. It seems to be specific to the miniDSP distribution of Volumio. I have tried other versions of Volumio with my music library and they all work. I have even purchased another nanoPi Neo2 and used a distribution built for it without any problems. Too bad that distro does not have drivers for the SHD

Strange that the miniDSP distribution of Volumio has this limitation, but not the current version of Volumio! I don't know why miniDSP doesn't take the current version of Volumio and add the drivers to it. Very frustrating that many miniDSP users encounter a problem that has been fixed by the Volumio team.

This makes the streaming portion of this otherwise excellent device useless! ... PLEASE FIX!

Just to let everyone know, despite what I wrote in my last post, the problem has not been permanently dealt with.

I am still having issues with the Volumio's indexing service and I support what @Ppop67 wrote, right above.

I've opened a support ticket and I'll inform this thread with any developments.

When I hit the address http://<IP address of your volumio>/dev, I get a rather lengthy log file. I noticed an error, so does anyone know what type of error is this:

"Failed to read mixer for 'alsa': no such mixer control: PCM"

Is this something that negatively affects the indexing service?

I am informing the community that I have solved the problem described in post #52930.

As I wrote, despite solving the earlier problem (the one regarding "broken" mp3 files), for a while, I was able to play music by inserting a USB flash disc into miniDSP SHD. After a while, I couldn't - basically, the SHD stopped indexing. Since, in 9 out of 10 times I listen to music, I do it via vinyl records, I didn't pay that much attention to the issue and adding the fact that for other reasons I didn't listen to music that much, since June 2020, the problem was somewhat forgotten.

It arose again a little more than a month ago, when @Ppop67 posted on this thread. I opened a ticket with the miniDSP support team, trying to master a solution. but to no avail - not the support team's fault. Then, I happened to read the two following posts:

Hoon wrote:

[...]
If my memory is correct, the artwork was causing the problems.....the only thing I had to do was running mp3tag software on my library. The "fix aspect ratio" option in the artwork menu fixed my issue if I remember well.....

Hoon wrote:

[...] I scanned my full library with mp3tag, around 30k songs, all at one time. You only need to select the folder your music is located. Make sure you don't enter anything on the tags ( album, artist...) fields, otherwise your songs tags will be overwritten. Nothing to worry about as it's quite visual the changes the program is about to do upon running the scan. You basically leave everything unchecked except this "fix aspect ratio" thing in the artwork...

mp3tag did the job! I followed the instructions given above and scanned a "test" folder with around 4186 files (!!!), loaded on a USB flash disc. When I inserted the USB into miniDSP SHD it was indexed in literally no time. All files were playable and playback came across no problems whatsoever. See attached pictures:



and




I then proceeded to scan selected folders from my collection with mp3tag and then loaded them to my NAS. Every single file/folder was indexed my miniDSP SHD immediately and I was able to listen to my music files.

All these were done before the latest update of the Volumio software. The latest update didn't affect in any way the above issue - files/folders remained indexed. I left the below settings to default in fear that something may go wrong:



So, all in all, to everyone reading this thread: Download and install mp3val and mp3tag, read the relevant posts and go on enjoying your music!

A word of caution for the @devteam: I wish it was as simple as it is described in the miniDSP SHD user manual to reproduce music files from the device. It proved that it is not. I would kindly suggest inserting a warning in the next available version of the manual. Last but not least, I still haven't figured out what this error "Failed to read mixer for 'alsa': no such mixer control: PCM" is. Since it seems it doesn't affect the indexing service, I don't consider it that much important, but it would be nice to know and even nicer to fix it in the software update.

Dear All,

Finally some great news!

Thanks for all your patience on this indexing issue. Volumio team finally tracked down the issue and solved it on Neo2 build (v1.94 / Units purchased before Jan 2021). A new build is in process for neo3 build (Jan 2021 and up)

Please create a tech support ticket (Support.minidsp.com) if you have any questions.

DevTeam

Really great news. I confirm that indexing bug is now fixed on my end , finally!

Hi everybody, I'm also confirming that the indexing issue has been resolved.

Thank you @devteam and Volumio team.