17-Sep-2016, 05:59
Spark has its weaknesses. But since the last update (ver. 1.6.2) it became quite stable and useful. Spotify connect works really well. Spark allows to stream from local drives (up to 24/192k without drop-outs), streaming services (I use Qobuz,which works really well in cd quality streaming), and internet radio. It is extreamly fast in building up the catalog. Much faster than any upnp servers I have experienced since 2003. In the beginning (March 2015) I still needed airplay via optical in, then chromecast audio, also optical in. But now, both airplay and anything using chromecast are buggier and less responsive. So besides spotify connect and a Raspberry PI with optical out and a MPD interface I don't use anymore other streaming tools than Spark. The RPi allows me to use room correction with brutefir. My favorite player on the RPi is the moode player.
To Spark: It features now global search function, global playlists, song, artist and album catalogs, but unfortunately not yet genres. Also a folder structure would be my preference instead of a flat list. Then more infos from the metatags would be an important feature to know at least the audio format. As temporary fix I have added the audioformat to the song title. My local library consists of ALAC and mp3, mostly. I have chosen ALAC over FLAG because Spark was much more responsive to ALAC when skipping songs or jumping to another location within a song. All operations take less than 1s, often are almost instant. Airplay got much worse when they introduced a 2s buffer and therefore such a long delay except when you turned on screen sharing. Similar buffering in Chomecast audio.
I have no experience with Sonos, but have read that it cannot handle hires audio, which is important to me and works very well in Spark and on the RPi, not at all with airplay and very buggy with Chromecast audio.
To Spark: It features now global search function, global playlists, song, artist and album catalogs, but unfortunately not yet genres. Also a folder structure would be my preference instead of a flat list. Then more infos from the metatags would be an important feature to know at least the audio format. As temporary fix I have added the audioformat to the song title. My local library consists of ALAC and mp3, mostly. I have chosen ALAC over FLAG because Spark was much more responsive to ALAC when skipping songs or jumping to another location within a song. All operations take less than 1s, often are almost instant. Airplay got much worse when they introduced a 2s buffer and therefore such a long delay except when you turned on screen sharing. Similar buffering in Chomecast audio.
I have no experience with Sonos, but have read that it cannot handle hires audio, which is important to me and works very well in Spark and on the RPi, not at all with airplay and very buggy with Chromecast audio.
