Feedback on a great audio server software

[minim-user]

Hi,

I'm currently evaluating UPnP server software for my home. I'm looking for a solution that supports flexible browsing of content and management of multiple server instances. So far, (only) Asset UPnP and MinimServer look very promising. Both products seem to be very reasoned and mature pieces of software. I'd like to give feedback on MinimServer here.

First of all, thanks to Simon for your amazing work. MinimServer is stable, feature-rich and thought-out well. It has a lot of documentation of really good quality, is scriptable and allows for multiple instances. This is really good.

I found a few drawbacks, too:

1. I regret that artwork is not resized. I have a lot of audio files that have artwork included, mostly sized ~600px, but some of my control point devices (radios) are limited to 480px. I'm not willing to re-tag my files because of these control point devices, so I won't see the artwork on them when I decide to use MinimServer.
2. My collection contains a lot of rips of single CDs and vinyl. These singles contain one track in different versions (e.g. Radio Mix, Extended Mix, Foobar Remix). I decided to use the title tag field for the title and the subtitle tag field for the version. MinimServer perfectly supports that (while Asset does not, by the way), at least for Vorbis and ID3 tags. Unfortunately I also have a few M4A tracks, and MinimServer doesn't support the subtitle tag on them because it does not map the MPEG4 atom 'desc' to subtitle as MP3Tag does.
3. I read that the tag field AlbumArtist does not allow multiple values (Conflicting album artist values, Multiple AlbumArtists). I have some albums that are affected by this limitation. I don't really understand why an album must not have two album artists (as long as all tags contain both). It's not really a big deal for me, but I think this limitation is not necessary from a non-technical point of view (when I read it right, the design decision has been made because of technical reasons only).
4. A tiny shortcoming concerning groupings: consider a large series of albums (~150) whose names all begin with the same letter. MinimServer will create a single group for this letter, which is needless actually (see attached screenshot).    
   

That's it for the drawbacks. Let me emphasize once more that MinimServer outperforms most other audio server software that I've seen. One can really see that Simon is very much committed to this project and created an awesome piece of software for audio maniacs.

- Christian