Serento: The audiophile UPnP controller app for iOS/macOS

[serento]

(25-08-2026 20:53)simbun Wrote:  

(25-08-2026 07:45)serento Wrote:  Well, this is a touchy subject. Not for me, but for my competition. Because I know what I wrote and what I wrote never touches the audio stream, never touches the files. It's just a server - streamer communication, as we all know.

Yes, just how a standard UPnP control point works (it just hands the URL of the track to the renderer). It's trivial to verify that the source is untouched by checking AVTransport.GetMediaInfo.CurrentURI

(25-08-2026 07:45)serento Wrote:  But there is an audible difference in Serento's favor. I will not theorize as to why the other apps sound less good, because there's no way of knowing and it's not really nice to talk about the competition.

If the source is untouched then there is no sound difference between control points, but there's no need to theorise given it's trivial to view the communication between the two devices. If I want to get a feel for how a control point works I'll normally play to a software renderer and enable logging, but it's simple enough to run a network capture to record calls and timings - which is only really relevant for polling/state change e.g. GetPositionInfo, GetVolume, GetTransportInfo.

It's ridiculous to claim that a control point can improve sound quality (when playing the same source), but if you don't, there will be a dozen apps that do so I guess it's just par for the course for "audiophile" products.

You are correct on both counts. I'm not saying my app sounds better because I did something with the stream. I'm saying it sounds better because I didn't. And I'll leave it at that. You will have to test it for yourself. Maybe someday I will have the time to test what other apps are doing with the method you described, but considering the amount of work I still have ahead of me with Serento, I'm not going to bother in the foreseeable future.