Asset Help Customising

Asset UPnP { Help Index > Customising }

To access advanced settings for Asset, visit the web-configuration page from any Internet browser. If Asset is running on the same device you are using, visit:

http://localhost:45537/

If running asset on a device other than your PC, then change localhost to the IP address of the device it is running on. For example you might have asset running on a QNAP, and its address on the local network is 192.168.1.14, it would be configured by visiting http://192.168.1.14:45537/

On QNAP there is Qfinder Pro to find the address of the NAS, for Synology use finds.synology.com

Configuration

The main configuration appears as:

The page details how many tracks and albums are known to Asset, as well as version and registration status.

Folders

Folders allows the location of music tracks to be set.

By default on many platforms the location, such as Music folder, is automatically chosen by Asset. Should your audio reside somewhere else, click Add folder, under Media Folders and browse to the location.

It should be noted that Asset required read permission of the location the music is stored.

Playlist Folders

A playlist folder can be added containing m3u, m3u8 and pls playlists. It should be noted that the playlist should contain a full network path to the item if stored remotely.

Options

General Settings

Asset UPnP Identification can rename the Asset UPnP server name to something more suited to your personal requirements.

Remote Configuration Access when unchecked only localhost can edit the settings, default is unchecked, except for NAS versions which do not show this option, as they can only be configured from external addresses.

TuneIn Username allows favourite radio stations to be added an a user account (free to create) on tunein.com, type your user name into Asset to access these favourites.

Index Settings

Monitor Folders for Changes allows Asset to monitor the Media Library folders for changes, does not work for all devices, such as a network share where usage is above a certain amount.

Forcibly Check for New Tracks Interval (minutes) can enable Asset to trigger a changed file detection every X minutes. Use when the previous option is not supported.

The Artist & Album Handling has 3 modes (example using The Beetles):

Smart this mode keeps the artist text as The Beetles, yet sorts the artist under 'B, would be overwritten by a Sort ID Tag
Value, the places the on the end, example: Beetles, The
Leave as is does not adjust the displayed value or sorted position

Combine Duplicate & Similar Artists imagine a large collection, when searching through the list of artists that the same artist name is duplicated because of a umlaut over one of the characters, or a spacing difference. This option corrects these, for example these would appear as one artist:

   Beyonce / Beyoncé,
   KT Tunstall / K T Tunstall,
   Black Eyed Peas / The Black Eyed Peas

Multi-Disc Albums many albums are released as multi-disc-albums, various options on how to group the multi discs, such as combining, or separating.

Fill missing Album Artist tags if set will always ensure the Album Artist tag is set, if missing, from either an Artist tag, or compilation tag to set as Various Artists.

Fill missing Artist tags likewise if an Artist tag is blank and Album Artist is available this option fills from Album Artist.

Album Defined by Folder Asset needs to be able to separate two 'Greatest hits albums' by different artists, normally the Album artist would be different, or a compilation tag set, however many audio collections are not as well tagged. This option defines an album by the location of the files, as typically all files for the same album are in the same folder.

Album Art the next 3 options allow reducing the size of Art as presented to the control point.

Index File Types can exclude certain types of audio from Asset. Trigger a full rescan after changing.

Display Settings

Sort Tag Handling often artists or composers might include a sort tag, for example Ludwig van Beethoven might have a ComposerSort tag set as Beethoven, Ludwig van. This option sets how the sorted values are presented:

Display in Sort and Non-Sort Locations In the above example Beethoven would be listed under both 'L' and 'B', this option is default as an unexpected sort tag effectively hides the artist under the last name (think of Elvis Presley shown under 'P' with a sort tag of Presley, Elvis)
Use Sort to Order Display item is displayed in the sort tag location only
Ignore Sort Values does not use sort values from ID Tags

[track #] - [title] for album track is useful for control points which do not display a track number when showing an album. This option embeds the track number into a title.

[artist] - [title] for Various Artist album tracks for compilation albums and control points which do not show the individual artists, this option adds the artist name into the title

[title] - [artist] for Title Listing someone requests the title Breathe, you might find there are 3 Breathes in your collection (David Grey, Kylie, Prodigy), this option is for Title browsing only and will place the artist after the title.

Show [All Tracks] and [Shuffle Tracks] items will place a selection at the top of the album selection page to enable the viewing of all tracks (from all the albums) and also a shuffled track listing.

[album] - [artist] for album listings for control points which do not display artists when browsing albums this option places the artist onto the album name (only for browsing).

Multi-Disc Albums show as '[Disc] [Track] [Title]' many albums are released as multi-disc-albums, such as Greatest Hits. Normally one album would be listed 'Greatest Hits' and tracks from disc 1, 2, 3 are all present under the same album (3 track 1's, not good). With this option checked each album would follow in the correct order in one album folder. Note has been superceeded by the option Album defined by folder.

UpStream Artwork enables artwork from the first discovered track to appear next to an Artist, or Genre.

Contributing Artists with Main Artists typically audio tracks might include featured artists (multiple artists), normally contributing artists are searched through Advanced Search >> Contributing Artist, with this option checked these 2nd artists are added to the main Artist browse.

Menu Icons Background Color sets the main background color images shown in the browse tree for items such as 'Artists', it can be changed to match your control point.

A to Z Selection Grouping sets how artist and albums are grouped together in the quick A to Z selection which is presented after selecting an Artist or Album.

Hide Main View Albums when browsing by album it can be advantageous to not list CD singles, this option can filter those.

Dynamic Playlist Item Count determines the number of items to present in dynamic playlists (such as newest tracks, jukebox tracks)

Preload user images to memory will load all the user images into memory for faster control point response. Normally is not needed and the operating system would cache.

Audio Streaming Options

Asset is able to decode and re-encode audio prior sending to a player, this would be useful when:

The player does not support an audio format directly. By transcoding the format to a supported format, Asset is able to allow the player to play the audio tracks.
Apply ReplayGain adjustment for players which do not support ReplayGain. ReplayGain is a method of changing the volume of each track so overall they are uniform in loudness.

Each audio format can choose as is which would not transcode.

as wave/LPCM/mp3 which would transcode to said format, unless mp3 is chosen there is no quality loss.

The option as is single allows for say flac to only be offered as flac, normally as is would offer FLAC, LPCM, WAV, FLAC this enables a player to pick FLAC if it supports, but also automatically chose LPCM or WAVE if it does not, as is single would only offer FLAC.

Use ReplayGain enables the application of ReplayGain if the source file has ReplayGain tags, only when the format is not as is. PerfectTUNES can mass write ReplayGain tags. If the player supports 24 bit audio then enable this option as it allows ReplayGain adjustments without any loss of bit depth when playing 16 bit tracks, also best to set the additional Gain to -3 dB.

Maximum option can be used to allow a player to play higher bit-depth files than it can normally support (by automatically converting 24 bit to a maximum of 16 bit), obviously though not at the higher resolution.

DSD handling: 'as is' sends untouched audio/x-dff or audio/x-dsf. 'as Wav' decodes the DSD to PCM. 'as DoP' embeds the DSD bitstream into a WAVE file, requires a DoP compatible DAC, only DSD64 files are supported

Advanced

Control Point Override allows to set a set of rules mainly to do with browsing, but also audio format specific, these rules are triggered by a known control point name. This is an advanced option and should not be edited lightly.

A list of rules are edited, they are in sections each starting with =, the list is searched looking for a match for a known control point name. Partial names can be supplied, for example to set rules based for the iPad, you could set =iPad

The rules themselves can be:

[ForceAlbumArt=200] to force 200 pixel album art
[StreamMax16Bit] sets the maximum bits for streaming to 16
[StreamMax2Channels] sets the maximum channels for streaming to 2
[StreamMax48KHz] sets the maximum frequency for streaming to 48KHz
[SimpleBrowse] is used to give a very simple browse tree (just tracks), this is used on control points such as XBox which only need to catalog all tracks as quickly as possible.
[NoAssetPrependTrackNum] see [track #] - [title] for album tracks
[NoAssetTrackWantFrontArtist] see [artist] - [title] for Various Artist album tracks
[NoAssetTrackWantEndArtist] see [title] - [artist] for Title Listing
[NoAssetAlbumArtist] see [album] - [artist] for album listings
[NoAssetMultiDiscTrackTitle] see Multi-Disc Albums show as '[Disc] [Track] [Title]'
[NoAllTracksItems] stops the listing of [All Tracks] in album listings
[SimpleArtist] to not supply composer, conductor or album artist (only artist) for track details to player

[ForceToWAVE] [ForceToMP3] [ForceToLPCM] [ForceToSINGLE] these three options force the streaming (transcoding), after setting this option follow with a list of extensions ';' delimitated, finalising with a blank line, for example:

[ForceToLPCM]
.mp3;.flac

A * can be used to signify all extensions, single extensions can be excluded with [NoForce] (see the =Xbox example in the picture, all formats except mp3 are forced to LPCM streaming).

See 'as is single' above for details on [ForceToSINGLE]

={no-identification} is a special identifier, for control points that do not match any other present rule set.

Backup & Restore

Copies all the configuration settings, which could be restored to a new machine. It is not recommended to move settings between different platforms.

Troubleshooting

To be used if requested to create debug logs by ourselves.

A code can be set which is required to accept any configuration changes, important if the network is shared with others who might change the settings.

Instances

By default one instance of Asset is defined, each defined Asset can be thought as a separate server, each with their own settings or music library. It is possible for example to have a Christmas Asset indexing just festive tracks, this instance of Asset can be disabled once Christmas has passed.