How Does Audirvana Control Streams to UPnP Renderers When Music Library is on a Remote File Share?

First post – I have used Audirvana for a while but this is the first Q I have about it. Its not a problem, I would just like to understand what is happening. Anyway here goes…

I have Audirvana installed on my Windows 10 laptop which is connected to my home network via a wireless connection. I also have a Linux file server that contains my music files connected using ethernet cable to a network switch, plus a UPnP renderer (Allo USBridge Sig feeding a Chord Qutest) connected to the same switch also via ethernet cable. The switch is connected to my ADSL modem router, which is the wireless access point that the laptop running Audirvana is connected to. I have made a CIFS network share on the file server, which is mounted as a drive letter in Windows and this is used by Audirvana as the “local library” (even though it is a mounted remote share). The UPnP renderer is selected in the “network” section of the Audio Output section of the UI (lower right corner of the UI).

I can use Audirvana to play music sent to the renderer. It works fine and sounds good but my question is: how does Audirvana control the stream from the file server to the renderer? I can see two possible scenarios, and I would like to know which one is actually happening, or are there others?

  1. Audirvana behaves as a control point, i.e. tells the server to serve the music and the renderer to accept it, and the music stream goes direct over the wired network from server to renderer.
  2. Audirvana actually streams the music from the file server to the renderer, so the files go from the file server to Audirvana then from Audirvana to the renderer. This would involve two trips across the wireless network, because Audirvana is connected wirelessly. If this is the actual scenario, is the two trips over the wireless detrimental to the sound?

Hope this is clear enough – it’s a bit involved. Thanks for any enlightenment!

It‘s the option 2. It‘s not detrimental to the sound quality, but it does double the bandwidth used.

1 Like