Troubleshooting guide
1
Troubleshooting guides – Network music streaming
Network music streaming
Overview
The Stream Magic product is a UPnP AV Client. Being a UPnP Client means the it can
connect to UPnP AV servers on a network and browse and playback their music content. A
connection to the internet is not strictly needed for this. The Stream Magic product just
needs to be able to connect to the server to access its content.
Most operating systems and/or music playback software now feature UPnP server facilities
built in.
These allow you to share the music on the computer’s hard-drive with Clients such as the
Stream Magic product. Your music library can include digital music located anywhere on
your home network such as shared folders on your own computer, shared folders on
another computer on your network, or music stored on a Network-Attached Storage (NAS)
device on your network. Using UPnP, the Stream Magic product can connect to these
devices and play back, or ‘stream’ this music via the network.
Many NAS drives support a built-in UPnP server that can automatically serve any content
stored internally, so that having a computer switched on is no longer necessary.
When connecting to a UPnP server it is actually the server that tells the client what content
it has and categorises it into folders. Typically, UPnP servers support browsing by Album,
Artist, Genre, etc.
When you connect to a UPnP server, the menus you then see are actually coming from the
server and not from client. It is often possible to customise these via the server’s own setup
procedure.
Note:
If a computer or NAS on your network is turned off or is in
standby
mode, the music
folders on that computer/NAS will be unavailable to the Stream Magic product until the
computer/NAS is switched back on.
