Stream to receiver/amplifier over Ethernet?

[peewee678]

I'm planning on buying a new receiver or amplifier and stream my music from Musicbee over Ethernet but I have no idea how to set things up. I can't find anything in Musicbee's output settings for this. I'm rather oldschool and until now I've always used an external DAC in combination with a "classic" amplifier (simple analog).

Can anyone explain how to do this? Thanks. (I'm using Musicbee 3.0.6057)

[frankz]

The way to do this is with the UPnP-DLNA Plugin. 

There is only a version 1 of the plugin.  It is no longer developed, no longer supported, and exhibits strange behavior at times.  It kind of works, though.

[peewee678]

Thanks a lot!

I installed it and after restarting MB, Windows asked permission to use the Network so that part seems to work.

If you know of a simple way to test this (on this or another PC connected to my network) before I decide to buy the amplifier I'll be glad to hear about it.

[frankz]

I don't have such a receiver so I can't help on the specifics. 

Assuming the receiver would be a DLNA controller (you browse and select playlists / albums to play using the receiver's interface) you can install a music player that does DLNA (like foobar or MediaMonkey etc if you're on Android.  I don't know what you'd use on iOS) on your phone and test it that way.  If your phone's DLNA music player can access and play your library, chances are good that your receiver would be successful in doing so, too.

If the receiver would act as a renderer only and not a controller (you use MusicBee to control playback and the receiver only outputs audio, like a Chromecast audio would), I don't know how you'd test that except to get the receiver and test it.

[zigzag10]

Thanks a lot!

I installed it and after restarting MB, Windows asked permission to use the Network so that part seems to work.

If you know of a simple way to test this (on this or another PC connected to my network) before I decide to buy the amplifier I'll be glad to hear about it.

There's a good solution to this, which is pretty straightforward and free.  On your second machine, the one which you won’t to hear MB, download and install Ohplayer, available via the PC 'Try it now' icon on this page: http://openhome.org/pages/use/index.html (There's also versions for Linux, Mac's and Pi's).  Having done that go to: C:\Program Files (x86)\OpenHomePlayer and run the executable 'OpenhomePlayer'.  It will run in a minimised state on the taskbar.  Finally, return to the PC on which MB is installed and select the player tab from preferences; and, if you've already installed MB's UPnP-DLNA Plugin, you should notice that your second machine is now listed as an audio output - select this and hopefully the job is done! Music from MB should playback on that second machine.

On a side note, if you’re looking to buy an amplifier or receiver to stream music from MB, or indeed another source, you should be aware that many hi-fi manufactures have developed their own proprietary, interpretation of what the UPnP protocol should entail and ultimately this implies that there isn’t really a common, fully adhered to standard to streaming music via this method.  This could mean there are issues with steaming music and possibly it may not work all.  IMHO this doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with MB’s UPnP-DLNA Plugin – I for one have never experienced any issues with it.  Fingers crossed that streaming will also be good for you, but if it isn’t I suggest you try running BubbleUPnP Server in the background (http://bubblesoftapps.com/bubbleupnpserver/)

[peewee678]

Thanks for the great info zigzag. Appreciated!