Signal Path from NAS to Receiver via DLNA on Musicbee

[austinbirdman]

I'm really enjoying using Musicbee to play my digital music on my home audio setup (configuration described below). All of this has made me curious about the signal path a file takes when I play it using Musicbee on my home network. If anyone knows the answer, I'd love to know it.

Here's my basic set-up:

- Audio files on a NAS (mix of ALAC and FLAC, from CD resolution up to 24-192)
- Musicbee running on a laptop connected via Ethernet to home network
- Musicbee library set to the NAS (in case that's not obvious)
- UPNP plugin enabled and configured to play high-res files
- Player option in Musicbee set to play on my networked Marantz receiver which has a high-res DAC

So, when I use Musicbee to select a FLAC on my NAS and send it to my receiver's DAC, is that file travelling straight from the NAS to the receiver, with Musicbee instructing it to move, as it were? Or is the file travelling to my PC and then being sent to the receiver?

And if the latter, is there any kind of processing that takes place along the signal path as the file comes to the PC and gets sent along via Musicbee?

I got kind of obsessed about signal paths using Roon, and  I'm curious to know how Musicbee handles this over a networked setup.

[redwing]

As long as you're using MB or any other PC program as a player, whether your files reside on a NAS or other storage won't make any differences.

is there any kind of processing that takes place along the signal path as the file comes to the PC and gets sent along via Musicbee?

It's up to how you have configured your player settings (Preferences> Player) and whether you have enabled the equalizer or any DSP/VST plugins.