NAB100 RTI driver setup:

NAB100 is a multi channel streaming product integrated inside a DSP matrix switch.  You will use:

  1. CMX-A2 driver to control the physical switch (via ethernet)

  2. The NetPlay audio driver if you want to display metadata from mobile streaming connections

  3. The Squeezebox driver for local and internet streaming sources

First, you need to decide how you will use the two enhanced user interface features of NetPlay audio.

Publishing mode: 

Mobile streaming renderers normally publish themselves as a single device or virtual speaker.  When you try to connect from your phone, you can select the device to play to.  Then you switch to your RTI remote to actually select that device as the source for your room and turn on the amps/etc.  This is the default publishing mode known as "source mode".

NetPlay Audio offers a patent pending enhanced publishing mode known as "room mode".  This mode allows you to publish channels for every zoned audio room and/or groups of rooms in the house.  This allows the user to simply select the room to play to directly on the mobile device.  The RTI source selection and turn-on/off happens automatically.  This mode provides a much better user experience, but takes more setup for the installer.

Note that with NAB100, the whole family can stream different audio to different rooms simultaneously.

Volume mode:

Most mobile apps allow volume control.  However, integrating this "remote" volume with the RTI room endpoint volume can be done different ways.  NetPlay audio provides three different modes.

"Source volume" is the default mode and also how most mobile streaming renderers work.  In this mode, the remote volume is applied to the signal before it is output from NAB (to CMX-A2), effectively making it a source volume control.  The users RTI remotes and touch panels would then control the room endpoint volume, and the total effective volume is (remote_vol * room_vol).  Even though this is how most devices work today, we think this is confusing and don't recommend using this mode.

"No volume" mode simply allows you to disable/ignore the remote volume control.  This is easy to setup, easy for the customer to understand, but does mean they need to switch from the phone to the RTI remote to change the volume.

"Remote volume forwarding" is a Video Storm enchanced mode that applies the remote volume control directly to the RTI room volume endpoint.  This allows the customer to control volume directly using any device.  This enhancement does require code to setup.  Note that with NAB/CMX-A2 the room volume endpoint may be the CMX switch for some zones and external devices on other zones (like surround sound receivers).  We have controls for this.

Driver architecture:

The recommended driver setup for NAB100/CMX-A2 for RTI is:

Note:  There are other ways to setup NAB/CMX-A2 by using fixed channels for squeezebox connected to the physical network inputs, but in our experience means the user needs to choose between them manually (which is avoided in the recommended approach).

NAB setup:

The next sections refer to the config pages located at the root index.php  (http://NAB_IP_ADDRESS).

General config:  Normally no changes needed here.  If you do not plan to use LMS, you will need to set the "Logitech Media Server" to OFF. 

Renderer config:  In our recommended setup, you will use "room mode" and all your channels will be virtual with dynamic mapping.  Refer to these instructions for more details.  All channels should be setup with:  "fixed"=false, "Output mux" = rooms this channel will play to, "Bonjour","Upnp", "Squeeze" each = true if used else false.

Renderer volume config:  If you are using "Source volume", then nothing should be changed on this page.  If you are using "Remote volume forwarding" or "No volume" modes, check the "check to use optional output volume" box.  In "No volume mode", set the "bypass vol" field on all outputs and you are done.  For "Remote volume forwarding mode", set the "bypass vol" field only on the outputs which the volume control endpoint is NOT CMX-A2.  Finally, set the default volume for all zones with the "bypass vol" field to 100.  The other zones should be left at 192.

Renderer LMS config:  If you have more than one enabled LMS server on the network, you will need to enter the IP address of the server to connect to here.  However, this is very rare so most people don't need to change anything here.

Announcement service config:  If you want to use the announcement engine on NAB, config it on this page.  The CMX-A2 driver exposes the annoucement engine commands to director programming.  They are also on the NBX driver, but use only the commands on CMX-A2 when using NAB.

After making all these changes, we need to REBOOT NAB100.  This is NOT done by power cycling.  Go to the "manual control" page and click on the REBOOT button there.

Driver setup:

Please use the NetPlay_example_multi.rti example project as a baseline.

CMX-A2 driver:

  1. In the driver settings select "Ethernet" connection and enter the device IP address or host name.
  2. Using the routing and volume commands is fairly straightforward.  Add these as required.
  3. The volume level variables are dynamic and can be used for customer feedback.
  4. The output volume variables will reflect the NetPlay volume (even if volume control is disabled on that output).  These variables can be used to control the audio amps (effectively forwarding the volume to the endpoint).
  5. CMX-A2 will automatically switch the outputs defined for each channel/player when network connections are made and ended
  6. The output source variables / events will trigger when network connections are made.  This can be used to turn on audio amps.
  7. The output source variables / events will trigger when network connections are ended.  This can be used to turn off audio amps.

NetPlay driver:

  1. You will use 1 netplay audio driver instance for each player/room
  2. Enter the NAB IP address in all driver instances
  3. Enter the EXACT renderer channel name for that room in the "default player" field on each driver
  4. Use the "Selected player" variables for metadata and coverart
  5. Use output 0 for all commands (0 = output dynamically mapped to selected player)

Squeezebox driver:

  1. See our example project for setup
  2. You will use 1 squeezebon driver instance for each player/room
  3. Enter your mysqueezebox account in the driver config (as well as in the LMS server config)
  4. Enter the NAB IP address in all driver instances
  5. Enter the EXACT renderer channel name for that room in the "default player" field on each driver
  6. Some of the "jump to browse location" commands do not work.  Browsing through "Apps" is the way to access all online services.
  7. If you do not want to see particular services in "Apps", disable those plugins in the LMS server config

Note:  You can setup devices that allow you to select players instead of being dedicated to a single room.  This is useful for tables or phones that could be used in multiple rooms.  The example file shows how to do this.  Described below if you choose to use this.

  1. For multiplayer zones, you need to sync the squeezebox driver current player and the NetPlay driver current player
  2. The example file shows how to select the NetPlay player
  3. On the squeezebox driver config, enter the names of up to 8 renderer channels (must be the first 8 enabled channels exactly). 
  4. Set the "lock to external variable" setting to the NetPlay "Current player" variable
  5. This will automatically sync the squeeze player to the selected NetPlay player
  6. Currently limited to 8 players