Universalmediaserver: UMS Web Interface no longer sends the correct format

[SsJVasto]

The renderer for Firefox seems to have changed between version 7.6.2 and 7.7.0.

I recently tried to update my UMS 6.8.0 to UMS 7.8.0. I tried playing a file in my browser, and it sounded like 1999 (like a 52kb MP3 file). I went back and downloaded every release between 6.8.0 and 7.8.0 and tried them one by one. The problem started in 7.7.0, but was flawless in 7.6.2. I included snippets of the debug file, but to sum it up:

In 7.6.2:
DEBUG 2019-02-14 17:46:14.207 [pool-1-thread-6] net.pms.remote.RemoteMediaHandler Sending MapFile [name=[Kenny] Ohne Dich.mp4, id=107, format=MPG, children=[]] with mime type video/ogg to Firefox
In 7.7.0:
DEBUG 2019-02-14 17:50:59.425 [pool-1-thread-8] net.pms.remote.RemoteMediaHandler Sending MapFile [name=[Kenny] Ohne Dich.mp4, id=107, format=MPG, children=[]] with mime type video/mp4 to Firefox

I imagine it works well in Chrome because of its native support of mp4 files, but it sounds terrible in Microsoft Edge and Mozilla Firefox. I haven't tried other browsers.

snip-7.6.2.log
snip-7.7.0.log

(The original debug files were 132724 lines and 133297 lines, so I removed the folder parsing and extracted the parts about rendering)

[valib]

@SubJunk this is caused by PR #1702 at line
https://github.com/UniversalMediaServer/UniversalMediaServer/blob/934febe6ade50f6c9578e24fd5e2be30fcb5f175/src/main/java/net/pms/configuration/WebRender.java#L399
because the bitrate 16 kb/s for the AAC format is very low. I would recommend the part of code

cmdList.add("-c:a");
cmdList.add("aac");
cmdList.add("-ab");
cmdList.add("16k");

delete and let the ffmpeg to create standard mp4 audio output format.

[Nadahar]

16kbps for AAC is simply a joke IMO. They have bought the hype and keep sending DAB+ (radio) in 80 kbps and 96 kbps here in Norway, and the quality is appalling so much so that I've stopped listening to radio since they shut down the FM net. I can't even imagine how terrible 16 kbps is. In my experience, 128 kbps is the absolute minimum for AAC, but higher is preferable. Using a radio with low-quality speakers, 196 kbps sounds "fine" to me, but playing it on a HiFi system might be very different. Regardless, 16 kbps is just madness.

[valib]

@Nadahar I think the 16 kbps is there since the time @SubJunk tested which format and setting will be the best for web interface. Maybe it could be 196 kbps and it is only mistyped.

[SubJunk]

Nice find @valib yes that looks like a typo. That part of the code was added 5 years ago and I think was more of an investigation.

I'll leave the aac codec in there until more testing can be done, but I have increased the bitrate to 128kbps for now.

A future enhancement should be to make it variable based on the number of channels, ideally plugging it into the same logic our renderers use, since they handle all this already.

Thanks for reporting this @SsJVasto it will be better in the next release :)