Jump to content

ikkei

  • Posts

    32
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Country

    France

Retained

  • Member Title
    Freshman Member

Recent Profile Visitors

The recent visitors block is disabled and is not being shown to other users.

  1. I don't think such a basic limitation can be rationalized... One expects tables, lists, anything with column headers, to be sortable by clicking on said header. Period. It's the 99.9%-case behavior expected or any piece of software. Is it that hard or detrimental to sort rows according in the specific case of the Play Queue? It's just a list, already sorted according to the added order; surely it could be sorted according to another index, couldn't it?
  2. Aye, nice comprehensive list. Just a few remarks from personal exp. 1. JPlay? Seriously? Wasn't there an "issue" with JRiver and Jplay since update 20 or something? (dunno, I don't use JRiver, but I surely watch out for vaporware to advice friends, and JPlay seemed controversial, to put it mildly). 2. Foobar2000 is my personal preference, because it's the king of DIY players. If you can understand TitleFormatting (short: TF; the scripting language used in foobar, mp3tag, musicbrainzpicard...) and get your way around Panel Stack Splitter, then there's basically NO LIMIT on: - what you can do with metadata (courtesy of online dBs to fill your tracks info, info upon which you can then script/regex your way to reach the exact data integrity you aim for) - how you can present/display that data (you, basically, can make your very own GUI). No more asking devs to implement this or that GUI detail, I now DIY-it at my discretion [to be more specific, you draw shapes and strings and colors using a TF-like language, or you simply program everything in VBScript or JScript if you know how to. I personally only use titleformatting and can't really find any limit in what I do (besides loops, can't do that in TF). Sure, VBScript or JScript may take it to the next step, but simply mastering TF already gives me a much better, customized, ad-hoc GUI than any other pre-made software GUI. Which is kind of obvious, but I'm stressing the possibility of that here, which opened me a world of customization ─ and long coding hours, yes, but I love that]. And since it plays all file formats bit-perfect, even the most exotic ones, Foobar2000 is the one solution that simply never failed me. Like, ever. 3. If I had to go back to OSX (see 4.), I'd use Audirvana 2+ because it sounds great and plays all file formats. However I wouldn't let that app touch any of my metadata with a ten foot pole (I find metadata management in A2+ to be not only limited but worse than that, making the user prone to errors because it adds unnecessary layers of complexity ─ like a one-size-fits-all album logic forced on every track, or how it presents a kind of metadata hierarchy between grouping/album/composer that just doesn't fit my personal use ─ and is somewhat buggy to top it all). So I'd recommend read-only files for A2+, and edit those with good dB code like Yate or mp3tag on the windows side. 4. You may or may not want to consider the OS as well ─ after all, that's the home of all software on a machine, isn't it? I can't speak for Linux, but as far as Win and OSX are concerned, here's my personal experience (tested on iMac 27" mid-2010 i5 2.8GHz 16GB RAM ; MacMini 2009 dual core 8GB ; assembled PC from 2008 Core2Duo 1.8GHz 2GB DDR2). Windows - I tested WASAPI only 7 is acceptable. If I didn't know better, I wouldn't complain. Windows 8/8.1 sounds GREAT imho. But (perhaps un-)surprisingly, Windows Server 2012/R2 is the one that yielded the best results [please read at the bottom of this post for a few necessary hints if you're going the Win12R2 way]. [*]OS X OSX 10.6-7-8 were awesome. OSX 10.9 is where I began looking at the windows side again, after 3 years using only OSX for music playback and file management. OSX 10.10 is when I made the definitive switch to Windows. I just couldn't hear the SQ I had with <10.8 on OSX anymore, and got that back ─ and then some ─ with Win/WASAPI. Overall, considering Windows 7 is somewhat obsolete, and 2012 is not for everyone (expensive; not as easy to use as a typical desktop-grade OS), I would recommend 8.1. 10 is coming soon, and reportedly sounds awesome, but current 7/8/8.1 users get a free upgrade to 10 (it's happening NOW, so be quick about it, do Windows Updates and check your taskbar icons!) Note that you can evaluate these products for 90 days for free (may need to reinstall if you buy it eventually though), so don't rush into buying anything. If you own a pre-2013 Mac you may eventually want to try to bypass bootcamp for your Windows boot. I should probably mention that I regularly boot into OS X Yosemite and VM my way to my local Win2012 install to play foobar (using VMware Fusion but Parallels should be just fine as well). It just works great sound-wise, not so much with real-time spectrum analyzers (I switch to a static GUI in such cases). About 2012 server: you need a few tweaks prior to getting a decent media playback experience. - Install features: qWave (Quality Windows Audio Video Experience), Media Foundation (you can get that with a Desktop Experience GUI, found in User Interfaces and Infrastructure (installed on top of a standard GUI install). - Prioritize Programs over Background services. - You may need to switch to test mode and live with an ugly watermark on your desktop, if your drivers aren't accepted by the OS in normal mode (happened with my MCE remote control). - The rest is roughly pretty much the same as 8.1, barring a few more warnings along the way.
  3. Now that is a very nice feature!
  4. Just a reminder for everyone, to avoid *disaster* with your files. Most of you know it, but those who don't really should. ;-) This applies to most operating systems (Windows, OS X..) under normal 'home' conditions (i.e. no iSCSI, no SAN domain etc.) 1. Here's the normal flow of deletion on a local disk* (*local disk: internal HDD, USB external HDD, anything that's physically plugged to, and controlled solely by, the physical machine in front of which you're sitting) File => user hits "delete" => Recycle Bin => user empties the recycle bin => Permanent File deletion 2. Here's the normal flow of deletion on a network share: (*network share: any disk that is physically plugged to and controlled by another machine, implying there's a network connection between your system and that disk) File => user hits "delete" => PERMANENT DELETION That's it. There is NO RECYCLE BIN WHATSOEVER on a network share. So deleting anything on a network share is permanent, forever, gone are your files. A personal workaround: I use network shares all the time, since I have an older Windows PC with a bunch of HDD's inside, set up as a NAS. I access it from Windows & OS X clients (a dual boot on my iMac + girlfriend's laptop). So I have one huge share (storage pool made of 2+2+4TB), at the root of which I have created a "network_trash" folder. Like so: smb://blablabla - folder 1: network_trash - folder 2: shares -- subfolder 2.1: music -- subfolder 2.2: video etc. (all that matters for easy deletion is that both the data & the "network_trash" folder reside on the same logical partition on the physical computer hosting this data). All the data is in subfolders under folder 2, folder 1 is just for the trash. When I need to delete something, I simply "move" that file to my "network_trash" folder. Periodically (say, once a week, a month...), I investigate that folder and hard-delete it (like you would empty a normal recycle bin). Obviously you can't do that within A2+ I think (can only delete, not move files IIRC), but it works perfectly fine with the finder. Using that "buffer network_trash" folder (it's just a habit, really) made me avoid tragic mistakes a few times.. ;-) Hints to make it easier: - put the "network_trash" folder in your favorites bar (left side of the Finder/Explorer) and then deleting is as easy as a simple drag-n-drop. - in windows, run "shell:sendto" and in the folder that appears, put a shortcut to the network_trash folder. Once this is done, right-click > send to will display your network trash folder (you can name the shortcut with a "_" or "•" first to make it appear on top of the list). - you can also configure programs to "move" files to the network_trash folder instead of "deleting" them, after whatever operation they did; this gives you an effective network-recycle bin-like behavior to check for yourself if nothing worthy was accidently deleted. - if you fancy linux/unix I suppose you may use "_" or "." as first char to hide the folder; likewise use windows attributes to define it as hidden or, better yet, system. That's it. And sorry for my posts being too often too long, it's just that when I'm started, so many ideas pop in my mind... :-)
  5. Indeed, my numbers for the 2013 DVD-A Stereo remix of Benefit do match the numbers for the HDTrack release. Average album DR is 11 (per track, in album order: 10-11-10-11-12-10-11-12-10-13 according to foo_dynamic_range 1.1.1 w/ Foobar 1.3.8). @mkrzych: About the 2015 Remaster of Aqualung by S. Wilson: you made me bite, I got it. The 2011 Bluray was good, but I felt like something was missing, or off, dunno. Issues corrected with this 2015 release: outstanding! Simply the best sounding mix/master of this album for me, by a clear margin. Thank you for the tip! :-)
  6. This has been my line of thinking ever since I realized we were deep in the loudness war. Add it to the pile of things that we know how to do better, yet just don't do it so. In addressing the why, I often wonder. >> Why do people, in their vast majority, buy low-dynamic music and feel content with it? Is it that they never heard otherwise? Is it that, in their mind, it's expected that music at home must sound horrendous compared to real, live music? Is it that most of their equipment needs lower DR to perform decently (fancy way of saying iPod earbuds hurt music as an art, perhaps the very technical specs of iTunes itself...)? On this topic it's true that I don't see the youth today as owning any decent audio reproduction equipment (it's mostly integrated speakers on mobile devices and low-end earbuds, few spend even $100 on a decent pair of headphones), whereas before the digital era most teens would try to get our hands on something decent to play CD/radio/tape/vinyl. Yet as we contemplate the massive financial drive that the post-2000 music industry has been, in the midst of a digital consumer revolution, it's hard to back a claim that market leaders made wrong choices. If anything, they survived the change and adapted to a world of low form factor devices, inherently unsuited to anything truly hires. And when I see 1080p/AAC2.0 videos on streaming ─talk about heresy to me, why not erase the words "balance" and "coherency" from the dictionary while we're at it...─ I always remind myself that most people only care about eye-candy, because their ear apparently can't or won't taste sweetness. Here, we're probably all part of a biological subset of the human species, folks ─ somewhere along the lines of "a small bunch of people, equipped with weird ears and unconventional brain sound filters, who emphasize sound much more than the average Joe for some obscure reason they enjoy discussing whereas nobody else cares". Funny thing is, I'm also very demanding with my eyes (HD video for instance), and I suspect I'm not alone in the audiophile crowd. >> Comparable trends exist in many if not all media: movies are tinted in blues and oranges, because supposedly that pleases the human eye ─ yet it destroys any sense of realism in many a modern picture, to an extent that's certainly not artistic but simply flawed, like DR3 songs can seldom be justified. I'm pretty sure in a few years we'll be offered to buy "the original, true-film-transfer, untainted version of <some_blockbuster>". It's cool you know, once you sold a broken version, you can sell a better one at virtually no cost, the music industry knows this all too well. And let's not even talk about video games and how it's ok to break the very premise of a game by forcing micro-transactions and farming to undecent proportions every step of the way ─who needs players with a brain and free will when you can have robots following linear instructions, by spamming a couple of keys over and over again, for hours on end, all the while paying for it? In a nutshell, nowadays it's ok to destroy the very media you're selling, it's ok to voluntarily fail by your art, to alter its content to such an extent that it's broken, flawed, downright disturbing to the very amateurs of said media/art. It's actually how it's done. If it were only Universal, Warner or EA, I could understand ─ and even support, that some take that cheap approach (we need some of that, some of all approaches, in a thriving free market). But now even Blue Note sells compressed material without loudness-free alternatives. Who.. how?.. why?.. did.. This.. Happen?! I personally support all the "good guys" in this war, from Chesky to NiN passing by countless others who do a fantastic job at trying to fight the good fight, defending dynamics where it matters. It should be noted that the movie industry has begun to actively sabotage their own picture but not the sound, still very dynamic, both in theaters and at home. Cue: Dolby (which already does on-the-fly compression at a consumer level), THX, and others, to teach some music majors a lesson in marketing and audio engineering. But things won't change until it doesn't cost a dime, though, I'm afraid. Why would it? Imho, the first move should probably come from the hardware manufacturers. If on-the-fly compression becomes a thing (a real option, on real devices, even if it's mostly useless at first for most tracks are already compressed...) to entice consumers to seek and buy loudness-free versions of tracks, on the premise that "it will sound better everywhere, from your fancy home equipment to your jogging buds", then the majors can make the shift cost-free (probably even save a few hours of foolish mastering per album). Sony is well positioned to do that for instance, because they sell both hardware and music, they are present on the whole chain from the studio to the end-consumer's ears ─ "we sound better than everyone else" isn't a bad catchphrase when it's true, it's the kind of global strategy that may prove very fruitful. I don't know. Time will tell. In the meantime, we have ~40 years of abundant recordings to enjoy still.
  7. The "conclusion" wasn't really a conclusion, it was just me saying something stupid at the end of a long-serious post. ;-) It would have made more sense though, if I hadn't forgotten to say something about that (again, long post, some ideas get lost in the process). So here goes (a bit off topic, though): on both my Mini and iMac, no matter the player (among the best contenders these days, A2+, HQ, Amarra, etc.), I consistently prefer the sound on Windows. In comparing SRC on OSX (in A2+) and SoX (in Foobar) on Windows for instance, hell even bit-perfect non-resampled playback (so, just straight sending the bits from the file to the DAC, no nothing done whatsoever) everything just sounds better on the Windows side. Since I know that neither A2+ nor SRC are worse than Foobar/SoX (certainly not by such a magnitude), I tend to blame the OS. I think WASAPI is great, whatever you throw at it (HD video audio resampling, games, this), it just does the job awesomely well, no matter the physical output (S/PDIF, WASAPI, you name it). Also I have this tendency to blame OS X because it wasn't like that with previous iterations of OS X, and certainly not with my old Windows 7x64. But now, 8.1 sounds insanely much better to me than Yosemite (again, it's just my personal setup, YMMV).
  8. Since this is going to be long, here's the meaty part first. I use fairly generic SoX settings. - Best quality (also called VHQ in SoX documentation) - Passband 95.0% - Phase response: minimum (0%) when downsampling; linear (50%) when upsampling - Aliasing/imaging: only allowed when upsampling Note that these slightly differ from the default recommended settings for downsampling only. Now here's the why and how in my personal case. Objective: everything to 24/96, except redbook (16/44 -> 24/44) My DAC only handles 44, 48 and 96 natively (and for some reason its 48 conversion seems subpar). Whereas in iZotope I only used integer resampling (2x 4x 8x), in SoX I can't hear the difference between integer or not, so I resample everything to 96 (I figure, why lose information when it's just as easy not to). Thus 48, 88, 176, 192, 352, 384 is resampled to 96. The bulk of my files, 96 & 44, is fed bit-perfect to the DAC. Foobar's DSP Manager So I put two SoX mod2 components (let's call them A and B) in Foobar's DSP manager. The order doesn't matter. Resampler A handles 88 & 48 files (upsampling to 96), Resampler B handles 176 & 192 files (downsampling to 96). Like so: (A) Resampler (SoX) mod2 Target samplerate: 96000 Hz Resample ONLY frequencies: 88200;48000 (these days I'm experimenting on upsampling 44100 as well) Quality: Best Passband 95% Aliasing/imaging: YES (checked) Phase 50% (linear) (B) Resampler (SoX) mod2 Target samplerate: 96000 Hz Resample ONLY frequencies: 384000;192000;352800;176400 Quality: Best Passband 95% Aliasing/imaging: NO Phase 0% (minimum) about other DSP order: I use "Skip Silence", first one in the list (because, why process in SoX parts of a file that won't be played? so let's exclude silences first of all). The fourth and last one, after the two SoX mod2, is "Convert mono to stereo" (I suppose it's simply doubling the existing track over two channels instead of one, so why process twice the same track in SoX, if that can be avoided?) Remarks about these settings I honestly suspect that my B-downsampling is not "transparent" or "the best", from a lab/mathematical perspective, but I'll tell you what: besides the fact that downsampling like so usually sounds better to my ears, I seriously think that, combined with the WASAPI passthrough, minimum phase is "how my DAC likes its food". I just don't know how to say that. Maybe it yields less jitter, maybe it's just my tastes, maybe it suits my speakers better (old JBL full-range column-shaped louspeakers, the aging twitters have a tendency to hiss unforgivingly with many masters)... I don't know. Comparatively, downsampling in linear phase seems a bit muffled, a bit too pretty yet dusty, somewhat unrealistically perfect and dull. It's like these mid-range CD players from the early 90's. Or a photograph from that time. I'm pretty convinced it's actually more transparent mathematically, though, but probably outside the human range. I don't know. All I know is, the lower the phase I can get away with, the better my particular audio chain seems to perform. Regardless of the OS/player/resampler. Aliasing is a different beast. When upsampling, I generally find that aliasing makes for a much better "presentation", clearer soundstage. Aliasing shines when it's all about creating stuff out of thin air (literally). However, generally when downsampling on my system (remember, with minimum phase), I often see aliasing as a necessary evil. Basically, in my subjective experience, and with many, many exceptions to these general impressions: - with the greatest masters, aliasing + minimum phase = loss of detail, like a picture losing sharpness (not blurry, simply less striking) - with a bad source, aliasing is often necessary because otherwise the sound breaks your ears with artefacts and sometimes an obviously flawed signal, and generally it just sounds better with aliasing on those flawed tracks (think: stupid DR5 so-called "remaster" of Hendrix, broken mp3 because it's been compressed several times, a file dithered more than once, a bad vinyl rip, a hissing master, etc) - with most lossless files I find aliasing to be somewhat of an unnecessary layer between the listener and the source (so I leave it off by default and only take the time to enable it for downsampling when I'm listening to one of these albums that sound bad without, but fortunately these are rare at 176 or 192...) Playing DSD to PCM: SoX may help I also use the SACD plugin, in relation to SoX, setup like so: Output Mode: PCM (wish I could do native DSD) PCM Volume: +0dB, NO DeClicker PCM Samplerate: 352800 => then it's up to SoX (second mod2) from there to 96000 DSD2PCM Mode: Multistage (Double Precision) => basically, 64-bit processing. PCM Samplerate should be set as high as the DAC can natively process. In my case the only multiple of 44100 is 44100 itself (and it performs very well, I honestly have no complain about setting PCM Samplerate to 44100 and be done with it), so if I want to output DSD to 96, I have to do two stages of resampling. It's an experiment, one that sounds better than I thought. Which is why it's ongoing. I think SoX sounds better than SACD plugin's internal filters, so I minimize that plugin's job so that SoX kicks in as early as possible in the chain (hence, 352800, and I would even use twice that if it were available). Note: +0dB instead of the default +6dB because, contrary to popular belief, whereas DSD has a 6dB overhead that usually isn't used, it can be! I've seen some DSD tracks (latest japanese SHM remasters of Queen and Stevie Wonder's discography, notably) use as much as 4dB out of 6, so to be on the safe side, it's better to keep DSD2PCM processing at +0dB and let ReplayGain do its job if volume is a concern (provided these tracks are .dsf files in order to be tagged with RG values). Ok, on to advanced settings. As most of us I suppose, most of my library is redbook material (16/44). So in Foobar's preferences, "Advanced", I set decoding Tone/sweep sample rate to whichever frequency I'm going to be processing redbook at. That's 44100 by default, and I set it up at 96000 if I'm upsampling 44100 to 96000 in the first SoX mod2 (which is my default case these days, but it's an ongoing experiment, one that goes well I might add). Note: I don't have a clue what the prior setting does, I'm just guessing. Any input is welcome. Playback > Full file buffering up to 6291456 kB (6 GB, probably enough for a full ISO). Playback > WASAPI at default values, High worker process priority checked. The most important setting is probably the following. Thread priority 7 (max), Use MMCSS YES (checked), MMCSS mode: Pro Audio This guarantees that Foobar's WASAPI sound processing is of the utmost importance for your system. Finally, I don't Prevent hard disk sleep while playing because a sleepy disk means less energy footprint, less EM in the computer case, and whatever else we don't need. That's considering my 16GB of RAM and the fact that my audio files are on a network share, so there's just no need for HDD access if Foobar does its job correctly. Windows might do stuff because that's what it does, but most of the time it doesn't (also a good reason to choose a Server version imho: less work on the user's part to achieve an optimally low OS footprint from a clean install). Speaking of which, in Windows, it never hurts to make sure everything's fine in your Playback Device config (right-click the sound icon in the taskbar > Playback Devices, select your DAC, hit "properties"). Sometimes a driver update or other application may change settings, though it shouldn't happen (blame these guys, not Microsoft). - Levels > Speakers: 100 - Enhancements > Disable all enhancements YES (checked) - Advanced > Default Format Set it to your DAC's maximum capability (last item in the list) > Exclusive Mode: check both options Click "OK", then "Configure" Audio channels: select your DAC's maximum* Full-range speakers: check those which apply, at least Front left and right. Test each speaker, then hit "Finish". *Some people suggest to use <max bit depth available> / 44100 Hz because the default format shouldn't matter when using Foobar/SoX with WASAPI (that's the whole point of WASAPI, bypassing Windows internal sound processing and especially forced resampling of everything), whereas other sources (YouTube, Spotify, most videos, most games, etc.) are more likely to use 44.1 KHz so you may want to avoid crappy directX resampling if you intend to use the DAC output with other sources than Foobar. As for Windows versions, in terms of SQ end result, I think the NT6.3 core (Windows 8.1 / Server 2012R2) is a significant improvement over NT6.1 (7/2008R2). I hope Windows 10 maintains that SQ, that will be one reason less not to update. Ultimately I think that 2012 sounds even better than 8.1, but that's probably due to optimization which can theoretically be achieved on both systems, though somewhat in a more convoluted way in 8.1. (if you go server, make sure you install the necessary media/QoS features in Server Manager, otherwise sound processing, and video for that matter, will simply be atrociouly bad). The conclusion of this thread is that I absolutely need to try a micro iDSD and only care about upsampling. And that Apple need to get a grip on their desktop OS.
  9. Mhh really? I didn't think so. Maybe that wasn't A2+ then. My bad, if that's the case.
  10. These days I'm using Foobar in portable mode, for which I've made a custom interface to my liking. The Mac Mini is bootcamp'ed into Windows 7 for the occasion, running nothing but foobar OR (exclusive) video software. As you can see, it's pretty spartan but I like it sober. This borderless window is displayed full screen on the TV all the time when music is playing casually, and likely hidden for critical listenning (keeping CPU activity to a minimum, the spectrum/peakmeters you see do consume a few %). What I like about it is that I've setup a simple MCE Remote to control it (this old thing was lying around waiting to be used ^^). The old ways, sometimes, are just as good as any ─ and the girlfriend doesn't like controlling stuff with smartphone apps, seems too cumbersome to load the app etc just to change a track for her, so a basic remote is just fine. It also control Plex/Kodi//whatever else, since my MCE just sends a bunch a key presses conveniently linked to foobar's customized keyboard shortcuts (I used a Kodi/XBMC plugin to achieve that MCE 'hack', since by default media buttons work as any keyboard's media keys, but much of the rest doesn't do anything elsewhere than in the obsolete windows xp media center). For instance, a simple press of 1-5 now rates the track, I can switch ReplayGain on/off (very appreciable for casual listening), etc. The library part isn't customized yet, so it looks 'meh' but it's functional with smart playlists, quick search, quick tagging, obvious features. I've build a few scripts with buttons at the bottom left, for instance to quickly archive a whole release (on this picture, for instance, I'd select any track in the CD and hit "archive" to move the whole folder to a specified location, leaving only the Vinyl rip for that album in my active library). As you can see, the whole interface is geared to display only a few tags, but the ones I care for when browsing. Dynamic Range being very important to choose between different masters, etc. In fact, the whole player interface color (LIB button, rating, play/pause, previous, next, etc.) changes color depending on the DR of the track currently playing (from red, low DR, below 6 ; to green, above 12). I like to 'connect', in my brain, that DR info to what I hear at a glance ─ it helps my ears learn about compression mastering techniques and how it's more flavoured than just "low DR is bad", especially when considering genre and what I'd call the "accoustic/electronic ratio" in a given track's mixing (classical being by essence fully accoustic, electronic being... oh you get the idea ) I suppose I don't need to explain the numbers/icons of my foobar UI any further on this forum. :-) Potable foobar does wonders, especially since I put it on a 2TB external HDD along with the music files themselves (referenced as "..\..\Library" which is a relative path independent of the drive letter in windows). Just plug the HDD on any windows machine, select audio output and hit play, it works anywhere. That's great to visit friends with my whole lib ─ I even usually grab a small USB DAC and for less than 1 pound overall, i can HD audio anywhere I find a couple RCA's and a windows PC. I also have an iOS app (MonkeyMote) to control Foobar, it works well, complete with rating on-the-fly to populate my smart playlists automatically. The iOS remote is just icing on the cake when showcasing my HDD-lib-foobar at a friend's (but see how it's totally secondary to much more important features, namely DB robustness and tagging consistency?...) On a side-related note, I'm considering a dedicated audio server (as I'm investigating virtualization these days, which works pretty well), because I'd like to stream from/to anywhere in the house more easily, and ultimately move all of this into a cloud of some sort (I saw that MS Azure is pretty cheap for a few TB, so I'm considering that for audio storage and audio apps servicing). There you have it, a free solution which fulfills my needs more than adequately. Sound Quality is top-notch of course, but you knew that since foobar is pretty well optimized, and players don't get much lower-footprint. I just wish I had iZotope on it, but SoX is pretty fine for downsampling ─the only kind of resampling I ever do, to fit my 16/24 44/48/96 DAC.
  11. I'll give you an example of database/metadata inconsistency that effectively put (notice: past tense, uncertainty about the present) your meta at risk in A2+. Please note this was back a few versions ago, dunno if it's still the case as I'm not using A2+ anymore. A2+ correctly reads the “COMMENT” field when first adding a track to its library; however when editing that field, A2+ writes into a field named “DESCRIPTION”. That’s bad because, without warning the user, it will erase any pre-existing value of the “DESCRIPTION” field. (I personally lost a bunch of info just like that) Several online music sellers do use that field to give additional info about the tracks. It seems to me this field is much too common to be used as an A2+ specific field (as “Intrument” or “Period”), especially if it’s going to erase pre-existing values without even being able to see them before it happens. Therefore this behavior is illogical, and more critically puts user (meta)data at risk. Another example : A2+ used to (does it still?) truncate "YEAR" with only the Year, replacing the full date (e.g. 2015-01-23 becomes 2015). A bunch of software do that, though ; because they try to comply with ID3 tags when in fact, Vorbis Comments in FLAC don't have such restrictions ─ they're all just a bunch of alphanumeric strings. But what A+ did (again, past tense, dunno in 2.0.10) is automatically overwrite the YEAR field when I rated tracks. So, one track after another, albums were getting split between, e.g., "2015-01-23" tracks and "2015" ones. Effectively breaking all these albums' meta integrity. I'm glad I know how to script (again, mp3tag does it well for free) because fixing this manually would've been a painful experience of keyboard-copy-pasta-break-your-fingers-fest. Fixed or not, such blatant flaw/security issues should NEVER make it to a release build. Even at the beta stage it's bad. That's how you lose trust in someone's code, hence fear for your files (and fixing such small data changes with incremental/delta backups is a bit tricky and often expensive in terms of resources ─because, checksums, or careful attributes management, and A/B compare the bytes back to make sure which files were effectively modified). Really, it's a pain to fix mistakes like that, especially when you didn't know it was happening in the first place until you somehow hallucinate at your Yate/mp3tag looking at the full Vorbis data. A way to actually refresh tracks after external tag editing is also required, especially considering the limited/flawed editing capabilities of A2+. Note: That's probably why I wish I had a totally external and dedicated DB referencing files with a unique ID and allowing me to rebuild all metadata from scratch if I ever need to (complete with folder structure, which in my case are noted in custom metadata fields). Suggestions as to which technology/software would be a good choice for a standalone music files DB are more than welcome. Back on topic, the list adds up: look at A2+ recycle bin's odd behavior; look at the exotic fields that even classical listeners may not care about, whereas everyone else is left out in the blue; the undocumented "Release Date" or "Recording Location" fields... Why even display fields we can't edit when so many others, useful and common ones, are left out in the dark? So, as you can see, these little details may matter in the end: YMMV. "YMMV" is precisely why : 1. I always advocate for full user control over tags. Why truncate dates for instance? why automatically rewrite a tag that wasn't even touched by the user? and how hard can it be to ask a piece of software to display field "BLABLA" if it already can pull field "WHATEVER" from ID3/Vorbis tags? It's more than QoL, it's a matter of consistency, of integrity ; ultimately it speaks volumes about the kind of code you're dealing with. These shortcomings are evidently not limited to A+, iTunes is the mother of all restrictors on OSX, but just as important as "if it's not broken, don't fix it!" should be "if something's bad, don't copy that, make something better or just abstain". 2. I think developers should avoid restricting users, rather seek to enable them. Software should not make decisions for users kept in the dark, but rather empower them with information, which is key to making the 'right' decisions. Sometimes, a little message with a couple variables makes all the difference in the world of GUI's. And A2+'s GUI is filled with inconsistencies, obfuscated or obscure behaviors, each and every one a potential reason not to feel at ease with your files being written by that code. And should a piece of software do things under the hood, then it needs to be documented (ideally) and most importantly impeccably consistent ─ think Apple's software, or Nintendo's: pretty restricted, but a model of integrity/consistency (not least because of the BSD base in Apple's OSX case). Sound IT logic. That's why I'd trust you more with my files than I do Damien these days. I do apply the same logic with much of my entertainment, XBMC/Kodi as video and game browsers, dedicated video player with madVR, etc. And when I look at Windows Updates, I wish Microsoft knew not to fix what wasn't broken in my system, because it would save me hours of research per months to identify the rotten apples─well, updates, apple's never really rotten ;-) Couldn't agree more. It's nice to be able to do short in-context edits from wherever (rating comes to mind, playlists as well, notice these are user-centric metadata that doesn't inherently qualifies the work itself ─ read: subjective edits should be made in-context, objective edits should be done prior to reading a file, ideally automatically through online DB). But that's as far as it goes if you're serious about metadata. Guys, do yourself─ and your tracks─ a favor, and use Yate (OSX, $20) or mp3tag (Windows, free, works perfect in a VM). These two little guys will manage/edit your library metadata and filesystem structure (folders). Players should basically be configured to pull info only (read only) at the notable exception of a few user-centric, subjective fields, which are easily stored in a local player DB until they're written to the track, preferably when not playing to avoid glitches and unnecessary traffic/disk activity. That's just good data care practices, which I deem somewhat required when dealing with thousands of dollars and hours in tracks and hardware. We have a right to be demanding, because we fork much more money than the average Joe in this hobby ─ think that, without music geeks like us, A+ and the likes wouldn't even have a market, and you can see the pricepoint of these to get an idea of how scarce the customer is. In such a niche market, you either please your users based on feedback, or you close shop. There's not much middle ground for the small guys, and 40+ years of audiophile history is a strong testimony of that. All that being said, I'm sincerely glad if some of you found their heaven in A2+. Really, more power to you. I'm just pessimistic for the future of 2.x; I think we'll see a cheap/free 3.0 upgrade (really, a revamp) sooner than we realize, which will put A+ back between 1.x and 2.x where it belongs: simple playlists management and flawless playback, iTunes integration, wheel-reinvention-free. Phil, who probably writes waaaay too much on Sunday afternoons, instead of properly building his virtualized ADDS domestic domain, bypassing his ADSL modem and setting up a pfSense router.
  12. Should you take that road (iso => individual files), you should take note that *.dsf supports metadata (as with flac or mp3, your tags are actually written in the file), whereas *.dff doesn't (so you may fill the A+ db for instance, or w/e software's internal db you wish to use, but that metadata isn't written within the file so it will never show anywhere but in A+, or said software of your choice. Always just the one, though). However, *.dsf isn't compressed (thus takes about twice as much space) whereas dff is compressed (I mean mathematically, not audio compression, your dsd stream remains pristine in all cases), thus dff saves space compared to dsf, at no quality cost. Your call, depending on how much you value your metadata compared to disk space (here again, it's all about the cost). In DSD64, I think dsf takes around 1GB per album, dff can go way north of that (all 2-channel).
  13. I don't know if his situation changed since, but back when I joined the A+ wagon (around 1.4 I think), it was Damien's second job (iirc, his main, day job was in computer engineering but unrelated to A+). Considering it was just the 'side-project' of one man, A+ 1.x was simply awesome. But what A+ 1.x was, was simpler also. A most direct, efficient, straightforward "audio transport" from file 'A' to DAC 'B'. Damien's genius, so to speak, was figuring out how to get these bytes as directly and perfectly to the DAC, whatever the file format (codec/container), whatever the OS X version, whatever the DAC and its connection. And A+ performed admirably at that on Macs. A+ 2.x is a wholly different beast. The library part is at best cogent, certainly seemingly unrelated to audio processing from an engineering standpoint. It's just DB management, and that in itself is still a vague specialty in computing. The 1.x 'root' in 2.x, the player itself, is buried under a ton of would-be features that evidently aren't as ironed out as many a customer would expect. And sincerely, given its economic model, I don't see how it could be otherwise ─unless Audirvana as a company goes full-on daytime-hiring-shareheld business. I think the prospects of A+1.x were daunting but achievable by one man, evidently. I'm not so sure that A+2.x isn't simply too much. Another concern of mine that grew exponentially as we went through iterations of A+2.x is the following: how could bit-perfect players sound so differently? Are we imagining things, hearing what we look for instead of what's actually there? My only requirement for an audio player is that it is able to feed a DAC bit-perfectly. I shouldn't hear any difference whatsoever between bit-perfect player A, B or C, as long as other aspects (jitter etc.) are kept within reasonable (read: negligible) boundaries. Then resampling with the best processing available is a must if one's DAC can't handle all rates natively, and that's where I am willing to pay for e.g. iZotope. The truth about my personal experience is that, after curating my whole library metadata-wise, in order to benefit from a perfectly organized A2+, I realized that in its current and foreseeable state I would never be able to reach a degree of customizing satisfying for my needs (which are not that extensive but quite rigorous). So I tried bootcamp/foobar on the same Mini, and guess what. It's bit-perfect sound, I can't hear the difference with A+. It's free. And I can customize the hell out of it, down to javascript panes or hard C/C++ plugins. More casually, on a day-to-day basis, enjoy the likes of ReplayGained random playlists, spartan yet awesomely modern and eye-candy interface (really just 4 or 5 fields such as artist/title/year displayed in nice big letters on the TV with artwork). Yep, A2+, Yate and iTunes (on the mac side) versus foobar/mp3tag (Windows) convinced me that my sound playback should take place on Windows these days. I would never have thought that 6 months ago. But hey, the hardware is what it is, it's great, and OS-wise, Win7 on WASAPI does wonders reliably whereas OS X changes integer processing way too much these days. I guess my point is that there's a whole world out there, down to hardware passing by OS and software, and A+ is competing more or less directly with all of this. A different OS is often just a dual boot away, a different software is a couple of clicks away. And I don't see how a one-man software can be a good jack-of-all-trades in such a competitive environment, especially when the biggest thing that happened to audio these past 10 years is all about the hardware (transparent DAC's under $1,000 and so on). I think it's a very shaky business move to have envisioned A+v2 as it unfolds currently ─ player + DB + remote... I'd see in a much more positive light if A+ were to go back to its core 'mission' as an application, delivering perfect audio to a DAC hooked to an OSX system on Apple hardware. No more, no less, and that is already huge a task to master. To do more, either Audirvana's means (as a company) are too limited, or its objectives too daunting. Just my opinion, of course, and I'd love to be proven wrong (I own a v2 license so bear in mind I'm arguing against my personal interest here, before that I spent 4 months being mildly apologetic to A+ shortcomings). But yeah, truthfully to myself, ever since I've tried v2, all these doubts emerged and subsequently got confirmed, and no update thus far has managed to alleviate them. Even the basic DB functionality isn't sorted out yet, 9 iterations into v2, already charged to the consumer (by "basic DB functionality" I mean listing tracks... just that, without duplicates or w/e else buggy... flawlessly playing through a playlist, basic re-ordering and sorting features... just that, a barebone audio DB that does the job...) Of course a remote app is a priority to 'some' degree, but what good is it if the basic player itself is just too buggy and lacking in expected features? I really don't think a remote is more important than the core DB itself for a media library. Indeed in my case it drove me away from using the software itself altogether, until it meets an acceptable working state as of the 2015 Computer Audio market. And it pains me to do so because, frankly, pretty much everything else I do on a computer takes place on OS X whereas using foobar forces me to dedicated a Mini to windows bootcamp on a permanent basis. But I don't see anything beating foobar (feature, customization and above all audio-wise) on OS X. I think Linux fares better, but I'm clueless as to how to install and use 'nuxes, so Windows 7 it is. (Words from a former A+ self-appointed evangelist, currently hibernating in a dark Redmond cave...)
  14. Many media players/managers have an "explorer" or "tree view", typically located the left lane of the application, allowing the user to browse items ("files", "tracks", whatever the unitary item is). Usually, the default sorting follows ad hoc hierarchy/grouping, such as Artist / TV Show - Album / Season -- 01 Track 1 Title / 01 Episode 1 Title This is based on metadata and requires proper naming/informing of the files. A cruder, most efficient way is to allow sorting by the file system itself: fancy way of saying you browse folders and file just as you do in the windows explorer pane or by clicking those little triangles next to folders in OS X Finder detail view. No mandatory metadata involved whatsoever, just a plain folder/subfolder structure. Why can't we have some form of sortable explorer based on a few criteria? The proof of concept in A2+ code is already there, when you sort the library in list view. It's just a matter of presenting the data with collapsible lines in the left pane. If you you can choose the sort order (artist/album, folders, etc.), then I believe it's kinda the best of both worlds, ie with and without metadata, with and without folder structure. Any would do.
  15. I'm using mp3tag, foobar tools (Dynamic Range, ReplayGain) and MusicBrainz Picard to edit my files tags. Files are stored locally on the Mini hosting A2+, on a USB disk, HFS+ partition. In my personal case: Once a file has been added to A2+ library, external tag changes are not visible in A2+. The only workaround I know (when editing metadata externally after files were added to A2+) is to basically delete the tracks from A2+ (they go to A2+'s "Recycle Bin") and restore them. Most of the time it does the trick. Sometimes it doesn't work and you have to delete the files entirely, copy fresh ones, maybe trick the library by using a temporary album name, etc. Anyway, editing metadata externally means losing all playback statistics (play count etc.) [*]I remember seeing files updated when browsing them in A2+ in my early tests, but I believe I was using Yate on the same computer with A2+ open. Not really sure, though. [*]Artwork is "bound" to the combination ("AND") of <album> and <album artist> in A2+ (one artwork per album, regardless of what's stored in the tracks, I think A2+ grabs the artwork from track #1 once and that's it). So, don't bother with different artworks per track/disc, or several artwork within each file: A2+ doesn't display those. [*]folder renaming and/or album deletions don't happen in A2+. There is no way to do that. A2+ allows you to delete files entirely (2-step process, first deleting them from A2+ library, then the only way to remove those files from A2+ "Recycle Bin" is to move the files to the Finder's trash, which irreversibly and immediately deletes files if they are on a network). Folders and every other file stay as is. You can't move/copy/rename files or folders within A2+. When adding a folder (within an already synced folder, or as a new sync folder), it will scan and add all compatible audio files within that folder. Basically, A2+ can read metadata from the files once (when adding said files) and trash them if you want them out of A2+. That's the extent of its file management.
×
×
  • Create New...