Article: Introducing Tonal: A Minimalist Music App for Collectors and Audiophiles

[baoshan]

45 minutes ago, bucket said:

Hi baoshan

 

Listening right now. I live in rural Ontario, Canada. Goes to say we have terrible internet service, therefore uploading my collection is an onerous, if not impossible task. I am really liking what I am hearing, not exactly understanding all of the process making this possible, I have read your articles. I will keep adding to the collection and following your progress. Best of Luck. David.

 

Hi David,

 

I’m sorry for the current experience is unsatisfying. It seems you have an asymmetric bandwidth. The upstream bandwidth is not so good. You can test it at http://speedtest.net An upload speed of 20+Mbps is preferred.

[Steve_Booyah]

This is a very interesting project!  However, is Amazon S3 a cost effective and scalable solution - both in terms of storage cost of initially uploading your entire library and the streaming costs?  CA himself investigated this and found that Amazon was not a realistic solution without unlimited storage:  

 

[baoshan]

24 minutes ago, Steve_Booyah said:

This is a very interesting project!  However, is Amazon S3 a cost effective and scalable solution - both in terms of storage cost of initially uploading your entire library and the streaming costs?  CA himself investigated this and found that Amazon was not a realistic solution without unlimited storage:  

 

 

Hi Steve,

 

Thanks for discussing storage and streaming cost.

 

S3 and CloudFront are enterprise grade services. CA reviewed Amazon Drive, an end-user friendly cloud drive service, not S3 and CloudFront.

 

Actually, to maintain an optimal experience, storage and streaming are only a small fraction of all expenses. Design, development, metadata quality control, these are much more expensive than storage and streaming.

 

Tonal MAY NOT be always free for unlimited collection size, but I’ll do my best to make the price competitive.

[Dan Gravell]

Hey @baoshan

 

On 11/04/2018 at 10:25 AM, baoshan said:

Re: On Storage / CDN

S3 / CloudFront solution is quite enough to power the UX for now. IPFS does bring decentralization, but I’m not sure what benefits it could bring to end users‘ experience. I belive my conclusion is quite short-sighted, please correct me.

 

I just meant it as a decentralisation approach, nothing more.

 

 

On 11/04/2018 at 10:25 AM, baoshan said:

Re: Integration & Synchronisation

Are you talking about allowing other players consume the same audio content from Tonal cloud storage? I’m not very fond of that, at least for the current stage. Tonal is focused on end-users’ (audiophiles and collectors) experience. The format is proprietry not to prevent other softwares from consuming it, but for better end user experience. Everything except for the metadata engine is designed solely for Tonal.

 

Players, or any software/hardware, yes. Your approach is your decision. It works for Apple! ;-) 

 

On 11/04/2018 at 10:25 AM, baoshan said:

Re: Metadata

Thank you very much for mentioning Tonal Curator. Yes. I havn’t introduced it to the community. It’s simple, efficient, and not error-prone. It has many secret features such as error-auto-fixing and autocompletion built in. I can teach the syntax in one hour. Tonal Curator is standard agnostic, which means the community need to decide on the standards. Can you think of a good method to build a community of metadata contributors? Without contributors, I have little motivation to introduce Tonal Curator officially.

 

I have zero experience of community building other than a following that has slowly built while running the bliss project.

 

I think you need to be open to different classes of "error". Yep, I'm sure you can write a compiler for the language and so on. I'm a bit worried about the syntax but my issue is more the content. Editorial guidelines are all something that MB (in particular) and Discogs have been working on for years to try to avoid what we see in FreeDB.

 

On 11/04/2018 at 10:25 AM, baoshan said:

Re: GitHub Repo Size

5GB can support millions of discs. Plus, it’s very easy to switch from GitHub to GitLab, etc. The binary assets (covers, booklets) are not stored in the repo.

 

Is that 5GB including history? "Millions of discs" will not give you much headroom. Discogs has heading for 10m releases now. I haven't done a check on FreeDB for a while, but probably similar...

 

On 11/04/2018 at 10:25 AM, baoshan said:

Re: Storage Cost

Tonal is a for-profit project. It MAY not be always free for unlimited collection size.

 

That's going to have to happen pretty soon if this takes off!

 

Cheers!

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

What are the hardware/software requirements for Tonal ?

Does it run on any Mac platform ?

Thanks.

[baoshan]

2 hours ago, hopkins said:

What are the hardware/software requirements for Tonal ?

Does it run on any Mac platform ?

Thanks.

 

Hello,

 

macOS High Sierra is the only requirement.

 

Thanks.

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

Thanks. 

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

iCloud seems to be required - but you mention Amazon S3. What is stored where ?

Edit: I actually found the answer in the pages above. No need to answer. 

[jaspal kallar]

Just wondered is there any way to remove albums once added? I don't see that option 

 

[baoshan]

2 hours ago, jaspal kallar said:

Just wondered is there any way to remove albums once added? I don't see that option 

 

 

I guess you want to remove the album because the imperfect metadata? Could I have the honor to fix the metadata for you?

 

Currently, deletion of album is unimpelmented. 

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

Hello again,

 

I gave it a try (using VMWare on my Windows 10 PC).

 

- The upload of albums takes some time (obviously with the benifit of all the processing going on behind the scenes). With a limit of 8 uploads at a time building a library would take some time... Will there be some kind of "mass import" functionality at a later stage ?

 

- Some album jackets were not found  - will there be an option for adding them ? Edit - one album cover was automatically added half an hour later - what is the process ? In some cases, the album jackets are "temporarily" incorrect. I uploaded two CDs of Bessie Smith's complete recordings, published by Frog Records (small label). The jacket for the first CD was not found (which does not surprise me), but on the second CD the jacket was incorrect for roughly 10 minutes (corresponded to another Bessie Smith compilation on another label), and was corrected after. Once the second CD was corrected, the first one became incorrect...

 

- being able to enlarge the images would be nice.

 

- I had a number of "disc is too long to be a valid audio disc" errors, and it seems this is simply due to the fact that I store some multi-disc albums in a single folder ? Otherwise, multi-discs albums are correctly displayed with a single entry - something basic but that most music players don't seem to be able to do...

 

- The title of the albums inherited from your ablum collection are sometimes incomplete or incorrect. For example, Arthur Grumiaux's recordings of Bach's violin concertos on Decca are labeled "Bach: Concertos BW...", with the artist "Raymond Leppard & English Chamber Orchestra", which is not entirely correct as some tracks are not performed by Leppard -  it would seem more appropriate to indetify Arthur Grumiaux as the main artist in this case.

 

- The interface is attractive and very easy to use. Obviously some alternative views (by Genre, for example) would be welcome. Will there be a way of editing "Genres" ? Adding favorites would also be useful.

 

- I like the way the search function works - simple and efficient. However, in some cases the system displays albums that are not in my collection. For example - searching for Pires brings up correctly her "Chopin - Nocturnes" album, but also her "Complete Works" album in which her Nocturnes are included (as disc 4 and 5). This is disorienting. 

- The search function does not include performers - in the example given above, I cannot find "Grumiaux" in my collection.

 

I cannot comment on the sound quality as I was not using it through my DAC.

 

Overall, provided some of these limitations are lifted and errors corrected, I would be happy to use this player on a permanent basis.

 

[baoshan]

8 minutes ago, hopkins said:

Hello again,

 

I gave it a try (using VMWare on my Windows 10 PC).

 

- The upload of albums takes some time (obviously with the benifit of all the processing going on behind the scenes). With a limit of 8 uploads at a time building a library would take some time... Will there be some kind of "mass import" functionality at a later stage ?

 

- Some album jackets were not found  - will there be an option for adding them ? Edit - one album cover was automatically added half an hour later - what is the process ? In some cases, the album jackets are "temporarily" incorrect. I uploaded two CDs of Bessie Smith's complete recordings, published by Frog Records (small label). The jacket for the first CD was not found (which does not surprise me), but on the second CD the jacket was incorrect for roughly 10 minutes (corresponded to another Bessie Smith compilation on another label), and was corrected after. Once the second CD was corrected, the first one became incorrect...

 

- being able to enlarge the images would be nice.

 

- I had a number of "disc is too long to be a valid audio disc" errors, and it seems this is simply due to the fact that I store some multi-disc albums in a single folder ? Otherwise, multi-discs albums are correctly displayed with a single entry - something basic but that most music players don't seem to be able to do...

 

- The title of the albums inherited from your ablum collection are sometimes incomplete or incorrect. For example, Arthur Grumiaux's recordings of Bach's violin concertos on Decca are labeled "Bach: Concertos BW...", with the artist "Raymond Leppard & English Chamber Orchestra", which is not entirely correct as some tracks are not performed by Leppard -  it would seem more appropriate to indetify Arthur Grumiaux as the main artist in this case.

 

- The interface is attractive and very easy to use. Obviously some alternative views (by Genre, for example) would be welcome. Will there be a way of editing "Genres" ? Adding favorites would also be useful.

 

- I like the way the search function works - simple and efficient. However, in some cases the system displays albums that are not in my collection. For example - searching for Pires brings up correctly her "Chopin - Nocturnes" album, but also her "Complete Works" album in which her Nocturnes are included (as disc 4 and 5). This is disorienting. 

- The search function does not include performers - in the example given above, I cannot find "Grumiaux" in my collection.

 

I cannot comment on the sound quality as I was not using it through my DAC.

 

Overall, provided some of these limitations are lifted and errors corrected, I would be happy to use this player on a permanent basis.

 

 

Re: Mass/Batch Import

As you have probably noticed: some discs failed to add to your collection. Once I improved the success ratio, a mass import feature will be brought to Tonal.

 

Re: Metadata Quality

The initial metadata is usually imperfect. Sometimes quite good, but usually a manual tweak is required. I’m the one who is notified to final polish the metadata. But I’m placing the priority of this job behind the fundraising. A community is a feasible way. You can also edit the metadata by yourself — PM me if you’re interested. Remember: all your edits will be pushed to users who collected the disc you edited.

 

Re: Enlarge

I agreed. Tonal has cover art with resolution of 2560+px. A Retina display with enlarge feature will be wonderful!

 

Re: Album Title

I guess it’s answered above. The metadata could be edited.

 

Re: Search

The missing albums are box set albums. The next version will make all these albums clear.

 

Thank you very much for the wonderful questions. Most of the questions I am already awared of but unable to proceed on without bringing an investor or partner in.

 

Thanks again for trying Tonal.

 

 

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

Thanks. I will follow your progress and will be glad to test your next version. 

 

Concerning Metadata editing I was not aware you were fixing it yourself for the time being. Community.roonlabs.com contributions is a solution but would there be a way to have the elation of "accepting" proposed changes? 

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

1 hour ago, hopkins said:

Thanks. I will follow your progress and will be glad to test your next version. 

 

Concerning Metadata editing I was not aware you were fixing it yourself for the time being. Community.roonlabs.com contributions is a solution but would there be a way to have the elation of "accepting" proposed changes? 

 

Roonlabs.com was added by my phone as I was typing and just saw it. Also noticed additional typos. 

[jaspal kallar]

4 hours ago, baoshan said:

 

I guess you want to remove the album because the imperfect metadata? Could I have the honor to fix the metadata for you?

 

Currently, deletion of album is unimpelmented. 

No, not due to metadata

 

I was just testing adding 4 different albums; so more than 20 years old, some recent and I want to remove them now.  However, if deletion is unimpelmented, no big no problem, they can stay.  

 

In the long run though, I'm not sure I want to upload music to a server and play form there, I like playback form local storage (mac & iOS). That's just me . In addition the iOS redbook streaming Tonal app would cost too much for me on 3G or 4G network.   

 

Must point out the the Tonal app sound quality is very good, so I urge others to try it out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[franz159]

Just upgraded to Sierra 10.13.4... now Tonal is telling me that iCloud is required, and iCloud is indeed active and I'm logged in.... any clue of what I'm supposed to do here?

 

 

[baoshan]

30 minutes ago, franz159 said:

Just upgraded to Sierra 10.13.4... now Tonal is telling me that iCloud is required, and iCloud is indeed active and I'm logged in.... any clue of what I'm supposed to do here?

 

 

 

Hi franz159,

 

Is your iCloud Drive enabled?

[franz159]

3 hours ago, baoshan said:

 

Hi franz159,

 

Is your iCloud Drive enabled?

Thanks. I enabled iCloud Drive.

Now let's talk about next steps.

 

My digital library is not huge, but big: about 5000 CD (1.55 TB on disk) for 58,354 items....

From my first experiments it seems I cannot upload more than 8 albums at the time....

5000 / 8 = 625

Even assuming I upload only 50% of my library it would tale a huge amount of time....

 

Second: I just uploaded two Albums, they just disappear after the upload.

Not good..... what's going on here?

I like being beta tester,  but not pre-alpha tester...

 

 

[franz159]

After the message "Enjoy" when I click on "Done is Beautiful" everything disappears and I got the "It looks like..." picture.

 

 

EDIT: tried again with another batch of two and another one.... 

Same story. Nothing gets uploaded.

It must be me, but for today it is enough.... 

Any idea what might be going wrong?

Thx

franz

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

Am having the same issue with uploads, but an album did appear after a few minutes. 

 

Concerning the upload limitation, it was already explained that this will be lifted when some bugs are ironed out. What I did not understand was whether you are waiting for some investments to do that or whether you are continuing to develop Tonal in the meantime.

 

I tested Tonal on a Mac Mini (not yet optimized) and the sound quality is indeed very good. 

[baoshan]

1 hour ago, franz159 said:

After the message "Enjoy" when I click on "Done is Beautiful" everything disappears and I got the "It looks like..." picture.

 

 

EDIT: tried again with another batch of two and another one.... 

Same story. Nothing gets uploaded.

It must be me, but for today it is enough.... 

Any idea what might be going wrong?

Thx

franz

 

I’m sorry franz159,

 

Sometimes the metadata needs some time (usually in minutes, but that’s obviously not true for the last hours) to be calculated. 

 

Are the albums shown in your collection? Please let me know.

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

And I would also be interested in knowing whether albums can be deleted. 

[baoshan]

22 minutes ago, hopkins said:

And I would also be interested in knowing whether albums can be deleted. 

 

Hi hopkins,

 

I will definitely put that feature in the next minor version.

 

Thanks,

Baoshan

[baoshan]

36 minutes ago, hopkins said:

Am having the same issue with uploads, but an album did appear after a few minutes. 

 

Concerning the upload limitation, it was already explained that this will be lifted when some bugs are ironed out. What I did not understand was whether you are waiting for some investments to do that or whether you are continuing to develop Tonal in the meantime.

 

I tested Tonal on a Mac Mini (not yet optimized) and the sound quality is indeed very good. 

 

Hi hopkins,

 

Thanks for the great questions!

 

I and my partners have been working on Tonal for almost 3 years. We hold a rock solid belief and vision on the Tonal concept and there’re more to be done: bug fixes, audiophile-related-optimization, interaction redesign, and ecosystem building with labels and audio equipment brands.

 

I can resume my work as a designer, a developer,  and a metadata curator just like what I did before, which may bring faster bug fixes and more minor features, but I believe that approach has more compromises to face and hurts end users’ experience in the long run.

 

I’m actively working on the project, but not as my previous role.

 

Re: audiophile performance

I’m sure there is room for improvement. Even for PCM audio. Plus, MQA and DSD support also need to be added.

[jaspal kallar]

Will it be possible to output the audio to a UPnP NAA (eg SoTM sMS-200.Microrendu) much like Audirvana Plus does?