HQ Player

[lucretius]

3 hours ago, richard kimber said:

 

Let's hope the library interface is improved. My carefully structured music collection is rendered virtually random by the current one.

 

Yes.

 

Currently, the "Composer" tag (in the music file) is remapped to "Artist" within HQPlayer and the "Artist" tag is remapped to "Performer".

 

First, why remap tags -- what's wrong with the standard? Second, why create new names, like "Performer"? Last, since I can only sort by "Artist" tag in HQPlayer (which is the "Composer" tag from the music file) transport area, I cannot find a lot of my music.  I listen to rock/pop/R&B, etc. (but never classical), the composer means little to me. I really hope Miska (Jussi) fixes this!

 

In addition to using the standard tags (no remapping or renaming), it would be nice if we could sort and sub-sort on various other fields.  

[lucretius]

22 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

Because that's the defined standard set of Vorbis comments used on FLAC:

https://xiph.org/vorbis/doc/v-comment.html

 

ID3v2 used on AIFF/DSF is mapped to fit that set. ID3v2 in itself doesn't really have clear "Composer" or "Artist", it is more complex and the mapping is done in most sensible way to from the ID3 spec set, depending on what kind of combination of the ID3 tags the file uses.

 

Here's the ID3v2.4 set:

4.2.2.   Involved persons frames

  TPE1
   The 'Lead artist/Lead performer/Soloist/Performing group' is
   used for the main artist.

  TPE2
   The 'Band/Orchestra/Accompaniment' frame is used for additional
   information about the performers in the recording.

  TPE3
   The 'Conductor' frame is used for the name of the conductor.

  TPE4
   The 'Interpreted, remixed, or otherwise modified by' frame contains
   more information about the people behind a remix and similar
   interpretations of another existing piece.

  TOPE
   The 'Original artist/performer' frame is intended for the performer
   of the original recording, if for example the music in the file
   should be a cover of a previously released song.

  TEXT
   The 'Lyricist/Text writer' frame is intended for the writer of the
   text or lyrics in the recording.

  TOLY
   The 'Original lyricist/text writer' frame is intended for the
   text writer of the original recording, if for example the music in
   the file should be a cover of a previously released song.

  TCOM
   The 'Composer' frame is intended for the name of the composer.

  TMCL
   The 'Musician credits list' is intended as a mapping between
   instruments and the musician that played it. Every odd field is an
   instrument and every even is an artist or a comma delimited list of
   artists.

  TIPL
   The 'Involved people list' is very similar to the musician credits
   list, but maps between functions, like producer, and names.

  TENC
   The 'Encoded by' frame contains the name of the person or
   organisation that encoded the audio file. This field may contain a
   copyright message, if the audio file also is copyrighted by the
   encoder.

 

 

I have a better look at this over the weekend.

 

Nonetheless, even according to the  Vorbis standard,  the Artist generally considered responsible for the work -- In popular music this is usually the performing band or singer. For classical music it would be the composer. For an audio book it would be the author of the original text.

 

For popular music, it's the same with the ID3 tags for ARTIST (TPE1). 

 

But that's not what's happening with HQPlayer. It is taking the TCOM (Composer) tag and mapping it to ARTIST.

[lucretius]

59 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

Yes, that's why for popular music PERFORMER is not defined, only ARTIST is because they are usually the "same". What is the problem?

 

 

Yes, I've explained the substitution logic already couple of times earlier in this thread.

 

Artist is primarily TCOM, if specified, if not, it is TPE1 in newer spec and TP1 in the older spec.

 

Likewise, performer is TPE1 if TCOM was specified, otherwise it is TPE2, TPE3, TP2, or TP3 in this order.

 

For popular music, you don't generally have TCOM or PERFORMER specified. So most of the time, the "performer" field stays empty for popular music and is populated only for classical. Or if you have Ebook, then artist is author of the book and performer is the one who has read it (voice of the book).

 

"Artist" is not TCOM -- "Composer" is TCOM; "Artist" is TPE1; that's how the spec is defined and that's exactly how it is in my music files -- iTunes and JRiver get this right. And yes, "Performer" is not specified because Artist=Performer (for popular music).

 

The problem is that in HQPlayer, the tag information is concatenated into Artist/Performer/Album/Song so that it can only be sorted on Artist -- but "Artist" here is mistakenly taken from the TCOM tag.  For example, take an ABBA song -- it is appearing as and sorted as:

- Benny Andersson, Bjorn Ulvaeus, Stig Anderson.  It's not until you click on this that you see ABBA.

 

For most of my music, I don't even know who the composer was in many cases.  Further, different songs from the same artists could have different composers, so they'll end up being sorted separately in HQPlayer.

 

I realize that none of this is a problem for classical music, but it is a problem for popular music.

[lucretius]

3 hours ago, Miska said:

 

HQPlayer doesn't have "composer", it only has "artist" and "performer". What are you having in your TCOM for popular music!? Never seen any problem with my content.

 

 

TCOM, when it is populated, contains the composer (songwriter).

 

Quote

Just don't put TCOM on your popular music files, use TMCL or TIPL instead for that kind of purpose... Or rather I'd recommend to use FLAC and the problem goes away.

 

The tags were automatically populated.  I may have to manually remove the TCOM info.  As far as using TMCL or TIPL, I don't know what program has access to see and write these tags.

 

I'd prefer not to have to use FLAC, since it is a compressed format and the lack of compatibility with Macs, Ipads, etc.

[lucretius]

1 hour ago, Miska said:

 

Automatic metadata is pain, usually it is more or less messed up and inconsistent.

 

FLAC (just like ALAC) saves some diskspace due to lossless compression although it doesn't matter much these days. I don't see any other compatibility problem apart from Apple refusing to support it in iTunes, but who would anyway use iTunes for anything?

 

mp3tag is quite flexible metadata editor.

 

I don't think the metadata I'm talking about is messed up. I use mp3tag -- for AIFF files, it maps the ID3 tags differently than HQPlayer. When I get some time, I'll show screen shots.  

 

With mp3tag, I don't see the TMCL or TIPL tags (or I don't recognize them) that you mentioned previously.

 

[lucretius]

15 minutes ago, ted_b said:

It's your prerogative, but...powering off digital gear is a no/no in my book because I want to hear what the unit can do at its best, and all dacs have clocks that take hours to reach their thermal equilibrium, some say 24-48 hours, but that's highly debatable.   Anyway, I leave all on, unless we are talking tube amps, then they alone rest up.

 

Regardless, to think a computer that has lost its dac address will simply resume playback is hopeful thinking at best.

 

In my expereience with amateur radio, a "cheap" clock (used for frequency determination) should stabilize (be relatively drift free) within an hour and a "good" clock (e.g. oven controlled) should stabilize under a minute.  I don't know where you are getting the 24-48 hours from.

[lucretius]

13 minutes ago, ted_b said:

I'm not in that camp, and clearly said "some say" to put perspective around it.  One is Alex Peychev of digital dac design fame.  I can't think of the others right now.  It's not really important, except that I highly disagree that good clocks chosen for high resolution audio don't reach equilibrium in under a minute.  Maybe we are being pedantic in our "stabilize" vs "thermal equilibrium" comments.  Feel free to turn off your digital gear daily.   Not me.

 

As far as the clock goes, "stabilize" and "thermal equilibrium" are the same thing.  One should note that all clocks will drift; for clocks without temperature compensation, the rate of drift is slowed down (but there will always be drift) considerably only after the clock reaches it's ideal temperature (takes about one hour). A termperature compensated clock reduces the warm-up period considerably. OTH, an ovenized clock can reduce the drift after equilibrium/stabilization (a better reference) but they do take a little longer to reach that equilibrium than a temperature compensated clock (but far sooner than 24-48 hours). 

 

I have no idea what clocks dac makers are choosing but for the best accuracy -- they should be oven controlled.  For cheaper dacs, they probably just use a run-of-the-mill crystal oscillator(s), without temperature compensation or oven control.
 

[lucretius]

Is there a way in HQPlayer to pass through MQA files while at the same time upsampling all other files?

[lucretius]

8 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

No... And MQA is best avoided in general...

 

Thanks, Miska.  Can you say more about why MQA should be avoided?

[lucretius]

12 hours ago, scan80269 said:

As far as I can tell it is the same crash with CU & AU plus their respective KB patches.

 

While my PC had KB4016871 installed for Win10 CU, I uninstalled and re-installed HQPlayer, but it still crashed at launch.  HQPlayer ran again only after I uninstalled KB4016871.  Summary:

 

* Win10 CU (Version 1703) without KB4016871 - HQPlayer works

* Win10 CU (Version 1703) with KB4016871 - HQPlayer crashes

* Win10 AU (Version 1607) without KB4019472 - HQPlayer works

* Win10 AU (Version 1607) with KB4019472 - HQPlayer crashes

 

 

I thought I had all the latest updates (yes, I have Win10CU) and my HQPlayer works.  I'll have to check later.  In any case, I did notice that when the last update was installed, I did initially have a problem -- I think the MS sound driver replaced the DAC's specific driver. I reinstalled the DAC's driver and all seems to be fine.   

[lucretius]

11 hours ago, Dr Tone said:

 

 

The updates only came out yesterday at noon so you probably don't have them yet, a reboot is required.

 

It's unrelated to audio drivers, I use an NAA.

 

I got the update (KB4016871)  yesterday but apparently I hadn't rebooted the computer.  So when I booted up tonight, HQPlayer crashed like you said.

 

In any case, Miska has posted a fix on his website -- HQPlayer 3.16.3.  It works with KB4016871.

 

 

[lucretius]

5 hours ago, Bob Stern said:

Feature request:  add Composer column to Queue (Playlist) pane

 

Miska:  I imagine that, to conserve space, there is no Composer column in the Queue/Playlist pane because the user should know what composer he chose to listen to.  However, omitting the composer is confusing when playing an album having short pieces by different composers.  If you add a Composer column to the left of the Performer/Artist column, the user can drag the width of the column to collapse it to a single blank space when there is no need to see the composer, and the column width can be expanded when desired.

 

It would be nice to have a separate "composer" column.  Unfortunately, HQPlayer takes the info from the "composer" tag in the music file and uses it to populate the "artist" tag in HQplayer and, similarly the "artist" tag from the music file is remapped to "performer".  There appears no need for HQplayer to be doing this.

[lucretius]

53 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

No, FLAC doesn't have a "composer" tag. FLAC has only "artist" and "performer"...

 

See "Field names" section below:

https://xiph.org/vorbis/doc/v-comment.html

 

 

True - re flac files - the Vorbis-comment spec has no "composer" tag.

 

However, AIFF, ALAC and WAV files support ID3 tags which have the fieldname "composer" (in addition to "artist" and "performer").  When bringing these files into the HQPlayer library, HQPlayer reads the values from the "composer" field ID3 tag in file and incorrectly populates the "artist" tag (see xml) in HQPlayer.  However, instead HQPlayer should be taking the values from the "artist" ID3 tag within the file to populate the "artist" tag in HQ player.  Similarly, HQPlayer should do the same with the "performer" tag. That is to say, HQPlayer is incorrectly mapping the ID3 tags to HQPlayer.

[lucretius]

1 hour ago, Miska said:

 

There's a hierarchical tree, there are no columns. Now the tree is structured to four levels; Artist (Composer) / Performer / Album (Work) / Song (Movement).

 

There is no field called "composer" because FLAC specification doesn't mention such. It is called "artist" - the person who created the work. Performers are the ones who merely play it.

 

ARTIST

The artist generally considered responsible for the work. In popular music this is usually the performing band or singer. For classical music it would be the composer. For an audio book it would be the author of the original text.

 

PERFORMER

The artist(s) who performed the work. In classical music this would be the conductor, orchestra, soloists. In an audio book it would be the actor who did the reading. In popular music this is typically the same as the ARTIST and is omitted.

 

Note the highlighted parts of the specs above.  ID3 tags do get this right,  i.e. "composer" vs "artist" vs "performer".  However, HQPlayer maps the ID3 tags within the non-flac files incorrectly when importing them into the HQPlayer Library.

 

 

[lucretius]

32 minutes ago, lucretius said:

 

ARTIST

The artist generally considered responsible for the work. In popular music this is usually the performing band or singer. For classical music it would be the composer. For an audio book it would be the author of the original text.

 

PERFORMER

The artist(s) who performed the work. In classical music this would be the conductor, orchestra, soloists. In an audio book it would be the actor who did the reading. In popular music this is typically the same as the ARTIST and is omitted.

 

Note the highlighted parts of the specs above.  ID3 tags do get this right,  i.e. "composer" vs "artist" vs "performer".  However, HQPlayer maps the ID3 tags within the non-flac files incorrectly when importing them into the HQPlayer Library.

 

 

 

I should have also noted that DSF files also support ID3 tags. Converting to flac files here is not an option.

[lucretius]

55 minutes ago, Miska said:

P.S. I already added COMPOSER -> ARTIST mapping with ARTIST override. Those other non-standard tags are not recognized anyway. Will appear in next release.

 

 

Thank you.  I am looking forward to the "ARTIST override". 

 

In any case, I should say that I love all the upsampling options HQPlayer has.  Great program!

[lucretius]

6 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Exactly, so things work just as specified... Since you were talking about composer I assumed you were talking about classical music.

 

ARTIST: "For classical music it would be the composer."

PERFORMER: "In classical music this would be the conductor, orchestra, soloists."

 

 

ID3v2 mapping has been discussed to death earlier. And I don't think anybody has offered any better mapping.

 

ARTIST: 1) use TCOM if defined, 2) use TPE1 if defined, 3) use TP1 if defined

PERFORMER: 1) use TPE1 if defined  with TCOM too, 2) use TPE2 if defined, 3) use TPE3 if defined, 4) use TP2 if defined, 5) use TP3 if defined

 

So far I have never encountered problems with wrong mappings in this and I have not heard much complaints.

 

 

That's just it.  This ID3 mapping above is not correct.

For example,

ARTIST/PERFORMER = TPE1 (not TCOM)

ALBUM ARTIST/BAND = TPE2

CONDUCTOR = TPE3

COMPOSER/SONGWRITER = TCOM

 

Therefore, for

ARTIST: 1) use TPE1 if defined, 2) use TCOM if defined

PERFORMER: 1) use TPE2 if defined  2)  use TPE1 if defined 3) use TPE3 if defined

 

[lucretius]

5 hours ago, Miska said:

 

No, that would make it wrong for classical music that usually has TCOM + TPE1, but not TPE2. That's why ARTIST is primarily TCOM and only secondarily TPE1. For popular music TCOM is not defined and it thereby falls back to TPE1.

 

When TCOM + TPE1 is defined, ARTIST must be always TCOM and PERFORMER must be always TPE1, even if TPE2 is defined. TPE2 applies only to popular music.

 

When I have Gustav Mahler's work, performed by London Symphony orchestra, I want ARTIST="Gustav Mahler" and PERFORMER="London Symphony Orchestra"...

 

 

The TPE1 (ID3) tag works the same as the ARTIST (vorbis) tag. For classical music, the TPE1 tag should be populated with the "Author". For popular music, it should be populated with the "band/performer".  It is a direct mapping. Also, for popular music, TCOM is sometimes defined, e.g. the "songwriter(s)".

[lucretius]

5 hours ago, Miska said:

 

As I said, when TCOM is not specified, TPE1 is mapped to ARTIST. It is mapped to PERFORMER only when used in combination with TCOM. In other cases TPE2/TPE3 is mapped to PERFORMER. This way it works correctly for both classical and popular music.

 

For popular music songwriters, TEXT, TOLY, TMCL and TIPL would be more appropriate. (and sometimes TOPE, in case of cover versions)

 

 

The problem is when TCOM is specified.  It does not matter what I think is the more appropriate tag for "songwriter", the fact is that most programs that automatically populate the tags use TCOM for the "songwriter".  It seems to me that you are overcompensating for the fact that for classical music, folks have made a mess of the tags.

[lucretius]

4 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Well the mess is that TCOM is wrongly used for popular music, but correctly used for classical. I have not seen any problems myself though with the current implementation. As I said earlier, metadata overall is mostly a horrible mess. I have so many tracks from HDtracks for example that have even typos in the metadata, just yesterday I was fixing one Steven Wilson's album that said "Steve Wilson" in the artist field... And same goes for highresaudio.com too. Not to even mention errors in freedb/MusicBrainz/Gracenote.

 

So just fix your metadata and abolish the TCOM field from popular music and use some more appropriate tag instead.

 

P.S. And remember that if you are only worried about the library view in HQPlayer, you can edit the data stored by HQPlayer in the Library-dialog - that doesn't touch the files at all.

 

Thanks, Miska.  I'll take a look at the library view.

[lucretius]

6 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Well, different file formats use completely different tagging systems so they are file-format specific as you can see also from the MP3Tag link you provided. When it comes to that "album artist" and using ID3v2's TPE2 field specified for the band/orchestra name for the "album artist" purpose is misuse/misrepresentation of the information and outright wrong - goes against the standard. 

 

OK, so here's the deal:

- I can add custom "ALBUMARTIST" tag as a priority tag for artist name for Vorbis comments (this covers FLAC files)

- Misusing TPE2 of ID3v2 is plain outright wrong and breaks the spec, so it is a definite no-go (so won't happen for WAV/AIFF/DSF/DSDIFF files)

 

Reason is that former, although not being formally specified in any standard, shouldn't either break anything. While latter is clearly breaking the standard specification.

 

 

The thing is, most softwares have hijacked the TPE2 tag for Album Artist. Why fight it?

[lucretius]

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[lucretius]

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[lucretius]

On 9/30/2018 at 4:55 AM, Miska said:

At the moment, the cover flow requires a detached cover image.  ...

 

I have detached cover images for both .flac and .dsf files.  Only the images for .flac files show up in Touch mode. What am I doing wrong?

[lucretius]

1 minute ago, sootshe said:

Do you have the detached files in the same folder as the album tracks? named as "cover".....as JPG or png files?

 

If this is all OK, try deleting all the library & scan it again. 

 

Yes, there in the same folder as the tracks. Named folder.jpg. I'll try re-scanning the library but I don't see how this would have an effect -- note that everything works fine for .flac files and many times I added the image after creating the library.