HQ Player

[lucretius]

I am using Desktop version 3.25.4.

 

I'm not sure for which version the following behavior started to occur but it wasn't always this way.

 

I am using flac files.

 

For a specific track, if the composer file tag is populated, the first composer entry (e.g. John Davenport - see below) and not the Artist will appear as the "performer/artist"  in HQPlayer:

 

 

So I go into the Library and add the artist name to the Performer field.

 

 

 

Then this is what I get:

 

 

You can see above that in the tree view, the artist's name (e.g. Madonna) appears twice and the performer / artist noted in the Playlist transport is still coming from the composer file tag.  

 

Please help.  How do I prevent the Artist from being listed twice in the tree view and how do I display the Artist under Performer / Artist in the Playlist transport?

 

 

 

 

[Miska]

5 hours ago, lucretius said:

I am using Desktop version 3.25.4.

 

I'm not sure for which version the following behavior started to occur but it wasn't always this way.

 

I am using flac files.

 

For a specific track, if the composer file tag is populated, the first composer entry (e.g. John Davenport - see below) and not the Artist will appear as the "performer/artist"  in HQPlayer:

 

 

So I go into the Library and add the artist name to the Performer field.

 

 

 

Then this is what I get:

 

 

You can see above that in the tree view, the artist's name (e.g. Madonna) appears twice and the performer / artist noted in the Playlist transport is still coming from the composer file tag.  

 

Please help.  How do I prevent the Artist from being listed twice in the tree view and how do I display the Artist under Performer / Artist in the Playlist transport?

 

If you have COMPOSER tag defined, then the behavior is supposed to work in a way suitable for classical music where COMPOSER would be usually something like Bach, Beethoven or Mozart.

 

Edited library data is shown and used in the library browser, but for playback the actual metadata information from the file is shown.

 

The library browser tree is populated like shown in the column title; first level is artist, second is performer, third is album and fourth is song. If performer is not defined, that tree level is skipped.

 

If PERFORMER tag is specified, it is shown instead of artist on the track list, as indicated by the column title.

[Ernie]

On 9/19/2019 at 4:25 PM, Miska said:

 

That could also work. Down side is that you need to switch sampling rate manually when it changes. But it is not necessarily too bad, since most content is 44.1k anyway.

 

 

Thanks....I know nothing about software development but is that something that you can add in a future release (auto switching)

[lucretius]

7 hours ago, Miska said:

 

If you have COMPOSER tag defined, then the behavior is supposed to work in a way suitable for classical music where COMPOSER would be usually something like Bach, Beethoven or Mozart.

 

Edited library data is shown and used in the library browser, but for playback the actual metadata information from the file is shown.

 

The library browser tree is populated like shown in the column title; first level is artist, second is performer, third is album and fourth is song. If performer is not defined, that tree level is skipped.

 

If PERFORMER tag is specified, it is shown instead of artist on the track list, as indicated by the column title.

 

What's the point of editing the library data if it doesn't show up on the playback list?  Is there any sort of library editing that can be done to fix the problem? I do not wish to remove the info from the actual file tags.

 

[Miska]

Just now, lucretius said:

What's the point of editing the library data if it doesn't show up on the playback list?  Is there any sort of library editing that can be done to fix the problem? I do not wish to remove the info from the actual file tags.

 

Point is to let editing organization of the library views. HQPlayer 4 takes this a bit further by extending amount of information stored in library.

 

For playback idea is to show the actual tag information.

 

[Miska]

5 hours ago, Ernie said:

Thanks....I know nothing about software development but is that something that you can add in a future release (auto switching)

 

That requires hardware to support reporting detected input rate, and in addition driver to pass that information along. For RME ADI-2, I have added special functionality for this to the Linux driver.

 

This is first and foremost up to the device firmware. With standard UAC2 and drivers, such is not supported.

 

So far, auto switching works with RME ADI-2 and HDSPe AIO on Linux.

 

[sbenyo]

For anyone using hqplayer as main player and wants a decent library, I recommend using Muso.

It works great with hqplayer and has a nice interface. 

http://klarita.net/muso.html

[lucretius]

55 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

Point is to let editing organization of the library views. HQPlayer 4 takes this a bit further by extending amount of information stored in library.

 

For playback idea is to show the actual tag information.

 

 

Except it's not!  The heading in the Playback section says "Performer / Artist" but instead displays "actual tag information" from the composer tag. 

 

It's not very useful for me at all.

[Miska]

4 minutes ago, lucretius said:

Except it's not!  The heading in the Playback section says "Performer / Artist" but instead displays "actual tag information" from the composer tag. 

 

It's not very useful for me at all.

 

HQPlayer v3 supports two types of artist fields, "artist" and "performer". If "ARTIST" is defined, it becomes "artist" Otherwise if "COMPOSER" is defined it becomes "artist". If "PERFORMER" is defined, it becomes "performer". If "COMPOSER" is defined before "ARTIST" in tags, "COMPOSER" takes precedence.

 

People wanted to get "COMPOSER" tag supported for classical music. Early versions in v3 line just ignored it.

 

Tag specifications for FLAC/Vorbis define only tags called "ARTIST" and "PERFORMER". There's no standard for tag called "COMPOSER", so I later added support for it as defacto "standard".

 

[lucretius]

25 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

HQPlayer v3 supports two types of artist fields, "artist" and "performer". If "ARTIST" is defined, it becomes "artist" Otherwise if "COMPOSER" is defined it becomes "artist". If "PERFORMER" is defined, it becomes "performer". If "COMPOSER" is defined before "ARTIST" in tags, "COMPOSER" takes precedence.

 

People wanted to get "COMPOSER" tag supported for classical music. Early versions in v3 line just ignored it.

 

Tag specifications for FLAC/Vorbis define only tags called "ARTIST" and "PERFORMER". There's no standard for tag called "COMPOSER", so I later added support for it as defacto "standard".

 

 

From this link, http://age.hobba.nl/audio/mirroredpages/ogg-tagging.html, I see there is a COMPOSER tag. Is that not standard?  Even if not, just about every player program (that looks for composer info) recognizes that tag.

 

So I have a flac file with ARTIST defined and COMPOSER(s) defined.  So in the tree view (which I really hate), I can see the ARTIST name.  However, in the Playlist under where it says 'Performer / Artist', the info from the COMPOSER tag is listed.  Is there not anyway to make the ARTIST info appear in the Playlist under the heading Performer / Artist, without deleting tag info?

 

You said, "If 'COMPOSER' is defined before 'ARTIST' in tags, 'COMPOSER' takes precedence."  However, I do not control the order of the tags, the tagger software does this.

 

[Miska]

17 minutes ago, lucretius said:

From this link, http://age.hobba.nl/audio/mirroredpages/ogg-tagging.html, I see there is a COMPOSER tag. Is that not standard?  Even if not, just about every player program (that looks for composer info) recognizes that tag.

 

Standard set is defined here:

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

 

So yes, as I said, support for it was added as "de facto".

 

17 minutes ago, lucretius said:

So I have a flac file with ARTIST defined and COMPOSER(s) defined.  So in the tree view (which I really hate), I can see the ARTIST NAME.  However, in the Playlist under where it says 'Performer / Artist', the info from the COMPOSER tag is listed.  Is there not anyway to make the ARTIST info appear in the Playlist under the heading Performer / Artist, without deleting tag info?

 

If both are defined, precedence is defined by order in which tags are specified in the file.

 

[lucretius]

17 minutes ago, Miska said:

If both are defined, precedence is defined by order in which tags are specified in the file.

 

 

Why choose one over the other?  Why not include both (ARTIST and COMPOSER) as column headings and perhaps allowing the user to choose which column headings to display?

[Miska]

22 minutes ago, lucretius said:

Why choose one over the other?  Why not include both (ARTIST and COMPOSER) as column headings and perhaps allowing the user to choose which column headings to display?

 

When HQPlayer v3 series started, COMPOSER wasn't supported at all, only the standard set.

 

Then you can combine that with the set from ID3v2 tags which covers rest of the file formats and defines 11 tags for involved people. So there would need to be like 13 columns in total or so. I think most applications don't support that, but instead do some kind of reduction through mapping to only few items. People have also asked about support for WavPack, which instead uses APE tags which defines another, different pile of tags.

 

Then you have the extra fun because many applications redefine ID3v2 tag TPE2 as "Album Artist" which is defined in the standard as

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

[lucretius]

21 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

When HQPlayer v3 series started, COMPOSER wasn't supported at all, only the standard set.

 

Then you can combine that with the set from ID3v2 tags which covers rest of the file formats and defines 11 tags for involved people. So there would need to be like 13 columns in total or so. I think most applications don't support that, but instead do some kind of reduction through mapping to only few items. People have also asked about support for WavPack, which instead uses APE tags which defines another, different pile of tags.

 

Then you have the extra fun because many applications redefine ID3v2 tag TPE2 as "Album Artist" which is defined in the standard as

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

 

I would be fine if HQPlayer did not support COMPOSER. My problem is that the COMPOSER info is overriding the ARTIST info. As I am unable to specify the order of the file tags, it appears that I cannot get the ARTIST info to appear in the Playlist view without deleting the COMPOSER file tag.  I had thought that the Library editor could adjust this but apparently not.  Is this correct?

[Miska]

1 minute ago, lucretius said:

I would be fine if HQPlayer did not support COMPOSER. My problem is that the COMPOSER info is overriding the ARTIST info. As I am unable to specify the order of the file tags, Then it appears that I cannot get the ARTIST info to appear in the Playlist view (without deleting the COMPOSER file tag.  I had thought that the Library editor could adjust this but apparently not.  Is this correct?

 

This is the challenge, for classical music not having for example Mozart shown related to a piece of work is major problem. For your example case it is more of an annoyance that it gets shown.

 

Yes, edited information is used for browsing and searching purposes. But for content loaded in the transport (album or playlist), the actual information stored in the file is shown. This is the same if it has not been modified in the library dialog.

 

HQPlayer is trying it's best to map the many different possible tag fields into few presentation fields. It is not always perfect. But on the other hand, I would prefer to avoid representing all the gory details of different tag formats too, because it easily gets horribly complex. So far I don't know a way to everybody happy in all cases. Most flexible would be possibility to write scriptable substitution/mapping rules.

 

Just for fun check the tags specified for ID3v2 (section 4.2.2 specifies involved people tags):

http://id3.org/id3v2.4.0-frames

 

And then APEv2 for example defines some small set:

http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=APE_key

But has it's own unique things like "debut album"...

 

[tboooe]

Ever since upgrading to version 4.1.1, HQP will stop playing music for no reason.  It usually happens between 5-20 mins after I start playing music. I've tried using the same settings I've been using in HQP version 3.25.2 but this stoppage still happens.  HQP3 will play fine on the same PC though.  Any ideas?

[Miska]

6 minutes ago, tboooe said:

Ever since upgrading to version 4.1.1, HQP will stop playing music for no reason.  It usually happens between 5-20 mins after I start playing music. I've tried using the same settings I've been using in HQP version 3.25.2 but this stoppage still happens.  HQP3 will play fine on the same PC though.  Any ideas?

 

What is the playback source? Does it happen when playing from a local file to a locally connected DAC? IOW, standalone HQPlayer. Any messages about the reason in the log? (you can check the time stamp when the stop happened)

 

[lucretius]

24 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

This is the challenge, for classical music not having for example Mozart shown related to a piece of work is major problem. For your example case it is more of an annoyance that it gets shown.

 

Yes, edited information is used for browsing and searching purposes. But for content loaded in the transport (album or playlist), the actual information stored in the file is shown. This is the same if it has not been modified in the library dialog.

 

HQPlayer is trying it's best to map the many different possible tag fields into few presentation fields. It is not always perfect. But on the other hand, I would prefer to avoid representing all the gory details of different tag formats too, because it easily gets horribly complex. So far I don't know a way to everybody happy in all cases. Most flexible would be possibility to write scriptable substitution/mapping rules.

 

Just for fun check the tags specified for ID3v2 (section 4.2.2 specifies involved people tags):

http://id3.org/id3v2.4.0-frames

 

And then APEv2 for example defines some small set:

http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=APE_key

But has it's own unique things like "debut album"...

 

 

I get that you have to map a larger set of tags to a smaller set of presentation columns/fields and that the mapping varies by the type of file tags used (ID3.v2 vs Vorbis, etc.) leading to a level of complexity.  I do note from the links above that they both define COMPOSER.  And while it's not a standard in Vorbis, it's nonetheless a "de facto" standard, as you say. 

 

I also note that Audirvana, JRiver Media Center, and Roon maintain separate presentation columns/fields for ARTIST and COMPOSER, and each can be turned on or off.

 

The specific problem here is not any complex mapping -- it's merely choosing whether to combine the ARTIST and COMPOSER tags into one presentation column/field or whether to present them separately (like the other software packages do). 

 

At least, how about an option in the HQPlayer settings to prevent the mapping of COMPOSER info to ARTIST/PERFORMER presentation field? 

 

Thanks.

[Miska]

1 minute ago, lucretius said:

The specific problem here is not any complex mapping -- it's merely choosing whether to combine the ARTIST and COMPOSER tags into one presentation column/field or whether to present them separately (like the other software packages do). 

 

At least, how about an option in the HQPlayer settings to prevent the mapping of COMPOSER info to ARTIST/PERFORMER presentation field? 

 

I am not going to make big changes to how v3 deals with metadata presentation. For v4, I may as well add composer separately along with some other things. However, I'm not into making lot of configuration for metadata mappings, because such will be actually used by a very small percentage of people using HQPlayer. I'm already seeing complaints that the configuration is too complex. Challenge is that for classical music, composer has entirely different weight in metadata compared to rock/pop/etc. My personal library has both categories of content and so far the overall results have been satisfactory. For rock/pop/etc modern things, I don't have composer tag defined at all.

 

For v3, the mapping of TCOM and COMPOSER will be as they are now. This is first complaint about this particular mapping in the past seven years. And if I start making changes that will likely grow into more complaints rather than less.

 

11 minutes ago, lucretius said:

And while it's not a standard in Vorbis, it's nonetheless a "de facto" standard, as you say.

 

Yes, and "album artist" is another similar one. Not defined by any of the standards, but used by many software packages. Although misuse of TPE2 ID3v2 tag for that is pretty annoying. For Vorbis comments (FLAC) and APE, it is more straightforward since tags keys are free form and thus easier to extend.

 

[tboooe]

1 hour ago, Miska said:

 

What is the playback source? Does it happen when playing from a local file to a locally connected DAC? IOW, standalone HQPlayer. Any messages about the reason in the log? (you can check the time stamp when the stop happened)

 

@Miska the playback source is wireless from my NAS.  I've had this setup now for years using HQP3 with no problems.  Here is a portion of the log right after the playback stopped.  BTW, before this I was able to play music for over 45 mins without any issues

 

 2019/09/21 15:41:20 Initialization complete, starting audio engine
+ 2019/09/21 15:41:20 Network engine starting...
  2019/09/21 15:41:20 Network SDM streaming
+ 2019/09/21 15:41:21 Network engine started at: 5644800
  2019/09/21 15:41:21 Teams: 1
  2019/09/21 15:41:21 Parallel threads: 4
  2019/09/21 15:41:21 Nested parallelism: 4
  2019/09/21 15:41:21 Parallel pipelines: 2
  2019/09/21 15:41:22 Offload: resampler=disabled convolution=disabled
! 2019/09/21 15:48:20 clHQPlayerEngine::Execute(): clStreamReaderHTTP::Read(): read timeout 2
  2019/09/21 15:48:20 Stop request (reset)
& 2019/09/21 15:48:20 Stop...
- 2019/09/21 15:48:20 Network engine stopping...
- 2019/09/21 15:48:22 Network engine stopped
- 2019/09/21 15:48:22 Playback engine stopped
& 2019/09/21 15:48:22 ...stopped
  2019/09/21 15:48:22 Set volume: -3
 

[tboooe]

1 hour ago, tboooe said:

@Miska the playback source is wireless from my NAS.  I've had this setup now for years using HQP3 with no problems.  Here is a portion of the log right after the playback stopped.  BTW, before this I was able to play music for over 45 mins without any issues

I just did a test using HQP3 on the same pc, same settings (SDM 44.1x128, ext2, ASDM7), same music via wireless N and it played music for 2 hours straight with no issues.  There seems to be something unique about HQP4 converting to SDM that is causing this problem for me that was not present with HQP3.  HQP4 playing PCM seems to be ok.

[Miska]

10 hours ago, tboooe said:

@Miska the playback source is wireless from my NAS.  I've had this setup now for years using HQP3 with no problems.  Here is a portion of the log right after the playback stopped.  BTW, before this I was able to play music for over 45 mins without any issues

 

! 2019/09/21 15:48:20 clHQPlayerEngine::Execute(): clStreamReaderHTTP::Read(): read timeout 2
 

 

This is not file playback from NAS by HQPlayer though, instead network stream. Is the source Roon or something?

 

This "read timeout 2" doesn't exist in v3, so it cannot happen there (you'll likely get an audio drop-out instead). This timeout is safety limit to avoid getting stuck forever, if the source has quietly disappeared or stopped sending data. It happens if sender is too sluggish sending data and has not sent any data for 250 ms. In a local network, Roon should be able to deliver data with less than one millisecond latency. So exceeding 250 ms timeout is indicative of a problem.

 

For me, it is not happening even for direct streams from internet over 4G data where internet latencies can be unpredictable. So if it happens in a local network from Roon, something is going wrong. I've tried to report similar problems to Roon, but so far they consider me being the only one experiencing it and thus not worth looking into.

 

[tboooe]

6 hours ago, Miska said:

 

This is not file playback from NAS by HQPlayer though, instead network stream. Is the source Roon or something?

 

This "read timeout 2" doesn't exist in v3, so it cannot happen there (you'll likely get an audio drop-out instead). This timeout is safety limit to avoid getting stuck forever, if the source has quietly disappeared or stopped sending data. It happens if sender is too sluggish sending data and has not sent any data for 250 ms. In a local network, Roon should be able to deliver data with less than one millisecond latency. So exceeding 250 ms timeout is indicative of a problem.

 

For me, it is not happening even for direct streams from internet over 4G data where internet latencies can be unpredictable. So if it happens in a local network from Roon, something is going wrong. I've tried to report similar problems to Roon, but so far they consider me being the only one experiencing it and thus not worth looking into.

 

@Miska Yes you are right.  I am sending music from Roon running on my Qnap NAS TS-473.  It's odd that I dont have this issue with HQP3 though.  

[Miska]

1 hour ago, tboooe said:

@Miska Yes you are right.  I am sending music from Roon running on my Qnap NAS TS-473.  It's odd that I dont have this issue with HQP3 though.  

 

HQPlayer v3 doesn't have that timeout, but the adverse effect is still there. So whereas v3 may have intermittent drop-outs, v4 gives up. When this problem appears, it is indicative of a problem and should get fixed properly instead of being hidden.

 

Can you try if the same problem appears if you play the same file directly with HQPlayer from the NAS instead of going through Roon? Another thing that would be good to check is if the problem appears when you play local content from Roon instead of playing from NAS.

 

In my case, Roon local file playback happens from Thunderbolt connected external HDD, and Roon is running on macOS while HQPlayer resides on some other computer. I have so far experienced issues with Roon only when source is Tidal, but not when Roon is playing from Thunderbolt HDD. If I play same content directly from Tidal server, problem doesn't appear. Only when Roon is proxying the content from Tidal to HQPlayer.

 

[tboooe]

40 minutes ago, Miska said:

HQPlayer v3 doesn't have that timeout, but the adverse effect is still there. So whereas v3 may have intermittent drop-outs, v4 gives up. When this problem appears, it is indicative of a problem and should get fixed properly instead of being hidden.

I've had this setup for years now and never had a drop out with HQP3.  I will test as you suggested and report back.