Supersonic

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

What is Supersonic?

 

It's a Kodi plug-in that will allow you to play from your Subsonic server to your software player of choice.

 

You must have Subsonic installed and configured and you will need a license for Subsonic:

 

Subsonic

 

The raison d'être of Subsonic is to allow you to stream your own library loss-lessly to wherever you may be, including your car.

 

If your connection can't handle lossless, Subsonic allows you to transcode on the fly to .mp3.

 

It's like creating your own personal Tidal or Qobuz service.

 

…but, you are not obliged to use Subsonic as a remote server. Plenty of Subsonic users are using it purely as a local server at home.

This also means you're not obliged to open up the ports used by subsonic (4040 or 4041 or 4443) on your router for incoming internet access.

 

Supersonic supports both modes. With "remote" selected you will be able to stream your music files to yourself wherever you may be. These streams will be played through your software player of choice, including HQPlayer.

 

Remote mode will not support DSD (dsf, dff files) as these are not inherently supported by the Subsonic database.

 

…with Remote deselected though, Supersonic will support DSD files and of course, it becomes feasible to play other high-rez PCM files as you are on your local network.

 

Apart from this in Supersonic settings, make sure your login details for your Subsonic server are entered, that you select the "Audiophile" option, that Transcode is deselcted and "Use HQPlayer" if this is your software player of choice. Otherwise the player you've designated to open .m3u/m3u8 playlist files will be used. The Ramdisk option is also available for HQPlayer only at this time.

 

Because I am exhibiting at the High-End show in Munich next week, my time is very limited to offer support for this.

 

If you want to try it and you are not already a Subsonic user, I suggest you download, install and configure Subsonic yourself and get familiar with it. Set up is really quite simple and all achieved via a web interface.

 

Once you are comfortable with using Subsonic itself, install Supersonic in Kodi and give it a try.

 

NOTE: Although Subsonic allows you to have more than one music library set up at the same time, Supersonic only supports one at a time. You can easily change music libraries though from within the Subsonic web interface. Run a scan to register all files with Subsonic, then run Supersonic from within Kodi.

 

So for the intrepid

 

 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/86110007/software/plugin.audio.supersonic.zip

 

Have fun!

 

Geoff

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

Hi Geoff,

 

Tried installing it on both Kodi Helix and 15 beta (Mac OS X) and got the error "Dependencies not met. Please contact Add-On author."

 

The dependencies are listed in the file addon.xml within the addon's folder.

 

They are as follows:

 

<import addon="script.module.simplejson" version="2.0.10"/>

<import addon="script.module.requests" version="1.0.4" />

<import addon="script.module.beautifulsoup" version="3.0.8"/>

<import addon="script.module.mechanize" version="0.2.5"/>

 

Normally these should be installed automatically when you install the addon from the .zip file from within Kodi. If they are not, you may have installed it differently or it may be because you're using Kodi 15 Beta.

 

You might have to install these dependencies manually.

 

Geoff

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

You are correct. Of course HQPlayer doesn't support mp3 though.

 

For that deselect HQPlayer in Supersonic add-on settings and use Foobar or something else as the default for opening playlist files.

 

This is a multiplatform solution.

 

Subsonic can be used locally and remotely.

 

Geoff

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

There are remote apps for Kodi on both Android and IOS.

 

The official apps work fine and are free.

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

Great!

I am making this solution know on Nexthardware.com for other HQPlayer users.

 

I have started experimenting installing Subsonic directly on my Synology NAS

Scanning music library is taking a long time.

I already have Kodi on my main PC with HQPlayer.

 

I haven't got to Supersonic yet, but I will report as I have the whole chain system up and running.

Re Supersonic, is it using a ramdisk? Is it possible?

Are you going to implement any new controls made available in HQPlayer?

 

Regarding mp3, is it possible to convert on the fly to wav?

 

I'm thinking of implementing something similar to my iTunes script whereby all non-supported formats, such as .mp3 will be converted to .wav and temporarily written to a Ramdisk for playback. On the Mac this is working very well and conversion is very fast.

 

At the moment Ramdisk is supported by Supersonic for running HQPlayer itself. To take advantage of this you need to select the Ramdisk option in Supersonic addon settings and name your Ramdisk as directed there.

 

All necessary HQPlayer files from within the HQPlayer desktop directory must be copied to the root of that Ramdisk.

 

Note: on some systems Supersonic may not install from the .zip file. You may have to unpack it first and manually copy the "plugin.audio.supersonic" folder to your Kodi add-ons directory.

 

If you get any complaints in Kodi about Supersonic dependencies not being met, take a look at the addon.xml file within the "plugin.audio.supersonic" folder. This lists the dependencies which are other addons that you also need to have installed.

 

Normally this shouldn't be necessary and those dependencies should be automatically installed. I mention this just in case you run into any problems, which might happen with the preview of Win 10 for example and/or the latest betas of Kodi.

 

I wil be implementing the hqp-controls as soon as Miska releases the full featured version, which I believe is nearly ready.

 

Geoff

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

Is it possible to have Kodi+Supersonic on iOS/Android and, for example, Subsonic and HQPlayer on main PC?

 

BTY, do you know if Kodi can work with HQPlayer Embedded?

 

Is tag management done within Kodi?

 

Sorry for the many questions.

 

I don't mind the questions; it's how we all learn

 

Kodi can run on Android devices; but only on Jail-Broken IOS devices, I believe.

 

I only use the Kodi remote apps on IOS and Android to control a desktop version of Kodi running on the same main PC and that has to be the same PC that HQPlayer is running on.

 

Kodi needs to talk to the OS that in turn talks to HQPlayer.

 

I don't believe HQPlayer embedded would work, because what Supersonic does is to write playlists and then tell the OS to open these playlists with HQPlayer Desktop. I believe only HQPlayer Desktop has the ability to open these playlists and start playback automatically from the first track. You could also check this with Miska though.

 

Tagging is handled by your library manager of choice and the Subsonic server should respect those tags.

 

Something you can do is to create playlists (smart or dumb) within say, J River, then export those playlists in .m3u/m3u8 format and using the Subsonic web interface to import those playlists into Subsonic.

 

Now the playlists will be available to Supersonic!

 

Additionally if you're concerned about performance on your main PC you could always use an NAA to divide the chores so that HQPlayer Desktop on the main PC does the heavy lifting and the HQPlayer NAA app does the rendering on the NAA box.

 

Geoff

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

With Kodi version 14.2 on Linux I have also the error message

"Dependencies not met. Please contact Add-On author."

 

Is that when installing from the .zip file from within Kodi?

 

If so, try just dragging the unzipped folder to your addons folder within your Kodi installation.

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

You need to add the port ":4040"

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

Geoff, please I need some help to configure the system. A step by step guide would help.

 

I installed Subsonic on my main PC. I tried to install it on my NAS, but it was excruciatingly slow. I scanned media library and removed remote and transcoding - OK.

 

I installed Kodi and Supersonic, by dragging zip content in add-on directory. Supersonic is visible and enabled - OK.

 

Now I need to configure it. I inserted server address localhost:4040 or 127.0.0.1:4040 + user + pw. When I launch it, I get an error: "Script failed: Supersonic".

What ip address should I use?

Once Supersonic is configured properly and launched, should I be able to see my media library in Kodi/Music?

 

It sounds as though you've done everything correctly. Can you send me the kodi log file so I can check on that Supersonic error?

 

One possibility is that if your music library is on the NAS your main PC running Kodi/Supersonic must be connected to the NAS. Is that the case?

 

Thanks,

 

Geoff

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

Congratulations!

 

Perhaps Win 10 sounds better then Linux anyway ?

 

Off course that's up for debate and I'll be interested in your opinions when you can compare the two.

 

 

Geoff

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

Hello,

the link https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/86110007/software/plugin.audio.supersonic.zip is not valid (404). Sorry I do not speak English or translation via Google.

 

I'm sorry. Please use this link:

 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/86110007/software/plugin.audio.supersonic.zip

 

Geoff

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

I just need to point out that Supersonic is only currently working correctly on Mac and Windows.

 

I need to carry out some tests on Linux and fix errors.

 

Geoff

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

Hi Keith,

 

A new version is coming soon. Watch this space!

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

Supersonic is an addon I’ve written for Kodi media center. It has the following capabilities:

 

1/ Play Qobuz and Tidal streams through HQPlayer or another supported software player.

2/ Play local files through HQPlayer or another supported software player.

3/ Play files from a Subsonic server through HQPlayer or another supported player.

 

Both HQPlayer and Kodi are, of course, cross platform. Other players are not available on all platforms or they don’t have the necessary features on all platforms for Supersonic to be able to interact with them.

 

So here are the players which Supersonic currently supports on each platform.

 

Mac and Linux:

 

HQPlayer only.

 

Windows:

 

1/ HQPlayer

2/ J River media center

3/ Foobar2000

 

I obviously wrote Supersonic mainly with HQPlayer in mind since it’s my personally preferred player. In recognition that people do use other players for particular features they offer and are quite happy with their sound quality, I’m offering as much support as I can for J River and Foobar under Windows.

 

The next release will also offer support for the Bughead Emperor family of players. I say “family” because it’s rapidly growing (Infinity Blade, Nontallion…)

 

None of the other players has the level of external control via a control API of the sort offered by HQPlayer. So that’s why I say I support them as far as I’m able to.

 

I’ve attached the files you will need, as follows:

 

1/ Supersonic itself

2/ TinyDB (this should install automatically; but for some reason it doesn't always work, so safer to install it before Supersonic).

3/ The pdf manual (please read it) It only covers Qobuz and Tidal at the moment though Supersonic can also handle local files and Subsonic.

 

NOTE: My previous effort of 3 years ago was a modification to some existing Qobuz and Tidal add-ons. Supersonic is completely different. You now use the latest version of the Qobuz add-on unmodified. For Tidal you'll need the Tidal2 add-on from arneson (latest version).

 

As an alternative to these you can also use a UPnP server, such as BubbleUPnP or mconnect on IOS.

 

Please also make sure you're using the latest versions of HQPlayer and Kodi.

 

I haven’t been able to do much testing on Linux or had any Linux alpha/beta testers. So testing on Linux and feedback will be especially appreciated.

 

Additionally please keep in mind that this is offered absolutely without any warranty, so use at your own risk, if you dare!

 

Thanks,

 

Geoff

script.module.tinydb.zip

plugin.audio.supersonic.zip

Qobuz through HQPlayer.pdf

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

Thank you very much for your kind words Simon. It was my pleasure and especially nice to be able to talk with somebody from HK, where I lived for a few years.

 

Warm regards from Monaco where we have the historic grande prix going on right now.

 

Geoff

 

 

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

18 minutes ago, Keith_W said:

Thank you so much Geoffrey! I have been waiting for this for a couple of years. 

You’re welcome Keith. That’s about how long it took me to write it ?

 

Best

 

Geoff

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

49 minutes ago, cittaa said:

I have just installed Subsonic Server 6.1.3 in Synology.
I have added dsf to the list of music files in General Settings.
After Scan Now Media Folders, only dsf files don't appear in Index.
Is it nomal? 

I hope you’re not confusing Subsonic with Supersonic?

 

Supersonic is a Kodi add-on which does support playing Subsonic streams through HQPlayer and other players. Subsonic is just one of the sources it supports through additional Kodi add-ons, along with Qobuz, Tidal and local files.

 

On Windows Supersonic can also output to some other external players, apart from HQPlayer.

 

I can’t recall offhand if Subsonic supports dsf. It’s a question best posed on Subsonic’s own forum.

 

Geoff

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

I am now able to offer version 1.5.2. This version improves on navigation when the feature in Supersonic's settings which prevents Kodi’s own playback of Qobuz and Tidal streams is activated. With this feature activated playback only happens in HQPlayer.

 

Navigation within Kodi's play queue is now reflected within HQPlayer's playlist as you would expect it to be, with this feature activated.

 

Clearing Kodi's play queue will clear HQPlayer's playlist and loading a new Album/Playlist into Kodi's play queue will load and begin playback in HQPlayer, starting from the first new track in Kodi's play queue. Again, as you would expect.

 

With these improvements, I believe there is little reason not to use the feature to prevent Kodi’s own playback of Qobuz and Tidal streams. I can’t guarantee it will always be perfectly gapless; but it is close and I believe there is a sound quality advantage to having no playback/processing by Kodi.

 

Your feedback on this will be appreciated as always.

 

Geoff

plugin.audio.supersonic.zip

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

16 minutes ago, cittaa said:

I can't find xbmc.python 2.14.0 anywhere, therefore can't install.
Both 1.50 and 1.52 give the following error message in Kodi 16 jarvis.
I got a error message in Kodi 17.6, too, but didn't run log viewer.
Please let me know your kodi version and add-ons you installed.

My apologies. it's referencing a module which I'm no longer even using in my code; but still had an import statement for.

 

Obviously this module is not present on all systems. Since we don't need it anyway, I've deleted all references to it in the amended version below.

 

Please also make sure you install TinyDB if you haven't already. It's also attached.

 

I'm using Kodi 17.6, therefore please send me the log file for this version if you get any more errors.

 

You will still see references to xbmc in the log files, even though the name has changed to Kodi.

 

Geoff

 

 

plugin.audio.supersonic.zip

script.module.tinydb.zip

Qobuz through HQPlayer.pdf

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

9 hours ago, cittaa said:

I still get the following error message.

 

 

 

 

9 hours ago, cittaa said:

I still get the following error message.

 

 

 

Once again apologies. … and once again you don’t need it, assuming you’re using HQPlayer. It’s part of support for Bughead that I’m still working on. I will post a new version with the offending code commented out later today.

 

This code should work and the error only crops up on specific installations of Kodi/Win OS.

 

Geoff

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

1 hour ago, pocarrie said:

I tried Supersonic in my dual pc system (HQP pc server + NAA on audio pc), following the instructions of this thread and of the pdf file about Qobuz, but without success. Supersonic doesn't take control of the Qobuz stream, that is forced to the default  audio output setted in Kodi, even if this output is disabled in Windows or muted.

Of course I perfectly followed the instructions about the add-on settings... (I installed also tinyDB).

To be honest, I didn't install Subsonic (because my only interest is to play Qobuz in HQP, I have already other softwares for playing my local files, like Muso and Roon), could it depend on that? I don't think so, if I understood correctly this thread...
Furthermore, when I try to install Supersonic add-on in Kodi, I see the same error described some posts ago, but the add-on is listed as installed. 

Kodi is installed on my pc server, with Windows 10 64bit April Update (v. 1803).

I tried to set Hi-Fi Cable Asio Bridge as output in Kodi (directed to Jplay in dual pc mode) and the reproduction (with mconnect app for iOs) is perfect, but my goal is to use HQP, because I have a T+A dac 8 dsd and the "sweet spot" is dsd512...?

Anyway, thanks in advance to Geoff for his beatiful work for all the audiophile community...?

Hi Pocarrie,

 

Thanks for your feedback. If you mean you're getting the same error messages as cittaa above, then we need to get to the bottom of why this is happening.

 

No, Supersonic is in no way dependant on Subsonic.

 

To uninstall Supersonic, please ensure you not only uninstall from within Kodi and quit Kodi; but also remove any plugin.audio.supersonic folder that might have remained in the Kodi add-ons folder on your system. Then restart Kodi and re-install Supersonic from the .zip file you download from here.

 

The error messages he reported were related to support I'm adding for Bughead Emperor and not needed for HQPlayer. So I stripped out the offending code for him to try to fix the errors. It was a bit strange for me as I have Supersonic running on several versions of Win 10 here and I have beta testers with Win 10 all without these errors. Obviously though not all installations of Kodi or Win 10 are created equally. I also couldn't see anything wrong with the lines of code that caused the problem for cittaa and really do want to solve this.

 

You can help me by please downloading the last version I posted for cittaa a few posts back, if you haven't already installed that version. If you are still getting errors with that version, I will need the Kodi log file. Please also make sure you turn on all debugging and logging within Kodi's settings to make sure we catch any more errors.

 

If you need any more help with that just let me know.

 

There's absolutely no reason why Supersonic should not work with your dual pc/naa set-up using HQPlayer with the Qobuz Kodi add-on, or from a supported UPnP server. So let's see if we can solve this together.

 

Best,

 

Geoff

 

 

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

On 6/7/2018 at 10:00 PM, cittaa said:

I still get the following error message.

 

 

 

Here is a new version 1.5.3 which removes the code causing those error messages. I was supposed to upload this last week; but got busy with other things.

 

This error is a mystery to me as the code works on all the win 10 systems I have and with my beta testers on Win 10. I believe it may be limited to Win 10 server. Only users experiencing this error need to update.

 

For cittaa and anyone else receiving these errors, please let me know if this version fixes the issue.

 

Thanks

 

Geoff

 

 

plugin.audio.supersonic.zip

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

This made me realise the method for choosing the correct path to HQPlayer within Supersonic's settings could be friendlier.

 

In all future versions from the one uploaded here it just involves browsing to the HQPlayer-desktop executable app on your system. e.g. HQPlayer-desktop.exe on Windows.

 

 

plugin.audio.supersonic.zip

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

3 hours ago, cittaa said:

When opens kodi, the error message associated with supersonic no longer appears.
However, HQP is not called. music file is played only with kodi itself.
Both kodi and HQP are installed in same windows 10 machine. 

 

If on the same machine, client would normally be “localhost”.

 

Also any HQPSettings file must be in the correct default location for HQPSettings files. Even if it is, why not keep things as simple as possible to get up and running? I suggest you remove the settings file from here for now and just make sure HQPlayer settings are correct for your DAC.

 

Also make sure your path to hqp corresponds with where you have hqp installed.

 

Are you trying to play local music files?

 

You should enter a path for temporary local files and turn on “Always create temporary local files”. This will get around any problems with non-western file names. It should also sound better, especially if the temp files are written to a Ram disk.

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

Here is the latest version 1.5.6 of Supersonic.

 

This version should work well on all versions of Win 10, including Win server. Previous versions had some code that caused an error on Win server.

 

I would appreciate testing on server and non-server versions and feedback from anyone running Supersonic on both.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Geoff

 

plugin.audio.supersonic.zip