iTunes - HQPlayer front-end re-visited

[ivarsmu]

Tested today māc book pro 2013 and with iPhone SE Remote app

everthing was OK .

So thanks again Geoff, the only remaining thing is Remote compatibility with

different Pads And Phones

 

Ivars

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

21 hours ago, ivarsmu said:

Tested today māc book pro 2013 and with iPhone SE Remote app

everthing was OK .

So thanks again Geoff, the only remaining thing is Remote compatibility with

different Pads And Phones

 

Ivars

Thanks for the feedback Ivars. I agree with both yourself and Lionel that it is possible to get into a situation where my app loses communication with iTunes and HQPlayer when using the remote app.

 

Unfortunately my Applescript cannot influence anything regarding the remote app. I have no way of knowing if a command was initiated via iTunes desktop app or the remote app on IOS.

 

I could delay things, if that would help; but after further testing yesterday, I don't think it would.

 

It's also a little bizarre that some IOS devices seem to work better than others and I think perhaps it's just a coincidence that when you ran into a problem, it was with a particular IOS device.

 

What I've observed is that people who don't need to ever create temp files are not likely to run into any problems with the remote app on IOS. So if your entire library is in AIFF and you set my app to "only create temp files when necessary", I don't think you'll have any problems.

 

I also had no problems at all, even when creating temp files, when everything was running on the same machine, which of course, had to be a Mac. (Mac Air mid 2013, i7 1.7ghz, 8 gigs RAM).

 

I only ran into the problems when I ran HQPlayer on a separate windows machine with HQPlayer's network button activated (as it has to be in this scenario). I also picked on ALAC albums so temp files had to be created on a Ram disk on that windows machine.

 

This indicated to me that problems are most likely to occur in the most demanding situations such as this one.

 

If any IOS devices perform better than others, I would expect it to be those with the most processing power.

 

There are two kinds of problem that can occur.

 

1/ iTunes - HQPlayer app fails to load a particular album or set of tracks into HQPlayer. The previous tracks were cleared; but HQPlayer's playlist remains empty. No temp files are created or loaded for the new album.

 

You can try to get out of this situation with the remote app by choosing to play the first track of the album then tapping the previous track button. There is no previous track so this has the effect of stopping iTunes. It's bizarre; but this appears to be the only way to stop iTunes from the remote app. Then try playing that album or another album and hopefully it will work this time.

 

2/ The more severe problem where iTunes - HQPlayer server loses communication permanently and hangs.

 

Unfortunately the only way out of this situation is to force quit iTunes - HQPlayer Server and restart it on the Mac.

 

Geoff

[ivarsmu]

7 hours ago, Geoffrey Armstrong said:

Thanks for the feedback Ivars. I agree with both yourself and Lionel that it is possible to get into a situation where my app loses communication with iTunes and HQPlayer when using the remote app.

 

Unfortunately my Applescript cannot influence anything regarding the remote app. I have no way of knowing if a command was initiated via iTunes desktop app or the remote app on IOS.

 

I could delay things, if that would help; but after further testing yesterday, I don't think it would.

 

It's also a little bizarre that some IOS devices seem to work better than others and I think perhaps it's just a coincidence that when you ran into a problem, it was with a particular IOS device.

 

What I've observed is that people who don't need to ever create temp files are not likely to run into any problems with the remote app on IOS. So if your entire library is in AIFF and you set my app to "only create temp files when necessary", I don't think you'll have any problems.

 

I also had no problems at all, even when creating temp files, when everything was running on the same machine, which of course, had to be a Mac. (Mac Air mid 2013, i7 1.7ghz, 8 gigs RAM).

 

I only ran into the problems when I ran HQPlayer on a separate windows machine with HQPlayer's network button activated (as it has to be in this scenario). I also picked on ALAC albums so temp files had to be created on a Ram disk on that windows machine.

 

This indicated to me that problems are most likely to occur in the most demanding situations such as this one.

 

If any IOS devices perform better than others, I would expect it to be those with the most processing power.

 

There are two kinds of problem that can occur.

 

1/ iTunes - HQPlayer app fails to load a particular album or set of tracks into HQPlayer. The previous tracks were cleared; but HQPlayer's playlist remains empty. No temp files are created or loaded for the new album.

 

You can try to get out of this situation with the remote app by choosing to play the first track of the album then tapping the previous track button. There is no previous track so this has the effect of stopping iTunes. It's bizarre; but this appears to be the only way to stop iTunes from the remote app. Then try playing that album or another album and hopefully it will work this time.

 

2/ The more severe problem where iTunes - HQPlayer server loses communication permanently and hangs.

 

Unfortunately the only way out of this situation is to force quit iTunes - HQPlayer Server and restart it on the Mac.

 

Geoff

Hi Geoff,

 

thank You again,

 

I did some extra testing today, Now with iMac27 mid 2010 i7 16gb with ssd osx 10.13.2.  For my big surprise this time everything was perfect with same iPad pro

which refuse on iMac Retina . I also switched on legacy first generation iPad and

old iPhone 5 from drawer. Again all was perfect , only obsolete iPad was unstable 

and drpped Remote app sometimes. But this time it was at downtown location with

fast optical internet and Apple Airport Extreme as router and wi fi. Previous testing was at my rural residence house with mobile internet and old zyxel router through

simple TP Link access point. I guess some local network nuances may influence.

Or some buggy differences with iMacs os/app interprets.

 

So again I’m really happy and recomend without any doubt your script/app for those music library owners with alac and iTunes for playback with excellent HQP engine.

 

Best

Ivars M.

[Lio_B]

about Remote,

just tested with a new iPad, last IOS same result that I had with my iPhone 6...

impossible to change album, and also to start from Remote

but not very important for me.

thanks

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

51 minutes ago, ivarsmu said:

Hi Geoff,

 

thank You again,

 

I did some extra testing today, Now with iMac27 mid 2010 i7 16gb with ssd osx 10.13.2.  For my big surprise this time everything was perfect with same iPad pro

which refuse on iMac Retina . I also switched on legacy first generation iPad and

old iPhone 5 from drawer. Again all was perfect , only obsolete iPad was unstable 

and drpped Remote app sometimes. But this time it was at downtown location with

fast optical internet and Apple Airport Extreme as router and wi fi. Previous testing was at my rural residence house with mobile internet and old zyxel router through

simple TP Link access point. I guess some local network nuances may influence.

Or some buggy differences with iMacs os/app interprets.

 

So again I’m really happy and recomend without any doubt your script/app for those music library owners with alac and iTunes for playback with excellent HQP engine.

 

Best

Ivars M.

That's great news Ivars. I'm glad it's working well for you now and thanks for the highly positive feedback.

 

Geoff

[Lio_B]

I'm also agree, it's a very good job Geoffrey, very simple and useful 

 

thanks

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

18 minutes ago, Lio_B said:

about Remote,

just tested with a new iPad, last IOS same result that I had with my iPhone 6...

impossible to change album, and also to start from Remote

but not very important for me.

thanks

Ok, Lionel, thanks for the feedback. As Ivars's post makes clear, there are so many variables at play, including your local network performance, that it's impossible for any of us to understand how these problems arise when they do.

 

I believe for anyone who really wants to use the remote app, your best chance of it working in the majority of situations, is if there's no need for creation of temp files. Having said that, I wouldn't want somebody to convert their entire library to AIFF for this reason, because I can never guarantee the remote app will work with my app 100% reliably in that situation either. Again, there're just too many variables.

 

Geoff

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

3 minutes ago, Lio_B said:

I'm also agree, it's a very good job Geoffrey, very simple and useful 

 

thanks

Thanks very much Lionel 

[Sevenfeet]

The Remote app hasn't been updated in ages (it's not iPhone X savvy).  I'm thinking we may see a major update soon with the release of the HomePod (any day now).  When that happens, we'll have to test everything all over again.

 

Overall I'm happy that Geoffrey's script exists at all.  Sure there are problems but it's mostly in the environment it operates in.  One "bug" I noticed that took me a while to get to the bottom of what that sometimes the script would work and sometimes it would just sit there.  My Mac Pro server does a few different things.  It's an iTunes Server, an OS X Server app machine and a Plex machine.  Plex is setup to scan iTunes for music.  When Geoffrey's script was doing it's thing once you pressed play, I noticed that tickled Plex's automatic scanner function for folder changes and I'm guessing that it interfered with the actions of the script.  Disabling the automatic scanning function seemed to make the script more reliable.

 

I do think that eventually I'll have to replace this old 2008 Mac pro with a newer machine as I think applications like HQPlayer will eventually demand newer Intel hardware with SSE4.2 capability and hopefully a Thunderbolt interface.  But for right now, it's a decent music server.

[copy_of_a]

On 20.1.2018 at 10:42 AM, Geoffrey Armstrong said:

My solution has been to assume that if the sample rate is 48, 88.2, 96 or 192, then the sample size must be 24bit. All other sample rates must be 16bit.

 

A 44.1 file at 24 bit is actually fairly unusual.

Geoffrey,

 

hmh... 44.1kHz/24bit is not that unusual these days.

Myself I have somthing like 60 albums in 44.1kHz/24bit.

 

On 20.1.2018 at 6:03 PM, Geoffrey Armstrong said:

So for WAV file creation only the only way I can see to solve this is to convert all to 24bit. That means true 24bits will be respected and 16 bit will always be padded up to 24 bits in this new version.

iTunes - HQPlayer Server.app.zip

in this latest version... are all files converted to 24bit - even AIFF source files?

Or only ALAC source files?

 

If this really applies to all files I'd prefer to stay with the version I've installed right now since my source files are all AIFF... and I bet the conversion from 16bit (in case the source is 16bit) to 24bit wav takes much longer than the creation of a 16bit FLAC file...

 

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

43 minutes ago, copy_of_a said:

Geoffrey,

 

hmh... 44.1kHz/24bit is not that unusual these days.

Myself I have somthing like 60 albums in 44.1kHz/24bit.

 

in this latest version... are all files converted to 24bit - even AIFF source files?

Or only ALAC source files?

 

If this really applies to all files I'd prefer to stay with the version I've installed right now since my source files are all AIFF... and I bet the conversion from 16bit (in case the source is 16bit) to 24bit wav takes much longer than the creation of a 16bit FLAC file...

 

It’s not what your converting from, it’s what you’re converting to. Conversion to flac will always respect the original sample size. Converting to wav I always have to convert to 24bit, to ensure I catch all the true 24bit.

 

When converting to wav and the original is 16bit I believe this will just result in extra zeros being padded. So it shouldn’t take significantly longer. You can always compare the timing of wav versus flac conversion of the same 16bit source files.

 

Geoff

[copy_of_a]

7 minutes ago, Geoffrey Armstrong said:

It’s not what your converting from, it’s what you’re converting to. Conversion to flac will always respect the original sample size. Converting to wav I always have to convert to 24bit, to ensure I catch all the true 24bit.

 

When converting to wav and the original is 16bit I believe this will just result in extra zeros being padded. So it shouldn’t take significantly longer. You can always compare the timing of wav versus flac conversion of the same 16bit source files.

 

Geoff

 

this version:

 

... does exactly what I need ... with AIFF source files.

Problem with this version for some users was it didn't work for ALAC source files and therefore you've fixed this problem...

... but obviously now we AIFF users have to convert 16bit to 24bit when the target is wav.

 

EDIT: well, I know AIFF shouldn't be converted at all... actually iTunes should only pass the file location to HQPlayer. But as you know exactly that doesn't work on my machine(s). So for the time being I have to live with the conversion.

 

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

1 hour ago, copy_of_a said:

 

this version:

 

... does exactly what I need ... with AIFF source files.

Problem with this version for some users was it didn't work for ALAC source files and therefore you've fixed this problem...

... but obviously now we AIFF users have to convert 16bit to 24bit when the target is wav.

 

EDIT: well, I know AIFF shouldn't be converted at all... actually iTunes should only pass the file location to HQPlayer. But as you know exactly that doesn't work on my machine(s). So for the time being I have to live with the conversion.

 

Yes, we still need to fix that problem, because actually you don’t want conversion at all. As we discussed, I’m willing to help you with that via a Teamviewer session, if we can schedule it.

 

Given that at the moment you appear forced to convert and prefer to convert to WAV, I’m questioning if that extra padding to 24bit for 16 bit source files is really a problem for you, in practice.

 

Also you don't seem to have understood that the problem is NOT related to whether you're an ALAC or AIFF user. I didn't break it for AIFF users in order to help the ALACS.

 

Whether you were converting from AIFF or ALAC, to WAV; it was the same problem. I couldn't guarantee that higher resolution 24bit files would all be converted at 24bit. Some were being converted at 16bit in error. This is all because the iTunes dictionary for Applescript does not provide the sample size of the file; only the sample rate. It is only related to WAV files as well because the conversion to WAV requires that the sample size be specified. This is not the case when converting to FLAC.

 

I hope that's clear now!

 

Geoff

[Jamesroy]

Hi Your posts are very informative. I'm switching from A+ Audirvana Plus on a Mac Book with all my audio on an external HD. Any beginner tips for a beginner into this HQPlayer. I have a Stellar Gain Cell DAC I'm just breaking in and a Parasound HALO P5 Preamp I haven't decided to use with the Stellar yet because the Stellar has it's own preamp. I downloaded your script.

[DancingSea]

1 hour ago, Jamesroy said:

Hi Your posts are very informative. I'm switching from A+ Audirvana Plus on a Mac Book with all my audio on an external HD. Any beginner tips for a beginner into this HQPlayer. I have a Stellar Gain Cell DAC I'm just breaking in and a Parasound HALO P5 Preamp I haven't decided to use with the Stellar yet because the Stellar has it's own preamp. I downloaded your script.

 

The game plan is to read Geoffrey's manual.  Install his app.  Give the trio (HQP, iTunes, HQPServer) a try.  Report any problems here.

[DancingSea]

Geoffrey and Gang,

 

Does the following quote from the HQPServer manual say that HQPlayer audio filters (poly sinc, etc) cannot be adjusted in HQP while using HQPServer unless the "hqp-<settingsfile>" is added to the comments section of each individual album in iTunes?  If I have 5,000 albums, do I have to paste that into the comments section of each individual album in order to utilize HQP's audio filters?

 

Or am I misunderstanding?

 

Thanks

 

11. Apply custom HQPlayer settings?

1. (a)  If this parameter is set to “No” you will not have the ability to apply different HQPlayer settings to different music.

2. (b)  With this parameter set to “Yes” you will be able to apply different HQPlayer settings to different music by adding the following into the comments field of the music track/album concerned:

   i. “hqp-<settingsfile>”Withoutthequotesandwhere<settingsfile> is replaced by the name of the HQPlayer settings file you wish to be applied.

[Jamesroy]

46 minutes ago, DancingSea said:

 

The game plan is to read Geoffrey's manual.  Install his app.  Give the trio (HQP, iTunes, HQPServer) a try.  Report any problems here.

Where can I download Geoffrey's manual?

Thanks

[Jamesroy]

Sorry for more questions but I couldn't find the area that you said I could get a good price on HQPlayer?

[DancingSea]

54 minutes ago, Jamesroy said:

Sorry for more questions but I couldn't find the area that you said I could get a good price on HQPlayer?

 

Send a PM to him:

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/profile/10348-bibo01/

[Jamesroy]

Thanks I found it. The only big problem for me is my MBP has only 8GB RAM and internal SSD 225GB. I'm a graphic designer and see this as tiny. If I only knew earlier but I got a great price on a clean machine from Apple refurbished.

[DancingSea]

1 minute ago, Jamesroy said:

Thanks I found it. The only big problem for me is my MBP has only 8GB RAM and internal SSD 225GB. I'm a graphic designer and see this as tiny. If I only knew earlier but I got a great price on a clean machine from Apple refurbished.

 

My MBP has only a 120 GB solid state hard drive.  Hasn't slowed me down a bit.

[Jamesroy]

Good I feel better now. bio01 got back to me, I only need one license and I don't do paypal so I'll see what he says.

[DancingSea]

8 hours ago, Geoffrey Armstrong said:

Yes, we still need to fix that problem, because actually you don’t want conversion at all. As we discussed, I’m willing to help you with that via a Teamviewer session, if we can schedule it.

 

Given that at the moment you appear forced to convert and prefer to convert to WAV, I’m questioning if that extra padding to 24bit for 16 bit source files is really a problem for you, in practice.

 

Also you don't seem to have understood that the problem is NOT related to whether you're an ALAC or AIFF user. I didn't break it for AIFF users in order to help the ALACS.

 

Whether you were converting from AIFF or ALAC, to WAV; it was the same problem. I couldn't guarantee that higher resolution 24bit files would all be converted at 24bit. Some were being converted at 16bit in error. This is all because the iTunes dictionary for Applescript does not provide the sample size of the file; only the sample rate. It is only related to WAV files as well because the conversion to WAV requires that the sample size be specified. This is not the case when converting to FLAC.

 

I hope that's clear now!

 

Geoff

 

Aloha Geoffrey,

 

I read the whole manual.  Even installed SoundFlower.  Without Soundflower, the music plays through iTunes and bypasses HQP entirely.  With Soundflower selected in System Preferences, no sound comes out whatsoever.

 

I would like to setup at Team Viewer session as its clear I'm stuck.

 

Thanks!

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

5 hours ago, DancingSea said:

Geoffrey and Gang,

 

Does the following quote from the HQPServer manual say that HQPlayer audio filters (poly sinc, etc) cannot be adjusted in HQP while using HQPServer unless the "hqp-<settingsfile>" is added to the comments section of each individual album in iTunes?  If I have 5,000 albums, do I have to paste that into the comments section of each individual album in order to utilize HQP's audio filters?

 

Or am I misunderstanding?

 

Thanks

 

11. Apply custom HQPlayer settings?

1. (a)  If this parameter is set to “No” you will not have the ability to apply different HQPlayer settings to different music.

2. (b)  With this parameter set to “Yes” you will be able to apply different HQPlayer settings to different music by adding the following into the comments field of the music track/album concerned:

   i. “hqp-<settingsfile>”Withoutthequotesandwhere<settingsfile> is replaced by the name of the HQPlayer settings file you wish to be applied.

If you set that parameter to “Yes” you must export your “default.xml” file to ~/.hqplayer directory. These are the settings to apply in most cases. You do this using the Export Settings menu item in hqplayer

 

After that, no, you do not need to add any exceptional settings file you create to all the comments fields of all your albums. Only to the albums where you want the exceptional settings to be applied.

 

Those exceptional settings files must first also be exported from within hqplayer and saved in ~/.hqplayer directory.

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

1 hour ago, DancingSea said:

 

Aloha Geoffrey,

 

I read the whole manual.  Even installed SoundFlower.  Without Soundflower, the music plays through iTunes and bypasses HQP entirely.  With Soundflower selected in System Preferences, no sound comes out whatsoever.

 

I would like to setup at Team Viewer session as its clear I'm stuck.

 

Thanks!

During my tv session with SevenFeet I asked him to reach out to you.

 

He has a lot of experience with Mac as he worked at Apple.

 

The time diff between us makes it very difficult for me.