iTunes - HQPlayer front-end re-visited

[DancingSea]

Just now, Lio_B said:

In HQP setting / Device, you should have your DAC

 

iTunes follow the system alone

 

strange

 

Perhaps it’s to do with Geoffrey’s .xml thing which is total Greek to me...

[Lio_B]

I don't have the default.xml file, and it works

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

9 hours ago, DancingSea said:

 

I did this. But HQP’s output automatically shifted to follow the system preferences output to internal speakers. 

 

HQPlayer didn’t stay with DAC. 

 

Thx

Well this is your problem then. Please follow these instructions step by step:

 

1/ Launch HQP

 

2/ Choose preferences from the HQPlayerDesktop3 menu

 

3/ Set the device to be your DAC (device drop down menu) and all the other settings for up-sampling PCM and DSD as desired. Also the volume range your wish to use.

 

4/ Click "OK"

 

5/ From HQPlayer's file menu choose "Export Settings"

 

6/ in the window that appears you should already see .hqplayer as the folder being proposed as the location to save the settings file. If not enter "~/.hqplayer" (without the quotes) in the "Save as field" to go to that folder.

 

6/ In the Save as field enter the file name as "default.xml" (without the quotes) or if a file named "default.xml" already exists, click on it and accept the proposal to replace the existing default.xml with this new one you are about to save.

 

7/ Click on the save button at the bottom right of this window.

 

This will ensure your default.xml settings file which is loaded by iTunes-HQPlayer Server is the one that has the correct settings to talk to your DAC.

 

If you follow these instructions correctly it should finally get you up and running.

[Lio_B]

Can we update HQP new version or it's better waiting ? thks

[DancingSea]

3 hours ago, Geoffrey Armstrong said:

Well this is your problem then. Please follow these instructions step by step:

 

1/ Launch HQP

 

2/ Choose preferences from the HQPlayerDesktop3 menu

 

3/ Set the device to be your DAC (device drop down menu) and all the other settings for up-sampling PCM and DSD as desired. Also the volume range your wish to use.

 

4/ Click "OK"

 

5/ From HQPlayer's file menu choose "Export Settings"

 

6/ in the window that appears you should already see .hqplayer as the folder being proposed as the location to save the settings file. If not enter "~/.hqplayer" (without the quotes) in the "Save as field" to go to that folder.

 

6/ In the Save as field enter the file name as "default.xml" (without the quotes) or if a file named "default.xml" already exists, click on it and accept the proposal to replace the existing default.xml with this new one you are about to save.

 

7/ Click on the save button at the bottom right of this window.

 

This will ensure your default.xml settings file which is loaded by iTunes-HQPlayer Server is the one that has the correct settings to talk to your DAC.

 

If you follow these instructions correctly it should finally get you up and running.

 

Thanks, I'll give it try.  Before I do, will following your instructions in anyway interfere with my HQP/ Roon setup?  Will it mess up HQP's settings relationship with Roon?

 

Will I have to revert back to how it currently is in order to use HQP/ Roon?

 

Thanks for all your help!

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

5 hours ago, DancingSea said:

 

Thanks, I'll give it try.  Before I do, will following your instructions in anyway interfere with my HQP/ Roon setup?  Will it mess up HQP's settings relationship with Roon?

 

Will I have to revert back to how it currently is in order to use HQP/ Roon?

 

Thanks for all your help!

With Roon/Hqp, Hqp will just use whatever settings are in Hqp at the time.

 

I assume with Roon/Hqp you also want to play through your DAC system.

 

As long as you enter the settings correctly for your DAC Roon/Hqp will continue to work correctly.

[DancingSea]

1 hour ago, Geoffrey Armstrong said:

With Roon/Hqp, Hqp will just use whatever settings are in Hqp at the time.

 

I assume with Roon/Hqp you also want to play through your DAC system.

 

As long as you enter the settings correctly for your DAC Roon/Hqp will continue to work correctly.

 

Thats the thing, Roon and HQP play just fine through my DAC now without doing the .xml maneuver. 

[ambre]

Hallo Geoffrey,

 

Where can I download the program resp script? On the 1e page of this forum?

Is that the latest one?

 

But it  cannot find the plist- file ( please see below)  

Is  there  a brief description how to start as newbie? Or do have to read all the comments on this forum?

 

Best regards, Andreas

 

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

Please go to the Library folder in your home folder:

 

~/Library

 

Within this folder you will find an iTunes folder.

 

within this iTunes folder there should be a Scripts folder.

 

If there isn’t please create one in there.

 

Quit iTunes-HQPlayer Server and launch it again.

 

With a scripts folder in the ~/Library/iTunes folder the .plist file will be created.

 

In my code I could have created this file anywhere. This seemed to be the logical place to put it though.

 

Anyone familiar with using iTunes scripts from Doug’s scripts site (as a good example) will be familiar with the process of placing scripts in this ~Library/iTunes/Scripts folder.

 

Doing so makes a script available in the Scripts menu within iTunes. You can place iTunes-HQPlayer Server in this folder to make it accesible from this scripts menu within iTunes if you wish; but you can run it from anywhere.

 

I’ve obviously made the mistake of assuming this sort of stuff would be obvious to Computer Audiophiles on Mac. Clearly it isn’t!

 

Please go to the most recent post in this thread where I attached the latest version of iTunes HQPlayer Server and download it from there.

[DancingSea]

6 minutes ago, Geoffrey Armstrong said:

 

 

I’ve obviously made the mistake of assuming this sort of stuff would be obvious to Computer Audiophiles on Mac. Clearly it isn’t!

 

 

Obvious to some for sure. Less so to others.  For the most part, on the consumer level, any tweaking is done with settings on the front end. Visits to the backend are more rare. 

 

If you can get your app to a more broad level of user ease, I think there’d be a paying market for sure. 

[Bob Stern]

28 minutes ago, Geoffrey Armstrong said:

Anyone familiar with using iTunes scripts from Doug’s scripts site (as a good example) will be familiar with the process of placing scripts in this ~Library/iTunes/Scripts folder.

 

Doing so makes a script available in the Scripts menu within iTunes. You can place iTunes-HQPlayer Server in this folder to make it accesible from this scripts menu within iTunes if you wish; but you can run it from anywhere.

 

I’ve obviously made the mistake of assuming this sort of stuff would be obvious to Computer Audiophiles on Mac. Clearly it isn’t!

 

You might consider providing an installer script that checks whether this folder exists and creates it if necessary.

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

Well, it’s an Applescript. I agree with you that a Mac app written in Obj C or Swift wouldn’t normally require the user to be familiar with the Library folder; etc.

 

Apple were pioneers in technology that allowed different apps to talk to each other and Applescript is part of that tech. It provides the “glue” for inter-application communication.

 

…but that was before all the security concerns of today.

 

An app that can talk to a browser, for example, could be created for extremely onerous reasons.

 

For that reason a Mac app that makes use of some of that inter-app communication wouldn’t satisfy the “sandboxing” requirements and wouldn’t be accepted for distribution through the Mac store.

 

That’s a big disinventive for guys like me, who might otherwise make this into a regular Mac app.

 

The challenge for Apple and the other tech giants is how to provide inter-app communications without compromising the user’s private data.

 

In the meantime, for now, we still have Applescript on Mac; but who knows how long that will last in the current environment?

 

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

That last reply was intended as a responce to DancingSea.

 

Thanks Bob for your suggestion. That makes sense.

[DancingSea]

41 minutes ago, Geoffrey Armstrong said:

Well, it’s an Applescript. I agree with you that a Mac app written in Obj C or Swift wouldn’t normally require the user to be familiar with the Library folder; etc.

 

Apple were pioneers in technology that allowed different apps to talk to each other and Applescript is part of that tech. It provides the “glue” for inter-application communication.

 

…but that was before all the security concerns of today.

 

An app that can talk to a browser, for example, could be created for extremely onerous reasons.

 

For that reason a Mac app that makes use of some of that inter-app communication wouldn’t satisfy the “sandboxing” requirements and wouldn’t be accepted for distribution through the Mac store.

 

That’s a big disinventive for guys like me, who might otherwise make this into a regular Mac app.

 

The challenge for Apple and the other tech giants is how to provide inter-app communications without compromising the user’s private data.

 

In the meantime, for now, we still have Applescript on Mac; but who knows how long that will last in the current environment?

 

 

I think when one knows a subject very well, it can a challenge to bridge the gap with others who are less wholesale than retail.

 

I appreciate your privacy concerns.  As a common user, it is nice to have apps that work - at the user level - in a simple way.  I'd happily pay $20 or so for an App Store level presentation of HQP Server....

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

1 hour ago, Bob Stern said:

 

You might consider providing an installer script that checks whether this folder exists and creates it if necessary.

Not surprisingly I run into a permissions error if I try to create a "Scripts" folder in that location programatically.

 

I think this is the crux of the issue. Apple wants the user to explicitly grant permission for such scripts to run from that location, by leaving the user to create a "Scripts" folder there if they choose to.

 

This is probably why the standard instruction from Doug's scripts is to create a folder named "Scripts" there, if it doesn't already exist.

 

Otherwise Doug could have created a folder there programatically for all his scripts.

 

It looks like my only other option would be to create the .plist file in another location; but I question if it's really so difficult for a user to manually create a "Scripts" folder there? They might find it useful if they want access to any other scripts from the iTunes Scripts menu.

[DancingSea]

13 hours ago, Geoffrey Armstrong said:

Well this is your problem then. Please follow these instructions step by step:

 

1/ Launch HQP

 

2/ Choose preferences from the HQPlayerDesktop3 menu

 

3/ Set the device to be your DAC (device drop down menu) and all the other settings for up-sampling PCM and DSD as desired. Also the volume range your wish to use.

 

4/ Click "OK"

 

5/ From HQPlayer's file menu choose "Export Settings"

 

6/ in the window that appears you should already see .hqplayer as the folder being proposed as the location to save the settings file. If not enter "~/.hqplayer" (without the quotes) in the "Save as field" to go to that folder.

 

6/ In the Save as field enter the file name as "default.xml" (without the quotes) or if a file named "default.xml" already exists, click on it and accept the proposal to replace the existing default.xml with this new one you are about to save.

 

7/ Click on the save button at the bottom right of this window.

 

This will ensure your default.xml settings file which is loaded by iTunes-HQPlayer Server is the one that has the correct settings to talk to your DAC.

 

If you follow these instructions correctly it should finally get you up and running.

 

Aloha Geoffrey,

 

I precisely followed your instructions.  I double and triple checked each step.  Unfortunately, the results were the same.  HQP Server is not connecting iTunes to HQP.  With "internal speakers" selected in the Mac System Preferences, and my DAC selected in HQP, the sound still came out of my internal speakers.  The setting in HQP remained on my DAC this time, so that was one change.

 

But the music is not getting from iTunes to HQP, there's no activity in HQP.  Its just straight iTunes.

 

When I selected my DAC in the Mac System (sound) Preferences, music came out of my stereo.  But once again, no connection to HQP.

 

It should be noted that when we first started these trials, sound was going from iTunes to HQP.  And it was coming out of my DAC as HQP's upsampled DSD 128.  And we had not done the default.xml maneuver.  The problem back then was if you changed tracks, the whole thing fell apart.  Or we couldn't get the volume to work properly.

 

With your latest incarnation, HQP Server is simply not connecting to HQP at all.  Why, I don't know.

 

Ideas?

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

Ok, I've relented on the location of the .plist file as this has caused some of you problems.

 

In this latest version it will be written to and read from ~/Library/iTunes/ which is hopefully always present.

 

 

iTunes - HQPlayer Server.app.zip

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

14 minutes ago, DancingSea said:

 

Aloha Geoffrey,

 

I precisely followed your instructions.  I double and triple checked each step.  Unfortunately, the results were the same.  HQP Server is not connecting iTunes to HQP.  With "internal speakers" selected in the Mac System Preferences, and my DAC selected in HQP, the sound still came out of my internal speakers.  The setting in HQP remained on my DAC this time, so that was one change.

 

But the music is not getting from iTunes to HQP, there's no activity in HQP.  Its just straight iTunes.

 

When I selected my DAC in the Mac System (sound) Preferences, music came out of my stereo.  But once again, no connection to HQP.

 

It should be noted that when we first started these trials, sound was going from iTunes to HQP.  And it was coming out of my DAC as HQP's upsampled DSD 128.  And we had not done the default.xml maneuver.  The problem back then was if you changed tracks, the whole thing fell apart.  Or we couldn't get the volume to work properly.

 

With your latest incarnation, HQP Server is simply not connecting to HQP at all.  Why, I don't know.

 

Ideas?

Sorry; no further ideas at the moment.

 

Perhaps the only way I'll get you up and running is to have a Teamviewer session with you after the New Year celebrations, next week sometime. How does that sound?

 

My only thought is, that with the changes you've made to your HQPlayer settings file (default.xml) have you tried with the limited test iTunes lib you set up earlier?

 

This would at least allow us to identify if there are issues with your main iTunes lib.

[DancingSea]

22 minutes ago, Geoffrey Armstrong said:

Ok, I've relented on the location of the .plist file as this has caused some of you problems.

 

In this latest version it will be written to and read from ~/Library/iTunes/ which is hopefully always present.

 

 

iTunes - HQPlayer Server.app.zip

 

Aloha - With the internal HD iTunes test library that has about 15 AIFF CD's in it - and using your second to last build - and with System Preferences set to "internal speakers", the sound only came out of the internal speakers, even though HQP remained set on the DAC.

 

When System Preferences was switched to the DAC, some of the original chaos returned.  Music did briefly begin to play from iTunes to HQP, but they quickly separated.  HQP began doing its own thing, playing the song independently.  Control from iTunes was lost.  Playback was full of stutters, it was a mess.  Similar to the early builds.

 

Tried your last build with the internal HD iTunes test library.  HQP had a heart attack and crashed after 15 seconds.  This happened several times in a row.

 

I quit everything.  Launched HQP with Roon.  Everything played normally.  My DAC was selected in both System Preferences and in HQP.

 

Happy to try a TeamViewer, although I'm not familiar with it.  I am in Hawaii, so time zones may be a challenge.

[Miska]

Whenever you use HQPlayer, make sure your DAC is not set as a default audio output device in Audio & MIDI Settings. When using Roon, also make sure the DAC is not enabled as output zone in Roon. Otherwise it is asking for trouble...

[DancingSea]

2 hours ago, Miska said:

Whenever you use HQPlayer, make sure your DAC is not set as a default audio output device in Audio & MIDI Settings. When using Roon, also make sure the DAC is not enabled as output zone in Roon. Otherwise it is asking for trouble...

 

Moi Miska,

 

I launched Roon and deselected HQP as the output.  I'm unclear how to set or unset a default output in Audio Midi.  Attached is a screenshot of my Audio Midi settings.

 

It should be noted that Roon/ HQP work flawlessly with those Audio Midi settings.

 

Even after changing the Roon output, HQP Server remains chaotic.  A song will launch in iTunes, get passed to HQP and then HQP quickly gets disconnected from HQP Server and runs on its own.  This happens after 10 seconds or so.  Once that happens, iTunes has no more influence over HQP and neither app perform properly.

 

Return to Roon/ HQP, and all is a happy land.

 

[DancingSea]

One idea is to just drag an evenings selections  from iTunes directly into HQPlayer.  

 

Problem is most of my 50K tracks are ALAC. Guess would have to convert all to AIFF for the sake of HQP. 

 

Just seems inelegant. 

[Bob Stern]

2 hours ago, Miska said:

Whenever you use HQPlayer, make sure your DAC is not set as a default audio output device in Audio & MIDI Settings.

 

There probably is a sonic benefit to specifying a default device other than the DAC in Audio MIDI Setup, but this setting should not prevent HQP or Geoff's script from working.  HQP does not attempt to acquire "exclusive access" for the DAC (i.e., HQP does not use "hog mode"), so HQP should be oblivious to whether OS X is mixing HQP's output with the default system audio.

 

I don’t use Roon, so I don’t know whether it has additional requirements.

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

6 hours ago, DancingSea said:

 

Moi Miska,

 

I launched Roon and deselected HQP as the output.  I'm unclear how to set or unset a default output in Audio Midi.  Attached is a screenshot of my Audio Midi settings.

 

It should be noted that Roon/ HQP work flawlessly with those Audio Midi settings.

 

Even after changing the Roon output, HQP Server remains chaotic.  A song will launch in iTunes, get passed to HQP and then HQP quickly gets disconnected from HQP Server and runs on its own.  This happens after 10 seconds or so.  Once that happens, iTunes has no more influence over HQP and neither app perform properly.

 

Return to Roon/ HQP, and all is a happy land.

 

As Miska said, "make sure your DAC is not set as the default audio device"

 

Select Built-in Output on the left pane of Audio Midi Set up. Then click on the gear icon at the bottom. A drop down menu will appear. Choose the option "Use this device for sound output".

 

You cannot expect my server app to work with the way you have it set-up at the moment.

 

The situation is different with Roon/HQP, because in that case Roon's output is only going through HQP.

 

In the case of my app iTunes must play along. So it must play along to a different device to the one being used by HQPlayer.

 

 

[DancingSea]

27 minutes ago, Geoffrey Armstrong said:

As Miska said, "make sure your DAC is not set as the default audio device"

 

Select Built-in Output on the left pane of Audio Midi Set up. Then click on the gear icon at the bottom. A drop down menu will appear. Choose the option "Use this device for sound output".

 

You cannot expect my server app to work with the way you have it set-up at the moment.

 

The situation is different with Roon/HQP, because in that case Roon's output is only going through HQP.

 

In the case of my app iTunes must play along. So it must play along to a different device to the one being used by HQPlayer.

 

 

 

I tried this.  Made no difference with our problems.  HQP is set on DAC, Audio Midi is set on Built-in Output.  Sound did came out of Mac speaker, not DAC.  And all the aforementioned issues remained.  Such a struggle it is! 

 

Thanks for you help though.