AyreWave- A New OSX Audio Player Released AT RMAF

[Lars]

AyreWave is a new audio player for OSX that has a number of interesting features. It is a "minimalist" program, that among other things, can play Flac files. It has the ability to handle complete gapless memory playback, auto sample rate change, and can be run in Hog mode.

 

The program is written by Stephen Booth and is superior sounding to his previous efforts (Play).

 

The free beta is ready to try at this site:

 

http://sbooth.org/AyreWave/

 

 

 

[wgscott]

Thanks for the heads up. I guess this is the new Play. 64 bit, excellent.

 

I wonder if it will be open source?

 

It is very basic, but I view it as a positive. It has a feature where you select something in iTunes and it adds the selection to its playlist, which is how I have been using Play recently. It also seems to do the right thing (order-wise) if you select a whole album to add to the playlist.

 

I'm listening via my iMac built-in speakers as the rotten children are monopolizing my mini to play Spore.

 

[roscoeiii]

Or do we have another new contender still in the pipes???

 

[Mr.C]

Just downloaded, nice. Sounds very clean like Play, maybe a bit more refined if memory serves. Very direct sound.

 

Re: beta version, I believe that is the Twilight beta that people are talking about IIRC, put out by Audiofile Engineering.

 

[Lizard_King]

I tried installing it yet I am not able to. My Mac is older and uses 32 bit architecture. Could this be the reason why I can't install AyreWave.

 

[Lars]

AyreWave requires 10.5 or latter.

 

[cfmsp]

 

"AyreWave requires 10.5 or latter."

 

Yes, and it also requires a Mac with 64-bit architecture (not to be confused with 64-bit OS).

 

clay

 

[Lizard_King]

AyreWave needs a 64-bit processor, so either Intel or a new PPC. The G5 won't work, unfortunately. The program is not compatible with 32 bit mode at this time.

 

[cfmsp]

Yes, this is the player I referred to some time back as both "minimalist" and "Alpha".

 

"Or do we have another new contender still in the pipes???"

 

Presumably, Audiofile Engineering will release Twilight at some point.

 

 

enjoy

clay

 

 

[earther]

Sounds pretty good, but i'm hearing a random clicking noise when played via usb into my benchmark. Tried all the options and changed sample rate, etc... never goes away. click click click click.

 

[sbooth]

Does the clicking occur for all file types? Does it seem to occur at a periodic interval or is it truly random?

 

[earther]

Just tried it with aiff, alac and mp3 and it was occurring with all of them. However, i just tried something which i didn't do initially and it fixed the problem. Seems hog mode was the issue. When that's activated i hear about 4 clicks per second which oscillate from left to right and change in loudness based on how loud the recording is.

 

 

 

[CG]

Nothing to do with clicking... I hope.

 

The attached is an AppleScript for people who like to use iTunes as the front-end organizer for their playback software. Select whatever tracks or albums you wish from iTunes and run this AppleScript. It will do the rest if you have AyreWave installed in your system.

 

This is similar to clicking the the iTunes button in AyreWave, but is more iTunes-centric. If this is your preferred mode of operation, then deselecting

 

Playlist: Remember between launches

 

and

 

Track Banner: Display when playback starts

 

in AyreWave Preferences makes the operation a little more integrated with iTunes. Adding the application to your Dock also makes it a little more accessible as well.

 

 

 

[I. G.]

But it has some problems with bit depth recognition, some 24 bit hirez tracks recognized as 16 bit (ALAC), checking it on the Inspector panel. And sometimes it just stops playing after a track.

 

[CG]

Well, this is why this is a free beta version. Be sure to send your comments and bug reports to the author.

 

[roscoeiii]

Oh boy oh boy a new music player.

 

I have not had the clicking problem but have had the issue of playback stopping after one track.

 

Hog mode would mean selecting "obtain exclusive access?"

 

Off to try the Apple Script...

 

 

 

[wgscott]

In fact, absolutely flawless at the moment. (2010 mini, 64-bit kernel, 2 gig memory). The inspector reports the correct bittiness and sampling frequency.

 

[Richard Dale]

 

earther: "..Sounds pretty good, but i'm hearing a random clicking noise when played via usb into my benchmark.."

 

 

 

Yes the same for me. I was trying out AyreWave before I read this thread with a new CD I only bought and ripped yesterday, and was thinking they must have mastered it off a battered vinyl copy. I have four year old MacBook with a 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo with 2 Gb memory and Mac OS 10.6.4 into an HRT Music Streamer II+.

 

 

 

Here are some of the usability issues I found:

 

 

• If you select an album in iTunes, and then hit the AyreWave 'import iTunes' button it adds the tracks, but selects the last one. So when you press play, it only plays the last track. Then there is no way of stopping the track that is playing, only pausing. So I had to delete all the album tracks and start again. I think you have to select them all before they will all play, as it only plays selected items.
   
   
   
  
• If you drag and drop an album from iTunes onto AyreWave, the tracks arrive but aren't sorted by track number. This is the same bug as in Play, but the difference is that I was able to fix it in Play as it is Free Software with the source available.
   
   
   
  
• You can't drag from iTunes onto the AyreWave icon in the dock. Maybe this isn't a normal way of interacting with Mac OS X, but I expected it to work.
   
   
   
  
• It would be nice to an item in the service menu 'Play selected iTunes item', so that I could select an album in iTunes and go to the service menu to play it via AyreWave.
   
  

 

 

Not really much of a usability problem, but an image of the album cover of the currently playing track would be great.

 

 

 

I wish it was Free Software, but as long as the price is reasonable and something like $100/70 euros or less I think I will probably buy it. The other proprietary programs didn't appeal to me as they don't seem quite targeted at audiophiles. Amarra is aimed at recording engineers, and Pure Music seems to have started off as a way of recording copies of vinyl LPs. Amarra seems to have some draconian copying restrictions like USB dongles and high prices for backup replacements. They seem to have more functions than I need.

 

Seeing the names 'Charles Hansen and J Gordon Rankin' on the credits gives me confidence that it is designed for best sound quality and will have had some excellent feedback from the start about how it sounds on a high end system.

 

 

[CG]

If you select an album in iTunes, and then hit the AyreWave 'import iTunes' button it adds the tracks, but selects the last one. So when you press play, it only plays the last track. Then there is no way of stopping the track that is playing, only pausing. So I had to delete all the album tracks and start again. I think you have to select them all before they will all play, as it only plays selected items.

 

I found that if you double click on any track, that track will play right away.

 

 

If you drag and drop an album from iTunes onto AyreWave, the tracks arrive but aren't sorted by track number. This is the same bug as in Play, but the difference is that I was able to fix it in Play as it is Free Software with the source available.

 

I just tried this with about 20 albums. Every one was added in correct order. Very curious. Which column did you have highlighted for sorting?

 

 

The other two comments are not so much bugs as requests for features. They sound like good ideas to me.

 

Oh, and there *is* an image of the currently playing track shown. Perhaps you aren't looking in the right place?

 

[Richard Dale]

 

CG: "..I found that if you double click on any track, that track will play right away.."

 

 

 

Yes, or you can select a particular track and press play. I've just tried selecting the first track and hitting play - and it does play all the tracks (I thought it would stop after the first one). So I think the bug is that after using the 'import from iTunes' button it just needs to select the first track, rather than the last one. Maybe there should be an option to just start playing the album, instead of needing to hit play.

 

 

 

CG: "..I just tried this with about 20 albums. Every one was added in correct order. Very curious. Which column did you have highlighted for sorting?.."

 

 

 

This is in Play I assume? I have Album/Artist/Title/Track/Duration columns sorted by Album. I would have thought that unless you wanted to sort by trackname, you would always want the tracks ordered by track number. I fixed the problem by sorting the track numbers when the album details were retrieved from the pasteboard, rather than changing the behaviour of the play list widget's sorting though.

 

 

 

CG: "..Oh, and there *is* an image of the currently playing track shown. Perhaps you aren't looking in the right place?.."

 

 

 

Gosh- you're right! I see it in the title bar now, small but a nice feature.

 

 

[CG]

But... If you are already playing some tracks and decide to add some more to the playlist, won't sending the playback and selection pointers to the top of the most recently added group disrupt whatever you had previously started playing? (BTW, the AppleScript interface to iTunes does exactly what you are asking for. One of the beauties of AppleScript is that you can customize the way you interact with applications to the extent the app's dictionary provides the options.)

 

I added about 20 albums to AyreWave, not Play. Every one was in track order. I stopped adding because I gave up trying to make it break. I don't know, but perhaps what you are seeing is due to the way you have tracks sorted in iTunes. Clearly something is different because I don't think you're imagining this!

 

[Richard Dale]

 

In Play, the app gets the tracks from the pasteboard like this:

 

 

 

NSDictionary *iTunesDictionary = [[info draggingPasteboard] propertyListForType:iTunesPboardType];

NSDictionary *tracks = [iTunesDictionary objectForKey:@"Tracks"];

 

 

Then it just obtains the track numbers with [tracks allKeys] and uses that. According to the NSDictionary documentation "The order of the elements in the array is not defined", and so if you are seeing the tracks it the right order the must be something in Play or AyreWave that is doing the sorting after the details have been retrieved from the pasteboard. I don't think it can be to do with any setting I've changed in iTunes.

 

 

 

[findog3103]

The program sounding great, but I also started to hear clicking when I moved from a lossless to mp3 file. After closing and reopening the program, the clicking ceased.

 

[blueixus]

I am trying to get this to function - has anyone else tried?

 

[findog3103]

Doesn't work for me.