Intended direction

shanecavanaugh · Post by **shanecavanaugh** » Mon Oct 30, 2006 6:51 pm

I'm curious what features you have planned and, in general, what you're going for with Play.

Fuga · Post by **Fuga** » Mon Oct 30, 2006 8:08 pm

As am I. From the initial statement it sounds like Cog.

Maurits · Post by **Maurits** » Tue Oct 31, 2006 5:03 pm

They don't necessarily need to bite.

One could be the no-frills, simple interfaced player that just plays every format under the sun.

The other could be this audio-geek focussed player that just plays every format under the sun but does this with Replaygain, Gapless playback, Cue-support, extremely detailed file-info, extremely versatile tagger, graphic analyzer etc. etc. A bit like Foobar2000 is on Windows.

I think there is a demand for both types on OS X, especially with all these recent switchers from Windows.

Neither of these players is the second one right now but from here on development could be based on these two types. When a user comes complaining "It has more than three buttons!" or "I've created this SHN file with embedded cuesheet, can you make the player read that?" you can politely point them in the direction of the other program.

krmathis · Post by **krmathis** » Tue Oct 31, 2006 8:48 pm

I would like to know some more about Stephen's intentions for 'Play' as well.

Ok, I understand that he intend 'Play' to be more than 'Cog'.
A multi-format audio player that works similar to JuK and Amarok (on GNU/Linux), which has a lot more features than Cog.

I expect/hope for features like these:
* Play any audio/container format (at least those supported by 'Max').
* Gapless playback.
* Replay gain support.
* Built in tag editor.
* MusicBrainz integration.
* CD burning (audio) support.
* Cover art management.
* ABX (listening tests) support.
* .. and last but not least, AirTunes support.

Can't wait to see what the future bring!

Edit: Regarding the AirTunes point.
I stream around 95% of my music to one of my two AirPort Express' (powering either the speaker or Stax headspeaker rig). So without AirTunes, 'Play' will not get much playing time around here...

shanecavanaugh · Post by **shanecavanaugh** » Tue Oct 31, 2006 8:54 pm

Slight OT, but maybe a a sticky thread for discussion of features would be a good idea?

Cinch · Post by **Cinch** » Sat Nov 11, 2006 3:24 am

hi,

i was surprised to see play, i stumbled uppon it by accident. recently i've been using cog, but am disappointed. i was wondering why the development of play has started and who is involved. also what programming language is being used? i'm assuming objective c with cocoa?
i'd be willing to help with the development process, however i don't have much experience with audio programming.

i'd be interested in developing gapless playback! this is the most important feature i think. this combined with support for many audio formats and advanced audiophile features. basically what foobar can do, but simpler.

how about for the start:
* true gapless playback
* OGG, FLAC, AIFF, WAV, MP3, MPC, APE, etc. playback
* possibly AAC & Apple lossless
* multiband EQ (like 32 bands, or user configurable, with the option of FFT based EQ!, which uses more cpu but has less distortion to the audio)
* CoreAudio supporting multiple output channels. for example i've got a soundcard with 12 outputs, would be nice to select which channel to send the audio to.
* fast database-like library for managing/sorting/searching
* almost forgot: the option of selecting a buffer size for playback. i don't want the audio to skip because there's other disc activity going on. like a skip protection as seen on cd and minidisc players. possibly the option to store the current song in RAM to avoid disk access.

hope some of these features can be implemented, and i'm looking forward for an alternative to itunes.

Post by **sbooth** » Sat Nov 11, 2006 7:05 am

Cinch wrote:i was surprised to see play, i stumbled uppon it by accident. recently i've been using cog, but am disappointed. i was wondering why the development of play has started and who is involved. also what programming language is being used? i'm assuming objective c with cocoa?

Yes, Play is a Core Data application written in Objective C and Objective C++. The development team consists of me, myself, and I! I decided to write Play because I wanted a fuller-featured multiformat jukebox player for OS X, and I also wanted to learn Core Data programming.

i'd be interested in developing gapless playback! this is the most important feature i think. this combined with support for many audio formats and advanced audiophile features. basically what foobar can do, but simpler.

Play supports gapless for FLAC and Ogg (Vorbis) right now. To add gapless for MP3 a new MP3 decoder is needed (the Core Audio implementation doesn't do gapless). I'm going to use MAD but I haven't gotten to it yet.

how about for the start:
* true gapless playback

See above

* OGG, FLAC, AIFF, WAV, MP3, MPC, APE, etc. playback
* possibly AAC & Apple lossless

Already done!

* multiband EQ (like 32 bands, or user configurable, with the option of FFT based EQ!, which uses more cpu but has less distortion to the audio)

On the drawing board (will use an AudioUnit for this)

* CoreAudio supporting multiple output channels. for example i've got a soundcard with 12 outputs, would be nice to select which channel to send the audio to.

Also on the drawing board

* fast database-like library for managing/sorting/searching

Already done- Play uses Core Data with an SQLite store.

* almost forgot: the option of selecting a buffer size for playback. i don't want the audio to skip because there's other disc activity going on. like a skip protection as seen on cd and minidisc players. possibly the option to store the current song in RAM to avoid disk access.

?? I'm not sure this is really necessary. Play uses a separate high-priority thread to read audio from disk. It should (!) be able to work with the buffer sized as-is (currently 128K).

ratmice · Post by **ratmice** » Sat Nov 11, 2006 3:33 pm

krmathis wrote: * .. and last but not least, AirTunes support.

Can't wait to see what the future bring!

Edit: Regarding the AirTunes point.
I stream around 95% of my music to one of my two AirPort Express' (powering either the speaker or Stax headspeaker rig). So without AirTunes, 'Play' will not get much playing time around here...

Check out airfoil, let's you send any audio to any airport express (even multiple ones).

http://www.rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/mac/

krmathis · Post by **krmathis** » Sat Nov 11, 2006 6:31 pm

ratmice wrote:Check out airfoil, let's you send any audio to any airport express (even multiple ones).

http://www.rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/mac/

AirTunes support within the actual application is a lot better, since it allow us to switch between local playback and any AirPort Express without using a second application.
I think Stephen can make this possible with the use of JustePort or raop-play.

Cinch · Post by **Cinch** » Sun Nov 26, 2006 5:54 pm

Play supports gapless for FLAC and Ogg (Vorbis) right now.

Congratulations on ..
Gapless FLAC & OGG!

wohooo. i think you're the first person to bring the mac os x community a player with gapless flac and ogg support!

(btw: gapless flac works in the more recent svn version, ogg in the unstable from the main website)

huge thanks sbooth!

Post by **sbooth** » Sun Nov 26, 2006 8:42 pm

On a side note, the gapless playback only works if the files are the same bits per sample and sample rate. So for example, playback of a FLAC at 16/44.1 followed by a FLAC at 24/96 will not be truly gapless.

krmathis · Post by **krmathis** » Fri Dec 22, 2006 10:00 pm

No check-ins to SVN the last three weeks (since Sat Dec 2 06:38:20 2006 UTC).
Sure hope you have not abandoned the project!

Post by **sbooth** » Sat Dec 23, 2006 7:46 am

No, not at all! I've been hard at work on Max 0.7, which is basically finished. Then I will be getting back to Play

krmathis · Post by **krmathis** » Sat Dec 23, 2006 8:44 am

Good to hear!

krmathis · Post by **krmathis** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 4:06 pm

Nice too see that you are now back devoting some time to 'Play' again!

Max 0.7 was released two weeks ago, and since then there have been twice as many checkins as in December.

I am hoping it will sometime be able to replace iTunes as my favorite audio player.

sbooth.org

Intended direction

Intended direction

play

Re: play