testing 1.1.6

[urlwolf]

First, congrats. GMB is the winner in my recent tour de force on linux players. Very powerful!
The tagger is the best I've seen, beats even foobar.

Now, things that don't work in 1.1.6:
- flac doesn't play, whereas in 1.0.2 it works fine
- populating the library is slower than other tools, and it slows down all other operations. I guess that's perl's multithread support (or lack of)
- any long playlist with album image doesn't scroll fluently at all  (same as in 1.0.2). I know this is technically difficult. Is there a cache somewhere? I cannot find it inside .config... The most efficient implementation of albumart on the playlist is deadbeef's, you could take a look and see why their scroll is perfectly smooth.
- audio stutters; but this may be my current settings. Is there a buffer anywhere?
- replaygain calculation, while improved on 1.1.6, still fails more often than not.

Sorry to sound negative, I'm actually quite excited I found this player...!

[Quentin Sculo]

- flac doesn't play, whereas in 1.0.2 it works fine

what backend do you use (in audio tab) ?
- gstreamer (recommended, if not available you need to install a package such as libgstreamer-perl)
- mpg123 and friends, both flac123 and ogg123 should be able to play flac files, is one installed, which one is selected in advanced options ?

- populating the library is slower than other tools, and it slows down all other operations. I guess that's perl's multithread support (or lack of)

It's probably the second phase, specific to some mp3, it reads the whole mp3s to check the potentially very wrong estimate of length/bitrate is correct. There is no other really sure way to know the correct length of mp3 files that don't have a vbr header. I think other players do not bother and just use the estimation. I plan to make it optional, with the option to check it only the first time the song is played. Also I need to improve the estimation a bit, it currently only uses the first frame.

- any long playlist with album image doesn't scroll fluently at all  (same as in 1.0.2). I know this is technically difficult. Is there a cache somewhere? I cannot find it inside .config... The most efficient implementation of albumart on the playlist is deadbeef's, you could take a look and see why their scroll is perfectly smooth.

I think someone mentioned this problem some time ago in the forum, if it is the same problem, it happens with the a large (as in almost fullscreen) SongTree, it is partly due the extreme customizability of the SongTree that prevent some optimizations, it is not due to the pictures, or to the length of the list, but to the number of text elements displayed. I could maybe create a simpler version that would be faster.

- audio stutters; but this may be my current settings. Is there a buffer anywhere?

It works fine for me, except in extreme load
gstreamer doesn't seem to offer a buffer option for local files, at least not easily.
some of the mpg123/... have a command line option to increase the buffer
mplayer may have one too

- replaygain calculation, while improved on 1.1.6, still fails more often than not.
Yes that is a problem with the perl bindings, I need to work with the developers on this.
Currently it's best to use other tools to add the replaygain info, like mp3gain, vorbisgain ...
I'll add a warning at least.

[urlwolf]

Thank Quentin,

1- I'm using the defaults with gstreamer.
What I see in 1.1.6 is that flac playback stops, then gets fluent, then stops. The time slider moves in jumps of say 20 secs.
In 1.0.2 I still see that the music stops sometimes, then it continues. Cpu is not the problem, not should be memory (16Gb, only 3 in use). Maybe disk IO?

2- tag reading speed : sounds good. I thought it was because you use your own lib in perl.

3- I'm up for a simpler, faster version of SongTree. Thanks! This was using the other component, though. It did have a lot of text. I'm trying smaller-sized components, with dxjay's layout. we'll see.

4- audio stutter: it happens on both gstreamers and the other options. I really wonder what's going on here... Other music programs also do this. Sometimes sounds stops for a sec, then continues. In foobar (wine) it happens when foobar has to write a tag, for example playcounts (I disabled that).

5- replaygain. A pity about perl bindings. You'll have the entire market to yourself if you get it to work. Currently, only quodLibet (plugin, not very efficient, only one album at a time) and soundKonverter can do this with a GUI on linux.

I'm very impressed at your coding speed. As an old perl hand, I like to think it's the language :) Good work! You make guayadeque's dev (previously thought the most responsive ever) look like a sloucher :)

- flac doesn't play, whereas in 1.0.2 it works fine

what backend do you use (in audio tab) ?
- gstreamer (recommended, if not available you need to install a package such as libgstreamer-perl)
- mpg123 and friends, both flac123 and ogg123 should be able to play flac files, is one installed, which one is selected in advanced options ?

- populating the library is slower than other tools, and it slows down all other operations. I guess that's perl's multithread support (or lack of)

It's probably the second phase, specific to some mp3, it reads the whole mp3s to check the potentially very wrong estimate of length/bitrate is correct. There is no other really sure way to know the correct length of mp3 files that don't have a vbr header. I think other players do not bother and just use the estimation. I plan to make it optional, with the option to check it only the first time the song is played. Also I need to improve the estimation a bit, it currently only uses the first frame.

- any long playlist with album image doesn't scroll fluently at all  (same as in 1.0.2). I know this is technically difficult. Is there a cache somewhere? I cannot find it inside .config... The most efficient implementation of albumart on the playlist is deadbeef's, you could take a look and see why their scroll is perfectly smooth.

I think someone mentioned this problem some time ago in the forum, if it is the same problem, it happens with the a large (as in almost fullscreen) SongTree, it is partly due the extreme customizability of the SongTree that prevent some optimizations, it is not due to the pictures, or to the length of the list, but to the number of text elements displayed. I could maybe create a simpler version that would be faster.

- audio stutters; but this may be my current settings. Is there a buffer anywhere?

It works fine for me, except in extreme load
gstreamer doesn't seem to offer a buffer option for local files, at least not easily.
some of the mpg123/... have a command line option to increase the buffer
mplayer may have one too

- replaygain calculation, while improved on 1.1.6, still fails more often than not.
Yes that is a problem with the perl bindings, I need to work with the developers on this.
Currently it's best to use other tools to add the replaygain info, like mp3gain, vorbisgain ...
I'll add a warning at least.

[ochosi]

ad 1 and 4: sounds like a gstreamer-bug then. you could try mplayer, it even uses less cpu in my experience.

[urlwolf]

Some problems may be due to a deffective disk, will report back...

[urlwolf]

Looks like the scroll problems are gone after I moved to an esata disk instead of usb.

Now, the stuttering problem persists for ogg, not for mp3 nor flac. and only gstreamer.
The other two are good, but I'd lose replaygain, which is important for me (at least no options visible).

gstreamer without  replaygain works fine.

My guess is that there's something in the ogg replaygain tags that doesn't fully work. It could be 1.1.6 (beta) or my gstreamer. I'm on sabayon, kernel 2.5.36, with the 'magic patch' on :)

UPDATE
after just switching around players, I can get gstreamer with replaygain to play ok, but after a song or two it goes bad again.

If anyone knows how to get mplayer or mpg123 and friends to play with replaygain, I'm fine with that too :)

Looks like gstreamer through alsa works fine. I'll keep playing like this for a while.

Thanks

[urlwolf]

Actually, sorry to report that 1.0.2 has the same problems with these ogg files.
And switching to mplayer/mpg123 or changing to alsa doesn't help for some reason :/, or do I have to reboot GMP before the change takes place?
one CPU goes to 100%
Deadbeef and audacious play them just fine, so I don't think the files are damaged.

finally, here's an example of such a file.

[Quentin Sculo]

or do I have to reboot GMB before the change takes place?

The change of playback options in gmb takes effect once the current song is stopped or finished.

If anyone knows how to get mplayer or mpg123 and friends to play with replaygain, I'm fine with that too Smiley

mpg123 has  --rva-mix / --rva-album options that should work, but I don't think any of the others has this.

finally, here's an example of such a file.

the ogg file doesn't seem to play correctly with any gstreamer-based player I tried (on mandriva 2010.1), so it's a bug with gstreamer or with the file, I doubt there is anything I can do about it.
You should report it to the gstreamer people

So it seems the problem is only with these ogg files then ?

[urlwolf]

The problem is with all my ogg files. killing and restarting pulseaudio doesn't help. Maybe I'll report a bug to my distro. I hate pulseaudio...
mpg123 has  --rva-mix / --rva-album doesn't help here buecause it reads some weird non-standard rva tags, not real replaygain taks (according to the man page).

Thanks