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[Tsorovan]

Oh and the directory structure in the STP-alike thing WOULD be shown, it's just that I don't make subdirs for artists, that works really shittily and I recommend everyone stopping doing that. It's really more time-consuming, and especially bad if you have say,

John Zorn · Filmworks VII - Cynical Hysterie Hour (1997) [160Xn]
John Zorn, Mike Patton, Ikue Mori · Hemophiliac (2002) [hVBRL]
John Zorn's Chamber Music · Live at the Barbican (1999) [192F]

as I have. Are you going to make one dir for John Zorn, or separate dirs for all 3? No good solution. But you're all free to do it I guess. I found it to be deplorable.
Aaanyway, that's moot because what I suggested would show all subdirs (just not the mounting points).

Oh, and 3D browsers/file managers have been made for a long time, checked any of them out? Myself, I see no point in doing it in 3D. Unnecessary speed impacts, hampered usability, resource hogging...I could go on. No benefits. But that's me and I'm a fruit.

[Zarggg]

Oh and the directory structure in the STP-alike thing WOULD be shown, it's just that I don't make subdirs for artists, that works really shittily and I recommend everyone stopping doing that.

The reason I do that is because I refuse to put albums in filenames and I have some files that are remakes, alternate versions, and rereleases of the same songs, all from the same artist.  The track titles are taken directly from the album cover; discriptive works such as [live] do not exist on my files, unless it is marked as such on the alubm cover.

[Tsorovan]

Whatever works for you is good I guess. Couldn't really understand your reasoning though, because I don't put album names in filenames either :) Anyway, this whole discussion is sort of stupid as my suggestion doesn't impair other people much (that I know of). It could be cool to (with some work) make a customizable parser, and it wouldn't need to be advanced. Just a simple input filter like this:

Legend:
:A: artist
:L: album
:Y: year of release
:C1: comment no. 1
:C2: comment no. 2
:C3: comment no. 3

This is how mine would look:
:A: - :L: (:Y:) [:C1:]\

This is how some others' might look:
:A:\:L: (:C1:, :C2:)\
:A: - :L:

...and you get the general idea.

[I chose :var: just for some weird reason, could be %var too I guess...not important]

This would extract the variables to use in your popup menu later, which also could be modifiable with this same system.

Pretty straightforward and easy. I don't think it would be that hard to code this at all, the question is: does people want it, or something similar? To get it to work with ID3 tags would add some complexity, and it would probably need to be precomputed as scanning through thousands of files for ID3 tags is way slower than just parsing the dir structure. Of course, maybe the non-ID3 way should be precomputed also or at least cached. Probably. I'm not much of a programmer really.

[Olego]

Still confused What's a Fourier transformation

As Brightguy says, Fourier once stated that every signal can be represented using an infinite sum of cosines.  Of course, it'll never be exact due to Gibbs' phenomenon, but assume that is you do it for a very long time, it'll look almost like an original signal.  So now, instead of dealing with raw PCM data, you have what's called an FFT Data: a double array of floating points.  It is because the equation is like this:

Signal(t) = Sum A * cos (i * w₀ * t + Angle).  Doesn't really make much sense unless you spend a lot of time with it, but basically if you don't care about the quality, this is used to sort signals by frequency, when working on sound data, whether it be for compression on anything else.

I thought the original thing was that you were recording a stream, in which case since XMPlay will output to only one device at a time (not counting MIDI) you would hear nothing from it. Instance 2, playing the stream thru speakers, can be paused/stopped without affecting instance 1. It could even be playing the file instance 1 is writing. If you have a 3rd copy, then you can just pause/stop the 2nd copy without affecting the original stream-writing copy.
Hope you get what I mean

Yea, I know what you mean; but it is the first one that I want to mute without pausing it.  Ian's DSP solution will fix that.

I'll add the option in the next update.

Yay!  But please have it be an option, 'cause I want to switch between DSP volume processing and hardware volume processing.  I'm picky!

~Olego~

[Pike84]

Tsorovan:

I personally disapprove of any kind of media library. I don't know if it would be much of bloating, but I think it's just unnecessary. You can have a file explorer (the one with the directory tree) open, and add directories and files straight to the playlist from there, simple as that. Explorer is enough of a media library, for me at least. The easiness of this, of course, depends on, in how good order your music is laid on your hd.

Thus, I really don't see what you need a media library for. I think it would only make things more complicated for me . It wouldn't matter, of course,  if you didn't have to use it, and it didn't add much to the filesize of XMPlay, but I'm afraid it could go rather complicated, all in all .

I don't know everything about media libraries, so perhaps you should tell me, why you think XMPlay should have one .

[Tsorovan]

Well, it's not really a library per se, just a hook into the file system. The ease of use that it would add is if you have, like me, hundreds of GBs of MP3s divided up on several hard drives. "Splicing" these behemoth MP3 dirs into a virtual one that is easily accessed through the player seems, to me, quite useful.

Dragging and dropping/having to right-click and whatnot is a lot more tedious, but I'm quite anal when it comes to simplicity/as few keystrokes as possible, so bear with me.

I can live with XMPlay not having something like this, just wanted to hear if I was the only who found something like this nice. Sometimes, in weak moments, I find myself harbouring some badly-founded hope for general computer users opening their eyes to lean, quick, simple ways to operate programs, but alas...I think I'm insane. Just look at all internet browsers for example...they all suck. Sure, they suck in different ways, but in the end they still suck.

Oh well...I've been rambling on and on for too long now...
It wouldn't be impossible to make a stand-alone program that does this through DDE calls really. Maybe I should install VS .NET and try to reacquaint myself with C++. Was quite a while ago I programmed; back in those glorious DOS days :\

You can have a file explorer (the one with the directory tree) open, and add directories and files straight to the playlist from there, simple as that.

BTW, I can't make that go uncontested! *slaps Kynes with his glove*
Going by that logic, well...this'll be fun :D

"You can have only buttons and press them instead of having hotkeys, simple as that."
"You can have xmplay running as a console application, simple as that."
"You don't need a playlist, you can add song by song manually, simple as that."
"You can have xmplay running on a computer in another room and a special foot controller which transmits commands over shortwave radio as morse code, thus controlling the xmplay instance, simple as that."

Okay, maybe I went overboard a bit there... :D
The gist of it is: improvements are good. Now, if it's worth spending time on adding those improvements...that's another question altogether.

Oh, and please tell me if I should shut up. I know I can be quite annoying at times. I won't mind.

[Olego]

I think I'm insane. Just look at all internet browsers for example...they all suck. Sure, they suck in different ways, but in the end they still suck.

Just had a conversation with a friend today about how either of us launches IE.  We both agreed that on some computers we do Winkey+R, type iexplore, and press Enter.  Double-click is rare, nowadays.  Good thing I have it in my quick launch!  To open the C:\ drive, I do Winkey+R, \, <Enter>.  Seriously, I abuse the Winkey as much as I can.  Instead of Right Click, on my laptop (yes, everyone, Olego owns a LAPTOP!  W00P!  ) I use Shift+F10.  So you're not the only one who's insane.

And browsers do suck major arse!  Opera has mouse gestures which are just about the coolest things ever, but otherwise, it sucks.  IE sucks but it's supported everywhere.  Mozilla would be much better if we didn't have to make 2 version of the same JavaScript code to run on both Mozilla and IE.  (I don't know if there've been any changes recently.)  I like it, but sometimes it can be a pain in the arse.

But I have found something better than all three: links / lynx.  Yes, a text-only web browser that kicks all others in the shins!    He he.

~Olego~

[Ian @ un4seen]

 • Option to remove the taskbar entry on mini-on-top mode. Oh, and no tray icon either.
   A switch would suffice.

I was considering this for 2.7, but didn't get round to it (it's not a matter of simply asking Windows not to show the taskbar entry)... it may well be done for 2.8

 • Optional bare filenames title formatting. I don't want to see any ID3 tags in the title display thanks.

You could set the "title formatting" to nothing - the filename will then be used (except for MODs, as title formatting doesn't affect them).

 • Option [skinconfig.txt] for turning off the tenths of seconds time display.
      I still think this is warranted as it can lower the amount of UI updates by ten times (if you're
      not showing any visualizations).

Don't forget the level indicator needs updating too

 • Can't think of anything except 24/44.1 and 24/48 kHz support.

They are supported... did your change in drivers not fix that problem for you?


I'll have to look over your main/big suggestion a few times

[Pike84]

BTW, I can't make that go uncontested! *slaps Kynes with his glove*
Going by that logic, well...this'll be fun

"You can have only buttons and press them instead of having hotkeys, simple as that."
"You can have xmplay running as a console application, simple as that."
"You don't need a playlist, you can add song by song manually, simple as that."
"You can have xmplay running on a computer in another room and a special foot controller which transmits commands over shortwave radio as morse code, thus controlling the xmplay instance, simple as that."

You made your point there ok . My point however, was that it's just as easy to just use explorer, drag'n'dropping the files. I know nothing about music archives of hundreds of gigs - maybe it would be a helpful addition to someone like you, but you must admit that not many people have even, say, over 50 gigs of music on their machines.

[Tsorovan]

You could set the "title formatting" to nothing - the filename will then be used (except for MODs, as title formatting doesn't affect them).

Ooh, didn't think of checking that. Smart one.

Don't forget the level indicator needs updating too :)

Yep. But how about if your skin doesn't have one? Or if it does, but not visible in say, mini-mode? :)

They are supported... did your change in drivers not fix that problem for you?

Nope. I get a speaker element-obliterating all frequency-encompassing noise. Hrmm. Weird. I think it has something to do with XMPlay though as all other programs (about 10-15 — for example Winamp (strange, I thought I had deleted it), Wavelab & SoundForge) play those same files just fine, either through ASIO/GSIF or the Windows API.

I'll have to look over your main/big suggestion a few times :D

No rush :D Thanks for putting up with my retardation.

[Lee_dC]

call me an idiot if this is already possible and ive just not realised how to do it, but i find it really annoying how if i try play a mp3 or wav, it still goes thru the eq+reverb+AAR stuff that the modules do. i dont need those things on wav or mp3, so it would be great if there was a screen where you could select which parts of the output stage to apply to each filetype. or maybe different eq&reverb settings per filetype? so for mp3 and wav id just turn all that stuff off, then if i put mp3/wav/mod/xm all in the same playlist, i wont have to keep switching the eq/reverb and stuff off when it hits the wav/mp3 files. you could use the "save settings per file" thing i think, but that still means setting it up for every mp3/wav doesnt it? as it is, i only use xmplay for playing modules because of this. btw, the sinc interpolation sounds really great in v2.7!!! and 24/32bit output works now for me. even old MODs sound amazing with a bit of EQ+reverb

[Pike84]

Well, I'm not calling you an idiot - I don't think there are default settings per filetype yet. Could make a useful addition, yup .

[Ian @ un4seen]

Nope. I get a speaker element-obliterating all frequency-encompassing noise.

Is this with everything you try to play at 24-bit (eg. MP3/OGG/MOD), or just some particular 24-bit WAV files? If it's everything, what happens if you set the output to 32-bit instead? If it's just 24-bit WAV files, please upload one to look at

or maybe different eq&reverb settings per filetype?

I'll look into it. In the meantime, the EQ (Q) and Reverb (V) shortcuts may be of some use

[Torkell]

I'll stay out of this one now, except for a couple of things:

One, xmplay.ini does exist, it is on my system as E:\Data\Programs\Un4seen\XMPlay\xmplay.ini, I can upload it, a screenshot of the file tree, a scanned printout of the contents of it, anything to prove that it does exist. It contains plugin settings, and could easily be expanded for other, advanced settings.

Two, I use IE which I either start by Win->P->I[->Enter], or by typing the adress in the address bar on my desktop (did you know you could have it there) and whacking return.

Three, the reason you need two versions of JavaScript is because Mozilla does not support DHTML, an official W3C standard, which is fully supported (beyond the original specification) by Microsoft, and which Mozilla *should* be made to support.

[Tsorovan]

Is this with everything you try to play at 24-bit (eg. MP3/OGG/MOD), or just some particular 24-bit WAV files? If it's everything, what happens if you set the output to 32-bit instead? If it's just 24-bit WAV files, please upload one to look at :)

I've done some testing, and it seems it's only Cubase SX clips that behave like this, maybe they're using some weird header stuff that XMPlay doesn't like...I'll upload a bit from one (24-48_weirdness.wav).

[Ian @ un4seen]

It's sorted for the next release... it was actually being detected as an MPEG file, that's why it sounded a bit funny

[Tsorovan]

Smashing!

[Lee_dC]

it would be good if (for mods with looping), there was an extra option called "fade out loop" or something. then when the song reached the loop point (or after playing it once if you have "loop once" selected), it would start fading out the song, and when it reaches silence, the next song begins. that way, when you have a song that doesnt have a proper ending (ie. a looped mod), at least it will fade out nicely at the end instead of abruptly stopping at the loop point, then the next song bursting in. also would work the same for MODs with "multi-songs" in them.

:idea:also i had a crazy idea (it would be of more benefit to MOD than XM i think tho) where each instrument gets sent to a channel in a mixer, so you can add different amounts of EQ/reverb and maybe plugin effects too (VST?), also set the volume/panning etc.... like the mixer in cubase or whatever. and it would be cool if you could save it to a file once you have a good "mix", then other people could load your mix settings in for that song. so you could make an old MOD sound a lot better & modern & stuff   i think it would be a good balance between time spent on a mix and the noticeable improvement, as it wouldnt take long to set up a mix. it would have to save the settings for each MOD of course.

[Pike84]

That idea of fade-out for looped mods is nice - you got my support .

Dunno about that crazy idea, tho. Remixing mods could be nice, but I think it's just not something for a music player. Besides, it would probably be a rather large task to add something like that effectively, so that it would work and be of some real use. I think we should let XMPlay be just a player, and leave remixing and stuff for some other project.

[Jace]

About that crazy idea..
Sounds like you would be able to do that in any 'modern' tracker fairly easily, and save it as your own file.