Topic: Suggestions for 3.9

[Alt]

Jace,
So you need channel allocation? ASIO Bridge + ASIO4ALL could help with it
http://static.kvraudio.com/i/b/asiobridge_v1003.gif

[Jace]

Shall give 'em a spin. Cheers.
Looks like I can't figure things out. Here's my settings on ASIO Bridge, ASIO4ALL and XMPlay output. I can't get a peep to come out of any speaker whenever output is set to the bridge. It happily shows the input levels, completely ignores output frequency/bitrate settings (That's just an ASIO thing though, right?) while it flashes the SR on both input and output. It doesn't even want to let me set the outputs to match inputs. Can't even decide if the 'ASIO ON/OFF' button in the middle shows what the current state is or what the state will be when I click on it.

Too complicated an option for me, it seems.

[saga]

ASIO4All requires exclusive device access or it won't output a single tone. If you have any other application active that may output audio (e.g. Flash in a web browser), this may be the reason.
Have you checked if e.g. WASAPI yields any better results that DSound?

[piovrauz]

[ASIO4All requires exclusive device access]
mmm, how comes it still works here even if I'm playing stuff on a player?
I mean, if I have MPC-HC output on Directsound and XMPlay outputs on ASIO (Creative ASIO).
Both work with no issues at the same time. Maybe there are spare pins on the deviice?

[Alt]

Shall give 'em a spin. Cheers.
Looks like I can't figure things out. Here's my settings on ASIO Bridge, ASIO4ALL and XMPlay output.Can't even decide if the 'ASIO ON/OFF' button in the middle shows what the current state is or what the state will be when I click on it.

Too complicated an option for me, it seems.

It's not really that complicated. Here's few advices that may help:
1) You don't need to enable VB-Audio Hi-Fi Cable in A4A Control Panel, just Output of RT HD Audio
2) You need to select ASIO4ALL as your A.S.I.O. Device
3) "ASIO OFF" means you disabled all sound streams through ASIO Bridge
Also did you select Hi-Fi Cable Input as your default Windows Audio Device?

piovrauz,
Looks like Creative ASIO doesn't take exclusive access to audio device (unlike Kernel Steaming, WASAPI Exclusive and ASIO4ALL for Windows Vista/7/8 or ASUS Xonar ASIO for both XP and Vista).

[Jace]

I tried ASIO4ALL as the output on XMPlay as well and it would output sound, but then the cable thing did absolutely nothing at all. Reckon I'll just live with it and wait, in case it'll be implemented in XMP in some way or another one day.

[piovrauz]

Alt, that piece of SW might interest me: do I understand right that I can clone front speaker to back speakers, or even to another card? that would solve something without bugging XMPlay.
If that's the case, as soon I got some free time I'll give it a try.

[Alt]

I'm not sure about multiple cards but for single ASIO device - yes, you can clone/disable/relocate all available channels.

[saga]

I mean, if I have MPC-HC output on Directsound and XMPlay outputs on ASIO (Creative ASIO).
Both work with no issues at the same time. Maybe there are spare pins on the deviice?

Uh, Creative ASIO is not ASIO4All. Creative's ASIO driver is an actual hardware ASIO driver, so it may permit non-exlusive access as it bypasses the Windows mixer. But the way the ASIO4All driver works, it cannot do this, since it uses Kernel Streaming / WaveRT, which both require exclusive device access.

[piovrauz]

@Jace: check this link, it may or may not have intersting things. http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2858110

[Ian @ un4seen]

If I've understood things right, XMPlay actually relies on the soundcard drivers to produce the sound for the rear speakers, which in my case is more or less utter garbage. Which is why I really would love for the program to have its own channel upmixing. Even if it's straight clone of front right to rear right and front left to rear left or something similar. Getting music from rear speakers would be better than getting random noise out of 'em.

Here's an update for you to try...

   www.un4seen.com/stuff/xmplay.exe

It adds a "quad" option to the "Channels" setting in the Output options page, which should expand mono/stereo stuff to 4 speakers. It hasn't been tested much yet, so there's a good chance of bugs. Let me know if you find them

[piovrauz]

A little question: how is QUAD supposed to work with multi channel files?
I mean, in the case of a 5.1 flac (from an actual Audio-DVD), played with QUAD and with downmix multichannel selected.
Does this mean rear and front speakers get the same output or there's a downmix matrix at play here?
BUG spotted, or maybe I don't understand how QUAD works.
Right now if I select MONO I get audio from just the SX speaker, STEREO is normal, while QUAD gives something like a dual mono.
Using headphones, and Os speaker count is 2 (stereo).
Will try later on my system if it's the same, but sometthing is strange.
EDIT: same happens with 4 speakers setup.

[Ian @ un4seen]

A little question: how is QUAD supposed to work with multi channel files?
I mean, in the case of a 5.1 flac (from an actual Audio-DVD), played with QUAD and with downmix multichannel selected.
Does this mean rear and front speakers get the same output or there's a downmix matrix at play here?

Yep, 5.1 will be downmixed to quad if the "Downmix multi-channel" option is enabled; the front and rear channels will be left where they are, with the centre and LFE channels mixed in.

BUG spotted, or maybe I don't understand how QUAD works.
Right now if I select MONO I get audio from just the SX speaker, STEREO is normal, while QUAD gives something like a dual mono.

Oops! Stereo-to-quad upmixing is indeed broken. I spent more time looking at downmixing, and never noticed a problem in the main purpose of the new option ... Here's an update that should get it working...

   www.un4seen.com/stuff/xmplay.exe

[piovrauz]

OK, now QUAD sounds right to me (on a 2 speaker/headphone setup too). Thanks for the fix.

BUT... if I select MONO just one speaker has sound. Is this intended?
I never use/used MONO, but shouldn't XMPlay output the same sound to both of the speaker (dual mono)?
Not a problem, just asking.

[Jace]

3.8.0.19 appears to do this perfectly, as far as I can tell. All the thank yous! <3

Will let you know if I'll run into something unexpected/undesired at any point. At least after brief testing with mono, stereo and 5.1 files, everything seems as good as they can be.


Only way with soundcard drivers which seemed to work was to enable reverb effects (making everything sound like you're in an empty swimming pool) or reassigning rear speaker output to front output, but I would need to change that every time I swap programs that can make sounds. But luckily, that is not needed anymore.

[Ian @ un4seen]

BUT... if I select MONO just one speaker has sound. Is this intended?
I never use/used MONO, but shouldn't XMPlay output the same sound to both of the speaker (dual mono)?
Not a problem, just asking.

Yep, the "mono" setting outputting to a single speaker is as intended. Windows will automatically convert that to stereo if you use the default (WaveOut) or DirectSound output systems. It is also possible to have mono files played in stereo by XMPlay (eg. to allow balance control) by setting "Channels" to "stereo". Actually, that reminds me of a little annoyance: when writing mono files to disk, they will be written in stereo (or quad now) if the output is set to stereo (or quad). Here's an update that will write the file with the original number of channels except when downmixing is enabled...

   www.un4seen.com/stuff/xmplay.exe

This update also adds a "List - Looping" shortcut that was requested earlier.

I forgot to mention previously that these recent updates have included some tweaks to the MP3/2/1 file detection to reduce the chances of non-MP3/2/1 files being detected as MP3/2/1 because they happen to contain MPEG sync words. If anyone encounters any files being incorrectly detected as MP3/2/1, please let me know and upload the files to test with here...

   ftp.un4seen.com/incoming/

[piovrauz]

Oh, OK, got it, MONO is working as intended. (I was using wasapi so the sound come from only one speaker)
ASIO behaves the same, Dsound "upmixes to stereo" as you said. All seems fine to me now. Thanks.

[piovrauz]

Would it be possible to put the "Close at the end of track" option" that is in the right click menu of the close button in the right click menu of the stop button too?
So right clicking the stop button would show "Stop at the end of track and "Close at the end of track". (with the kind of menu that remembers the choosen option)

Also, for a reason or another, that option doesn't work anymore: I have a list of a bunch of songs, set to loop the current track forever, but if I select "Close at the end of track" it still repeats the track.
mmmm

[saga]

Stop and close are two completely different functions though, so why should their context menus be merged? I think the current division is quite logical.
And yeah, if you want to close XMPlay at the end of a track, you must disable loop because otherwise... well, it will never end. Depending on some plugins, I think it might not be technically possible to realize this in another way (i.e. plugin doesn't report that it's looping).

[piovrauz]

You're kind of right on the stop button logic division from the close one: let's call the proposed option "Stop and close at the end of track" instead, it'll be more consistent with the menu.

Regarding looping of a track + "Close at the end of track" (I suppose "Stop ..." would do the same): it's true that some plugin won't play nice, but even if a track (example, FLAC) is looped or there is a looped playlist it should be able to stop the current track and close XMPlay after clicking that option. dunno if it's better to post this as a bug but for now I'll keep it here since I asked a feature.

[Dotpitch]

... Regarding looping of a track + "Close at the end of track" (I suppose "Stop ..." would do the same): it's true that some plugin won't play nice, but even if a track (example, FLAC) is looped or there is a looped playlist it should be able to stop the current track and close XMPlay after clicking that option.

saga brought this up before. Apparently, 'Stop at end of track' will not allow looping and 'Close at end of track' will, so enabling both will get the behaviour you're looking for,

Does anyone else feel that "close at end of track" should also work when a song is set to loop forever? Right now, you first have to disable looping for that option to work.

Rather than disabling looping in that case, another option is to enable "Stop at end of track". It's still a bit of extra effort, but at least you don't have to re-set the looping option again afterwards
You could set a shortcut key that triggers both "Current track - stop at end" and "Close at end of track/list".

[piovrauz]

mmm, so I wasn't alone...
well, I think looping setting should not matter.
isn't it possible to have both those options just ignore looping settings?

[Dotpitch]

well, I think looping setting should not matter. isn't it possible to have both those options just ignore looping settings?

Most probably it is possible, but I think the looping setting could matter. For example, you could loop 3 times (using the loop limit) and then close.

[piovrauz]

So there I suppose one would need an other option regarding that too...

[komu]

Please, Add to ‘favorites function’.(see attachments)
I think, this 'favorites function' is more efficient than ‘playlist tab function'.

Because I do not speak English well, it is difficult to describe the favorite function.

It is registered in the favorites a music file(mp3, wma file, etc.) or a playlist file(pls, m3u file, etc.), for example like in 'Billy player'.

If you register a playlist file in the favorites, it performs a function similar to the 'Playlist tab'.

And if you set a hotkey(Ctrl + 1, Ctrl + 2, etc.) to registered playlist file, you can use this feature effectively.