Author Topic: musicIP (as a player): wow (Read 45,067 times)

urlwolf · « **on:** May 22, 2007, 08:15 PM »

Wow.

The database search is lighitng fast, almost real-time.
I can drag and drop songs to my portable player (!).
Albumart shows up fast.

Memory usage is tiny compared with basically anything else (even virtual memory) : mediamonkey, foobar, even XMplay (!).

This thing is actually a very serious player. And the added playlist generation features are great!

EDIT: a good review, with pics:
http://musicinterfaces.com/2007/02/28/impressively-smart-playlist-generation-musicip-mixer/

mouser · « **Reply #1 on:** May 22, 2007, 09:17 PM »

um... could we have a url or is it a secret?

(a screenshot would be nice too

Darwin · « **Reply #2 on:** May 22, 2007, 10:14 PM »

musicIP sounds seriously nice (as opposed to merely tentatively nice...) and I'm off to download it now. Thanks for alerting me to it, urlwolf!

justice · « **Reply #3 on:** May 23, 2007, 12:27 AM »

Seems like a mix between a good media player, last.fm and Picard music matching.
Instead of regular playlists, it can create a playlist based on one song, then you can select whether you want to hear "more like this" or "less like this". Also compares song analysis with an online database so you can select 'a mix' on mood etc.

Good for big media collections. Plusses for pointing you towards legitimate free music with similar qualities as what you are listening too. Best way I've seen to discover unknown talent!

Mind you that is a 5 minute review. After a few weeks I probably have a better opinion.
[attachimg=#]

Darwin · « **Reply #4 on:** May 23, 2007, 04:58 AM »

Thanks for posting the above, justice. musicIP Mixer is just about finished validating my mp3s (I have roughly the same amount as you - about 1800 or so) and am already impressed by the fact that I've been able to play tracks while my collection is being indexed/validated. I'm already impressed, too, by the fact that while indexing AND playing a track, resource utilization is less than, say, WMP or iTunes when either of them are merely playing a track. I'll post back later when I have actually had a chance to play around with it more completely.

urlwolf · « **Reply #5 on:** May 23, 2007, 10:01 AM »

Good news.
It support replay gain (album and track), using the command line:
http://www.musicip.com/mixer/commandline.jsp
It uses the BASS engine (same as xmplay).
I'm still amazed at how fast the database searches are... click on the album panel, start typing, and you have 'live' search...
It is portable, i.e., you can copy the folder to an USB drive and it's ready to go.
It can configure keyboard shortcuts with the simplest method (why oh why other apps don't use this?): just put a txt file in the folder with the kb combo and the action, separated by tabs. That's it.
It has audioscrobbler support.
It writes some interesting tags (you can look at them with foobar) that can be useful to do sorting/searching outside musicIP.
It can start working (giving recommendations) without finishing analyzing your tracks.

It feels like musikCube but with cover art and a lot snappier.

Bad news: doesn't support cuesheets yet. I'm considering spliting all my cue files into independent tracks, let me know if you know a good, fast method for doing this.

It has it's own syntax for tagging (I was getting used to Tagz already).
Not a huge community (although active forums and developer!)

I have registered it (wil report on the advanced features later).

Lashiec · « **Reply #6 on:** May 23, 2007, 10:22 AM »

Quote from: urlwolf on May 22, 2007, 08:15 PM

Memory usage is tiny compared with basically anything else (even virtual memory) : mediamonkey, foobar, even XMplay (!).

Blasphemy! You'll die in the holy fire!!

Wasn't this included as a plugin in Winamp?

justice · « **Reply #7 on:** May 23, 2007, 10:28 AM »

@urlwolf:

Quote

CUE Splitter - A CUE file splitter for Windows. Support: MP3, APE, FLAC, WAVE.
CUE Splitter is a freeware tool that split a single big audio track, mostly an album or a compilation, into the relative individual audio tracks, using informations contained in the associated "CUE" file. Sometimes you can find a big compressed audio file (for example MP3, APE, FLAC, OGG, WAV, WMA, etc...) equipped with a small "CUE" text file that contain informations about tracks title, artist and length. Usually these couple of files are generated by programs like EAC (Exact Audio Copy), CDRWin, BPM Studio, GoldWave or similar.With CUE Splitter you can obtain splitted audio track files without burn any CDR or decode/re-encode any audio data! Moreover audio files are automatically named using a user-defined "file mask" string, it's tags are filled with informations extracted from "CUE" file and, optionally, an M3U playlist file can be generated (option enabled by default). CUE Splitter is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

[attachimg=#]
http://www.shareup.com/CUE_Splitter-download-30218.html

justice · « **Reply #8 on:** May 23, 2007, 11:29 AM »

BTW if you enjoy revolutionary software you should definately check musicIP out:

Quote

or instance, you might create a file called Happy.m3u and store 10 songs which make you feel happy. After saving this in the Moods directory, you can choose Moods/Happy from the menu bar, and MusicIP Mixer will automatically create a new playlist which reflects those songs.

A "binary" mood file is stored as a .m3mood file instead of a .m3u file - the difference is that the .m3mood file contains a binary description of your mood. You can swap .m3mood files with your friends, and they will be able to make mood mixes based off your original playlist, but using songs from their collections.

Also something I have never seen before is the 'scan button'. Press the green button with the man walking icon on it and it will preview files, click on it again when you hear something you like and musicIp will create a mix based on this.

urlwolf · « **Reply #9 on:** May 23, 2007, 01:29 PM »

Quote from: justice on May 23, 2007, 10:28 AM

@urlwolf:

Quote
CUE Splitter - A CUE file splitter for Windows. Support: MP3, APE, FLAC, WAVE.
CUE Splitter is a freeware tool that split a single big audio track, mostly an album or a compilation, into the relative individual audio tracks, using informations contained in the associated "CUE" file. Sometimes you can find a big compressed audio file (for example MP3, APE, FLAC, OGG, WAV, WMA, etc...) equipped with a small "CUE" text file that contain informations about tracks title, artist and length. Usually these couple of files are generated by programs like EAC (Exact Audio Copy), CDRWin, BPM Studio, GoldWave or similar.With CUE Splitter you can obtain splitted audio track files without burn any CDR or decode/re-encode any audio data! Moreover audio files are automatically named using a user-defined "file mask" string, it's tags are filled with informations extracted from "CUE" file and, optionally, an M3U playlist file can be generated (option enabled by default). CUE Splitter is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).
http://www.shareup.com/CUE_Splitter-download-30218.html

Thanks justice.

I'm using the almighty foobar for that. It's the only one that understands all file formats, incluing .TAK (latest and fanciest lossless format, that of course I tried).

Foobar can even transcode to more than one format at the same time (e.g. FLAC to TAK and OGG) using MAREO:
http://www.webearce.com.ar/

Note: MusicIP seems to be able to even auto-fix your tags.
If this works half-way decent, it'd be like picard done right... which would be huge. My collection is in pretty good shape, but I know people who have tremendous messes, who would be blessed by such a thing...

Darwin · « **Reply #10 on:** May 23, 2007, 02:30 PM »

This is a bit picky, but I find getting it to play tracks a bit fussy - sometimes it appears to freeze and won't play my selection... Oops! I'm an idiot - I was trying to play DRM'd iTunes files

Anyway, sound is nice and I like the layout. I was going to cry "Foul" over urlwolf's assertion that

Quote

Memory usage is tiny compared with basically anything else (even virtual memory) : mediamonkey, foobar, even XMplay (!).

But actually running it head to head with XMPlay:

On my machine musicIP Mixer used the following while playing a randomly selected track:

0% CPU, 17,584K RAM, 17,124K VM

Compare this to XMPlay playing the same track:

0-32% CPU, 17,048K RAM, 21,196K VM

In both cases I opened the program and selected the track and played it immmediately (ie neither programme had been running for hours beforehand).

Dang! This is cool because it features all of the extras urlwofl mentions: live search (I agree really quick), album art (don't actually care one way or the other about this), much more intuitive/easy to use playlists, Pandora-esque playlist generating ability, ability to see and export to my mp3 player (haven't tested this aspect yet, thought)...

I like it!

Darwin · « **Reply #11 on:** May 23, 2007, 02:33 PM »

BTW - I get a popup message everytime I shut it down but it's up and then gone in the blink of an eye - I can't tell if it's an error message or if it's important. Has anyone managed to read it?!

justice · « **Reply #12 on:** May 23, 2007, 04:02 PM »

It says "Saving library cache...", with a stop button.

Darwin · « **Reply #13 on:** May 23, 2007, 04:13 PM »

Whew! That's a relief - thanks Justice!

Darwin · « **Reply #14 on:** May 23, 2007, 05:31 PM »

Am I the only one too dense to figure out how to play an actual album or complete .m3u playlist in musicIP? I select an album and play the first track and that's all that plays. Context Menu, File Menu, Preferences, etc. don't seem to have anything to help me out here! The help documentation seems geared toward the idea of generating mixes based on genre/artist/song/mood, etc. and I can't find an answer.

This is a major issue for me!

EDIT: Two more things: many of the files that are catalogued show up with the wrong album art (rather than the no image indicator) and, following from my original request, the previous and next track controls don't do anything either EVEN if I have selected an album or a playlist. This is quite frustrating!

justice · « **Reply #15 on:** May 23, 2007, 06:28 PM »

I had slight trouble with playing the whole mix, I think the same applies to playing albums.
In every other player double clicking on the first song in a mix plays the whole mix.
In MusicIP it plays the one song only: double click on the label of the mix (usually called 'Mix' or the name of your playlist) plays the whole list. Probably the same thing applies to your album, try double clicking the album, that works.

You can see what is playing under "now playing".

And because you have double clicked on the first song in the list, it only plays one song, and you can't use the previous/next button.

Regarding album art: it shows the art for the song you have selected browsing the library, not the one playing: right click the album art and select Image View -> Prefer playing track

whicken · « **Reply #16 on:** May 23, 2007, 06:30 PM »

This behaviour is changing in version 1.8 (now in beta), because you aren't the only person with this question. If only one track is selected, the whole list will transfer to the Now Playlist list, with the position set at the selected track.

For now, in 1.7, if you have any songs selected when you press play, only those songs will be played. So, you can either select the entire playlist, or select none of the playlist, and press play, to get the entire playlist. As a shortcut, just double-click on an album (or anything else), and it will start playing.

Album art is coming from either embedded images, or folder images. Typically if you are seeing wrong cover art you didn't expect, it means you don't have folder images set up like we expect - you can disable folder images from the preferences. (There's also the issue of whether you want playing artwork, or select artwork, as justice mentioned).

Prev/Next buttons only affect the position in the "Now Playing" list, depending on where you are currently in that list.

You can also use drag and drop to the Now Playing list to put things in the queue.

Hope that helps!

Darwin · « **Reply #17 on:** May 23, 2007, 06:40 PM »

Cool! Thanks Justice and Whicken (welcome to the site!). I'll play around with this and report back.

UPDATE: OK this works and is too cool. My credit card is starting to warm up... it's calling me: "Go on. You know you want to. Who's the boss? You? Or your wife? Go on, it's so easy. It's not even that much money and it supports development! Stop blubbering, be a man! Do it! Do it!" I'm telling you, the damned thing is evil. So far the physical embodiment of my conscience - my boss, er wife - is winning, but it's a pitched battle...

urlwolf · « **Reply #18 on:** May 23, 2007, 07:02 PM »

Hi whicken,

Welcome!
A minor issue. I don't think APE is supported.
No big deal, since as you may know, there is an emerging new format that is as fast as FLAC in decoding/encoding, and as space efficient as APE. It's TAK:
http://www.thbeck.de/Tak/Tak.html (in german)
http://www.losslessaudioblog.com/2007/04/17/tak-101-beta-released/
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=53291

It's making quite a stir in the hydrogen audio forums. Some people there have converted entire collections of flac and apes to tak already.

I'd love to see support for this format. I can see that xmplay does support tak already, and the engine is the same, so I'd guess it's doable.

Now that I'm in 'feature request' mode:
- having winamp plugin access would be a terrific feature.
- support for non-standard tags (visible in the columns interface would be good.

I'm actually converting all my cue files to independent tracks just so MIP can 'see' them

. If I could move to tak as well in the same effort, so much better

urlwolf · « **Reply #19 on:** May 24, 2007, 05:16 PM »

Note: at 10-20 seconds per song, completing the analysis of my collection will take about 15 days (assuming 10hrs of processing). This is quite a lot of CPU usage.

It's not clear to me what advantages we get once our collections are completely analyzed. when a song is mixable, it turns green. In my case most songs are green already, *before* the analysis. It seems that the first pass (about 1 seconds per song) is enough to get most of the advantages. The only thing I know for sure is that the 'correct tags' feature will work only after the full analysis is done.

cthorpe · « **Reply #20 on:** May 25, 2007, 12:21 AM »

Wow...
I seriously need to prune my collection...
It's taking forever to even load all my tracks up into the library, much less analyze them.

Looks like urlwolf and I are dealing with a similar library size.

- Edit -

Ok, after the initial processing phase has run through, I must say that I really like the mixing in this thing. As I said above, I have a lot of mp3s, so I am always interested in programs that let me manipulate my collection in interesting ways. It's already pulled up stuff that I love that I had forgotten I have in digital format.

I am very curious about the premium version.

Carl

whicken · « **Reply #21 on:** May 25, 2007, 03:32 AM »

The fast initial pass is based on metadata - we have mountains of metadata correlated with acoustics, so we can usually get pretty close based on just that. The slower pass is to verify the metadata isn't lying (so if you've got a song which is completely mistagged, the acoustics originally assigned will be wrong, but fixed in the slower pass). The full process is a bit more complicated to explain, involving SHA-1's, acoustic fingerprints, and acoustic profiling. (It's detailed somewhat in the FAQ.)

If you look under our "Best of the Blog" section, you'll see a section titled "Other Topics" - this covers some of the more advanced features which show up under the premium version.

http://www.musicip.com/about/blogs.jsp

cthorpe · « **Reply #22 on:** May 25, 2007, 04:15 AM »

So if you know you have your songs tagged correctly, you can skip the second and third pass and everything should work well?

Carl

whicken · « **Reply #23 on:** May 25, 2007, 04:24 AM »

Pretty much. The "find duplicates" feature won't work unless they've been fingerprinted, but that's about it. And of course tag fixing, but if the tags are already correct you don't care about that.

Darwin · « **Reply #24 on:** May 25, 2007, 12:44 PM »

The beauty is, though, that by default the second and third passes occur at low priority and I saw virtually no hit to my system responsivenes while they were done. The effect on RAM was minimal but I did see occasional, and brief, spikes in CPU utilisation that DID have an effect. The procees took about eight hours - if I was going to do it over again, I'd have it run overnight. My music library is 8.3 GB and contains about 1800 tracks).

I spent yesterday listening to music through musicIP Mixer and am very impressed.