Operational Questions

[liffy99]

1) In what order does Slimserver play music files ?
For example my music library is structured by artist/album/track. There is a separate directory for each artist, then a separate sub-directory for each album. When Slimserver plays back an album it seems to play the tracks in alphabetic title order. In the metadata there is the facility to hold filename (eg. XXXXX.flac), track title and track number. Is it possible to control the order in which music plays ?
2) How do I set the SB3 display to show the name of the track currently playing ?
Whenever I press the next track button on the remote, the track changes just fine, and its name seems to be momentarily displayed on the SB3. But then the display reverts back to the name of the track first selected. Is there a way to make the display show the name of the track currently playing in the above situation ?
3) Gapless playback - how to use it ?
For tracks that flow into each other on an album I now understand Gapless Playback is the way to go. I'm currently ripping vinyl to digital (FLAC) and have a number of albums where this occurs. I use Audacity to edit the tracks and insert breaks. Do I simply chop the album side into sections, set a parameter somewhere to Gapless Playback,and leave well alone ? Up until now I have been introducing Fade In and Fade Out track sections with Audacity.
4) Replay Gain - big losses ?
I've tried setting replay gain using EAC and Foobar and adjustments are being shown as quite large. For example one album has had all its tracks reduced by over 7db. Does this 7db change relate to a difference between the musics original recorded level and the notional 89db ? In other words was the music ariginally recorded at a 96db level ? How canI check original levels ? Are CDs mastered at more than 89db a problem ?

Sorry for all the questions.

[liffy99]

Operational Questions

1) In what order does Slimserver play music files ?
For example my music library is structured by artist/album/track. There is a separate directory for each artist, then a separate sub-directory for each album. When Slimserver plays back an album it seems to play the tracks in alphabetic title order. In the metadata there is the facility to hold filename (eg. XXXXX.flac), track title and track number. Is it possible to control the order in which music plays ?
2) How do I set the SB3 display to show the name of the track currently playing ?
Whenever I press the next track button on the remote, the track changes just fine, and its name seems to be momentarily displayed on the SB3. But then the display reverts back to the name of the track first selected. Is there a way to make the display show the name of the track currently playing in the above situation ?
3) Gapless playback - how to use it ?
For tracks that flow into each other on an album I now understand Gapless Playback is the way to go. I'm currently ripping vinyl to digital (FLAC) and have a number of albums where this occurs. I use Audacity to edit the tracks and insert breaks. Do I simply chop the album side into sections, set a parameter somewhere to Gapless Playback,and leave well alone ? Up until now I have been introducing Fade In and Fade Out track sections with Audacity.
4) Replay Gain - big losses ?
I've tried setting replay gain using EAC and Foobar and adjustments are being shown as quite large. For example one album has had all its tracks reduced by over 7db. Does this 7db change relate to a difference between the musics original recorded level and the notional 89db ? In other words was the music ariginally recorded at a 96db level ? How canI check original levels ? Are CDs mastered at more than 89db a problem ?

Sorry for all the questions.

[mherger]

Operational questions

> 1) In what order does Slimserver play music files ?
> For example my music library is structured by artist/album/track.

SC uses the files' tags to get information about your tracks. If you play
a full album, it's played by track number.

> number. Is it possible to control the order in which music plays ?

What way would you like it to play? There's RandomPlay, sure. But
otherwise it handles the songs as they were on the disc.

> 2) How do I set the SB3 display to show the name of the track currently
> playing ?

That's default behaviour if you're using the "Now playing" screensaver.

Michael

[autopilot]

Why dont you download Slim Server (or the beta of the next version called Squeeze Center) and have a play. There is an player emulator that comes included called SoftSqueeze.

EDIT: Sorry, I see you already have a SB3

[ceejay]

1) In what order does Slimserver play music files ?

Just to add to Michael's answer - if you are accessing your music by Browse Music Folder then Slimserver will ignore the tags and play the files in alphabetical order. If you intend to use this method and want the files played in track order, you should add the track number at the beginning of the file name "01 - songname.flac"

3) Gapless playback - how to use it ?

Just chop the album side into sections and leave well alone. SS will automatically play FLAC tracks gapless. Just don't turn the Crossfade option on.

4) Replay Gain - big losses ?
... Are CDs mastered at more than 89db a problem ?

Not as such, no, but they will sound louder than other ones which is the whole point of replaygain!

HTH
Ceejay

[4mula1]

2) How do I set the SB3 display to show the name of the track currently playing ?
Whenever I press the next track button on the remote, the track changes just fine, and its name seems to be momentarily displayed on the SB3. But then the display reverts back to the name of the track first selected. Is there a way to make the display show the name of the track currently playing in the above situation ?

The default behavior when you select something to play is to not go to the now playing screen, but rather continue to display what you are browsing. The way you describe the problem sounds like this, but not quite. If you want to see what's playing and have the track titles change accordingly, hit the "Now Playing" button on the remote when you are done browsing to see the current track.

[schatzy]

If you want to see what's playing and have the track titles change accordingly, hit the "Now Playing" button on the remote when you are done browsing to see the current track.

Or rather than having to press the now playing button every time set the "Screensaver To Use When Playing" to "Now Playing" and set the "Screensaver Delay Time" to 1 (seconds) and that should do the trick.

[Khuli]

Just to add to Michael's answer - if you are accessing your music by Browse Music Folder then Slimserver will ignore the tags and play the files in alphabetical order. If you intend to use this method and want the files played in track order, you should add the track number at the beginning of the file name "01 - songname.flac"

Just to add to Ceejay's answer - if you don't have any tags, Slimserver will try to guess them from the filename (you can set the filename format that it should use). If it can't match the format, it will play alphabetically.

It's probably good practise to include the track number in the filename - directory listings are more user-friendly, tags can be guessed, and if you should delete any existing tags by accident you can can recreate them direct from the filename.

[Mark Lanctot]

4) Replay Gain - big losses ?
I've tried setting replay gain using EAC and Foobar and adjustments are being shown as quite large. For example one album has had all its tracks reduced by over 7db.

Oh, this is nothing, I have quite a few albums over 10 dB and the most I've seen is -12.5 dB. You can thank loudness wars for this.

In my experience every album made after about 1988 will have negative RG, and it gets worse the newer the album is.

Does this 7db change relate to a difference between the musics original recorded level and the notional 89db ? In other words was the music ariginally recorded at a 96db level ?

Yes.

How canI check original levels ?

You can't, because the level will vary with the dynamics. There's very little of that left now, but the "baseline" still can't be calculated.

The REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_PEAK tag denotes how close the album gets to 0 dBFS, but I'm not sure where 0 dBFS is on the scale - it's surely not 89 dB, because CDs can be recorded much louder than that. Also this is a peak value only, it doesn't determine how loud overall the album is, just that there was at least one sample this close to 0 dBFS.

REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_PEAK values seem to be calculated such that 1 = 0 dBFS, so the decimal value in the tag indicates how close it gets to 0. A typical number is "1.00000000" for a fairly recent album and bad offender, Red Hot Chili Peppers Californication, "0.76196289" for an older album, Led Zeppelin III.

Also this is the peak value, it doesn't indicate how loud the album is. Plus there can be a loud sound on the album but it can still be very dynamic, for example Led Zeppelin IV has a peak value of 0.99996948, yet it's hardly compressed or terribly loud - it's probably due to the huge dynamic swings rather than being recorded hot.

Are CDs mastered at more than 89db a problem ?

Yes, due to compression and clipping. Again, search for loudness wars.

There's definitely clipping on Californication, a simple listen will tell you that. Looking at the waveform will too, and the REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_PEAK tag of exactly 1 is another dead giveaway.

[liffy99]

Wow - thanks for all the helpful replies.

Thoughts as follows;

1) I've just spent hours removing track numbers from track titles (doh !) apart from classical items such as symphony movements.
2) Understand that if browsing by music folder then SS will default to alphabetical.
3) I'm busy adding replay gain to my music using Foobar - a lengthy process ! See now that reductions of 7db and more are not uncommon.
Is there a way of incorporating replay gain when ripping vinyl using Audacity ?
4) Quite understand the loudness war issue - amazing how much better many of my older recordings sound. Is there any sort of database that can recommend (or otherwise) good recordings. I know there is a movement called "Turn It Up" which aim to label recordings that don't make the loudness war worse but can't see they have actually produced anything yet. Similar question to try and identify DVDs with PCM tracks (never seems to be much info on the covers).
5) Now I understand gapless (but a bit late !). Unfortunately I've applied Fade in and Fade out (using Audacity) to beginning and ending of tracks - typically on live albums where the audience is the filler between tracks.
6) As to the info on current track - yes the screensaver option will work, but then I need to go back to Now Playing / Browse/ Music Folder . . . to choose another track (as opposed just back up a level to the album). Just wanted SS to keep the current track info when the track is selected - but now realise that this is a developer choice between browsing in the background as opposed to current track info.

Thaks again for all the help - I just love these forums. Now I just want to find sources of high res, reasonably uncompressed audio . . . . (don't we all).

[Mark Lanctot]

Is there a way of incorporating replay gain when ripping vinyl using Audacity ?

If you encode to FLAC you can specify track gain calculation in the encoding options (--replay-gain). metaflac can add album gain post-encoding.

foobar can do both, but post-encoding.

[oktup]

Or rather than having to press the now playing button every time set the "Screensaver To Use When Playing" to "Now Playing" and set the "Screensaver Delay Time" to 1 (seconds) and that should do the trick.

This is interesting; after reading this thread, I realised that it's something that's always slightly niggled me, without me fully realising it

I think the behaviour that I want is: when I press Play, the 'Now Playing' screensaver should be activated immediately, regardless of what the Screensaver Delay Time is currently set to. Is there any way of configuring this at the moment? Or is this an opportunity for me to try writing my first plugin? (in which case, expect results in about 32 months).

thanks!