ANNOUNCE: Group Players

[philippe_44]

Actually, no - I would prefer if you would temporarily "unfix" the volume of the player while playing in a group. The reason for the 100% volume fix in the first place is only for having the best possible quality when listening very concentrated to music on my main stereo alone... That by definition doesn't apply to the case of having everything in the whole apartment synced (party mode...)

I know that my main premise (fixed volume = better sound quality) may be complete snake oil... but nevertheless it gives me the warm and fuzzy feeling of having done all I can do :-)

ah ... that's a very specific use then. There is always the possibility to add yet another option, but I'm always concerned with settings creepings... and I' won't start a discussion about snake oil

[jtl]

ah ... that's a very specific use then. There is always the possibility to add yet another option, but I'm always concerned with settings creepings... and I' won't start a discussion about snake oil

Yeah, I know.

Maybe doing as you planned (ignoring fix volume players when calculating the group volume) is a good thing to do anyway, and if you can be bothered to add the option "temporarily unfix players volume" on top it would be even better :-)

Thanks for the great work!

[KeBul]

Thanks

This thread popping back up reminded me to install and try this.

I have three use cases for this, downstairs players, upstairs players and all players.

As already said works really well, top work Philippe (and assist by Michael),

Thanks so much for applying your time and skills to the benefit of all Squeeze ecosystem users, it is much appreciated.

Kev

[bakker_be]

This actually solves an issue I was having I've now disabled Spotty on the individual players, but enabled it on this "virtual" player, which gives me a rather easy way to switch between my personal Spotify playlist when I'm home alone, playing on bothe the kitchen player and the living room Touch, and switching back over to a more "general purpose" playlist on the same players but through the traditional sync mechanism when the whole family is present

[woodster]

IckStream

Hi there (@Pippin perhaps),

any status regarding the having the name and model supported by the IckStream plugin?

[pippin]

Thanks for the reminder.
Yes, I'll look into it (and we're going to support it), hopefully I can do that tomorrow.

[woodster]

Thanks for the reminder.
Yes, I'll look into it (and we're going to support it), hopefully I can do that tomorrow.

Hi Pippin,

that sounds absolutely brilliant

[Simon_rb]

Possible miss behaviour

Hi,

Just started using the Group Player's more recently and think I have found a behaviour that maybe isn't quite right. I'll run it by you guys/gurls and see what your setup does and/or your thoughts.

Group starts by grabbing all players which is great. I had a couple of players on and playing in sync out of the 10 or so sync'd at the time. The wife turned on the Kitchen Radio (which his part of this group) and then selected her own album which was fine, the Kitchen Radio was removed from the group and it played her chosen album. Now using iPeng I paused the Group player as that was what was selected from choosing the previous playlist that started the group. When resuming it grabbed the Kitchen Radio back into the group and started playing my playlist in sync with the group! My wife wasn't best pleased.. whoops.

I assume thats not normal behaviour?!?! So just to clarify, pausing the group player and then resuming pulled a previously attached player that had left and was playing its own thing. I would have thought that the Kitchen Player shouldn't have been pulled back in to the group is it was switched on and playing something different.

Cheers

[philippe_44]

Hi,

Just started using the Group Player's more recently and think I have found a behaviour that maybe isn't quite right. I'll run it by you guys/gurls and see what your setup does and/or your thoughts.

Group starts by grabbing all players which is great. I had a couple of players on and playing in sync out of the 10 or so sync'd at the time. The wife turned on the Kitchen Radio (which his part of this group) and then selected her own album which was fine, the Kitchen Radio was removed from the group and it played her chosen album. Now using iPeng I paused the Group player as that was what was selected from choosing the previous playlist that started the group. When resuming it grabbed the Kitchen Radio back into the group and started playing my playlist in sync with the group! My wife wasn't best pleased.. whoops.

I assume thats not normal behaviour?!?! So just to clarify, pausing the group player and then resuming pulled a previously attached player that had left and was playing its own thing. I would have thought that the Kitchen Player shouldn't have been pulled back in to the group is it was switched on and playing something different.

Cheers

I agree that's not ideal, but that's by design so far. Groups are disassembled at pause and restored at resume. I have to re-think about it, but how would I differentiate that you don't want that player to be re-grabbed?

- In many cases, you'd want it to be re-grabbed otherwise the only option would be to "stop" the Group it (i.e. to erase it's playlist) and then to re-play it - not very convenient either. And even if you do that, maybe your wife does not want the Kitchen to be re-grabbed if you change your playlist.

- Then I could not-grab players that are already playing, but that would defeat a lot the purpose of Groups

- Then, more complicated, I could mark Group members that are de-synced when pausing and not restore them upon resume. But what shall I do if you change the Group Playlist? Shall I leave marked players as well but then how will they re-join the group then?

- The only option I can think about, while write that, is, when breakin up a Group, I would mark the players that are not synced with it anymore. Then, when reforming that group, members that were marked and *are* playing shall not re-join the group. Unfortunately, that would also make some unhappy users were you have extracted a player yesterday from a group while it was playing. Today, you're playing something on that player, and then you decide to play on the Group ... well, that player will not rejoin Not sure you'll remember what you did yesterday ... okay then I need a timer and we are entering into some spaghetti thinking

but

suggestions welcome

[pippin]

Its one of the issues around player groups. Is a group a definite thing or not? Problem is, everybody seems to have a different opinion based on personal preferences...

[jasell]

I agree that's not ideal, but that's by design so far. Groups are disassembled at pause and restored at resume. I have to re-think about it, but how would I differentiate that you don't want that player to be re-grabbed?

- In many cases, you'd want it to be re-grabbed otherwise the only option would be to "stop" the Group it (i.e. to erase it's playlist) and then to re-play it - not very convenient either. And even if you do that, maybe your wife does not want the Kitchen to be re-grabbed if you change your playlist.

- Then I could not-grab players that are already playing, but that would defeat a lot the purpose of Groups

- Then, more complicated, I could mark Group members that are de-synced when pausing and not restore them upon resume. But what shall I do if you change the Group Playlist? Shall I leave marked players as well but then how will they re-join the group then?

- The only option I can think about, while write that, is, when breakin up a Group, I would mark the players that are not synced with it anymore. Then, when reforming that group, members that were marked and *are* playing shall not re-join the group. Unfortunately, that would also make some unhappy users were you have extracted a player yesterday from a group while it was playing. Today, you're playing something on that player, and then you decide to play on the Group ... well, that player will not rejoin Not sure you'll remember what you did yesterday ... okay then I need a timer and we are entering into some spaghetti thinking

but

suggestions welcome

I think that's the way it has to be or else the group definition needs to be dynamic and very complex.
I that case you would need to have commands like "reset" group to its original collection of players.
Or when you start a using a group you could get a control question, for each player that is doing something different if you want to bring them back in the group.
This will complicate the user experience and the current GUI is not capable of doing that.
But you would have full control...

Group player, in my opinion, is designed to make it simple. You already have full control by arranging your synched player manually.

[Simon_rb]

Philippe,

Thank your for replying so quickly! I agree with all comments that this is mostly personal preference.

Does the syncing and unsyncing have to be done with pause and play on the group player? WouldnÂ’t the most logical and user friendly way to be this:-

When group player is powered on.. it grabs all players.. this is the only time this is done. If itÂ’s paused or resumed then it does no more grabbing. Only powering it on. To unsync group, just turn the group player off.

If during the group sync a player is removed by a user by changing its plylist locally then when that player is turned off (ie, they have finished with it) the player is reattached to group on power off if the group player is still turned on. To me that is more seamless than the current setup. Although I agree 100% that is more preference and setup.

IÂ’d love for the group players to stay in sync permanently whilst the group player is powered on, rather than break up and re grab at pause/play. The break up group when group player is powered off. So simple then, whilst group is powered on, players are grabbed and stay grabbed (unless locally released by changing playlist on local player). Then power off and players are released.

I hope I have explained that correctly..

That above scenario would then stop a player from being grabbed again when itÂ’s playing something locally if the group is paused then played again. However once that person is finished with that radio, itÂ’s turned off and it syncs back into group. If you wish to resync whole group including the radio that is still locally playing something then just power off and power on the group player just like you do with pause/play the current way. That would grab the playing radio again.

To me that is the simplest and seamless experience. IÂ’m sure there are reasons this canÂ’t be done or scenarios why its not a good idea, sure I may have missed something obvious..

Reason for group players is to sync players, turn it on and they are synced and stayed synced. Turn it off and they are back to being standalone players. Simples. 👍

Thanks for reading and entertaining this!!!

Cheers!

PS, sorry for repeating it a few times, just trying to explain it a couple of different ways as to make sense..

[philippe_44]

Philippe,

Thank your for replying so quickly! I agree with all comments that this is mostly personal preference.

Does the syncing and unsyncing have to be done with pause and play on the group player? WouldnÂ’t the most logical and user friendly way to be this:-

When group player is powered on.. it grabs all players.. this is the only time this is done. If itÂ’s paused or resumed then it does no more grabbing. Only powering it on. To unsync group, just turn the group player off.

Unfortunately that will break here immediately as, you've basically created a classical LMS sync group. Unless, you power off the Group, when you play on any member of the group, while it's paused/stopped all players will start and that's probably going to be super irritating, especially if you played something on the group a few hours ago and let it just go to the end of the playlist.

In fact, what you're describing is done pretty well by The Synchronizer, but I personnally did not like the need of switching sync group, which almost the same as powering them off all the time - you simply forget. I can't see users power on/off the Group player every time they want to use it, or especially when they want to stop it - they will forget and shout.

For example, when I play "whole house", track ends then I play "ground floor", I don't want to have to power off "whole house" to avoid that it's suddenly playing every where because I played "ground floor" whose players happended to be synced with others from "whole house". So then I would have to undo the "whole house" when doing "ground floor" because they have at least one player in common. I really mean you're entering into a lot of nasty corner case.

If during the group sync a player is removed by a user by changing its plylist locally then when that player is turned off (ie, they have finished with it) the player is reattached to group on power off if the group player is still turned on. To me that is more seamless than the current setup. Although I agree 100% that is more preference and setup.

IÂ’d love for the group players to stay in sync permanently whilst the group player is powered on, rather than break up and re grab at pause/play. The break up group when group player is powered off. So simple then, whilst group is powered on, players are grabbed and stay grabbed (unless locally released by changing playlist on local player). Then power off and players are released.

I hope I have explained that correctly..

That above scenario would then stop a player from being grabbed again when itÂ’s playing something locally if the group is paused then played again. However once that person is finished with that radio, itÂ’s turned off and it syncs back into group. If you wish to resync whole group including the radio that is still locally playing something then just power off and power on the group player just like you do with pause/play the current way. That would grab the playing radio again.

To me that is the simplest and seamless experience. IÂ’m sure there are reasons this canÂ’t be done or scenarios why its not a good idea, sure I may have missed something obvious..

Reason for group players is to sync players, turn it on and they are synced and stayed synced. Turn it off and they are back to being standalone players. Simples. 👍

Thanks for reading and entertaining this!!!

Cheers!

PS, sorry for repeating it a few times, just trying to explain it a couple of different ways as to make sense..

I really do think that the very dynamic build/break up is only solution, but I will think about the option I mentionned before which might be doable

[philippe_44]

okay, here is a proposal that combines out two views, is (I think) easy to implement and has limited side effects

- When a player leaves a Group "on its own", it is marked
- When a Group is reformed (after a pause or a stop or a change of its playlist), marked players that are playing are not added to the group
- Powering off then on a Group will reset the marked player

If the "other party" is unhappy because her *stopped* player restarts when you change a playlist on the Group, then she just has to power it off and, if you have left the option "power on all members at play" unchecked, then you'll have peace at home

I've put that in dev version 0.5.0, but I did not test it at all (late here) - I would appreciate if you could

[Simon_rb]

Once again thank you! With the groups being constanantly kept together until the group player is turned off wouldn’t result in players playing everywhere if forgetting to turn off the group player would it?

All players stay in their groups, however only when you select the group player do all players play.. they can all be in group,
If you leave group player on and select something to play on one of the players say, a bedroom player then because you selected that locally then only that will play as it would leave the group. When it is powered off it would then join the group again ready to be in sync.

I only have one Group Player. If you have multiple group players. Only one should be allowed to be powered on. So if you have 3 group players. 1 is on and assembles the players. Then you power on group 2, then group 1 should powered off by group 2 and group 2 assembles it’s players.

I’m not sure how it works with more than one group player as I only have one so maybe the above wouldn’t work for more than one if you can have multiple group players playing at the same time. If that is the case then forget my idea lol.

You don’t even need to power up the group, just select it and send playlist then it powers on anyways. Yes you might forget to turn it off but does that do any harm, your mechanics of selecting a local player and changing playlist would remove it from the group anyhows. Then it would return once powered off.

Yes the above is similar to the LMS native sync, as it keeps it simple yet with the added bonus of your approach if you do select a local player it is removed from group then returns once powered off.

Thanks again, I’m not being argumentative and fully appreciate all your hard work Philippe!