[Rod_S]

I'll give a test tomorrow controlling from my laptop and get back to you, getting ready for bed now I've never used my laptop for actual listening so that will be a good test. I've never had the issue previously on my iPad so maybe there is just some flaky/inconsistent behaviour with iOS9.

Thanks for considering an addition to the sort order.

[Marius]

Chris,
Thank you for this:


 


Cheers,
Marius

I can look into using the date and adding it to the list of things to sort by. 

Cheers
Chris

That would indeed be very nice, a welcome extra . Please also consider a 'recently added' category. Maybe in the initial media player display, below the list with genre , Artist , album etc. Coming from Plex that has that feature , it really is a miss not to have ones latest downloads at the fingertips. Hope you can make it.

Cheers Marius

[Marius]

Ok Thanks Chris, just unplugged them, we'll see what happens.


Just to be sure:
Playing from a Nas doesn't introduce the risk of stuttering files does it? I take it the BDP reads and buffers the files before playing? I ask because yesterday i installed the new Google Chromecast Audio, and experienced serious gaps in hires files. Could be caused by the Synology NAS not being equipped for this (the Chromecast Dac ought to be powerful enough), but still it was a letdown.


Cheers,
Marius

Turning off USB mount doesn't unmount the drives, it simple turns off the software responsible for mount and unmounting the drives.  If you wish to ensure your playing purely from your NAS, unplug the drives, reboot, update the mod database.

Cheers
Chris

[Grit]

Marius,

How/where did you install Chromecast Audio?

- Garrett

[Marius]

in my second system in the Gym


usb power from the Synology Nas. Wifi from the Apple Airport Express next to it, and feeds into my Quad 44. All within a square meter, so distance cant be the issue...


Cheers,
Marius

Marius,

How/where did you install Chromecast Audio?

- Garrett

[Rod_S]

Something else I have found odd and I'll have to check iOS behaviour against my laptop (Windows 8.1) tonight but when in Artist View the left pane does not scroll independently of the right which depending on how many albums an artist has (the right pane) or how many artists you have (left pane) can be quite annoying because you will lose your position in the opposite pane when you start scrolling.

Another nit pick is again with Artist view, when you are in the right pane scrolling through the albums after choosing an artist the right pane does not have left/right scroll functionality so you can only ever see and get access to the 1st column of songs. If there are enough songs on the album to warrant more than one column and you wanted to select individual songs there is no way of seeing/getting to them. We shouldn't have to switch to Default View to have access to all of our individual songs. I'll compare what I see on the iPad with Windows tonight. It might be that the screen on the laptop is wide enough to accommodate more than one column of songs but regardless I think the software should be flexible enough to know how much screen space is available and whether a scroll bar is necessary.

[Marius]

Well, strangest things happen.
Chris, Ill assume you're not experimenting with my BDP in service mode
Ive unplugged all external usb drives (3 of them) and only have the Bryston thumb, and 2 NAs Shares enabled. Also only MPD, Servicemode, and Samba were activated in services.

After a few reboots to clear all caches, both in the BDP database and my browsers, it seemed to be successful. I saw only the 2 shares and the Bryston thumb in the Mediaplayer in MM. I then selected a few songs. Nothing happend in the playlist, songs were not displayed at all. In fact, MM became unresponsive. Both Safari and Chrome.

After letting in rest for a bit (had to watch the Security counsil's report on the MH17 Crash..) I tried to fire MM again and behold the result: all previous drives are back. They're not even attached and a rebuild of the full library has been made. Also, in services USB-Mount shows it's enabled. I certainly did not do that...


 
 
In Finder the correct maps are shown,
 

Chris, im in real need of help here. What to do? I really like to go back to a BDP playing music. I have no idea what triggered this chain of events, other than trying the Bryston DB a few days back. That is disabled right now, i don't dare to try it again.

Cheers,
Marius

Ok Thanks Chris, just unplugged them, we'll see what happens.


Just to be sure:
Playing from a Nas doesn't introduce the risk of stuttering files does it? I take it the BDP reads and buffers the files before playing? I ask because yesterday i installed the new Google Chromecast Audio, and experienced serious gaps in hires files. Could be caused by the Synology NAS not being equipped for this (the Chromecast Dac ought to be powerful enough), but still it was a letdown.


Cheers,
Marius

[vklyushnikov]

Not to Be critical, but it sounds like some of the issues aren't issues but simply misunderstandings.  For instance mPad ... yes tapping a song places it into the playlist and begins playing; but if you hold your finger on an item it provides a menu that includes additional options, like "add to playlist" or "play next".
 
We do provide features in our  firmware that allow our customers to make use of dlna controllers, this feature was introduced with manic moose over two years ago.    We feel web apps are not without there draw back and we aren't the only ones that feel this way; for example both Apple and Microsoft have released web versions of there office packages.  Yes they have there short falls, but the do have pro's (as listed above) and the list/seriousness of there con's are dwindling at pace faster then then the advantages of thick apps.
 
Please see the video I produced today to help clarify how much faster the BDP-2 is over  the BDP-1 when it comes to the processing power with a library of 27,000 songs and the general performance of both.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/86196657/Videos/BOSS/S2.18%20demo.mov

Hi Chris,
In my opinion most problems with different software go either from bugs or poor usability - not from "misunderstanding". For example Mpad has excellent usability but also has some annoying bugs. In my case "add to playlist" and "play next" actions always start playback - at least on my Ipad. This is a bug but no one care about it because developer doesn't support his app for almost 2 years.
In case of MM we have problems mostly with usability. I watched your video but found nothing useful for me. I don't need searching all songs by artist. I don't need to type [album "some album"]  - especially on IPad. What I need is exactly the same design as implemented in MPad: artist, album and song views with simple filter by input box + abc filter. There is nothing unusual in such design because dozens of software players are implemented in this way.
And some more suggestions:
1.Right column in default view is unnecessary. You may create "File View" for navigating in file system, but this view should not be default.
2.I also miss ability to view artwork on full screen
3.There should be the way to show the total remaining time in playlist. I miss this feature since my old good BCD-1

[StigO]

An app for ios/windows/android would be nice. Isn't much more work supporting different browsers and browserupdates?
I use mpad, but I guess if Bryston created their own app it would work more smoothly, and could integrate Tidal in an better way then in a browser.

[Marius]

Hi Chris,


Only today did i realize the Clear cache command in the Settings/Music Player Deamon concerns the MPD database, and not anything related to Last.FM.


 


Wouldn't you agree that button should better be placed near the BrystonDB buttons in Media player Settings?


 


Could you please explain the difference between the 2: reset DB and Clear cache. ( i would have thought the reset DB also clears the cache)


I now notice the crossfade on that Page, is this related to the crossfade.jpg files I found lately in my Music folders?


Last one for now: Since MM/BDP apparently also writes files to the Music folders, need i authorize the account accordingly in my NAS ( it now only has reading permission )?




Cheers,
Marius

[Rod_S]

Hi Chris,


Only today did i realize the Clear cache command in the Settings/Music Player Deamon concerns the MPD database, and not anything related to Last.FM.


 


Wouldn't you agree that button should better be placed near the BrystonDB buttons in Media player Settings?


 


Could you please explain the difference between the 2: reset DB and Clear cache. ( i would have thought the reset DB also clears the cache)


I now notice the crossfade on that Page, is this related to the crossfade.jpg files I found lately in my Music folders?


Last one for now: Since MM/BDP apparently also writes files to the Music folders, need i authorize the account accordingly in my NAS ( it now only has reading permission )?




Cheers,
Marius

Good point Marius about the location of the Clar Cache button.

[Rod_S]

I can look into using the date and adding it to the list of things to sort by.  I just upgraded an iPad 2 to iOS9 to test other issues recently posted and can't say I noticed that problem on either the BDP-1 or 2.  Do you have the same problem from a computer or other device? 

Cheers
Chris

So I just did the experiment using web browsers on my Windows 8.1 laptop, IE and Chrome. The issue with the current song not refreshing when navigating away and coming back seems to be specific to the new iOS9. The laptop was properly refreshing every time I return to the tab and like I mentioned this was never an issue with the previous iOS version.

I also checked out the horizontal scrolling of songs when in Artist view and there are horizontal scroll bars when you can't see all songs and they function as expected so again there seems to be a bug in iOS functionality?

One thing that is common between iOS and the web browsers is that the vertical scrolling in Artist View on both the left and right frames are locked, scrolling one scrolls the other, they should really be independent.

The other thing I was able to confirm was when in Default view and you select the Artist Album folder, that view does not pick up all albums associated with the artist. It doesn't happen for all of my artists though. It simply can't detect some of my albums. This is consistent with iOS and Windows on my laptop. If I go back and go into the Artist folder that view properly picks up all of the albums associated with my Artists.

[unincognito]

So I just did the experiment using web browsers on my Windows 8.1 laptop, IE and Chrome. The issue with the current song not refreshing when navigating away and coming back seems to be specific to the new iOS9. The laptop was properly refreshing every time I return to the tab and like I mentioned this was never an issue with the previous iOS version.

I also checked out the horizontal scrolling of songs when in Artist view and there are horizontal scroll bars when you can't see all songs and they function as expected so again there seems to be a bug in iOS functionality?

One thing that is common between iOS and the web browsers is that the vertical scrolling in Artist View on both the left and right frames are locked, scrolling one scrolls the other, they should really be independent.

The other thing I was able to confirm was when in Default view and you select the Artist Album folder, that view does not pick up all albums associated with the artist. It doesn't happen for all of my artists though. It simply can't detect some of my albums. This is consistent with iOS and Windows on my laptop. If I go back and go into the Artist folder that view properly picks up all of the albums associated with my Artists.

To address the artist view there will be a new option in media player that will add some extra CSS to the page.  Not sure how well it will work, hence why it will be an option that can be enable or disabled. 

I upgraded an iPad 2 to iOS 9.0.2 on Monday and didn't have any issue and did some more testing today, granted today's testing focused on the new artist view.

Have you tried another browser on your ipad, like Chrome, could be something not quite working

You should load some of the albums that don't populate in to the playlist, play a song and check song info to see if the fields populate.

Apple really needs to change were the omojis button is on the keyboard

[unincognito]

Hi Chris,


Only today did i realize the Clear cache command in the Settings/Music Player Deamon concerns the MPD database, and not anything related to Last.FM.


Wouldn't you agree that button should better be placed near the BrystonDB buttons in Media player Settings


Could you please explain the difference between the 2: reset DB and Clear cache. ( i would have thought the reset DB also clears the cache)


I now notice the crossfade on that Page, is this related to the crossfade.jpg files I found lately in my Music folders?


Last one for now: Since MM/BDP apparently also writes files to the Music folders, need i authorize the account accordingly in my NAS ( it now only has reading permission )?




Cheers,
Marius

I'll do something about the buttons, but the lastfm settings are directly related to mpd, they allow mpd to report the music your listening to, to your last fm account.  Next time you login, lastfm will make recommendations based on what you've listened to.

Reset DB , found in media player is related to the Bryston DB and the Bryston DB is only used by media player.  Clear cache, resets the mpd cache used to save the database between reboots and used by all mpd clients; hence why it's found in mpd settings.  They are seperate and only need to be used under certain circumstances. 

Reset DB would be used if the artist or sorts are out of date and an auto update wasn't triggered.  Clearing the cache should only be used if the mpd database is either crashing while being built or isn't removing or adding songs it should be.

Crossfade allows the song that's ending to cross fade with the next song, if the value is set to 0 the feature is disabled, if you enter five it'll use a cross fade of 5 seconds.

I'm not sure why the BDP is generating cross fade.jpg or the other one which file name escapes me at the moment and havn't spent much time researching it other then it's not the Bryston DB creating them... Atleast relatively sure it isn't

If you want cover art in the artist view, yes, write permission is required

[unincognito]

An app for ios/windows/android would be nice. Isn't much more work supporting different browsers and browserupdates?
I use mpad, but I guess if Bryston created their own app it would work more smoothly, and could integrate Tidal in an better way then in a browser.

No, each platform uses a different programming language and that language changes from time to time (granted not very frequently and there is time to switch).  iOS and Mac OS used objective-c and are now transitioning to swift.  Microsoft uses the .net environment which I believe the current goto language in it is hash, before the c++ and a few others have been tide in like basic.  Android uses Java, so the apps can't really get much better then they already are.

Creating a web app, you take all of your back end code and it never changes, even the HTML remains the same.  The tricky part has to do with CSS, but this isn't a new issue and css3 takes this into account and allows web designers to add tags to specific browsers.

[Rod_S]

To address the artist view there will be a new option in media player that will add some extra CSS to the page.  Not sure how well it will work, hence why it will be an option that can be enable or disabled. 

I upgraded an iPad 2 to iOS 9.0.2 on Monday and didn't have any issue and did some more testing today, granted today's testing focused on the new artist view.

Have you tried another browser on your ipad, like Chrome, could be something not quite working

You should load some of the albums that don't populate in to the playlist, play a song and check song info to see if the fields populate.

Apple really needs to change were the omojis button is on the keyboard

I haven't tried another browser on my iPad but I can certainly give that a try.

I'll also try what you suggest about adding some albums that don't show in the Artist Album folder via another method and see if there is any info on them.

[Marius]

Thanks Chris,
I think the Clear cache did the trick! After that a full update took place and the BDP is fully responsive again. BDP at nominal operation ! pfff took some effort, thanks for helping, chatting and skyping. Customer service at its best 




So if i understand correctly MM has


1- update, either full, or incremental
2- reset (Bryston) DB (which needs a reload (=reboot?) and
3- Clear cache (which also does a full update after an immediate reboot, since the MPD DB is cleared and needs to be rebuilt)


Bryston Db is needed for the album art only? or does it also have anything to do with the MPD DB?
For a simple user as i am, the distinction is a bit complex to understand. I would have thought rebuilding a MPD DB would also imply a rebuild of the Bryston DB. And vice versa, resetting the Bryson DB (ie building it from scratch ) implies a relationship with the MPD DB.


Also, when updating, is the Bryston DB automatically updated along, or do we need to issue an extra command for that.


After one clicks reset DB a message states the DB is rebuilt on the next load. I take it that means after the next reboot? And is it correct it doesn't reboot automatically after clicking it? Just as after clicking clear Cache? Please consider issuing a bit more feedback on those commands, so we know what is expected, and what is happening (if anything at all)


Sorry for this, but i feel a good understanding of this system, is very helpful in using the BDP/MM.


Cheers Marius


btw i have another miracle here: My NAS apparently resides on 2 different IP addresses?


 

I'll do something about the buttons, but the lastfm settings are directly related to mpd, they allow mpd to report the music your listening to, to your last fm account.  Next time you login, lastfm will make recommendations based on what you've listened to.

Reset DB , found in media player is related to the Bryston DB and the Bryston DB is only used by media player.  Clear cache, resets the mpd cache used to save the database between reboots and used by all mpd clients; hence why it's found in mpd settings.  They are seperate and only need to be used under certain circumstances. 

Reset DB would be used if the artist or sorts are out of date and an auto update wasn't triggered.  Clearing the cache should only be used if the mpd database is either crashing while being built or isn't removing or adding songs it should be.

Crossfade allows the song that's ending to cross fade with the next song, if the value is set to 0 the feature is disabled, if you enter five it'll use a cross fade of 5 seconds.

I'm not sure why the BDP is generating cross fade.jpg or the other one which file name escapes me at the moment and havn't spent much time researching it other then it's not the Bryston DB creating them... Atleast relatively sure it isn't

If you want cover art in the artist view, yes, write permission is required

[Rod_S]

Something I noticed last night was two files created called bdp_front_44.jpg and bdp_front_250.jpg being created in my album directories with the songs. Look like the BDP is creating it's own album files from the ones I already have. In some cases there is a 3rd file called bryston_db_disable.jpg

What's the purpose of each of these files?

[Rod_S]

Hi Chris I wanted to get your thoughts on the following behavior. I think it might be tag related but I'm not seeing what it would be that needs changed. I'm going to show an album I have in 3 formats, CD (flac 44.1/16), high res (flac 96/24) and mp3. I have the song number tags setup the same for all 3 but yet the Artist view is showing the mp3 number differently. The actual file naming is a bit different though but that's just for the CD.

CD (01 Joe Satriani - Premonition.flac)



High Res (01 Premonition.flac)



MP3 (01 Premonition.mp3)




Interestingly I just literally noticed that there is a specific Album Artist tag (I can't believe I never noticed that before) so I suspect that is going to explain why some albums aren't showing up in Default view when I click the Album Artist folder. As you can see the high res file does not have this tag. 

[Marius]

Forget about that USB feed from the Nas. It gives a ridiculous amount of distortion, like one hears the drives spinning. feeding the Chromecast Audio  from the Ac with the supplied adapter takes that out fortunately.


Cheers,
Marius

in my second system in the Gym


usb power from the Synology Nas. Wifi from the Apple Airport Express next to it, and feeds into my Quad 44. All within a square meter, so distance cant be the issue...


Cheers,
Marius