Posts Tagged ‘iTunes’

Getting Songbird To Sing Beyond The Cage

Sunday, April 26th, 2009

Worse case scenario happened.  The laptop I was using for a Songbird powered stereo had a sudden and massive hard drive crash.  Nothing is recoverable, the drive isn’t even recognized.

It’s not the end of the world, I keep all the actual music files on a Drobo connected to a server in the basement.  So those are relatively safe.  But all the intangible stuff, like the meta data for ratings and playlists are gone.  With over 18,000 tracks they’re not easy to get back.

But what to do now?  I’m taking this as a sign to do something better.  I’d prefer not to have a laptop just sitting in the living room any more.  In the realm of Network Music Player there are only a few real choices:

And they all have their problems.  (And the Sonos is too expensive to even bother talking about.)

The Squeezebox hardware is pretty pricey and I don’t have an audio system on the main floor that could take advantage of the fidelity that they put out.  Only one package has anything other then a text based screen with an IR remote.  Ug.  It also requires a service running on a computer somewhere.  I tried installing it on the PowerMac I’m using as a server but it refuses to start.  Not even an error message in the console to explain why.  I’ve been able to get it running on other PC’s and the service interface is UGLY.  The only playlist management is through reading an iTunes database.  Ouch.

The Roku seems to be very tied to iTunes as well and the Firefly media server feels really bare-bones.  After their new video player, I think this is being forgotten about.

The Airport Express is a nifty little device, but it’s specifically designed for iTunes.  And if you want a controller for it, you need at least an iPod Touch.

I’m a very committed fan of Songbird, but I’m not left with many options for it.  There’s a Songbird Remote for the iPod Touch, but Songbird still can’t “speak” through the Airport Express.  Unless I get Airfoil as well – which will allow any app to pipe it’s sound through the Express.

Sounds good, right?  Well then there’s the issue of Songbird not having a PowerPC build anymore.  There was someone who was producing their own PowerPC package, but I don’t know if it’s still being maintained.  Then there’s the question if all the extensions and addons will work with it as well.

I picked up a Airport Express to try out and so I’d be able to play something on the main floor.  It’s streaming from iTunes on a everyday laptop for now, but it is working.  And it gives me Wireless-N to boot.  But it’s still not Songbird and all the flexibility that comes with it.

So, to get everything working just right I need a PowerPC version of Songbird, an iPod Touch, Airfoil, Songbird Remote iPod app and Songbird Extention.

What could possibly go wrong with that?

*sigh*

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Posted in Apple, Signal Noise | 3 Comments »

09/09/08 – What I want.

Friday, September 5th, 2008

So Apple has another really big show going on Tuesday the 9th.  There’s talk of new MacBooks, iPod Touch ‘s, a fairly reliable rumour of a new Nano (which sounds pretty stupid, 4 generations and each one is radically different from the last – it better be worth it…) and even iTunes 8.

And I don’t want any of it.  MacBooks will never be cheap enough for me to buy new, so I don’t care.  Pictures of the new Nano make me wonder why they still call it a “nano”.  And anything added to iTunes now will be for people that use the iTMS – which I won’t.

The iPod Touch, however, does have a foothold in my mind.  And let me go into why.

Right now, for music in my living room I use a old laptop with iTunes on it and a IR remote so that I don’t have to stand over it to change songs.  It works ok. Not great, but almost good enough.  Almost.

I’ve been looking for a network music player to replace the setup.  But everything has it’s shortcomings.  Slim Devices has a lot of good hardware.  There’s the Squeezebox Duet which puts a small black box next to the speakers and you control everything from a full colour controller.  Of course, it costs $399.  The new Squeezebox Boom is also very, very cool.  Build in speakers with excellent sound – you can take it anywhere you can hit your WiFi signal.  Like outside when you’re having a BBQ.  That’s very cool.  Only I have to search through 18,000 songs on that small display.  Fun.

All of these play your music from software you need running on your computer.  And this is where it really falls down.  There are no dynamic playlists.  Or song ratings.

What?!

Sure, you can create static playlists, but who the hell wants to do that any more?  If I have a list of favourite songs and I add a album to my collection, which has a new favourite song, then I have to go through the web based interface to add it.  That’s not cool.  I should be able to just set it to 5 stars straight from the player and forget about it.  I saw a plugin which gave song ratings, but that should be built in from the start.  Core functionality should never be a plugin.

You can get SqueezeCenter to access your iTunes Library so it can access iTunes’ dynamic playlists but that just seems like a cludge and I find it a little distasteful.

Now, on the other end of things Apple has a small solution to my problem.  With current versions of iTunes you can do two nifty things.  You can play music from it over a network to a Airport Express with “AirTunes“.  Goodbye laptop.  And with a iPod Touch, or iPhone, you can use the iTunes Remote to control both iTunes, and AirTunes.  So you get the little touch sensitive controller, the reduced clutter of a laptop free living room and the refined database capabilities of iTunes.

So what’s the problem?  I hate iTunes.

iTunes is good at what it’s for, keeping you in line and directed to iTMS to spend, spend, spend.  But it’s not very open to “unsactioned” ideas.  It would also mean that I would have to keep a Windows or Mac machine running as my server when I’d prefer Ubuntu, where possible.

There’s a ray of light in all of this.  Dim, dirty, but it’s there.  When I picked up my Drobo I was faced with a choice.  Run it on Linux or XP with a upper limit of 2TB (which sounds like a lot right now) or run it on Vista or OSX for up to 16TB.  Vista is not an option so I picked up a older PowerMac running 10.5 for fairly cheap.

Sooooo……  I mean, it’s already got iTunes on it, right?

I’ve started to think about how all this would work.  Headless PowerMac in the basement running iTunes, Airport Express plugged into the wall and the stereo and iPod Touch controlling it all from where ever I want.  Nice.  Hell, I even get an iPod to carry to work with me.

Wait….  how would I sync the iPod?  I don’t want to have to go down under the stairs to put the iPod in the dock just to sync songs and ratings.  That would be stupid.  My laptop is running Ubuntu, and even if it was capable of running iTunes that means the rating changes still wouldn’t end up on the computer in the basement.

Which finally brings me around to what I really want from Apple:  Wireless sync for the iPod Touch. Take a closer look at the Airport Express – it has a usb port for printing.  I’m betting that could also be used to charge the Touch, and if the Touch won’t sync itself over WiFi, why can’t the Airport Express act as a bridge between the PowerMac and the iPod?

It would be so neat, so clean in design, so Apple.

They’ll never do it.

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Posted in Apple, House | 1 Comment »

Bird Brain

Saturday, August 23rd, 2008

The new version of SongBird is amazing.  It just gets better and better.  I’m hoping that by version 1.0 I’ll be ready to switch away from iTunes.

One of the things I’m going to need to be fixed before then is what do to about Christmas music.  If I rate a Christmas song a full 5 stars, it’ll show up in my Highest Rated playlist.  Which would be fine, if it was December.  During the summer months when I’m arguing to turn on the A/C it’s not exactly something I want to hear.

Under iTunes, I simply create a smart playlist called Christmas Music then do a select all on the results and uncheck the songs.  Then none of the other playlists will include those songs.

Nice.

Songbird doesn’t have that feature yet, nor can I create a Christmas Music list and tell the Highest Rated playlist to ignore songs that are also in Christmas Music.  But these are all things that are going to be fixed.

But how about if I want it more then fixed?  Why can’t Songbird be better?

Why can’t Songbird recognise when it’s appropriate to play Christmas songs?

Or for that matter, what about other types of tracks?  Like Comedy.  Once again, I might give Robin Williams 5-stars but I don’t want that showing up in Highest Rated when I just hit play.

I started to think about this more and more after I initially posted in the Songbird forums.

Imagine a way to give Songbird some idea of what’s going on around it?  Such as the time of year, time of day, or maybe even it’s location.  Then let it be able to tune playlists to those situations.

Time of year: When to play seasonal music and when not to.  Christmas is one of the main points here, but I also have tracks which are really only for Halloween.  I also have a CD of national anthems – wouldn’t it be cool to play those on the nation’s respective “<Insert Country Name Here> Day”?  Maybe play Happy Birthday on your birthday?

Time of day: Some people would like to hear Nine Inch Nails in the morning, some wouldn’t.  Maybe you’d like your playlist to blend into softer music before bedtime on a weekday and maybe a little more rock’en on Friday night.  Those who have left their teenage punk roots behind but not their music might prefer if some tracks would be kept out of rotation until the kids are asleep.

Location: Laptops are starting to come with GPS and a computer can get an idea of where it is based off it’s IP address.  Your workplace might frown on Gangsta Rap, or maybe you just stay more focused if songs have no lyrics.  If you’re enroute somewhere you might want travelling music.

So how would this work?  I’m not sure.

My first thought is to have a new selection appear just under Library and have it called something like BirdBrain (’cause it’s smart) or DJ Bird (’cause it does all the mixing for you) or a more “Apple” style name of Concierge (’cause it thinks it knows what’s best for you).  And have it as a generally more intelligent version of Party Shuffle on iTunes.

Or maybe that would keep it too separate from the rest of things?  Perhaps it should just work in the background with the main Library and the smart playlists that are already there.  I imagine normal playlists would be left alone since they are made with specific tracks.

As for what it would do in the background I can see at this point two main tasks.  Based off rules which the user can create (or perhaps Songbird could even learn) Songbird would enable or disable tracks from playing outright – or change the statistical chance of a song being selected for random play.

At first there was talk of iTunes’ randomization not being random enough.  Then Apple made a feature of making it less random with the ability to focus on songs from the same album or artist.  I’m suggesting to take that level of randomness down another notch.

A quick scenario on how this might work:

The Rules

Global (In place unless a following rule comes into effect)

  • No Music tagged with: Christmas, Comedy, Spoken Word, Halloween, Anthem, Bad

6 AM – 9 AM Everyday

  • No Music tagged with: Heavy, Loud, Industrial, Techno, Sad, Blues
  • Increase chance of Music tagged: Easy Listening, Morning Music, Soft, Energetic, Happy

9 PM – 12 PM Worknights (Sunday Night – Thursday Night)

  • Gradually Decrease chance of music tagged: Energetic, Peppy, High Tempo, Loud
  • Gradually Increase chance of music tagged: Slow, Quite, Sleepy, Relaxed, Ambient

While At Work:

  • No Music Tagged: Course Language, Loud
  • Significantly Increase chance of Music tagged: Instrumental

December 1 – December 24

  • Gradually Significantly Increase chance of Music tagged: Christmas

July 1

  • Significantly Increase chance of track:” O Canada.mp3″

What it means

The date and time settings are obvious.  “No Music” is simply disabling of tracks from playing.  “Increase/Decrease chance” means to boost or hinder the “randomness” of a track being played.  While “Significantly” simply means exactly that, I’m thinking you could choose a few levels of randomness interference.  Increase Chance, Modestly Increase Chance, Significantly Increase Chance or something like that.

“Gradually” affects how the rule is implimented for the duration of the rule.  So if Significantlly Increase boosts a tracks chances by, say 90%, and that rule is in effect for 3 hours/days/months then the statistical boost starts off low and and then increases to 90% at the end of the rule duration.

So in the Christmas rule above, you only get a few Christmas songs at first and then get many by Christmas Eve.

So what do you think?  Good idea?

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Phatty+

Wednesday, October 10th, 2007

I picked up Anita one of the new iPod nano‘s. The 3rd generation is lovingly referred to as the ‘Phatty’ due to it’s wider and shorter stature.

Honestly, it’s pretty wicked. The screen is sharp and the whole unit is hella light.

But there’s only one real reason I bothered giving Apple more money. The Nike+ Sport Kit. Anita’s been trying to get back into jogging and I think this might help. (Or at the very least can’t hurt.)

The other MP3 players on the market are actually of a better value. The Zune looks great with FM receiver built in, no add-on needed. But it doesn’t have the Nike+. (And it’s not on sale in Canada… but I digress.)

This also means her mini gets redeployed into my grubby hands. :) This is my first time dealing with a real iPod. My shuffle doesn’t really count. And I’ve already set the ratings on a good 50 songs. No being chained to the keyboard for it. Yay!

What I really want is to create a dynamic playlist which will constantly swap the songs on it. I have over 17,000 tracks (That’s +100 Gigs) and they’re not all going to fit on the little 1st gen mini. I’m probably doing something wrong, but if iTunes is really that great, I would hope it would be a little more straight forward. I’ll have to see if I can get the time to do some more research into it later.

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