some suggestions

Hey Spoon, you rock. I've been using your converter and (aux and Cd ripping) and now have been playing with the player. However, I have a couple suggestions.

1 intelligent Id tagging from the filename would be cool. I've seen it on other players so I know it is possible. You have the opposite feature with the arrange thing, so...

2 when you click on a field in the My music Collection window, It sorts based on that field, but it would be nice if you could do consecutive sorts, or sort by two or more fields. Thus you could select artist, album, and track number and have the collection shown by artist with the albums and tracks in order. This is standard in Winamp...

3 perhaps you could have the track information scroll across the taskbar like some other players.

4 dragging and dropping in the MMC


I can't seem to get the auto volume normalization feature to work. My songs still play at different volume levels.

Lastly, I would like to know how I could become a beta tester.

[Razgo]

to test the beta products simply go to the beta forum on this page.

[donny]

inteligent id taging is partly there... when there is no id tag dAP assumes that the file is named like artist - track.extension . So the file will be added as so in the mmc, and if you need a tag then just right0click on the song and go advanced->rewrite ID tag and it's done.

[Spoon]

>I can't seem to get the auto volume normalization feature to work.

It is a basic peak to peak normalize so if a track is quiet with one loud part, then the loud part will stop the normalize.

Anyhow if you have the Green 'A' light up when a track is added, the next time it is played (on random for non-beta versions) the value is worked out and shown.

Hmmm. It seems to require playing the song through, then it sets a volume level, but that new level still seems quiter than other songs that haven't been normalized. I guess it doesn't normalize to 100% like most people do when encoding. Is this an RMS normalization?

Do I have to let MMC normalize all of my tracks, reducing the volume on those tracks that are already loud?

This may be asking for too much, but how about an adaptive nomalization that changes the boosting or reduction throughout the song? This would keep a loud croud cheer at the end of a live track from spoiling the normalization...

Thank you guys

[Razgo]

i don't know if this is possible but the solution would be where you see "auto volume normalize" , put an option to click "powerpack DSP" so we can select "adaptive noramalzation" from the effects list.

probably easier said then done though.

This feature is only changing the volume of the playback right? It isn't actually normalizing the file permanently. (a good thing)

I noticed that the basic normalization in the DMC is set at 86%. Is this also normalizing at 86%? Why not 99% or 100% for that matter? As an audio engineer and all around studio guy, I know that the higher the signal to noise ratio on any recording the better. (up to but not including the distortion point) In my work we tend to compress (not file compression but audio level compression) tracks and then boost the overall normalization to 100% if possible. Advanced versions of this process are known as finalizing.

[Spoon]

It is possible to write the same Adaptive Normalize as in dMC (it would read 5 seconds of data in advance), it is quite agressive.

dMC should have been modified to 100% default values, dAPs normalizing is 100%.

[Razgo]

i haven't experimented much with volume normalize auto imuch. so i took a look and only just realized that's what the "A" is for in the "volume boost" colum?

i selected some tracks and enqued then after i played them they showed the slider in different positions. my guess is with volume auto normalize it would all be based off the first track?

I just tested to see whether the DAP actually normalizes, and was relieved to find that it doesn't. It just sets a volume boost and remembers to play that track louder. (or rarely softer) Of course, this isn't perfect, and you have to play every track in your MMC through from beginning to end before it will work the way we might want it to.

Still, this is better than uncompressing our files, normalizing the wave, and then recompressing the file. (this produces a louder but poorer quality file) The best time to normalize is before compression. Alternatively, if burning an audio cd, it is acceptable to normalize the wave produced before burning.

Of course some people don't care about quality. (some people listen to 32 kbps mp3s

[irisclara]

If you want to permanently normalize some files you can use dmc (converter) to do so. You can set up a batch convert from mmc. Also, you asked about sorting by more than one field. I think dBplayer will let you set 2 fields to sort by. At least Music Collection Preferences has a place to set a second sort category. It's not as convienent as just clicking at the top of multiple columns but there it is. As for scrolling track info, I'm not sure what it's called, but the stay-on-top control bar thingie does that. There's also a setting to minimize to system tray control that should show track info on cursor-over. Good luck!

[JahSun]

Well, it seems as if Spoon is working on a new Noramalization/ Volume Leveling scheme at this moment. ( can't wait!!)

The question is, If you permanantly nomalize a file (with DMC or another program) does the resulting file lose quality? Is this a form of transcoding? It would seem that an SHN file, for example, would have to be converted to Wave, normalized, and then reconverted back to SHN. Perhaps the quality difference wouldn't be notice-able, but this is not a solution for true collectors and audiophile phreaks... As many of the bootlegs and rare live tracks are in need of normalizing, but would also suffer the most from sound degredation. In the taper trading community, anything that would change or modify the original recording is anathema. Even though I do tend to EQ, edit, and Finalize my tracks before burning them to Audio CD.

My suggestions for the Normalization are as follows:

1. Use a method that doesn't require playing the song all the way through if possible. (Or allow us to set levels for the entire collection at once, and leave it running overnite if need be)
2. Try to use professional quality Normalizing/ Finalizing plugins. You should be able to insert Cool Edit or Cubase plugins into the wave output line. (This would be ideal !)
3. A preset compressor, audio enhancer/ exciter, surround sound simulator plugin would be cool too. (as with *blooper*2 use professional quality plugins)
4. Using a limiter would keep ultra loud sounds from jumping out at you.

Thanx a bunch. Illustrate products rule!

JahSun

"If at first you don't succeed, change the rules."

[Spoon]

You wouldn't loose any quality with shorten files, they are lossless, so encode, decode, encode as many times as you like.

[moby]

Has anyone heard of or tried MP3Gain.

http://www.geocities.com/mp3gain/

It is probaly the best volume "normaliser" out there. No loss of quality and completely reversible.

any kind of final normalizing DOES change the audio information and thus should not be used with losslessly compressed files

normalizing, EQ-ing, dynamics, enhancer, effects or anything else you would like should be done temporarily on the fly in realtime during playback by a plug-in, without changing the audio information itself. the support of VST compatible plug-ins would be a dream... if you could save the settings of your plug-in farm for each and every of your tracks, so that you can make them all sound like you have always wished, that would be still utopia i guess...

but i think this is the future... we will have stored all audio (and other multimedia) on a central server in our house and we will listen to them from terminals in the other rooms