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Requested OS features/improvements/...

Luyckx Bart

July 09, 2020 07:46

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Along the way I found some things that would make life more easy using HiFiBerryOS.  Here I want to group some of my ideas and suggestions.  Feel free to add.

 

- laptopscreen layout can be improved 

   - resolution = 1366 x 768 :  A lot of space is used by the left menu.  Needs to use the scroll bar even when you hace only 1 album in it.  (can not read the album title from the bottom without scrolling down)

   - icons are quit big so you need a lot of scrolling.  giving the options to make them smaller in the userinterface would be suitable so users can adapt then according to their needs.  Size now will be H for my feeling M = 3/4 of H and L = 1/2 of H

 

 - Resolution op laptop (HD-screen) suffer from the same thing.  Only 4 artisit/ albums can be shown on 1 screen.  This require a lot of scrolling

- NTFS support so a windows external drive can be easily attached

- volume control is too sensitive. 

- Show progressbar while playing music

- show type and resolution of playing song (eg FLAC 44.1Bit-96Hz ; MP3 230 kbps)

- allow clicking on the picture of the playing song to go back iso using the smal '<" 

- scrolling through albums :  When you go into an album and scroll down.  Leave the album and open an other album, it isnt opended at the top of the songlist.

- Some songs are loud some are soft.  Needs volume control from the amplifier.  Is there a possible to improve things based on song en album GaIn setting

- Startup time is quiet long more then 2 minutes.

- manually updating the DB general-menu

Just Some thoughts from my side...Apart from that, the OS has nice touch and feel and is a joy to work with....compliments to the developmentteam

 

 

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31 comments

• 0
  
  Luyckx Bart July 09, 2020 07:49

  one thing I forgot.  Adding seach scrollbars.  artisit /albums list can be quiet long.  A scroll bar A...B..C..D ..Z  will make life more easy

• 0
  
  Rincewind July 09, 2020 19:41

  An additional bunch of feature ideas for the epic owner:

  - Playlists editor
  - Folder based Music-Library: I have a lot of albums in two file formats FLAC and mp3. I need mp3 files for iPhone or radio in my car. In a meta tag based library there now many albums twice. Folder based view on mounted music files will be also good for compilations (like a compilation "best of Blue Note record labe"l)
  - Support of wav-Files - I have also some albums from "Erased tape records"-Label in studio quality as wav-Files
  
  

  Great work from yours UI design team! 

   

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team July 09, 2020 20:16

  Thank you for the feedback. We will definitely integrate some of these in the future, but we will not integrate everything. We see some existing distributions with an extreme amount of features that just make them hard to use.Therefore we want to make sure that we don't haven hundereds of settings in configuration menus. 

  Our goal is to really focus on music and artists, not technical details like file names, file formats, bit rates, sample rates. I understand that this might not be the best choice for everybody. However, there is never something that will be perfect for everyone.
  Good news: the UI can be customized by creating your own templates. If some developers wants to develop features that we don't want to integrate in the standard HiFiBerryOS version, this is doable and we can give some tips how to achieve this. 
  
  Some stuff might also be doable for advanced users from command line (e.g. tweaking volume control range). 
  
  And in the end: the is an ongoing development - maybe some things will be integrated in the future that we don't integrate today. We don't know were this leads us in the long time. We'll see...

• 0
  
  Luyckx Bart July 12, 2020 10:12

  Some first hand experience with the interface :

  Playing song doesn't show length and time elapsed.

  Playing song doesn't show bit-sampling rate and file format

  When a song is playing, its not easy to get an overview of the album and the songs on it when you have been scrolling through your album/artist list.  Would be nice if this easy accessible from the the playing song screen. ( eg return to albumview by clicking on the album icon in the playing song screen.

  In albumview can not see the SD resolution (16/44,1)  and HD resolution albums (>16/44,1)

   

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team July 12, 2020 13:39

  > bit-sampling rate and file format

  This is something we do not plan to support in the UI. See the post above:
  
  "Our goal is to really focus on music and artists, not technical details like file names, file formats, bit rates, sample rates. I understand that this might not be the best choice for everybody. However, there is never something that will be perfect for everyone.

  Good news: the UI can be customized by creating your own templates. If some developers wants to develop features that we don't want to integrate in the standard HiFiBerryOS version, this is doable and we can give some tips how to achieve this.

  Edited by HiFiBerry team July 12, 2020 13:45
• 0
  
  Luyckx Bart July 12, 2020 17:10

  Is there a possibility to take the album replay gain into consideration? 

  Adjusting the volume of the amplifier isn't practical.  Also the volume slider isn't practical in use...With album replay gain into account it will be more usable.

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team July 12, 2020 17:12

  Not sure. We might look into it, but don't expect this to happen soon.

• 0
  
  Bob Carmichael July 13, 2020 21:04

  I concur with the idea of file path based listings. I also have an extensive collection in compressed and unCompressed. Any song that has a guest performer is treated as a separate album unless you modify the metadata to be wrong. This is the reason that I don't use most other players. I almost exclusively play albums in their entirety and this is difficult.

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team July 14, 2020 07:03

  That's what the "AlbumArtist" tag is for. If you have an album with multiple artist, just set the "AlbumArtist" to the main artist and it will list this album as a single album. 

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team July 14, 2020 12:16

  - Support of wav-Files - I have also some albums from "Erased tape records"-Label in studio quality as wav-Files
  
  Problem with WAV files is that they don't support metadata. Therefore, I recommend to convert these to FLAC

• 0
  
  armaster July 28, 2020 08:46

  Hi,

  I love HiFiBerryOS. It's simple, works great and HFiBerry team is very responsive. All praises to the team!

  The only thing I currently miss is Folder list view in music library, which is already mentioned by @Rincewind.

  Best regards.

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team July 28, 2020 09:00

  I know that some of you don't agree with us, but a "folder" view is not on our short-to-midterm to do list. We won't even commit that it will ever be developed by us. We think that music isn't about files, but artists, albums and songs. 
  
  Therefore, our recommendation is to spend some time to correctly tag your songs - and you won't miss the directory view anymore. 
  
  Tools like mp3tag makes tagging files quite easy. You can extract tags from directory/file names or retrieve the metadata from Internet services. We think, this gives you the best experience when browsing through your library.
  
  If you still insist on a file file, there are two ways:
  - Somebody could develop a "folder browser". HiFiBerryOS uses a modular design, it's possible to add 3rd party modules to the GUI
  - You use the integrated ympd running on port 9000 (you might have to enable it first using
    systemctl enable --now ympd
  
  
  

  Edited by HiFiBerry team July 28, 2020 09:24
• 0
  
  Richard Harvey July 28, 2020 14:01

  In HiFiBerryOS 20200727, ympd web interface can't be started from the GUI. Can it be started from the command line?

  Regards, Richard.

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team July 28, 2020 14:12

  See posting above:
  systemctl enable --now ympd

• 0
  
  Richard Harvey July 28, 2020 14:25

  Thanks but that command does not display ympd on a browser tab. In previous releases ympd could be started from the GUI.

  Also, shutdown from the GUI causes a reboot.

  Regards, Richard,

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team July 28, 2020 14:31

  This command starts ympd. You need to enter the URL in your browser to access ympd
  http://your-ip-address-or-system:9000

• 0
  
  Richard Harvey July 28, 2020 14:39

  Got it - thanks, my bad (senior moment).

  Is shutdown reboot from GUI a bug? Shutdown from terminal is ok.

  Regards, Richard.

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team July 28, 2020 14:41

  Probably a bug. However a bit strange as there was no work on this.

• 0
  
  Richard Harvey July 28, 2020 15:00

  It was the same with the previous release. I didn't report it as I thought it would be picked up with a new build. Not HAT specific as I have tried both DAC+DSP and DAC2 HD (very nice except for pulse on turn off (not shutdown but 5V switch off). I guess that's the 5532's supply.) Are they powered by +/- 5V or single 5V?

  Regards, Richard.

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team July 28, 2020 15:02

  Ok, we'll have a look into this. The DAC2HD uses lots of different internal voltages - both positive and negative. ;-)

• 0
  
  Richard Harvey July 28, 2020 15:25

  Thanks. Any chance of a fix for the turn off pulse? I'm using the DAC+DSP between my pre-amp and power amp for room correction so there is no muting unless I rig a relay to mute the output on shutdown.

  Regards, Richard.

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team July 28, 2020 15:30

  With the DAC+ DSP? Probably not an easy thing to do as only the DSP can control the mute function.

• 0
  
  Richard Harvey July 28, 2020 15:41

  Another senior moment :-) - DAC+ DSP is fine - no turn off pulses. Question should have only referred to eliminating turn off pulse with DAX2HD. It's not a big issue so long as the power amp is switched off first.

  Regards, Richard.

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team July 28, 2020 15:42

  I'm not sure, but we'll have a look.

• 0
  
  armaster July 28, 2020 15:43

  Regarding to mute output with relay... It would be great to implement to control gpio pins as action. So the scenario could be: Trigger=on play any source - - > Action=set pin X to high, Trigger=on stop any source - - > Action=set pin X to low. I asume that pin X default state is low (on reboot, disconnect power). Makes any sanse? 

  Edited by armaster July 28, 2020 16:09
• 0
  
  Richard Harvey July 28, 2020 15:44

  Many thanks.

  Regards, Richard.

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team July 28, 2020 15:46

  @armaster: Yes, makes sense. It's on our internal "wishlist" (as lots of other things ;-)

• 0
  
  armaster July 28, 2020 15:51

  Another option is to use current mute/unmute action, but don't work ok for this scenario (change volume when muted would act as unmuted). It would be better to have two separated actions: 1=mute, 2=unmute.

  But problem is, that system will not mute on reboot or disconnecting power. It will work only on play/stop trigger. 

  Edited by armaster July 28, 2020 16:13
• 0
  
  Luyckx Bart July 29, 2020 07:21

  I hope search-bar A-Z in artist and Album view is high on the prio-list.   This will make things more easy to scroll trough the lists.  Something like in the picture (stolen from Moode Player) It also would be nice to see playing time/elapse time etc....

  

• 0
  
  Maciej Bartosiak July 08, 2021 19:57

  This is list of features/improvements I would like to have:

  1. Better handling of compilations albums (i.e. albums with multiple artists). Now the album is displayed several times (one per artist).

  2 Better handling of songs without artist tag. Now it's impossible to play them.

  3. In terminal access better support for files with unicode characters in name (UTF-8).

  4. Download artist photo and/or album artwork from GUI.

  Regards,

  m/