WavPack support

[Mahinepua 81]

Something for the Emby devs to consider moving forward, Finamp support seems like the easiest the cheapest option given servers are similar.

[Jdiesel 1431]

Using the Legacy version of the Windows app could be an options too

https://emby.media/emby-for-windows.html

 

I don't have any WavPack files to test with though

[softworkz 5065]

53 minutes ago, Ronstang said:

I have tons of apps that will play anything I throw at them

Which tons of apps can play wavpack on Windows (besides foo and mpv)?

[Jdiesel 1431]

From the website

 

WavPack has been tested and works well with the following quality Windows software:

• Custom Windows Frontend (by Speek)
• DirectShow filter to allow WavPack playback in WMP, MPC, etc.
• WMP Tag Plus allows WMP 11+ to read and write WavPack file tags
• CheckWavpackFiles to batch verify WavPack files/folders (by gl.tter)
• Audacity (audio editor) (**new**, w/ 32-bit floats & metadata tag support)
• NullSoft Winamp (plugin available here, w/ ReplayGain & Media Library & DSD)
• JRiver MediaCenter (complete native support for reading and writing, including DSD)
• Foobar2000 Advanced Audio Player (native support w/ ReplayGain & Cuesheets & DSD)
• Adobe Audition (and CoolEdit) (filter available here, w/ 32-bit floats & extra info save)
• Resonic Audio Player & Sample Manager (full support including native DSD)
• dBpowerAMP Music Converter / Audio Player / CD Writer (official addon)
• Steinberg WaveLab Audio Editor (native support since 8.5)
• Ahead Nero Burning Rom (plugin available here)
• Reaper Multitrack Audio Recorder and Editor
• FL Studio Music Production Software
• Mp3tag Universal Tag Editor
• VLC VideoLAN Media Player
• JavaTunes Audio Player
• SoX - Sound eXchange
• jetAudio Media Player
• Musique Audio Player
• EZ CD Audio Converter
• EAC CD Ripper

Edited January 26, 2025 by Jdiesel

[softworkz 5065]

57 minutes ago, Ronstang said:

I realize the DEVs think emby's ability to transcode everything is some big plus, to me it is an Achilles heal

Please go to https://emby.media/ and read the headlines to understand what Emby is about.

[Mahinepua 81]

@softworkzis a finamp port a possibility?

Its open source and code should only need the server part changed?

[Ronstang 293]

6 minutes ago, Jdiesel said:

From the website

 

WavPack has been tested and works well with the following quality Windows software:

• Custom Windows Frontend (by Speek)
• DirectShow filter to allow WavPack playback in WMP, MPC, etc.
• WMP Tag Plus allows WMP 11+ to read and write WavPack file tags
• CheckWavpackFiles to batch verify WavPack files/folders (by gl.tter)
• Audacity (audio editor) (**new**, w/ 32-bit floats & metadata tag support)
• NullSoft Winamp (plugin available here, w/ ReplayGain & Media Library & DSD)
• JRiver MediaCenter (complete native support for reading and writing, including DSD)
• Foobar2000 Advanced Audio Player (native support w/ ReplayGain & Cuesheets & DSD)
• Adobe Audition (and CoolEdit) (filter available here, w/ 32-bit floats & extra info save)
• Resonic Audio Player & Sample Manager (full support including native DSD)
• dBpowerAMP Music Converter / Audio Player / CD Writer (official addon)
• Steinberg WaveLab Audio Editor (native support since 8.5)
• Ahead Nero Burning Rom (plugin available here)
• Reaper Multitrack Audio Recorder and Editor
• FL Studio Music Production Software
• Mp3tag Universal Tag Editor
• VLC VideoLAN Media Player
• JavaTunes Audio Player
• SoX - Sound eXchange
• jetAudio Media Player
• Musique Audio Player
• EZ CD Audio Converter
• EAC CD Ripper

Exactly.   Emby likes to support one thing and transcode, which is why emby is simply a movie player for me.  Music does it's own thing and doesn't believe Genre>Artist>Album>Tracks is how music should be accessed or at least that was the case 4 years ago as I have not even tried music since nor does it play my files and LiveTV is a complete mess.

[softworkz 5065]

• Custom Windows Frontend (by Speek)

🠊 Doesn't play anything

• DirectShow filter to allow WavPack playback in WMP, MPC, etc.

🠊 Doesn't play DSD

• WMP Tag Plus allows WMP 11+ to read and write WavPack file tags

🠊 Doesn't play anything

• CheckWavpackFiles to batch verify WavPack files/folders (by gl.tter)

🠊 Doesn't play anything

 

• Steinberg WaveLab Audio Editor (native support since 8.5)
• Ahead Nero Burning Rom (plugin available here)
• Reaper Multitrack Audio Recorder and Editor
• FL Studio Music Production Software
• Adobe Audition (and CoolEdit) (filter available here, w/ 32-bit floats & extra info save)
• Audacity (audio editor) (**new**, w/ 32-bit floats & metadata tag support)
• Mp3tag Universal Tag Editor
• EZ CD Audio Converter
• EAC CD Ripper

🠊 Not players

• VLC VideoLAN Media Player

🠊 Doesn't play DSD

• JavaTunes Audio Player
• SoX - Sound eXchange
• jetAudio Media Player
• Musique Audio Player
• NullSoft Winamp (plugin available here, w/ ReplayGain & Media Library & DSD)
• JRiver MediaCenter (complete native support for reading and writing, including DSD)
• Foobar2000 Advanced Audio Player (native support w/ ReplayGain & Cuesheets & DSD)
• Resonic Audio Player & Sample Manager (full support including native DSD)
• dBpowerAMP Music Converter / Audio Player / CD Writer (official addon)

Ok, haven't tried these. The only one I had been able to play DSD was MPV - not even VLC - which normally plays everything..

[Guest]

Do I need to say it again?....

[Jdiesel 1431]

Foobar2000, WinAmp, MusicBee, JRiver, Audirvana, and hqPlayer are probably the most common music players/managers for serious audio enthusiasts 

[Ronstang 293]

Just now, Jdiesel said:

Foobar2000, WinAmp, MusicBee, JRiver, Audirvana, and hqPlayer are probably the most common music players/managers for serious audio enthusiasts 

Serious users is the operative word here.  I would suppose emby to understand that their product is not something for the casual user and most of us put a lot of time and money and love into our content so many users of emby would be considered "serious" users, they just don't take us seriously with the ever common "We're looking into this for the future" (paraphrase) which translated means don't hold your breath or care too much because we are probably ignoring you.  Emby as a product is great in many ways but whoever is in charge obviously has very little business sense.  They destroyed the server with an update last February which took them a long time to correct and left LiveTV worse than it was.  I have no LiveTV buffer at all so it's useless.

I would never recommend emby to anyone I know that does not have a lot of patience or technical skill and lots of time for testing and fixing issues.  Hell, I updated Windows 11 to the latest build the other day and my tuner card stopped working in emby so I had to revert.

[Mahinepua 81]

I’m sure it’s something Emby will want to address, at least we have Softworkx ear.

If the Xbox app didn’t exist it wouldn’t be an issue they would have stuck with MPV.

It must be an easy change though assigning the format to MPV instead of the windows api, just like file associations.

[user24 312]

36 minutes ago, Jdiesel said:

Foobar2000, WinAmp, MusicBee, JRiver, Audirvana, and hqPlayer are probably the most common music players/managers for serious audio enthusiasts 

I'd add Roon and Plex/Plexamp to this list. Both of these have advantages and disadvantages compared to Emby.

[softworkz 5065]

32 minutes ago, Mahinepua said:

It must be an easy change though assigning the format to MPV instead of the windows api, just like file associations.

Not at all. First, the players are not invoked as standalone executables, but are integrated and controlled via API.

Just playing audio files would still be easy, though. It gets difficult when it comes to playlist handling and features like gapless playback. For gapless playback, you can't just wait until one song has finished playing and then tell the player to play the next one, as that would cause - you guessed it - a gap!

Gapless playback can only work when the player knows what's next to play even before the current track has finished playing. This allows the player to load the next file early enough to play the next song without a gap. Same is required for quick skipping. The current Windows audio player loads the start data of the next two songs already in order to start playback instantly when you skip forward (in the same way, it caches audio from previous songs for quick skipping backward).

To make those things possible, it is required to provide the playlist to the player - or rather the player's playlist feature. As the playlist is editable by the user in the Emby app, even during playback, every single change that is made to the playlist in the app, needs to be mirrored to the player's playlist. You cannot do this by clearing and copying the changed playlist to the player, because then it would interrupt playback. Instead, you need to replicate every playlist change individually (add, delete, re-order).
It's not really rocket science, but there are many edge cases that need to be handled correctly and when you have one solid implementation ready and dozens of other tasks yet to be done, it should be understandable why the choice was made to go with that one for the initial release.

MPV audio playback is planned for the Linux app and could be used in the Windows app as well (like said a number of times already).

Thanks

Edited January 27, 2025 by softworkz

[Guest]

Theater already uses mpv for music. Doesn't that mean a lot of the work is already done?

[Ronstang 293]

7 minutes ago, softworkz said:

For gapless playback

Not much of an issue for me.  I am from the days of vinyl and 8 tracks so if I have a little gap between songs I really don't care.  Younger people with no patience who live in the now and have to have constant stimulation yes, I understand that I have young kids, but for audiophiles I cannot see gapless as much of an issue.  What's a few seconds between songs?  Plus anyone who cares can rip their tracks with no gaps if they like and the problem is solved or at least minimized.

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, Ronstang said:

 Plus anyone who cares can rip their tracks with no gaps if they like and the problem is solved or at least minimized.

There will still be gaps. But, with mpv in Theater, the gap I would have was around 200 milliseconds. So very few people noticed. 

[softworkz 5065]

9 minutes ago, Ronstang said:

Not much of an issue for me.  I am from the days of vinyl and 8 tracks so if I have a little gap between songs I really don't care.  Younger people with no patience who live in the now and have to have constant stimulation yes, I understand that I have young kids, but for audiophiles I cannot see gapless as much of an issue.  What's a few seconds between songs?

Vinyls exist and especially many CDs which are gapless. Just think about concert recordings. You really don't want to have gaps when listening to those.

9 minutes ago, Ronstang said:

Plus anyone who cares can rip their tracks with no gaps if they like and the problem is solved or at least minimized.

How is it solved? You mean to rip it as a single track? Then it's tedious to find the position of a specific track.

[softworkz 5065]

14 minutes ago, generiq said:

Theater already uses mpv for music. Doesn't that mean a lot of the work is already done?

No. It didn't use MPV's playlist management and it didn't have those features.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, softworkz said:

No. It didn't use MPV's playlist management and it didn't have those features.

I knew that, I was referring to general use.

[Ronstang 293]

30 minutes ago, softworkz said:

How is it solved? You mean to rip it as a single track? Then it's tedious to find the position of a specific track.

You rip the individual disc with no gaps not a singe track.  The gaps are created by digital silence on an audio CD.  When you rip them them part of that gap is assigned to the end of the previous track and the other part to the beginning of the next track but a good ripping software lets you control how the gaps are applied or remove them totally.  That way all playback is gapless.  When you use a cuesheet to rip the original disc it has all the gap information on there so if you want to recreate the original disc from tracks you can.

I use CueTools and EAC and have been for decades.

Edited January 27, 2025 by Ronstang

[Ronstang 293]

42 minutes ago, generiq said:

There will still be gaps. But, with mpv in Theater, the gap I would have was around 200 milliseconds. So very few people noticed. 

That was my point, it is essentially gapless without gapless playback but there is a small amount of file changing time involved but like you said most people would not notice the difference.

I rip certain CD tracks as gapless on older real music from the album rock days because on many one track bled into the next.  For instance The Cars album Candy-O.  The track Shoo Be Doo flows right into the track Candy-O.  They are essentially one song but Shoo Be Doo is the intro and should always be played as one song.  On vinyl there is no gap.  They are listed on the jacket as different songs but on the actual vinyl there is no way to separate them.  The CD era messed this up because the mastering people were clueless.

Actually I think instead of splitting the gap you can assign it to the beginning or append it to the end.  I append them then they play as intended and when playing mixed music you get the gap as was intended for the track playing now.

Edited January 27, 2025 by Ronstang

[softworkz 5065]

36 minutes ago, Ronstang said:

You rip the individual disc with no gaps not a singe track.  The gaps are created by digital silence on an audio CD.  When you rip them them part of that gap is assigned to the end of the previous track and the other part to the beginning of the next track but a good ripping software lets you control how the gaps are applied or remove them totally.  That way all playback is gapless.  When you use a cuesheet to rip the original disc it has all the gap information on there so if you want to recreate the original disc from tracks you can.

I use CueTools and EAC and have been for decades.

30 minutes ago, Ronstang said:

That was my point, it is essentially gapless without gapless playback but there is a small amount of file changing time involved but like you said most people would not notice the difference.

 

I'm afraid, you totally misunderstood. I was of course talking about such kind of content where the tracks itself do not have any gaps when played one after another. Otherwise a player cannot achieve gapless playback (unless it analyzes the audio and applies some kind of crossfade).

And gapless means gapless. 200ms is not gapless. 50ms is not gapless either. Gapless means 0ms.

Also the client is not always on the same local network, and 200ms can easily become 1000ms.

 

Edited January 27, 2025 by softworkz

[softworkz 5065]

1 hour ago, generiq said:

Theater already uses mpv for music. Doesn't that mean a lot of the work is already done?

1 hour ago, generiq said:

1 hour ago, softworkz said:

No. It didn't use MPV's playlist management and it didn't have those features.

I knew that, I was referring to general use.

Like explained above, that's the easy part. The playlist part is the "difficult" one.  In theater, there was just some javascript code for integration of mpv as a NaCL browser plugin (like how Flash player was brought into web pages). The new app is written from scratch (the outer part, not the core app which is shared with most other apps).

Edited January 27, 2025 by softworkz

[Ronstang 293]

8 minutes ago, softworkz said:

I'm afraid, you totally misunderstood.

Oh, obviously.  Then again I don't care at all about gapless playback at all for any reason I can think of at all.