Allow .cue files

HardBit · July 1, 2014, 7:48am

Hi People.

Will be great if Volumio allow .cue files, because too many files FLAC are in only once file

Seriously, this feature will be great :mrgreen:

Thanks

volumio · July 3, 2014, 7:18pm

It’s almost a year I’m unsuccessfully trying to get this accomplished, of course any help is appreciated on that!

Twerp · July 10, 2014, 10:48am

Rockbox does it successfully, can you borrow any of their code?

download.rockbox.org/daily/manua … 1290007.13

In the meantime, mpdroid handles .cue files if you have an Android phone.

corwin · August 28, 2014, 10:25pm

I’m going to upgrade from Volumio to Raspyfi and see if cue support works. My collection is entirely single file flac so not having cue support is like having a car without a steering wheel; it doesn’t matter how pretty the paint job is how big the engine is; It’s unusable.

balbuze · August 29, 2014, 1:48pm

Hi!
Even if this is not the solution you are looking for, what I did is to split single Flac file with .cue into several files with auto tagging and renaming. I did it with Ubuntu, it’s fast and easy to do and now I’m able to listen the track I want with Volumio.

sstavross · September 9, 2014, 7:56am

Splitting 1 Terra collection is not so easy…

Any news about .cue files support? I know that mpd supports cue files, I don’t understand why mpd on volumio doesn’t support it…

jotak · September 9, 2014, 11:44am

Hi,

I’m not particularly aware of this issue since I’m not using cue files, but it’s interesting to know that mpdroid manage them. It means there’s probably a way to do it in volumio (I mean, without having to re-write everything) ; mpdroid is open-source, on github, it should be interesting to have a look at the code
github.com/abarisain/dmix

sstavross · September 9, 2014, 1:19pm

I have tested mpdroid and it only lists the cue files if you browse in file system, no throw album or artist. It only lists the cue file, you don’t see the tracks, and if you play it, volumio plays the first track and if you select next track volumio plays next track! So there is no listing of the tracks in the library. I don’t know if that helps…

Twerp · November 13, 2014, 9:59am

Runeaudio seems to have cue files working. Here’s their commit:

https://github.com/RuneAudio/RuneUI/commit/d1654c2e422579a2f50358f8fe4acbe42548ed1a

chip_mk · December 2, 2014, 10:30am

Recently I deployed Volumio 1.51 on my Rasberry with HiFiBerry Digi. It’s great player, I have much positive to say, but will keep it for another post. My post is about .cue files. I find playing .cue files is quite important feature to product usability.

I’m new in this field, although with some experience as a programmer. I would like to share my idea how to implement .cue support. I’ve just read MPD documentation and this suggestion is based on my, possibly wrong, understanding of the subject. So this is it:

When “add to playlist” is chosen for .cue file while browsing the library, the effect should be similar to adding a folder, i.e. should result in adding multiple entries in the current playlist
In a typical case when one flac file contains multiple tracks, first the chosen .cue is parsed and following data is extracted: URI of the flac file (e.g. xyz.flac), time offset of the start and end of each track.
For each track, make another entry of the flac file (xyz.flac in our example) by addid command and use the rangeid command to set the start and end position of the track
I now, it’s more a workaround, not a genuine solution…

flyingnote · December 4, 2014, 8:40am

hello.
I use mpd client “ncmpcpp” to access Volumio.
By using ncmpcpp, i can add cue sheet to the playlist.
When add cue sheet, track’s names is shown on the playlist, And you can select track you want and play it.
mpd client “gmpc” supports cue sheet too. I use gmpc on Windows 7 to access Volumio.

I read on web that Volumio’s interface uses mpd client “mpc” in background, and mpc doesn’t support cue sheet.
I Think this is the reason Volumio’s interface cannot support cue sheet.

marcoc1712 · December 5, 2014, 10:20pm

Hi,

I understand would be beatifull to have MPD on Volumio supporting .cue files, but indeed i think is a problem in MPD, since I’m not aware of any client that correctly handle them. I Was in touch with cantata’s developer and we tried to 'copy ’ the way gmpc do, but we discovered it’s only listing the cue as a file, so no hope to have tracks, albums, composer, director and artists listend in the library.

Maybe something has changed, I don’t know but… who cares! Volumio now supports Squeezelite so all the rich features we are used as squeezebox users are in our hands, starting from a very good integrated support of .cue files.

GREAT!

flyingnote · December 6, 2014, 2:44pm

Soory, I add a postscript.
I missed to write a point. I use flac files and cue files. I don’t use other format files.
WAV format file may not work with cue sheet on mpd system, I read that on the web before…

marcoc1712 · December 10, 2014, 10:13pm

Hi,

thanks to flyingnote to correct himself, he saved me some work.

Too bad, seems cue sheet are evil for programmers, they think we all have to use tags instead and try to force you to do.

I’m not aware of any player supporting 100% .cue files, the best I know (and is the one I use) is Squeezebox + Logitech media server, is not complete but much better than other, native support for Composer, Director and Band let you file classical music in a far better better way than just by Artist and - most important - every functionality in SB is the same for tagged files and cue files defined tracks.

I really suggest who is comfortable with Volumio to not give up just becouse missing support of .cue file in MPD and MPC, but give a try to Squeezelite and LMS.

Thanks, Marco.

Griffith · January 8, 2015, 8:53pm

CUE work very well on Volumio (RPI), but only in MPDroid (google play app).

chip_mk · February 22, 2015, 9:47pm

Thanks for the hint, MPDroid makes such a wonderful supplement to Volumio.

ajh · February 25, 2015, 2:13pm

Given that client communication is plain text (see musicpd.org/doc/protocol/)
I managed to eavesdrop gmpc’s communication with MPD (using wireshark).
(You can enter the following commands yourself by doing “telnet volumio.local 6600”)

Here is gmpc’s startup dialog:

commands
notcommands
tagtypes
outputs
status
urlhandlers
outputs
stats
listplaylistinfo “Favorites”

and here it is adding a .cue to the playlist:

lsinfo “/”
lsinfo “NAS”
…
lsinfo “NAS/albums/Air/2001 - 10 000Hz Legend”

listplaylists
command_list_begin
load “NAS/albums/Air/2001 - 10 000Hz Legend/2001 - AIR - 10 000Hz Legend.cue”
command_list_end

status
…
playlist: 3
playlistlength: 11
…

command_list_begin
playlistinfo “0”
playlistinfo “1”
playlistinfo “2”
playlistinfo “3”
playlistinfo “4”
playlistinfo “5”
playlistinfo “6”
playlistinfo “7”
playlistinfo “8”
playlistinfo “9”
playlistinfo “10” < (=“playlistlength: 11” -1)
command_list_end

So gmpc uses the “load” command (which adds a playlist to the active queue). It then asks MPD to list each of the queue entries so it can display them.

I created a test folder with two files in it:

a Flac file with embedded cue sheet
a cue sheet (.cue)

Using telnet to talk to MPD, it listed three entries in that folder:

lsinfo NAS/test
file: NAS/test/Angelica.flac
playlist: NAS/test/Angelica.flac
playlist: NAS/test/Angelica.cue

However if you try and “load NAS/test/Angelica.flac” it responds with “ACK [50@0] {load} No such playlist”
while “load NAS/test/Angelica.cue” works and you can see the individual tracks in the playlist.

$ telnet volumio.local 6600
OK MPD 0.19.0
lsinfo NAS/test
file: NAS/test/Angelica.flac
Last-Modified: 2015-02-23T21:58:05Z
Time: 644
Artist: Angelica
AlbumArtist: Angelica
playlist: NAS/test/Angelica.flac
playlist: NAS/test/Angelica.cue
Last-Modified: 2015-02-23T18:04:09Z
OK
load NAS/NAS1/test/Angelica.flac
ACK [50@0] {load} No such playlist
load NAS/NAS1/test/Angelica.cue
OK

Using Volumio web interface I can see the three entries:
Angelica.flac 10:44
Angelica.flac
Angelica.cue

However if I “add” the first two entries they appear as one “whole file” entry in the playlist. If a “add” the cue sheet nothing appears in the playlist.

This points to two seperate issues:

MPD seems to be unable to load a flac file with embedded cue sheet as a playlist (using the load command)
This seems to me to be BROKEN in MPD (if someone has a flac file with embedded cue that works can you supply the output from e.g. “metaflac --list Angelica.flac”).
Volumio does not use the “load” command on cue sheets (or the flac playlist item) This seems to be incorrect Volumio behaviour (I havent found a way to eavesdrop on volumio’s communication with MPD so dont know what it does do).

ajh · February 27, 2015, 6:27pm

After some more digging I can get Volumio’s web interface to load cue files as playlists (the same as gmpc) by editing the following file:
/var/www/inc/player_lib.php

search for the line containing ‘m3u’ (approx line 399):

 if ($fileext == 'm3u' OR $fileext == 'pls' OR strpos($path, '/') === false) {

and change it to:
if ($fileext == 'm3u' OR $fileext == 'cue' OR $fileext == 'pls' OR strpos($path, '/') === false) {
You will need to reboot to pick up the changes.

While the real solution to all this is for the MPD music database to support multi track files, If somebody is up for a coding challenge then I suggest modifying a client to do this:

[code]$ telnet volumio.local 6600
lsinfo “/”
…
lsinfo “NAS/test”
file: NAS/test/Angelica.flac
Last-Modified: 2015-02-25T13:53:58Z
Time: 644
playlist: NAS/test/Angelica.flac
playlist: NAS/test/Angelica.cue

listplaylistinfo NAS/test/Angelica.cue
…
file: NAS/test/Angelica.flac
Range: 250.560-385.626
Last-Modified: 2015-02-25T13:53:58Z
Genre: Indie
Date: 1999
AlbumArtist: Angelica
Album: Bring Back Her Head
Track: 02
Title: Nothing Special
Artist: Angelica
Time: 135
…[/code]

Extract from this information the Track number, Title, Artist, Time (duration)
and display it in the GUI interface like individual files are displayed.
Then adding e.g. track 2 becomes:

load "NAS/test/Angelica.cue"  1

(note listplaylistinfo lists tracks from 1 but the load command indexes them from zero)

Again the flac playlist entry should work but doesnt which looks like an MPD problem.

norrest · April 6, 2015, 9:48am

UPD!
Previous code some help,
But if files many (not only one), cue not work!

raspycero · December 19, 2015, 8:45pm

Looking for audio player options for a new hifi-berry project.

Very disappointed to see that there is no proper support for single-file flac + cuesheet in Volumio. Like many ppl with lots of classical music and live jazz albums I chose to keep my collection in Flacs + cuesheets to preserve as-close an image as possible to my original CDs. This is a fairly large collection of about 3000 albums. A few hundred of these are hi-res / HD-audio FLACs.

For those in a similar situation wondering what to use, XBMC / Kodi provide great support for this format. It scans and indexes the cuesheets and ignores untagged FLAC images, and it can scan the collection from your NAS or from local storage, transparently.

For my new audio-only build I was hoping to go with Volumio but it seems I will have to go with Openelec.

Honestly, it sounds a bit bizzare that Volumio calls itself an audiophile player and does not provide support for this common format amongst audiophiles.

p.s. for local playback in your fedora / linux desktop, “audacious” recently added Library scanning support for this format as well (they have been able to play back cue files forever, but only recently added library support).