As a new user of volumio (generally impressed) and an experienced software tester/coder I have discovered a few areas that require a bit of code tidy-up. I use other machines sometimes windows sometimes linux to rip CDs and modify meta tags. I use an external SSD on my lap tops and an HDD on my RPi4. I offer the following 6 points for bug clearance and increased usability.
I discovered in the process of updating, adding & deleting flac files on my Pi attached HDD I was seeing duplicate entries of every track. I worked out (by moving the HDD to my laptop) that my deleted folder remained on the HDD but was invisible to me over Samba (hidden folder). Really in searching for files I think hidden tracks should be skipped - better still the user should be asked if they should be automatically deleted.
Having ripped over a hundred CDs and updated the meta data I found that 1 album of 13 tracks had 3 removed and orphaned to the end of the album listing and the artist was reported differently to the others. Using a tag editor there was nothing to indicate where the meta tag for artist was different. In fact I had made a small error and not filled in the name of the artist for any of the tracks. I reentered Mozart for every track and the 3 vagrant tracks were reunited with their parent album. This sounds like a variable is not being initialized.
I then checked Genre and Artist and the error persisted. This suggests that instead of a common routine to interrogate and update the internal database at least two versions exist and they are not aligned.
I ripped many CDs and used WiFi to send them from my laptop to the HDD attached to my RPi4 and discovered another issue which should be assessed. On ripping CDs especially classical CDs many tracks contained Op.345 etc in either the album or track description, the included fullstop as well as the .flac fullstop caused multiple copy failures. mp3 files obviously had the same problem.
It would really be handy to have an unmounted SSD/HDD button on the user screen. Having to turn off my pi to ensure a controlled shutdown before moving my HDD back and fourth became tiresome.
Given my data needs it is not worth me getting a NAS, instead I use my pi to archive all sorts of files eg Photos, Music & Documents, I have now got to the stage that I use rsync to synchronise my laptop SSD with my pi HDD and I plan attaching a second HDD to my pi that will perform a similar operation via a chron job a week later for archiving purposes. I will then run a similar process to back-up HDD held data to the cloud. If you could add this functionality it might be quite useful to many audiophile but techno-phobic users.
By the way I used a linux laptop across my wifi network using Dolphin to transfer nested directories between my laptop and volumio in both directions. I guess the Samba on the pi just needs to have a parser built-in to strip out errant dots in the title and replace them with dashes. Maybe it is even configurable in Samba. I noticed in my laptop if I inadvertently clicked on an audio file with a bad string VLC reported an error. I confirmed this with âaplayerâ in a terminal (which also did not like spaces so I had to force them to be strings).
This is what I found but being hidden they were initially difficult to track down especially remotely on a headless server. One line of code would see them skipped over or permanently deleted and make volumio even more user friendlyâŚ
You could remove it easy on a pc
In scanning / updating the drive it doesnât exclude the trash.
There is still a lot to do we switched from older kernel to new one
And somethings need to be fixed and updated so we are buzy with a lot
Even all the plugins ainât there yet all need to be updated so a lot of work still to go.
Quite true, but 1 line of code and thousands of happy un-impacted users is more professional. Anyway I have grown to hate windows, it gets larger, more restrictive and less intuitive to me with every release. But I am an old guy who liked DOS and Windows XP. Pi and Volumio are a nice combination and worth growing.
Me to started on c-64 itâs not bad but as windows guys,
Sometimes it looks like linux is still not there where we want it to be.
Are you dutch mike? Nope!
For me it was an early release Clive Sinclaire special. Like me you have seen the world change quite dramatically. I ended up testing somewhat major servers, raid arrays and disk qualification with a fair bit of coding en-route. Glad to be retired.
Yes from creating things in kb to gigbyte
If you good with linux they always need a helping hand itâs a community driven Volumio all plugins are written by great guys
No, I am British, ex IBM, living in France. It took me years to write a program that compiled to 64k. Now âhello wordâ takes a 5 man team 3 weeks for a 30 gig piece of software. At my age I can rant like any old guy.
that is why I like linux, lots of inbuilt commands for system calls and although it is complicated it is worth the effort. I just think both windows and apple are making it difficult for the average user to get to see the engine. Everybody is a driver now not a mechanic. People are so busy driving they forget they are being locked in, getting linux on my windows machine made me realise that, a computer is the universal machine not a windows or apple machine to rent for a few years. That is why I find the Raspberry pi fascinating, I do not need 64 gig of RAM, a few Terabytes of storage and the fasted intel CPU with 128 cores to play a record, run a spreadsheet and write a letter.
Most of those things you can do with the pi but if you need more power,
For say video editing or any high demand programs like cad or any 3d tools
Your bound to a big cpu and a great video card the basics like you said
You can do on a little computer like a pi
True, but happily retired so they are not ever going to be part of my next job description. Most people are not in creative/artistic industries. But for those that are they have a wonderful toolset. I looked into photo editing and concluded I would be better off learning to hold the camera straight and going for healthy walks rather than sitting staring at pixels. Our dreams, aspirations and the extent to which we can experience satisfaction change as we go through life. Simplicity without a hair shirt is good enough for me. Anyway have fun creating a good tool for many on relatively inexpensive equipment.
By the way, as part of signing off I appreciate your offer to help me become part of the team but I am fully retired. I did think about writing my own NAS and I did think about writing my own music server but then reality set in. I think the NAS would not be so hard and then I tempered it with what do I really need from a NAS - very little. Then I started exploring Alsa, MPD, Pulseaudio and the like and I realised it was outside of my skill-set and instead of being a retirement project I would be learning new technical skills in areas that did not really interest me and anyway other people were much more accomplished than me. Actively joining a team would be like leaving school and getting a first job! But I do not mind reporting issues if I think I can understand where and what they are, especially simple things that can be turned around quickly to give volumio greater resilience for the greatest number of people at minimal developer effort. I am less keen to say âCan you help me find out why my particular piece of rare and exotic HI FI equipment is inadequately supportedâ. In my way of thinking, robust for many and problems that are never apparent because they have been tidied away are more my domain and are essential for a long life polished product. So very rare appearances but maybe one or two helpful observations. Your success is my improved user experience and that is fine.
Iâm not in the team iâm just a user helping others but about the nas
Are your thinking about using rpi as a nas or just buying one and build it to your specs? I know some youtube links where they build a nas if you want to know more about it i could search for the links âŚ
What kind of rare piece do you mean maybe i can ask around.
You could always add it to the list if we can get it to work.
In the transitition to the new kernel some old bugs came back but in time they will be fixed again
See, I would not be an asset! Anyway, I think it is already polished and with raspberry pi a good match. Anyway you might not be an active team member but you are an ambassador which is just as important. No I do not need a NAS. I looked at my use case and decided to use Volumio as a base for an archival system. I explored openmediavault and broke it last week. Simple plan is have a music directory structure on my Windows PC rsync it to my linux PC, use windows for ripping, music metadata, printing and scanning use the other as a workstation mostly for photography and document control. Automatically rsync both when changes are made then rsync the linux PC every 24 hours with a chron job to a HDD on my RPi4 which is also my music player and now contains photos and pdf documents. Give the Pi a second HDD and have the first HDD rsynced to the second HDD every 7 days and thence to a cloud archive. Then I guess I will just add a communal house diary to the RPi4 and also use it as a household music streamer. With such little use I can remove the fan for inexpensive silence and consistent data backup. Nowadays everyone has smartphones and the like so a fully fledged NAS is overkill. The only thing I need to do on top of that is ensure our cameras send photos directly to the cloud and have them automatically rsynced to the pi for editing into nice albums. Most people think all of their data and files are tremendously important and they need to store every movie ever made on raid arrays working flat out 24/7. My expectations are less grandiose. By the way I do not have exotic or rare equipment it was just a way of distinguishing me from the audiophiles seeking the ultimate solution. Once I used to want the best, then I discovered my ears were not good enough for the best HIFI nor were my eyes good enough for exotic cameras and even my camera skills are second rate. So I settled on sufficient not best. I saw a comment the other day which will anger many but amused me and it was âmusic lovers buy CDs to tap their toes, audiophiles buy CDs to listen to their equipmentâ.
Iâm just a simple user not using the best but just like music and nice sound,
So i bought a pi 4b /4gb and a tone one / khadas dac on usb nice enough to hear a nice stage and what others think of it will be something i donât care about if they want to have gold plated toilets or sinks or the best of the best. iâm just happy with nice sound.
ditto. I also decided a long time ago that the brain is just a magnificent CPU depending upon organic inputs such as ears and eyes. None of us have identical brains, ears or eyes. For example when I see colour, the colour I see may be similar to you or it might be quite different but we can appreciate it against a designated standard even if one of us is colour blind. Ears are the same with respect to sound. Education helps close the gap but unless I can see through your eyes it is only describable to me in relative terms, With scientific measuring devices we can measure sound very accurately but it does not describe an individuals evaluation. In his later years Beethoven was deaf but still a great composer, I found out only the other day 98% of people can conjure up visual images and for some the imagined image is as real as their eyes see and a source of confusion, I suddenly realised I was part of the 2% but I always thought we were all the same and that âphotographic memoryâ was a figure of speech. How wrong I was, but it made no difference to my life except to be able to forget horrific images and not suffer post traumatic stress. As a result I do not deal in absolutes except maybe in something like mathematics. The rest is just personal experience and personal evaluation.
