[PLUGIN] Volusonic

[dk31]

Hi Jo,

I have now updated my actual volumio instance, ie the one I use for music, with the lastest version of volumio, your plugin in version 1.1.0 and the Touch Display plugin.

Everything works fine until now. I can live with the fact that I loose the current directory if I switch to another library, that is not a major point.

The boot time of volumio is now very short, music is available almost instantly. Much better than before. Thanks again!

I will update my other post to describe the way the problem was solved.

There are still errors in the subsonic log, but I think it is rather a subsonic issue…

  Denis

[foobarjo]

Denis, as I said earlier, the persistent path should now be implemented.
You should be v1.1.1

[dk31]

Ah thanks, I probably missed your answer. So I’lm going to update the plugin. I’ll let you know.

[dk31]

I’ve implemented the persistent path. It’s now a Volusonic option (default to true).

I have it now got version 1.1.1.
As far as I don’t go in any other “music” tab (Radio, Music library, etc…), I stay on the last directory that was visited. That’s fine for me. Great!

The option to go to the artist or album from the playing screen already exists. You have to click on the “…” but these redirect to the “Artist” and “Album” pages in the respective “Artist” and “Album” sections of Volusonic

I know about this option you’re talking about, but I don’t find it convenient at all in my case, because it relies on the way the tags were built… And my tags are not perfectly built, and there are too many of them, anyway.

Actually, my tags are useful only for displaying some correct information on the screen when playing some music. When I need to search something, I find it much easier to use the directory tree, becasue I know where things are.

So, an option like “going to the directory” would, for me, be much more useful than going to the artist, or going to the album).

But having the persistance of volusonic tree is enough, I think.

What I used to do with GMPC was:

• searching in the “Database / Filename”, which led me very rapidly to where I wanted to go, because you can search for anything that is in the path/filename, you don’t care about tags, only filenames.
• and then add the full directory, when I’m at the right place.

At that point, everything in the directory is played, and the file browser (in GMPC) is focussed on the directory, so you can navigate from this point.
That was very handy and very fast to use.

I could stiil use it, but when you play something using a MPD client, volumio plays the music but does not display the right information…

I’ll go further in my testing process, but for the moment, I’m very happy with volusonic.

[dk31]

After a few tests, I must admit that the search function is much better, as going through subsonic. I’ll go further in that direction.

[dk31]

It just works fine, even the “search” feature is nice, thanks to Subsonic and your piece of code.

Except in one case. I’m not sure this has something to do with volusonic, but just in case, I explain you the problem, you may be able to reproduce it. Maybe you can help me.

Let’s say I have a ripped CD, in flac, which is present only in one place in my library. As an exemple, we’ll call it CD1, and this CD1 contains 10 tracks, from Track01 to Track10.

So, we have somewhere in my file hierarchy, something like: /ArtistX/CD1 Album/Track01 … Track 10.

The album is “physically” present only once, of course.

Now, for convenience, I use also symlinks, to ease access, for example, if I bought this CD in 2018, I shall have:
/NEWS-2018/

OK? Of course, these links are not made manually, but through a shell script each time I introduce a new album.

So the album is only in one place, but there are actually 2 symlinks that allow to access it. From the DB point of view, there are 3 albums, but let’s say I don’t care, what’s most important for me is the disk usage… My DB is just larger that it could be, but I can manage it.

So, if I search this given album in Subsonic (through my web navigator), I find it 3 times (one physical path and 2 symlinks), but I can choose to play any of these 3 “instances”, and they wil play the same album, only once, from Track01 to Track10.

Now, it I do the same thing through Volusonic, it finds the 3 “instances”, but shows only one of them. I cannot choose between them. If I choose to play the album I see, each track is played three times…

I have, in the queue:
Track01
Track01
Track01
Track02
Track02
Track02
… and so on.

Interesting, isn’t it?

Would you have an idea how to solve this, except stopping using symlinks? For the moment, I’m a bit stuck on this… Any “sort” parameter when grabbing the track-list from subsonic?

EDIT: it looks like unchecking the ID3Tag box for the plugin solves the issue. I can now see my 3 “duplicates” and select one of them. Good!

Denis

[dk31]

Hi Jo,

I had a surprising bug in Subsonic yesterday evening, while playing with volusonic… I tried to use at the same time volusonic, my web navigator and my android phone, all with the same user of course… This had a tremendous effect, everything was blocked… I had to reboot the RPI which holds subsonic, and after rebooting, my subsonic user had lost the right to play music… Weird…

Well, everything’s up again now and works fine. May I ask one more question:

• what is the effect of the “Metadata” check box in the plugin? I don’t see any difference with or without this box checked.

  Denis

[foobarjo]

@dk31

Hi Jo,

I had a surprising bug in Subsonic yesterday evening, while playing with volusonic… I tried to use at the same time volusonic, my web navigator and my android phone, all with the same user of course… This had a tremendous effect, everything was blocked… I had to reboot the RPI which holds subsonic, and after rebooting, my subsonic user had lost the right to play music… Weird…

Well, everything’s up again now and works fine. May I ask one more question:

• what is the effect of the “Metadata” check box in the plugin? I don’t see any difference with or without this box checked.

  Denis

Strange behavior with subsonic, i’ve never seen that before;

About the metas, It shows artist & albums infos, the same way it does in subsonic but in the Artist and Albums tabs. (LastFM biographies and stories)
I’ve added the option to disable it to avoid to get infos in double because it is now a feature of the Superstar myvolumio membership.

[dk31]

OK thanks, that’s clear. I’ve been using volusonic extensively today: no problem, it works like a charm! That makes a great difference in the ease of use of Volumio.

Thanks again for this.

Denis

[foobarjo]

I’m glad you like it

[dk31]

Hi Jo,

I have modified my initial message in the Help Forum to explain how Volusonic was more than a very good workaround to my performance issue. You may get more requests from people interested, I don’t know…

Denis

[foobarjo]

Thanks,

By the way new version is now merged, so you just have to install Volusonic from the standard plugin pannel.

Have a good time listening music, your library looks great

[dk31]

Hi Jo,

Absolutely no problem with your plugin since last installation. Really good! And my boot performances are now very good as well.

But a question/request: would it make sense to have the album art displayed at the album level, like in subsonic and aslo in the “standard” music library of Volumio?
Today in volusonic, I see a “folder” icon at the album level, although the album art shows up at “tracks” level. My album art files are named “cover.jpg”, or sometimes “folder.jpg”. In some cases, I have only a file named “album-name”.jpg.

Well, in short, I have a jpg file attached to all my albums… Would it be a hard work to have them show up like in subsonic?

By the way, if I use the “random” or “new albums” view, for example, the album art shows up. It’s only with the index view that it doesn’t.

Denis

[GreenbergEng]

hello, had volusonic working well,
recently it is asking me to check username and password credentials.
what would be the cause of this?
do i need the premium version of subsonic for the plug-in on volumio to function?

any help would be greatly appreciated

[foobarjo]

Hey Denis,

It’s quiet not simpl but I’ll give look.

In your case you could also try to enable the DLNA server in subsonic or to install minidlna on your nas and access your library via the standard “Media Server” volumio entry.
I confess that i didn’t test it myself. If you do so let me know how it works

[foobarjo]

Did you check and recheck your subsonic url and credentials?

[dk31]

Hi Jo,

Thanks for the hint. Actually, I had tried Dlna from Subsonic years ago in an earlier version, and not from Volumio, but it did not work at all (version 5.x.x), my client could not even see it.
With version 6.1.6, it works OK, but there is no album art at the “album level”, only on tracks. And I made a fast check with minidlna, with the same results… I had a look at some forums concerning minidlna, but did not find anything on this specific topic. And nothing either in the conf file…

Don’t worry, I can live with volusonic this way, it is not a huge issue. Just tell me if you ever find a way to solve it. Thanks again.

  Denis

[GreenbergEng]

yes multiple times, even created a new user id and password to be sure.
is the premium version of subsonic necessary for use with volumio?

[foobarjo]

ok,

It’s no necessary to get the premium version, volusonic work with the standrad version.

Can you update volumio to the latest version if it’s not already the case, then post Volumio and Subsonic versions and the URL you use to connect to subsonic please?

[GreenbergEng]

running subsonic version 6.1.6
running volumio version 2.779
running volusonic version 1.1.1

url to connect is the ip address of the computer with subsonic installed with port 4040 opened on my router. 10.0.2.99:4040

a custom url requires me to have premium version of subsonic. as per the network page on subsonic.