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91
Opus / What's with the awful sound of Opus through (some) bluetooth speakers ?
Last post by d.o.k -
Hello everyone. This thing annoys me to no end and when I search about it on the internet I find nothing : the sound of opus files is awful when using some bluetooth speakers. Let me explain :

I use the opus format on all of my devices : android devices with foobar2000 for android, Rockbox driven DAP (such as Ipod and Sandisk Clipzip), and a linux PC. I settled for a bitrate of 76kbps, which is fine for my use, almost transparent. Listening my music on these devices with headphones give me nice results, no complaints.

However, I have 3 bluetooth receivers and problems with 2 of them :
- a LiNKFOR DAC 192kHz (the same as shown here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RfTmxm3uXI&t=72s&pp=ugMICgJmchABGAE%3D compared with the logitech one) plugged on my stereo system.
- a JBL GO
- a Earfun Uboom L

Everything is fine with the LiNKFOR 192kHz but with the two others the sound can be awful in the high frequency range : very "washy washy" sound especially on the cymbals sound.
I made tests with 96kbps or 128kbps Opus file and even though I still have the impression that the quality is deteriorated it remains... fine. But with 76kbps or 64kbps sound files it's awful. Mind you, I am aware that 64kbps files can exhibit artifacts in the high range but I am talking about something even more degraded and really disturbing notably with long cymbal sounds.
Tests made with ~80kbps Ogg Vorbis files do not give the same issue, I notice no degradation.

Also, very important point : the awful sound is the same even when the speaker is connected via the AUX cord ! (for both speakers)

Does anyone have any explanation for that ? Could it be a sample rate issue between a 48kHz opus file and a maybe locked in 44,1kHz bluetooth device ? This is the only explanation that I have in mind.
92
General Audio / Re: What is a "high resolution audio system"?
Last post by Porcus -
As marketing slogans I am not confident there is any distinction between "fidelity", "definition" and "resolution" except the order of appearance?
While the "high fidelity" phrase has been around since the bronze age, "high definition" might have been introduced with HDCD and about at the same time you got marketing spin terms like "super bit mapping" and "extended resolution" - at 16 bit resolution yes, as far as I understand it was only how about resampling and dithering.
Actually, part of the extra "resolution" HDCD boasted was from the dithering process - the mid nineties was obviously a time where nobody was doing dithering so the ones who did (= everyone!) could boast extra resolution. Or was it definition.

There must have been more catchphrases with similar (lack of precise) content? ("Definition" seems to have died out with HD DVD?)
94
General Audio / What is a "high resolution audio system"?
Last post by nickdiba -
I read the expression "high resolution audio system" all the time, and I don't understand what that means. I understand resolution in video, in film, in digital audio. But how can analog audio have a resolution? What can a better amplifier or speaker "resolve"? Noise, distortion, phase, it's all clear to me. But how any of those can impact "resolution"?

Of course, I suspect it is a made up audiophile expression. But I keep reading it even from people that I deem unsuspectable. So, is there a meaning that eludes me?

(mind you, I'm not a troll. I've been reading HA for many, many years, and I consider it the ONLY bs-free place on the internet when it comes to audio)
95
General - (fb2k) / Re: How to play a single track from a random album, then from the next random album
Last post by regor -
Quote from: mawazi on
I'm figuring there's some way to do this, but I'm unsure how to search for it (google searches weren't helpful).

Let's say I have ten albums. Nine of the albums have ten tracks each. One of the albums has 100 tracks.

If I shuffle by track, I'm going to hear a disproportionate number of tracks from the one album, which I don't want.

I'd like an even distribution of tracks from all of the albums.

Play one track from album #1, then play one track from album #8, etc.

What magical (or extremely obvious and I'm missing it) method can be used to accomplish this goal?

I realize that eventually I'm going to be left with 90 tracks of the one album (in this exact scenario), but with a large enough library of albums, I won't reach that point any time soon in real life.

Thanks!
This questions appears from time to time...
1. Copy the desired tracks into a playlist.
3. Use Playlists Tools\Selection Manipulation\Scatter by tags\Intercalate by album.
3. Play by order. You are ensured a single play of every album before starting the cycle again
.
X
Works for asymmetric number of tracks per group. And if there are remaining tracks which can not be grouped, they are put at the end.

Link at my sig. Download zip from repository (green buton 'Code'), not latest release.
96
General - (fb2k) / Re: Defining a range for auto-playlists
Last post by kanishknishar -
Quote from: ojdo on
Ouch, thanks for pointing that out. In that case, the (path HAS 1965 OR path HAS 1966 OR ...) chain is probably easiest and best to maintain... however, using much too much title formatting, you might be able to extract the year-bearing substring from your path. In my collection, albums contain the year in `[yyyy]` brackets in their folder name, which can be extracted from the folder name with a fragile snippet like this and then compared against a range in the two `ifgreater` in the end:

Code: [Select]
$puts(y,$add(0,$substr($put(d,$directory(%path%,1)),$add(1,$put(s,$strchr($get(d),'['))),$add(4,$get(s)))))$ifgreater($get(y),1964,$ifgreater(1972,$get(y),1,0),0)

However, this can be quite brittle and depends very much on your folder layout. As a minor insurance, `$add(0)` converts all non-matches to a numeric zero, so that any non-matches are converted to a known value.

I did read up on GREATER and LESS than. I used mp3tags yesterday and extracted the performing dates into the date/year field for all live performances. The issue now is more manual in nature and that's ensuring every relevant song has correctly extracted year field/isn't missing the year field. I might have to keep referring back and forth to my auto-playlist and library to make sure there are no omissions.
97
General - (fb2k) / Re: How to play a single track from a random album, then from the next random album
Last post by JohnBuckWLD -
Quote from: mawazi on
Nine of the albums have ten tracks each. One of the albums has 100 tracks.
If I shuffle by track, I'm going to hear a disproportionate number of tracks from the one album, which I don't want....

I realize that eventually I'm going to be left with 90 tracks of the one album (in this exact scenario), but with a large enough library of albums, I won't reach that point any time soon in real life.
If you take a step back and look at your issue in an unbiased fashion, your question is negated by the fact you want a random play order based on non-random criteria: albums. If you can't ignore your album fixation for playing random songs, your only option is to split the 100 track large album into 10 ten track discs
98
CUETools / Re: CUETools DB
Last post by Despair -
Quote from: korth on
The metadata CUERipper uses is stored in the settings folder .\CUE Tools\MetadataCache\ under {TOCID}.xml so if all 8 CDs have the same TOCID then the xml file will be overwritten with each CD.
Yeah, they do. Guess there's nothing that can be done then :(
100
3rd Party Plugins - (fb2k) / Re: foo_discogs
Last post by da yuyu -
It works as expected here (both 32/64bits fb2k v2 beta 24), testing the same release with a dummy FLAC file.
Tested both $joinnames(%<ARTISTS_NAME>%,%<ARTISTS_JOIN>%) and %<ARTISTS_NAME>%,
with tracks by artists containing suffix brackets.
Not essential, but I am not sure if these are ANVs, which are more like "Name1 (Name2)" or "Name 1 AKA Name 2".

@alec.tron, you could also check in the preview panel stats (Results view):
- Artist tag stats columns 'Skip W/U' and 'Equal' count is 0.
- click to edit the artist value to check if it contains extra spaces.

Maybe also you could try manually deleting those tags before running the test again.

I've changed the v1.0.15.1 status from 'preview' to 'latest release' at Github (as the latest code update is working fine here).
Maybe it is worth downloading and installing the component again to see if it makes any difference?