[How to do instruction] managing library solution to check all the folders are available in artist album view

[TheOldPresbyope]

@Tom Traubert

The Web is awash with posts and rispostes about WAV vs FLAC sound quality. The only thing I'll point out is that the level of compression chosen for a FLAC file affects only its size and the amount of CPU effort to compress/uncompress the file. It's a lossless codec so the content remains the same if the software implementing the codec is correctly coded.

This lead item in your post, though, caught my eye:

Only issue is that some cover art changes from black to white in artist view eg. Back to Black by Amy Winehouse is rendered in white, so is Metalica by Metalica.

Could you upload a sample file (either a track if the image is embedded in it or the image file if it is separate) somewhere like Dropbox and PM the link to me so I can try to repro?

Talk Talk - Norah Jones - Glenn Gould? It appears your taste in music is as eclectic as mine

Regards,
Kent

[Tom Traubert]

Thanks for your replies.

@CallMeMike thanks for your suggestion. I went through Edward's thread again and I will try the tweaks, it seems to be straight forward, though it takes me closer to coding than I have ever been before. It appears to be working on newer versions of mo0de, 6.3. At least there are no comments on the thread stating otherwise.

@TheOldPresbyope thanks again Kent. I will dropbox the files when I get back to civilisation and a better internet connection.

Best regards
Jacob

[dtoss]

Sound Quality:
Am I starting hearing things, I shouldn't hear? flac vs. wav.
I hear a difference in sound between flac and wav. The wav seems more natural, more detailed bass more air between instruments eg. better wider stereo image and better sound stage (hierarchy in between instruments). Flac appears to put most instruments in the front and give a hard edge to female vocals compared to wav.. a more aggressive sound. Detailing seems equal in both formats.

As was suggested, FLAC and other lossless compressed formats entail more work by the DAC chip, which in turn may result in more noise/RFI/ground plane modulation generated etc. 
A few years back, purists would go with WAV to get a very slightly more "natural", less "edgy/hifi" sound. Nowadays, DAC chips are more powerful etc and the difference is less so.

Your hearing a difference suggests that your system is quite sensitive/transparent/high end. What is your DAC?
Denis

[Tim Curtis]

The DAC chip does not decode the audio format, it only understands PCM and optionally DoP/DSD. The audio format is decoded by the host system's CPU.

[dtoss]

The DAC chip does not decode the audio format.

You're right Tim. My bad.
Perhaps the decoding of compressed formats generates more noise, which is pass to the DAC.

[Tom Traubert]

Hi Dennis and Tim.

Thanks for reading. And thanks for the wonderfull software, Tim.

@dtoss I am glad you asked :-) my setup is:
Speakers: Philharmonic Audio. BMR philharmonitor
Speaker cables: Duelund 12 awg tinned, oiled copper in cotton.
Amp: Densen B-150 xs class a/b
Interconnects: Black Rhodium opera silver, with eichmann silver bullets. To be changed.
DAC: Khadas tone board
Player: Rpi 3b+ with hifiberry digi + transformer hat. Powered by ifi ipower.
I did the power by-pass via the hat modification this weekend. Music on an USB.

The power via the hifiberry digi + helped to get some air between instruments and some of the edge from female voices. But I still miss some of the presence and life like sound I perceived to hear with the wav format. Maybe some details to the instruments emphasising the type. Eg. Crisp overtones from the strings of a double bass, and the natural noise when they slap against the wood.

Disabling software volume ctrl in MPD helps. I thought I heard an improvement in sound when upsampling in SoX. But it could also be that the gear was getting warmed up. I could not detect any improvement with upsampling today.

I would like to try the sound tweaks posted by Edward a year ago in this forum. But I am confused whether to use the debian, tinycore of arc linux. Any advice?

@Tim Curtis The Khadas toneboard should support various formats. Would it possible or even worthwhile to feed the files raw to the dac?

Thanks
Jacob

[Tim Curtis]

MPD selects an appropriate codec for the file format being played and the codec decodes the file to the raw format that's accepted by the DAC, either PCM or DoP/DSD.

[TheOldPresbyope]

@Tom Traubert

I apologize for being so tardy with my analysis of the file you sent me.

It contained

Code:

pi@moodecd:/mnt/SDCARD/Tom Taubert $ ls -l
total 76792
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 48446597 Jan  6 20:55 '11. - My Friend of Misery.flac'
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 30147878 Jan  6 20:55 '12. - The Struggle Within.flac'
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root     2163 Jan  6 20:38  Metallica.cue
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    25903 Jan  6 20:55 'Metallica - Metallica.jpg'

I ran metaflac to check the content of the 11th track's metadata block (I already knew which metadata block I wanted)

Code:

pi@moodecd:/mnt/SDCARD/Tom Taubert $ metaflac --list --block-number=2 11*.flac
METADATA block #2
  type: 4 (VORBIS_COMMENT)
  is last: false
  length: 229
  vendor string: reference libFLAC 1.3.1 20141125
  comments: 10
    comment[0]: ARTIST=Metallica
    comment[1]: TITLE=My Friend of Misery
    comment[2]: ALBUM=Metallica
    comment[3]: DATE=1991
    comment[4]: TRACKNUMBER=11
    comment[5]: GENRE=Metal
    comment[6]: ALBUMARTIST=Metallica
    comment[7]: DISCNUMBER=1
    comment[8]: TOTALDISCS=1
    comment[9]: TOTALTRACKS=12

Looks reasonable.

I ran several utilities on the jpg coverart file. The utilities didn't flag anything and it displays ok in an image viewer. It also displays ok in my moOde 6.4.1 player whether in Artist View, Album View, or Playback View. In particular, I see no black/white reversal.

Regards,
Kent

[Tom Traubert]

Nordic letters in metadata

@TheOldPresbyope thanks for looking into it. I noticed, that the black turning white in all black cover art lis only an issue on my samsung s10e. It displays correctly on sony xperia z4 and laptops.

I have run into another issue: Displaying nordic letters in the user interface. I rip my CDs to wav and then add metadata in foobar2000. Foobar2000 shows the nordic letters like æ, ø, å, ä ö etc. However, when I look at metadata in windows ø becomes o and so forth. and the same is the case in moode.

Then I tried ripping with metadata in dppoweramp. Which is very userfriendly. Now the correct letters in metadata are seen in windows applications, but in moode the turn int "?" eg. C.V. Jørgensen becomes C.V. J?rgensen.

Changing the library setting to enabling UTF-8 does not resolve the issue. Any suggestions?

Regards Jacob