Introducing pleezer: a Deezer Connect player

[Tim Curtis]

Nice :-)
I'll implement for next release.

[roderickvd]

Cool.

In the Audio Information screen, I see that “Decoded to” always says “PCM 16 bit 44.1 kHz, Stereo”. That is not always the case: some radio stations and podcasts are 48 kHz, or mono. They *could* even be above or below 16 bit. Would you like some environment variables to capture any of that? If so, don’t hesitate to sketch out what would help you.

[Tim Curtis]

Right, the decoded_to string is currently hardcoded.

How about DECODED or DECODED_TO and stuff it with the appropriate format
"PCM 16 bit 44.1 kHz, Stereo"
"PCM 24 bit 48 kHz, Mono"

That way there is no need to parse it for Audio info.

[TheOldPresbyope]

Gotta say, I'm loving this plugin and the ability to use Deezer's native app on a tablet.

I dropped Spotify because of their ongoing efforts to pay less and less to real composers and performers and I've now dropped Qobuz and Tidal because I didn't like using the available open-source UPnP control points and didn't see the point of their native apps if I had to use Bluetooth or AirPlay to pipe the output to moOde.

Thanks for the sweat equity you two have put into this new capability.

Regards,
Kent

[the_bertrum]

I'm tempted to swap to Deezer too, but my Daughter is wedded to Spotify and I've a multi user deal for the two of us. No way I'll get her to swap, perhaps when she moves out properly...

[roderickvd]

Thanks guys for the glowing terms. I mean, pleezer scratches my own itch, but it's great to hear that others are enjoying it as well.

I switched from a Spotify Family account to a Deezer Family account. Deezer offers a great migration tool to transfer all your favorites and playlists. Deezer's catalogue approaches Spotify's, and from a couple of thousands I only lost a handful of tracks (which it reports, by the way, so sometimes it's just a matter of looking up the same track with a slightly different name).

Of course, Spotify Connect's hardware support is beyond comparison, but my wife now just streams to the living room setup over Google Cast or AirPlay.

Here in the Netherlands you also have a Deezer Duo plan, maybe in yours as well? http://deezer.com/offers
Not all offers are available in both annual and monthly plans, so you may have to toggle between the two.

[roderickvd]

Right, the decoded_to string is currently hardcoded.

How about DECODED or DECODED_TO and stuff it with the appropriate format
"PCM 16 bit 44.1 kHz, Stereo"
"PCM 24 bit 48 kHz, Mono"

That way there is no need to parse it for Audio info.

Added it in 887246a and called the variable "DECODER".
Will play around a little more and release v0.10.0 soon.

[Tim Curtis]

Right, the decoded_to string is currently hardcoded.

How about DECODED or DECODED_TO and stuff it with the appropriate format
"PCM 16 bit 44.1 kHz, Stereo"
"PCM 24 bit 48 kHz, Mono"

That way there is no need to parse it for Audio info.

Added it in 887246a and called the variable "DECODER".
Will play around a little more and release v0.10.0 soon.

Observations: 

We have FORMAT which contains the "streaming format" i.e., the output of Deezer streaming server encoder for example MP3 320K or FLAC 823K. These are compression formats. MP3 is lossy and as such has no bit-depth. FLAC is lossless and so the source bit-depth can be determined.

When pleezer receives one of these streams and translates (decodes) it to a PCM format for output to the audio device I would assume that MP3 would always decode to 16/44.1 while FLAC could be 16 or 24bit and 44.1 or 48K. Something like that.

[roderickvd]

Correct. MP3 and AAC will always report 16-bit output. They can be in both 44.1 and 48 kHz.
FLAC and WAV could be higher bit depth.

[Tim Curtis]

Tested v0.10.0 this morning and all is looking good. :-)

Code:

# From audioinfo.php
} else if ($deezActive == '1') {
    $_file = 'Deezer stream';
    $_encoded_at = getDeezerInfo('stream_format');
    $_decoded_to = getDeezerInfo('decoded_to');
    $_decode_rate = '';

# From inc/renderer.php
function getDeezerInfo($item) {
    switch ($item) {
        case 'stream_format':
            $itemIndex = 5;
            break;
        case 'decoded_to':
            $itemIndex = 6;
            break;
    }
    $metadata = explode('~~~', file_get_contents(DEEZMETA_FILE));
    return $metadata[$itemIndex];
}