Messages

1

MusicBee Wishlist / Volume Leveling: Automatically lower ReplayGain adjustment if clipping occurs

« on: December 29, 2021, 03:28:50 PM »

When running Volume Leveling, MusicBee will alert you if the current gain adjustment would cause clipping, and also presents the amount by which clipping occurs for each affected track or album.

While this is a beneficial alert, it would be nice to have the option to automatically apply that adjustment.

For example, when using Volume Leveling on Dire Strait's Love Over Gold, I set the ReplayGain adjustment to -4.5dB. It calculated an album ReplayGain of -5.9dB, and for Private Investigations, a track ReplayGain of +1.7dB, and informed me that it would cause clipping by -0.5dB. I re-ran track only Volume Leveling with a new target of -5.0dB, and it calculated a track ReplayGain of +1.2dB. This means that the ReplayGain targets for this track were still -4.5dB for the album value, but lowered to -5.0dB for the track value as to prevent clipping.

This request is to have MusicBee re-run ReplayGain for a given track or album when the respective track or album ReplayGain target would cause clipping.

2

Plugins / Re: Musicbee Chromecast Plugin

« on: January 17, 2021, 05:54:38 PM »

That seems like a lot of work when you could just switch to the portable version, but cool to know if can be done. Would this work for any plug-in?

Definitely a lot of work, and I thought about switching, but I appreciate that Windows handles the updates for me and I didn't want to mess with trying to copy all my settings and preferences over. Maybe that's easier than I thought.

I suppose this should work for any plugin, but using the "Add Plugin" option in under Edit Preferences > Plugins has worked for everything else I've thrown at it. I think this one is unique because we're not actually adding Microsoft.Owin.Host.HttpListener.dll to MusicBee, but just putting it in the folder that this Chromecast expects it to be in. There might be a way to update the plugin to look for that .dll in a different folder that's easier to access.

3

Plugins / Re: Musicbee Chromecast Plugin

« on: January 15, 2021, 03:26:15 AM »

If anyone is trying to get this to work with the store app, it can be done! It's a little complicated though.

Since Windows essentially bars you from modifying anything in the WindowsApps folder (where Windows Store apps are installed), you're going to have to do your work outside of Windows. I used Ubuntu Live on a flash drive, but there are numerous other ways you can do it.

• Rather than copying the plugin's files into MusicBee's folder (which Windows won't let you do), save them elsewhere and then add them in MusicBee under Edit Preferences > Plugins > Add Plugin.
• Per some other users, you may also need to install the MusicBee UPnP/DLNA server plugin. I didn't try this without it.
• Follow the instructions here to create install Ubuntu Live on a flash drive.
• Make note of (1) where you have Microsoft.Owin.Host.HttpListener.dll saved and (2) the parent directory of musicbee.exe. You can find musicbee.exe's parent folder by right-clicking on it in Task Manager and selecting "Open file location".
• Shut down your computer and boot Ubuntu Live from the flash drive. You may need to modify your UEFI/BIOS settings to get it to boot from the flash drive instead of booting your Windows installation.
• Select Ubuntu in the first menu AFTER you've booted from the flash drive.
• On the next menu, choose to boot from the drive rather than installing Ubuntu.
• Now you should finally be into the Ubuntu desktop. Open the file manager and copy the .dll from wherever you saved it to both the same directory as musicbee.exe AND the plugins directory. I'm not sure if you need both, but it's better to be safe than sorry.
• Shut down Ubuntu and reboot into Windows.

If your drive is encrypted with Bitlocker (like mine), you'll need to follow a few more steps.
BEFORE booting into Ubuntu.

• Save your recovery key by right-clicking on the encrypted drive (in Windows) and selecting "Manage Bitlocker", then "Backup your recover key".
  
• You can either save it to a text file or to your Microsoft account. In either case, it's a long set of numbers (8 sets of 6, with dashes in between).

AFTER booting into Ubuntu.

• Open software center, click on edit, and the software sources. Then check the box that says "Community-maintained free and open-source software (universe)".
  
• Follow the instructions here to unlock and mount your drive. Where it says to type in your password as "-u<password>", use "-p<recovery key>" instead, where you replace "<recovery key>" with the long number you saved before, INCLUDING the dashes, and making sure there is NOT a space between "-p" and the beginning of your recovery key.
• Copy the .dll as described above.

While modifying files in the Ubuntu environment, you should be careful to not modify anything else, because you could corrupt your MusicBee or worse, Windows installation.

4

Portable Devices / Re: Lyrics aren't embedded with on-the-fly conversion

« on: December 12, 2017, 04:16:52 AM »

I'm having the same issue. I'm syncing music to my Android phone in MTP mode, and embedded lyrics don't carry over when a file is converted. Any tracks that are just transferred keep their lyrics.

All lyrics are embedded in the file (not just downloaded), and doing a normal conversion on my computer retains the lyrics.

5

Portable Devices / Re: iPod Video (5.5th Generation) recognized as storage instead of iPod

« on: December 23, 2016, 09:18:07 PM »

want to post the plugin questions/issues in the plugin thread to be sure the plugin developer sees it.

The only thing I can think to look at for your original issue is Preferences > Devices > detect MTP devices. If it's on, turn it off. If it's off, turn it on. Perhaps that will help.

Seems like the plugin is working fine so far. And the junction works.

I forgot to mention I already tried with both MTP on and off. Not sure why that should affect an iPod anyway, as they don't use MTP.

EDIT: I noticed a few major issues I'm having with the plugin that essentially make it unusable for me, so I've posted in that thread.

6

Portable Devices / Re: iPod Video (5.5th Generation) recognized as storage instead of iPod

« on: December 23, 2016, 06:33:44 PM »

I'd still like to get my iPod working natively, but I do have the plugin up and running.

Pros:
-I can now sync the iPod games I bought years ago!
-genius playlists?

Cons:
-for some reason I get an error when trying to authorize my computer... and I can't sync the iPod games
-converted files get dumped into the %appdata% folder, and I don't have gobs of space on my C:\ drive
-more cumbersome than native support

I'll probably create a junction to fix the converted files issue.

I am still looking for alternate ideas if someone's found something that works.

7

Portable Devices / Re: iPod Video (5.5th Generation) recognized as storage instead of iPod

« on: December 23, 2016, 07:28:34 AM »

For reference, here's what my settings looked like prior to the mSATA -> uSD swap:



And now:

8

Portable Devices / iPod Video (5.5th Generation) recognized as storage instead of iPod

« on: December 23, 2016, 07:01:59 AM »

To get this out of the way... yes I understand that MusicBee "does not directly support iDevices." That being said, I've been using an iPod Video for a while now with no/minimal issues. I've also read though several threads:

http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=20213.0
http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=18097.0
http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=20377.0
http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=18506.0

(I also understand there is a plugin, but that's an inconvenient workaround for something that worked yesterday.)

This started when I decided to take my mSATA drive out of my iPod Video (gen 5.5, originally 30GB) and replace it with an iFlash adapter and several microSD cards. I first restored it using iTunes 12.5, which seemed to work fine until I noticed that MusicBee saw it as a removable storage device instead of an iPod. Since then, I've tried the following troubleshooting steps:

-quitting MusicBee
-rebooting both computer and iPod (several times throughout troubleshooting)
-installing iTunes 9.1.2 and using that to restore the iPod (it wouldn't download the firmware for the server, so I had to locate version 1.3 myself)
-detect MTP devices both on and off
-connecting the iPod with iTunes open and closed
-enable disk use on and off (the iPod still shows up in Windows explorer when this is off)
-manually manage music on and off
-attempted to update the USB driver per this help page; the driver installed and renamed the iPod to "Apple Mobile Device USB Driver" in Device Manager under USB controllers, but this produced no change of behavior in MusicBee
-multiple computers (though all Windows 10; one w/ iTunes and one w/o)
-I've now also tried going back to the mSATA drive, which now yields the same results as the uSD cards

Any other steps to take? Settings to try?

If anyone has an iPod Video/Classic that's working, I'm curious where it shows up in Device Manager. Mine is appearing under Disk Drives. I don't know where it was before the upgrade.

Some info:
Windows 10
MusicBee 3.0.6132
Both iTunes 12.5 and 9.1.2 tried
iPod 5.5 gen, v 1.3 firmware (25.1.3)

9

Questions / Re: File Managing Woes

« on: December 12, 2015, 02:52:53 AM »

I did have that setting ticked, but it shouldn't have mattered as my files are organized using: <Album Artist>\<Album>\<Disc-Track#> <Title> and all of those tags were present.

Now I unchecked the setting (just to be sure), moved an affected album back to my inbox and then back to my library. Didn't work though. For now I've manually moved the files, but I'd rather not have to do that every time.

Side note: files do move from my Inbox folder when I add them to my library.

10

Questions / File Managing Woes

« on: December 11, 2015, 04:31:47 AM »

I've been having some trouble with file management in MusicBee.

The first issue I noticed was that files that I've ripped (and are consequently added to MusicBee\Ripped Files) are not moved over to MusicBee\Music once I move them from my Inbox to my main library.

Now this would not be a major issue if I didn't have a secondary one. Whenever I right click>Send To>Folder (Move) that option is greyed out, so I can't move it.

This leaves me with the only (apparent) solution being to move the files over in Explorer and then manually tell MusicBee where each file is located. Not a practical solution.

Any ideas? Some setting I need to tick?

11

Questions / Re: Syncing device + on-the-fly conversion + resampling?

« on: April 05, 2015, 04:11:42 AM »

Bingo. That did it. I could have sworn I tried that, but I guess I decided not to when I noticed it was already converting it to 16-bit even without that parameter. Thanks!

12

Questions / Syncing device + on-the-fly conversion + resampling?

« on: April 05, 2015, 12:33:52 AM »

While most of my music is encoded as 44.1 kHz/16-bit FLAC from CDs, some of it is 88.2 kHz/24-bit high-res FLAC. I use the the on-the-fly conversion in MusicBee's device settings to encode all of my FLAC as ALAC (using nu774's refalac64) so the iPod can play it. This works great for all of the 44.1 kHz files, but the 88.2 kHz files remain at that high sampling rate (though it does reduce it to 16-bit). I've tried using refalac64's command line to do the downsampling, but that yields the following error message: "ERROR: floating point PCM is not supported for ALAC". Since MusicBee only offers to resample in the Format Converter dialog box and not in the device settings, I can't think of any other way to get it to resample the songs (when I do use the resample option in Format Converter, it does produce a good file). I've also contact nu774, but I haven't heard back yet.

Any ideas?

--
I'm using: "refalac64 in.flac –r 44100 –o out.flac" in command prompt (slightly different for the MusicBee parameters)
Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit
MusicBee 2.4.5404
refalac64 2.47

13

Questions / MusicBee crashing when opening (caused by MusicBee Remote by Kelsos)

« on: March 23, 2015, 06:06:10 AM »

I'll try to provide as much information as possible, since I'm not sure what is relevant. Let me know if I've missed something.

Win 8.1 Pro 64-bit
MusicBee 2.4.5404
MusicBee Remote plugin 0.9.8

I have my music library located on my OneDrive; all of the music is locally on my desktop. Because my Surface Pro 3 has limited storage, I wanted to use MusicBee on that by accessing my music library on OneDrive. I'd been meaning to do it for a while, but I finally got MusicBee installed on the Surface. When I did so, it didn't detect everything correctly. None of my preferences carried over, and the music would not play either. This was even after checking the "enable OneDrive compatibility" for MusicBee in Windows. Anyway, that's not my real problem, I wasn't sure if it would even work anyway if two computers were trying to access the same library and settings files.

What this did, however, was mess up the library (and other) files on my desktop because OneDrive synched the bad files from my tablet. Fortunately, I perform daily backups for my desktop, and I just restored all of the library and settings files (but not all of the other files--those were unchanged). After doing that, I started up MusicBee and got an error related to the MusicBee Remote plugin, and MusicBee was forced to close. I uninstalled the plugin and MusicBee opened fine. I downloaded the plugin again and reinstalled it but the errors came back. I tried this one more time to be certain of the result. Before this, I had been using the MusicBee Remote for months on my desktop without incident.

Has anyone else encountered an error when starting MusicBee with the remote plugin installed? Or have any ideas on how to fix it? Thanks.

The three error logs:
https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=1F21FC8A498A88AC!33955&authkey=!APblV7okWaslSrY&ithint=folder%2c
This should be a public link to the 3 logs on OneDrive. Let me know if you can't see them.

14

Questions / Re: Is It Worth It to Sync iPod Classic?

« on: March 23, 2015, 05:58:44 AM »

I sync my 7th gen iPod Classic with MusicBee (Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit). I have a fairly large library, mostly encoded in FLAC, and MusicBee's on-the-fly conversions work quite well. No jailbreak/alternate firmware is required for the Classic. Disk-mode might have to be enabled for it to work, however, I can't remember.

For more info, see the FAQ: http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/FAQ

If you need additional functionality for syncing, there is a plugin to give more features.
See: http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/IPod_%26_iPhone_Driver

Edit: the one issue I have encountered is that my 96 kHz sampled songs didn't convert/play right. I haven't looked into it yet.

15

Questions / Re: Two Issues: album definition and media keys only work in foreground

« on: September 18, 2014, 08:43:55 PM »

Reverting to Logitech SetPoint 6.32.7 seems to have resolved the media keys issue. They now work regardless if MusicBee is the active window or not.

As for the other issue, it seems that it is playing the tracks in order of their date for the affected albums, and then by track. Therefore making all of the dates the same "fixes" the issue. I still would like a solution that preserves each tracks release year though. Some (I'm not sure about all) of the affected albums exhibit another odd behavior. In "Artwork" view mode, if I double click on, say, the first track of an album, but that track isn't the first chronologically, it actually plays the first chronological track rather than the one I clicked on. This behavior continues to the second track, which actually plays the second chronological track, etc. If two tracks have the same year, the lower track number is played first.