Subsonic Client

[greenday1987]

Yeah, I've always used the flash player via Firefox and there's no delay issues on my end.

[Steven]

if you download a medium size track eg. around 6MB, how long does it take from a different PC to the subsonic server? (you can download files from the sub-sonic web interface)
Because the subsonic api doesnt provide any flexibility with streaming, i either download the entire file first and play it locally (which means the first song will have a delay starting, following songs will be instant) or i use the streaming API which means playback will start straight away but seeking will be slow

[greenday1987]

The latter option sounds better to me. Seeking isn't too important to me

[phred]

I agree with greenday - starting the playback immediately is my preference.

[Guegs]

Option 2 for me. I love subsonic, this would be an AMAZING feature.

[Steven]

i've got this pretty much done now but i am having a problem with playback of .m4a files - does anyone have Subsonic working with .m4a files?
edit: scrub that - got it working. I'll post a link tomorrow night

[greenday1987]

That's massively epic

[john6555]

On the Subsonic Android client, songs are downloaded/cached in the background and I've gotten used to it. On mobile I suppose it especially makes sense because of potential intermittent connectivity which could affect streaming. However the track is only buffered (downloaded partially) in the background before playback begins, and will continue to download the rest of the track and the next tracks as well. I don't mind waiting the 15 seconds or so (often less for me) for the first song to buffer, but then again I don't use seeking much either.

The standard web client has a few options for players, pictured below. The Web Player (Flash based) is the main one and this allows seek although I suspect Flash may be caching the file locally to disk? Playback does begin instantly though.



Really excited for this integration! I'm not sure if there is an API for the jukebox player but this could be really sweet to implement too.

[Steven]

i've taken the approach of downloading a small part of song and then starting playback while it continues to download. It might need tweaking depending on how it performs on less powerful machines.
john6555, how long does it take to download tracks running it from your laptop?

[thegreyspot]

i've taken the approach of downloading a small part of song and then starting playback while it continues to download. It might need tweaking depending on how it performs on less powerful machines.

On the web interface it seems to do this aswell. But when is song is about to end, im pretty sure it prepares the next one :/

Can't wait to see this!

[john6555]

i've taken the approach of downloading a small part of song and then starting playback while it continues to download. It might need tweaking depending on how it performs on less powerful machines.
john6555, how long does it take to download tracks running it from your laptop?

Right now I'm on a tethered Sprint 4G connection and it took about 1 minute to completely download 6MB song (at roughly 70kbps). When I have a solid WiFi connection it's much quicker obviously. My Subsonic server at home is on a pretty fast connection (around 20MB download, 3MB upload) so it's never really an issue.

[Steven]

updated .exe to support the extended plugin API (unzip and copy/overwrite where MusicBee.exe is installed)
http://www.mediafire.com/?5qduiiwh384bj7m

subsonic plugin (MB_SubSonic.dll)
http://www.mediafire.com/?3e2v3ibig53mj03

**** its my understanding you need to have made a donation to Subsonic and registered Subsonic to allow the Subsonic API MusicBee uses to work after 30 days of using Subsonic ****

- if you dont have a Plugins sub-folder where MB is installed create one
- copy MB_SubSonic.dll to the Plugins sub-folder
- you should end up with something like: c:\program files\MusicBee\Plugins\MB_SubSonic.dll
- restart MB, and in the Plugin preferences enable Subsonic
  - host is your server name without the http:// at the start
  - port is the server port
  - path is normally the default "\" but it is possible to configure subsonic to be something else so you need to enter the same
  - username
  - password
  - transcode stream - only tick if you need to reduce the size of the file streamed from the server because the connection is slow
- on clicking Apply, MB will validate the settings - any errors are those as returned by Subsonic and I probably wont be able to help so you might need to visit the Subsonic forum for help

If no error is reported on setup, a Subsonic drive will appear in the computer section. Clicking the parent node will show the entire library, but you can also view playlists and folders

You can reference the subsonic drive from Auto-Playlists, the Auto-DJ or create manual playlists (but in all cases these reside in your MusicBee library, not on the Subsonic server). If you add files to your local MusicBee library, MB will keep track of playcounts and enable ratings to be stored (but only in the local MusicBee library cache, not on the server).

In the main panel, MusicBee will only show the tags that Subsonic makes available which is the basic ones you need (Artist, Title, Album, Track#, Year, Genre and Duration). Unfortunately it doesnt include Album Artist.

[thegreyspot]

Hey thanks steven,

I was able to connect to my ss server and it listed the folders but when i click on a folder it just says "loading" in the main panel. Do you need a test server?

[Steven]

the first time it might take ages to load depending how big the library is/ fast your connection is. Unfortunately the Subsonic API is not good for efficient retrieval of the full library. The files will be cached after that so it should be fast the next time.
If you expand the subsonic node and can see playlists (if any) and folders then it is working ok

[thegreyspot]

yep you are right. took a long time. I have a large collection.