Subsonic Client

[Steven]

i will be interested to get anyones feedback about how playing tracks is working out, particularily on a low powered computer or slow connection

[boroda]

It seems most tags are not retrieved from server, for example 'iTunes compilation'.

[Steven]

It seems most tags are not retrieved from server, for example 'iTunes compilation'.

i've covered that in the notes i wrote - only basic tags are supported by Subsonic

Also i updated the musicbee.exe link as there was an unrelated introduced bug with creation of playlists

[john6555]

I almost posted that I couldn't see the Subsonic drive, before I realized that I am using filtered folders and the drive was just hidden. Anyone else using filtered folders, make sure you add the Subsonic drive to your list.

The library has been loading for the past 40 minutes or so and still nothing is displayed in the folders. Just thinking out loud here, but I have many GBs of videos in my SS library alongside the music (SS supports streaming video playback too) - could that be an issue?

EDIT: Added below info

I have my SS library split into 3 folders: Music, Videos, and Downloads. I was hoping to troubleshoot my above "theory" so I tried to change the plugin settings so the library was looking just at /Music (also tried Music, /Music/, and Music/) but I keep getting unknown error popup.

[Steven]

its as i said before with thegreyspot, the subsonic API is not suited to retrieving a large number of files and will be very slow the first time (although 40 mins is awful). Afterwards MB caches the files so will be a lot faster once the cache is completed.
Video files are ignored. I have contacted the developer but suspect it will be some time before he even considers my request to improve the API.
But could you confirm you are doing this over an internet connection and not your home setup?

I thought having the entire library accessible in the main panel would be a plus, but if its going to take an hour for people to initially load the library the first time then perhaps its not a good idea, and i just restrict it to folder access only.

MB loads all folders - there is no current support for restricting the folders retrieved.

[john6555]

Yeah, i saw the back and forth with thegreyspot i was just thinking at 40 minutes (now over an hour) there might be something wrong. My library is about 50GB, not sure how big that is relative to others. I'm still on a Sprint 4G connection which isn't very quick, so I'll check it on a faster connection and report back.

[phred]

I've got about 36 gigs in my library (about 5900 tracks) and it took about five minutes to do the first-time load.  Understand that this is on what I'd call my "inside" network.  IOW, MB is on one machine within my network, Subsonic is on another, and all the tracks are on a NAS.  I guess a good test will be from outside, which I will do within the next few days.  It's terribly busy at work right now and it wouldn't be cool is the bosses walked by and saw me configuring MusicBee. 

Nice job, Steven.   Thanks.

[john6555]

It has been loading for hours now but still nothing (just the folder structure). Disabled and re-enabled, deleted subsonicSettings.dat and started over, changed server name to IP address, still nothing. FYI I'm on a fast 20MB download line now. Help!

[Steven]

what i plan to do is change it so when you drill down on folders, it will query the subsonic server directly for the files in that folder only rather than waiting for the entire cache to load. It will mean that "Include files in sub-folders" setting will be ignored.
john6555, i dont know why it wouldnt be loading after that amount of time but if i do the above you will at least be see the files straight away

[Steven]

john6555, if you know the IP address of your home server (run IPCONFIG from the command prompt on the machine) and enter that as the hostname rather than the friendly subsonic name it should load a lot faster in your home environment

[john6555]

john6555, if you know the IP address of your home server (run IPCONFIG from the command prompt on the machine) and enter that as the hostname rather than the friendly subsonic name it should load a lot faster in your home environment

yep already tried it, no luck. the problem for me isn't how long it takes to load, it's that it never loads. even when the "Loading..." goes away no music is displayed in any of the folders.

[greenday1987]

I'm gonna try this out hopefully tomorrow. I don't have any money atm to donate to subsonic to re-activate my account. I didn't even realise it was a trial period until I reinstalled it today :/

[Steven]

i've made the following changes:
- MB substitutes the subsonic friendly name with the ip address of your server - this should improve performance in home networks (i'm doubtful it would help much when accessed from an external location)
- MB is now a bit more intelligent about when and how it refreshes the cache. However the initial cache load for first time users will still be slow
- viewing files in folders now no longer requires the cache to be loaded
- john6555, if you are using an old version of subsonic its possible this version might resolve your issue. Otherwise i sent you a PM


updated .exe:
http://www.mediafire.com/?7c3s94476b4h4qx

updated plugin:
http://www.mediafire.com/?aqvm1zmddnmn6ca

[phred]

For the record, and using the first iteration of the dll ... from outside my home network it took six minutes to load the aforementioned 36 gigs.

FWIW, when I set this up last night at home, I used the ip address of the subsonic server, not the name.

And for greenday and others, best as I can tell Subsonic server is free for use.  Yes, there is a 'donate' button on the server UI, but there are no ads nor is it crippled in any way.  If one wants to use the Andriod or other mobile versions of Subsonic then the donation is required after a 30 day trial.

[john6555]

it's working now! i'm not sure if it was the new version, rebooting my home router, the Subsonic service, and the server itself, or maybe a combination of all of the above... anyhow this looks really great so far. i'm on a fairly poor connection and it took about 6 seconds to buffer a 4min song, wow!

while some music is playing fine, a couple albums so far (seems that it's the entire album) are giving me an error. they play fine through the web interface so i'm not sure why they are causing errors in MB. Here's an example (this album is MP3 320kbps):