Maybe somebody can help me:
I have a Numark MP-103USB. I am almost happy with the sound quality, but there are some issues causing me to want a replacement.
Issues:
1. does not show subfolder structure (but gives access to subfolders)
2. no "random DJ mode" to shuffle the songs in a folder (repeat shuffle)
3. does not display long file names at full lenght
4. on some files it does not "recognize" the correct lenght, i. e. it stops within the song or spends minutes of silence after a song, just counting the time down. The files are OK in coolEdit / MPlayer etc... so no file issue.
- > I generally do not want to deal with messed up ID3 tags, since correct file naming is difficult enough (Artist - Song.mp3), therefore I generally delete all Tags using ID3kill.exe. Could this cause some play time confusion on the player firmware?
The new model should have the following spec:
*19" rack mount, 1 or 2 units of height (or 1.5)
*plays unlimited number of files (not like some Tascam models only accepting less than 256 files for whatever strange reason)
*features like MP-103USB (including CD drive plus USB connector)
*plus:
- subfolder structure view
- random DJ mode / shuffle and repeat shuffe within a folder
- at least ~50 characters displayed of the filename (don 't care about ID3 tags etc) in scroll mode - no truncation of the file name, I can accept some screwed up special characters though...)
-plays all valid .mp3-files at full length, VBR plus CBR, no matter what encoder was used or what bitrate setting etc....
*uncompressed *.wav - file playback would be a bonus
*mp3 normalizing feature can be a plus if it can normalize the whole file at once - not some gradual ******** volume adjusting like VLC player automatically does - (VLC guys hear me: -> this is distortion that no one wants! MPlayer / MPlayer X is much better!)
*2 x RCA outputs unbalanced (full signal sine wave: ~2Vrms), XLR balanced would be a bonus
Is there any player that can meet this spec ??
I have a Numark MP-103USB. I am almost happy with the sound quality, but there are some issues causing me to want a replacement.
Issues:
1. does not show subfolder structure (but gives access to subfolders)
2. no "random DJ mode" to shuffle the songs in a folder (repeat shuffle)
3. does not display long file names at full lenght
4. on some files it does not "recognize" the correct lenght, i. e. it stops within the song or spends minutes of silence after a song, just counting the time down. The files are OK in coolEdit / MPlayer etc... so no file issue.
- > I generally do not want to deal with messed up ID3 tags, since correct file naming is difficult enough (Artist - Song.mp3), therefore I generally delete all Tags using ID3kill.exe. Could this cause some play time confusion on the player firmware?
The new model should have the following spec:
*19" rack mount, 1 or 2 units of height (or 1.5)
*plays unlimited number of files (not like some Tascam models only accepting less than 256 files for whatever strange reason)
*features like MP-103USB (including CD drive plus USB connector)
*plus:
- subfolder structure view
- random DJ mode / shuffle and repeat shuffe within a folder
- at least ~50 characters displayed of the filename (don 't care about ID3 tags etc) in scroll mode - no truncation of the file name, I can accept some screwed up special characters though...)
-plays all valid .mp3-files at full length, VBR plus CBR, no matter what encoder was used or what bitrate setting etc....
*uncompressed *.wav - file playback would be a bonus
*mp3 normalizing feature can be a plus if it can normalize the whole file at once - not some gradual ******** volume adjusting like VLC player automatically does - (VLC guys hear me: -> this is distortion that no one wants! MPlayer / MPlayer X is much better!)
*2 x RCA outputs unbalanced (full signal sine wave: ~2Vrms), XLR balanced would be a bonus
Is there any player that can meet this spec ??
Hello thanks for answering! The odds of the whole internet crashing because of my thread causing too much traffic are very low ;-)
What operating system do you recommend? I want playback with as few conversions as possible. Super-Fast boot and power turn off instead of slow shutdown would be a bonus.So no linux. Also, disks must not be rotating because of subwoofer trembling. So I can only use flash or SSD or the like...Also, linux suffers from various things like system mixer, pulseaudio, ALSA - they do things like sample rate conversion, digital amplitude scaling etc. which I don't like.
honestly, I just want 1:1 playback shifting the digital unmodified audio to some "good" converter in 44.1kHz. DOT.
Windows XP plus Winamp or the like would may be an option - but it also has this system audio mixer plus system jingle sounds and other BS that no one needs. What is your opinion?
The above needed Player is for my "disco". In my "studio" I have an iMac 27" plus focusrite scarlett / JBL LSR2328P set up to play with MPlayer X -after much fighting around with the "Mavericks + fusion drive USB audio gapping issue" (just google) - this system now sounds almost perfect. But Apple is no option because of cost and complexity - a total overkill.
Other idea would be to totally surrender the 19" requirement and use some kind of living room "multimedia player" or a tablet / Smartphone / portable media player - good idea? What is the typical output voltage of this kind of stuff? I need about 2Vrms unbalanced to best integrate into my DSP controlled disco system. My other sources are the said Numark Player, an FM radio, and a piano, all of which provide about that voltage level and I dont want to have 2 adjust level / change DSP program on source change.
What operating system do you recommend? I want playback with as few conversions as possible. Super-Fast boot and power turn off instead of slow shutdown would be a bonus.So no linux. Also, disks must not be rotating because of subwoofer trembling. So I can only use flash or SSD or the like...Also, linux suffers from various things like system mixer, pulseaudio, ALSA - they do things like sample rate conversion, digital amplitude scaling etc. which I don't like.
honestly, I just want 1:1 playback shifting the digital unmodified audio to some "good" converter in 44.1kHz. DOT.
Windows XP plus Winamp or the like would may be an option - but it also has this system audio mixer plus system jingle sounds and other BS that no one needs. What is your opinion?
The above needed Player is for my "disco". In my "studio" I have an iMac 27" plus focusrite scarlett / JBL LSR2328P set up to play with MPlayer X -after much fighting around with the "Mavericks + fusion drive USB audio gapping issue" (just google) - this system now sounds almost perfect. But Apple is no option because of cost and complexity - a total overkill.
Other idea would be to totally surrender the 19" requirement and use some kind of living room "multimedia player" or a tablet / Smartphone / portable media player - good idea? What is the typical output voltage of this kind of stuff? I need about 2Vrms unbalanced to best integrate into my DSP controlled disco system. My other sources are the said Numark Player, an FM radio, and a piano, all of which provide about that voltage level and I dont want to have 2 adjust level / change DSP program on source change.
?? Linux can run from read-only medium, and boot in a few secs, depending on your GUI requirements. E.g. linux puppy from a USB stick. Or a tiny ARM board with SD card. Lots of options.
Sure, no need to use rotating HDDs.
No, it can be easily configured to be bit-perfect. In fact it is bitperfect out of the box if you do not add the additional layers of dmix or pulseaudio, as is the case in full-blown desktop distributions.
Quite a simple requirement.
linux must not be be powered off but must be shutdown -h now. otherwise the file system is can be affected. That is what I mean. but if the shutdown is fast - then why not use linux?
I have experience with distros like ubuntu, Mint, CentOS, KWheezy, PClinuxOS, all of which use the different sound layers. Great distros, especially KWheezy!, but sound-wise - very bad!!!
What linux distro do you recomment to avoid that sound screw-up? What player software? What DAC unit - how to best configure (please note that I am not good at command line hacking - honestly!). I can make an USB stick bootable and install a downloaded distro, configure and do some updates and installs, google some how-tos etc., even operate linux distros in the virtual box under OS X, so I am not the very silliest user, but I hate the command line.
I have experience with distros like ubuntu, Mint, CentOS, KWheezy, PClinuxOS, all of which use the different sound layers. Great distros, especially KWheezy!, but sound-wise - very bad!!!
What linux distro do you recomment to avoid that sound screw-up? What player software? What DAC unit - how to best configure (please note that I am not good at command line hacking - honestly!). I can make an USB stick bootable and install a downloaded distro, configure and do some updates and installs, google some how-tos etc., even operate linux distros in the virtual box under OS X, so I am not the very silliest user, but I hate the command line.
That is only the case if your main filesystem is not read-only. There are lots of distributions which create their root filesystem in RAM/disc as a combination of read-only root filesystem stored in ROM/SD card/flash and a runtime layer. Upon shutdown the runtime layer disappears (RAM disc) or gets discarded on subsequent boot (AuFS). If a technology like that did not exist, your wifi router most likely powered by linux could get bricked upon unplugging the PSU.
The typical example is puppy linux.
Or daphile - look at this post http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/pc-b...le-music-server-player-os-58.html#post4016182
All of these are desktop distributions which must tinker with the sound in order to be usable for their purpose - general desktop computing.
Look e.g. at daphile http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/pc-based/240040-daphile-audiophile-music-server-player-os.html
It has been discussed here for over a year.
Well, from time to time the command line will save your butt. Plus it will save tons of your time if you decide to spend the few minutes for learning how to use it efficiently in linux in case you happen to need it.
Last edited:
Sure, another example of a linux audio system capable of bit-perfect operation and surviving any power outage.
I personally would pick a regular x86 machine to start with. RPi USB hardware is not exactly reliable. Or look at RuneAudio - Embedded Hi-Fi music player for examples of other ARM boards.
I personally would pick a regular x86 machine to start with. RPi USB hardware is not exactly reliable. Or look at RuneAudio - Embedded Hi-Fi music player for examples of other ARM boards.
thanks for the help- Daphile lokks quite good. but much reading. I just found out that the files that my Numark Player does not correctly play time-wise, are mostly the ones that I had reworked (from scratches / clippings / normalizing, denoising.... and the like) using V-Box installed Win XP Cool Edit Pro 2.0, then "saved as" using a 10 year old WinXP based lame MP3 encoder, set at very high VBR quality, like 320kBit, BW21kHz, joint stereo OFF, or the like (to not get additional sound degradation I usually save in highest possible quality, since you can only loose - never gain - quality by opening - editing, then saving. Disk space is cheap so that is how I do it. I did not try other encoder options so far...)
-> coz the Numark MP-103USBcan only play Mp3 files, no .wavs.
Remember: I did all my discotheque hardware / CD ripping / setup work around that MP3-Player.
I do not care if some reworked files are increased by some megabytes. Re-ripping all my CDs into WAV, on the other side, would require about a years effort plus an unconvenient (3 digit) number of Gigabites - don't want to go his way.
Mp3s are better than most people think. they have a bad "smelling" due to people using cheap cellphones / crappy USD 10 computer speakers to play, but the file format itself - is quite good. I did some blind testing with a friend of mine who has a pro audio company doing horn subs and active 3 ways and the like. He definitely has better ears than mine, but was not able to distinguish between uncompressed .wav and 128kBit CBR Mp3 on one of his personal favourite audio files. Let alone properly compressed 256kbit VBR - you just can't hear it.
Remember: I did all my discotheque hardware / CD ripping / setup work around that MP3-Player.
I do not care if some reworked files are increased by some megabytes. Re-ripping all my CDs into WAV, on the other side, would require about a years effort plus an unconvenient (3 digit) number of Gigabites - don't want to go his way.
Mp3s are better than most people think. they have a bad "smelling" due to people using cheap cellphones / crappy USD 10 computer speakers to play, but the file format itself - is quite good. I did some blind testing with a friend of mine who has a pro audio company doing horn subs and active 3 ways and the like. He definitely has better ears than mine, but was not able to distinguish between uncompressed .wav and 128kBit CBR Mp3 on one of his personal favourite audio files. Let alone properly compressed 256kbit VBR - you just can't hear it.
Ah, OK!
FLAC would cut down the number of gigabytes required, and be better for tagging anyway, but aren't an option with the numark either. And yes, the re-ripping would be a bother.
I agree. They are perfect for playing - it is just that if you actually do a fair bit of editing and processing, you might to use a losssless "master copy".
I have similar experiences.
"FLAC would cut down the number of gigabytes required, and be better for tagging anyway, but aren't an option with the numark either. And yes, the re-ripping would be a bother."
fully agreed, but since my CD collection ripping efforts dates back to the good ole 90s when Windows 2000 plus Xing Audio Catalyst ripping into MP3s was state of the art, things are not perfect.
nowadays, time is money and I don't happen to have a slave around to do this ripping.
Maybe a "ripping machine" is a market gap to make money? It could take a ton of CDs from a shelf, open each and clean it, insert it into PC, rip it using XLD or Exact audio copy, compare the checksums, convert, correctly rename and store the files in flac, put the CD back, take the next Cd and so on.... lol
fully agreed, but since my CD collection ripping efforts dates back to the good ole 90s when Windows 2000 plus Xing Audio Catalyst ripping into MP3s was state of the art, things are not perfect.
nowadays, time is money and I don't happen to have a slave around to do this ripping.
Maybe a "ripping machine" is a market gap to make money? It could take a ton of CDs from a shelf, open each and clean it, insert it into PC, rip it using XLD or Exact audio copy, compare the checksums, convert, correctly rename and store the files in flac, put the CD back, take the next Cd and so on.... lol
Just for inspiration: linux offers a technology for simple building of virtual filesystems called FUSE. People have used it in lots of different ways, for media files management too Filesystem in Userspace / Wiki / MediaFileSystems .
One of them is mp3fs mp3fs which takes a directory tree with FLACs and offers it as a read-only virtual directory tree of MP3s. The files are converted on demand (using pre-set lame parameters), when they are actually opened and read.
This way I have my library in FLAC (mixed with original MP3s for which I have no flacs), I play from that directory, but when I need mp3s (for traveling, mp3 player e.g.), I access the other MP3-only directory where the flacs appear as mp3s, along with the original mp3s. Since this directory structure is virtual only, any change in the main writable library is immediatelly reflected in the virtual read-only mp3 library. No need to sync the libraries. Pretty handy IME.
One of them is mp3fs mp3fs which takes a directory tree with FLACs and offers it as a read-only virtual directory tree of MP3s. The files are converted on demand (using pre-set lame parameters), when they are actually opened and read.
This way I have my library in FLAC (mixed with original MP3s for which I have no flacs), I play from that directory, but when I need mp3s (for traveling, mp3 player e.g.), I access the other MP3-only directory where the flacs appear as mp3s, along with the original mp3s. Since this directory structure is virtual only, any change in the main writable library is immediatelly reflected in the virtual read-only mp3 library. No need to sync the libraries. Pretty handy IME.
I think lib-lame is hard-coded in mp3fs https://github.com/khenriks/mp3fs/blob/master/src/mp3_encoder.cc
Thanks for the beets, I will take a look.
Thanks for the beets, I will take a look.
Indeed, that's pretty much what I figured out and gave up (coming up with a patch would have been too much work).
I happen to like the fact that it is written in python.
so looking into the daphile thing i can see that it is some webserver software that needs to be controlled via another computer tablet etc. thus making things even more complicated. i want nothing more than a device to stick my usb stick into and press some play /skip etc. button. isn.t it possible to control it via a directly connected screen?
Although RockBox runs on a wide variety of hardware.
Link to Rockbox: Rockbox - Free Music Player Firmware
I prefer to run it on an old iRiver player that has a Wolfson DAC.
The combo of Rockbox running an iRiver/Wolfson, is something that I believe qualifies as a good MP3 player.
Link to Rockbox: Rockbox - Free Music Player Firmware
I prefer to run it on an old iRiver player that has a Wolfson DAC.
The combo of Rockbox running an iRiver/Wolfson, is something that I believe qualifies as a good MP3 player.
- Status
- This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.