play:Sub 1.8 (iOS): Jukebox, Chromecast, iPhone X

[Michael Bech Hansen]

Hi,

play:Sub 1.8 has just hit the App Store.
This version brings support for Jukebox and Chromecast as the main attractions, as well as support for iPhone X.

To use Jukebox and Chromecast, select them as play destinations using the audio-route / airplay button.
Once selected play:Sub will continue playback on the new device, meaning you can transfer what is currently playing between devices with little interruption and at the same playback position.

Get it at the App Store:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/play-sub-subsonic-music-streamer/id955329386?mt=8

Cheers and have a great New Year and 2018!
Michael.

[chasmo]

Hi Michael;

You might want to update your info page on the Apple store. It currently reads that play:Sub supports Subsonic 4.8 and higher, however I'm on 5.3 and it doesn't work (tracks are added to playlist and show download activity but never play). I realize I'm only out $4.99, but it's disappointing to pay for something that doesn't work.

Thanks,

Chas

[Michael Bech Hansen]

Hi,

You might want to update your info page on the Apple store. It currently reads that play:Sub supports Subsonic 4.8 and higher, however I'm on 5.3 and it doesn't work (tracks are added to playlist and show download activity but never play). I realize I'm only out $4.99, but it's disappointing to pay for something that doesn't work.

The app is supposed to work with Subsonic 4.8 and later.
I have a testserver running Subsonic 5.3, and the app works against that (I just tried it).

Clearly that is not what you are experiencing.

If you create a test account for me on your server (normal user, no admin rights), I will be happy to connect and try to see what is going on.
Send the login details to me via a direct message on this forum or a support email from within the app.

You also have the option to request a refund from Apple - somewhere at the bottom of the App Store receipt email, you can find links to do that (I believe it's buried under "Report a problem" or something like that).

Thanks,
Michael

[chasmo]

I think I figured it out - I was getting REST errors in the Subsonic log and nothing was playing. However, I restarted the Subsonic server and it now seems I'm getting tracks.

Nice app!

A question: when playing to a Chromecast Audio device, is the track being sent directly from the Subsonic server to the Chromecast, or is it being routed through the phone (including transcoding, etc.)?

[Michael Bech Hansen]

Great you got it working!

When playing on Chromecasts, the track is sent directly from the server to the cast device.
The app is merely reflecting what is being played, acting as a controller/viewer.

If you need to you can tweak transcoding for the chromecast-players in the server settings web interface.

Cheers,
Michael.

[chasmo]

Regarding transcoding to Chromecast, I'm interested to try that. I wasn't able to do it with AVSub because there appears to be something in the Subsonic API that detects it's sending to Chromecast and it ignores any transcoding settings. The reason I want to transcode is that Chromecast doesn't do ReplayGain, so if you play a playlist, volume levels are all over the place. This can be corrected by applying ReplyGain during the server's transcode, but only if Subsonic honors the transcoding settings.

I've been playing around with play:Sub and found some notes for you that might help with the next release:

--The "Genres" folder ignores Subsonic's user-level settings that control which folders (genres) the user sees. For example, my wife and I both use the same Subsonic server, but I have each of our users set up to only view our own folders.

--Crossfade doesn't seem to work. I tried changing the duration, but no luck.

--For those of us with large collections, it would be great to have an option to turn off artist pics altogether. The problem is the pics make each line item fairly large, meaning lots of scrolling to get through a long list of artists.

--Can the genres view be alphabetized? It also seems to behaving strangely, possibly because it's getting the genre from the ID3 tags, rather than from the folders as I'm accustomed to in Subsonic's web interface. I'm seeing a lot of genres I don't expect and not seeing others I do expect.

--How does "Audiobooks" determine what's an audiobook? I'm getting albums from the Comedy and Spoken Word genres in there too

--Does play:Sub automatically apply ReplayGain? I do mine at the server level with transcoding, so I wouldn't necessarily want that turned on in the player.

None of the above are dealbreakers for me - just suggestions of minor tweaks you might look at next release.

Thanks again for a great app.

--Chas

[Michael Bech Hansen]

I've been playing around with play:Sub and found some notes for you that might help with the next release:

--The "Genres" folder ignores Subsonic's user-level settings that control which folders (genres) the user sees. For example, my wife and I both use the same Subsonic server, but I have each of our users set up to only view our own folders.

I believe this is on the serverside - each request to the server is for the "apps user", and the server should - ideally - only return data relevant for that user.

--Crossfade doesn't seem to work. I tried changing the duration, but no luck.

Did you enable it on the player screen? There's a button with two horizontal bars, next to the equaliser one...

--For those of us with large collections, it would be great to have an option to turn off artist pics altogether. The problem is the pics make each line item fairly large, meaning lots of scrolling to get through a long list of artists.

Noted - you're not the first to ask. It's on the list, and will eventually be done,

--Can the genres view be alphabetized? It also seems to behaving strangely, possibly because it's getting the genre from the ID3 tags, rather than from the folders as I'm accustomed to in Subsonic's web interface. I'm seeing a lot of genres I don't expect and not seeing others I do expect.

Yes - below the title in the Genres-view you will find a small downward-pointing arrow... tap that one, and you'll be able to get the list alpha-sorted instead.
(and when you do that, you'll want the alpha-list to be default... that will happen in a future update )

--How does "Audiobooks" determine what's an audiobook? I'm getting albums from the Comedy and Spoken Word genres in there too

play:Sub has a hardcoded list of genres that it considers audiobooks.
This will change to some other scheme when I revisit the audiobook support.

--Does play:Sub automatically apply ReplayGain? I do mine at the server level with transcoding, so I wouldn't necessarily want that turned on in the player.

It does not at the moment apply replay-gain. It will in the next release use replay gain if configured to do so.

None of the above are dealbreakers for me - just suggestions of minor tweaks you might look at next release.

Thanks a lot for the input, let me know your further thoughts when you have played more with the app.

Cheers,
Michael.

[chasmo]

Hi Michael;

I had a chance to further test Play:Sub and it looks like there may be some issues with the Chromecast Audio implementation. When I play tracks to the CCA, they play for about 20-30 seconds, then advance to the next track. This occurs whether I have transcoding turned off, or when transcoding to any format (mp3,flac,wav).

Also, typically after about 5 tracks the player will flash a red error bar saying the CCA has been disconnected; however it continues to play the first 20-30 seconds of each track and doesn't respond to a disconnect. The only way to stop the CCA is to enter the Google Home app and reboot it.

Note that this is not a problem with my connection, as I can successfully stream full tracks from Subsonic to my CCA via AVSub, etc.

I've tried this several times with the same result.

A second issue is that when playing tracks on the phone itself, Play:Sub seems to take quite a while to cache the first track I play - up to 30 seconds in most cases (it also seems fairly slow to load cover images, etc.) After that, it appears to be pre-caching and things work fine. This occurs both with low-bitrate mp3's over a cell connection and larger files over Wifi. In both cases, I can successfully play the same files in a few seconds via AVsub. I don't have any connectivity issues with other apps on my phone via cell or wifi.

Thanks for your work on this!

--Charles

[chasmo]

Forgot to mention versions:

Subsonic version: 5.3
Tested with: iPad Pro (latest), Ipad Mini 2, iPhone 6s, iPhone 5

[Michael Bech Hansen]

@Chasmo

Can you send me a couple of feedback emails from within the app, after reproducing these issues ?
It needs to be sent from a device, which is setup for email, so the app will attach log files to the mail.
(if the device is not setup for email, you will be sent to a website form, and no log files can be attached).
Hopefully the log files will give some hints to what is going on... (i.e. I dont see these issue on my setup).

Thanks,
Michael.

[3Dscrewer]

Hi ...
I have a iPhone 7 plus 128GB, iOS Ver 11.1.2

If i go into Folder view, there are a lots of empty Folders, but at my iPad Air II they are shown with all files

All downloaded Files are lost every few days, today all my downloaded songs are gone again, that is very annoying.

BTW. If I have 70GB free Memory why can I only set the momory to a max of 45,85GB? Is that the max?

Regards

[Michael Bech Hansen]

Hi,

If I have 70GB free Memory why can I only set the momory to a max of 45,85GB? Is that the max?

This is fixed in v1.9 (on it's way to the App Store now).
play:Sub was using the actual free space, whereas iOS is reporting free space as actual free space *plus* what can be freed by deleting cached data in apps.

Cheers,
Michael.