Music Player 5.0 (firmware 2.3.3) – testing, findings, improvements expected

I am looking for a Music Player with/without stereo DAC but also passing MCH DSD via HDMI. Any suggestions?

 

@Nice Monkey

The CocktailAudios are only Audio Player, they support spdiff and optical, but no hdmi because they not need it

For example https://www.cocktailaudio.de/shopware/x-14/

This link is better for you http://www.cocktailaudio.com/home/sub01_10.php

 

S/PDIF is outdated and not a replacement for HDMI with MCH.
This is all about Stereo only. Not what i am looking for. Thanks!

 

Ditto.

 

Well in the end after using kodi 18 and its music player I have had to fight again with Music player 5.0 because although the visual aspect of the kodi player is incredible, it has many errors in the music reproduction with continuous cuts in the songs, and also the most important thing for me that was the lyrics of the songs shown in animated mode only works when you play from the album list not from the song list. Now when I return to music player 5.0 after scanning the disk with my 11,000 songs a multitude of times I have managed to finish doing it without closing the player but after this success it turns out that now from the thumbnail view of the songs when I try to move to right The player crash and close, just like the album thumbnail view. Overall I see that I will have to wait for them to release a new version of music player 5.0 with the solution to these problems. I do not know if the same thing happens to you, or it is a problem of the x9s that is already obsolete and cannot manage so much information. By the way, does anyone know why it might happen that the program closes when I try to move through the album and song thumbnails and yet in the artists and folders view it doesn't happen?

 

@Nice Monkey

Maybe you go the way over an suitable AV Receiver. For example the Denon AVR-X4300H or successor should handle it.

 

Maybe, but I can nowhere read that the music player:
- Can read SACD ISO files
- Can read MCH DSD with DST compresssion.

My Onkyo has similar specs but reads only DSF, DFF (without DST) in stereo from an USB stick (not USB HDD or NAS).

 

Can someone tell me how to put the fanart in the background without going to a song, click on the ok button and keep it, then choose to see artist and then choose images and add the image from a folder?
Can you put the background images in the album folder so that they later appear when the song is played? Should we call them somehow? folder or background or any other name?

 

At this moment, I will suggest we wait for the next update on Music Player. I have stopped trying with the renaming works.
Comparing wiht the other music apps, what I can tell is that MP's scraping logic is not right since the beginning, and it goes in the deadlock if only recognizing the ablums by names, if without reading the music tags, and without linked to such CD database like FreeDB, TMDB etc.

 

I was not expecting another battle field here, but we may have to be a bit fair with such TV end Android apps, and remember this is just +100$ box...

Indeed MP is quite at the low side comparing with others, however need to remember that HT is really on the best side in playback performance, and with a real good looking interface.

Talking about MP itself, playback performance is still on the high-end:
- few android players can properly play and recognize the SACD ISO, DFF, MCH, DTS..
- easy to use - which is critical for the TV end with remote control - I stopped with Kodi mainly because I was really sick with KODI's RT controls...
- album covers, disc, backdrop, lyrics, artist introduction... (by the way, FW 3.15 now also started to use your own pics of disc and can use your lyrics in the same directory)- it is a beautiful tool.

The only short board of MP is the album matching philosophy, and indeed it brought many pains to everybody including me trying to fix the issues.
And the wrong matching totally destroyed the organizations and links between all the elements, and it also brought problems even to play properly a full album (this is what I found from 2.3.15).

BTW, we shall say Zidoo is updating quite frequently - just after I made this post, there were quite some FW update with 2.3.10, 2.3.15, and 2.3.17, but after that Zidoo has no more news on MP...

So anybody knows when the next update on MP will be?

If it will still take some time, I shall post another testing report based on 2.3.15 with all those new findings (mostly still related with scraping mechanics).

 

Not really. The app is not just for the Z9s, for the Z10 also.And not forget Z1000 and i think UHD2000 will use a succession of this software. Its anothe rpoint for the straneg doing of the Zidoo developers. They start something which seems to be a good idea, and then they develop new features without solving old bugs. The players of Zidoo could be awesome at the top but because of their issues they are only mainstream.

 

Just got your pics seen finally... I don't have the MJ's BAD, so no idea if it existed in the DB of Zidoo. But the naming of the folder/tracks are quite all right.
Check on the playback screen, if there are some background indicated on the playback screen, it basically means the album is matched. Also there should be more album info (publish date, release company, sometimes the gene also). If not, it means it is not matched.

But it also surprised me, you have quite some ablums on the screen, but not even 1 artist indicated?

 

Agreed with the pricing of UHD 2000, but it is not for those guys who already have an amplifier. Same case for the CocktailAudio x14.

BTW, the only point interested me of CocktailAudio is to know the ripping and scraping is based on Gracenote, which is one major task for Zidoo to work on.

 

Just saw the news that Zidoo is developing the Roon ready, Tidal, Spotify...
Maybe it is a good news for the people who are expecting the brand-new Music Player, or maybe a bad news we may have to wait more time...
Roon Ready for me is just a joke, even though it looks like the best scrapper nowadays, but 700$ for only membership...

 

Well, We are developing a new version, which I think will be released in two months.
Of course, it fully refers to the opinions in this thread

 

Sounds promising.
May I do the interpretation that it will be launched together with Zidoo X?

 

Thanks mirror for the update, at least we know it is on the way, and how we live with the current issues.
Will try to post soon the next report of further findings, hope it may still be helpful...
A good surprise will be expected

 

Good news,

But not sure that it is at the same time as the availability of the Zidoo X, but it would be nice

 

Wow!
Only blah and everyone go steep. No concrete infos, nothing ...
I would also like to have such customers.

 

It is great news that zidoo is working on the music player update. Unfortunately at these times when we must stay at home we have more time to test our devices. If it is of any use to the developers of the application, I will present my results in the music player test.

The tests I have done have been with the zidoo x9s, with firmware 2.1.36 and with a hard drive with external power, 2 terabites and in some tests with an sd card in the slot of the x9s.

I have a lot of albums and songs stored in a directory, called music, around 11000 songs and more than 700 albums.
The scan has been interrupted on some occasions and the program has been closed, I do not know if it is due to too much information or other reasons.

Once the scanning of the 11000 songs has been achieved after several attempts I place myself in the album menu, with this menu in the thumbnail view if we press the arrow to the right the program always closes both with the remote control and from the smartphone application. Except when using a mouse connected to the x9s.

It does not happen with the other menus, although the last time I did the scan it also happened with the songs menu in thumbnail mode, as soon as you press the arrow to the right the program closes. After reducing the number of songs to 9000 it has not happened again, except in the album menu that always happens.

In my case, with 9000 songs and around 700 albums, around 500 artists have detected me. Of the 500 artists it has only detected the artist's photo in about 6 artists. And in the other artists it appears in white with the star in the background. In most cases it detects far fewer songs by an artist than it actually has. For example from Queen that I have approximately 250 songs only recognizes 65, that is one of the few artists that recognizes a background photo.


If for example you know that an artist has not detected it when doing the scanner, you can position yourself in a song by that artist, press ok and keep it. Then the menu comes out and you choose REMATCH, and immediately you get an option to choose that artist, which automatically increases one more artists. It is rare because if the artist has in his database why he does not recognize it in the scan.


If in the menu that appears when you press ok, you choose to see artist in the menu that is displayed, you can choose the images menu and add them from a folder, you can choose several and once this is done, a presentation will be made at the background of the screen when they are played songs by that artist (as long as they're associated with that artist). Visually it is very beautiful. What I have done is download the fanart images of most of the artists and save them in a folder all together and go one by one associating them to the artists, it is a bit tedious but the result is very good. The problem is that if you randomly play songs, the background image doesn't always work. I would like this to be done automatically in the new version.

About 10 percent of the songs detected in the scan have a wrong common cd art, which is the same in all of them and which I cannot locate by name and which must be corrupting the database. It is very annoying to see that a large number of songs show this cd art that in my case corresponds to an artist called -86 Flatliner ... feat ..., I have looked for it by all means to erase it and that it does not corrupt the library but I can't find it.

It is clear that one of the great errors of the program is not recognizing the special characters which influences in an important way the detection of artists, songs, albums and lyrics. I live in Spain and many artists and songs have a special character called an accent. If the name of the song or the artist or the album has this character, it does not recognize it. But as an example, let's see what happens to Michael Bublé.
As you can see, Bublé has this special character. If we position ourselves in a song of his and press ok and choose rematch we will see in relation to the name of the artist some strange symbols at the end of the word, if we edit and write Buble without that character now the program recognizes the artist and the lyrics of the song . When you try to rematch a song letter and it takes a long time to find it, the program closes.
The same happens with the special characters of the English language such as:
Don't Try So Hard, the program will only recognize Try so hard.

When this happens, many songs do not detect the lyrics correctly since when editing and seeing the alternatives, of the 20 options of lyrics that we can choose, none has the option in the name of choosing the words that carry the special character.


Regarding the wishes that I ask for the new version, I would like to give less importance to the menu that appears on the left with folders, artist, albums, etc., I think it should be smaller in order that more thumbnails could be shown to Right, since currently most of us have large television screens and only 10 miniatures on screen, I think they are few. I would like it to be like in the home theater 2 application when a large number of movie posters are shown,


Of course I would also like it to show some setting options for both scrappers and thumbnails. Also I would like that in addition to the original lyrics of the song the translated language could be shown, that is to say, to be able to choose the language to which the song is translated. In addition to being able to remove or put it.
Sorry for my language, I have done everything thanks to the google translator