# AudioFaucet 1.5 Public Pre-Release



## SafariKC

Hi Gang,

We've put up a Public Trial Pre-Release of AudioFaucet for all of you to Enjoy while we work on the finishing touches.

AudioFaucet Homepage

If you run into any issues or have questions about AudioFaucet that you don't want to ask here, please take a moment to email us at [email protected] instead of Private Messaging me here. It makes it much easier to respond to your issue.

Please feel free to kick the tires. However this version will expire once the retail version of the product is ready for release. We'll have more details on that in the coming weeks.

About AudioFaucet:
"AudioFaucet" is an innovative TiVo HME application that allows you to effortlessly control the flow of music within your household.

If you have iTunes installed we allow you to completely control playback of iTunes via Apple Airport Express, Computer Speakers or stream iTunes MP3 Audio to your TiVo directly.

It works with iTunes on both the Windows and Mac platforms, provides a slick interface which allows you to navigate your music collection while displaying the album art on your TV.

It overcomes a fundamental limitation of the Airport Express (no display) and allows users to be able to control the playing of music from the iTunes Music Store (which would otherwise be unstreamable due to DRM) with the help of AirTunes Express Units.

Don't have iTunes? No Problem. We also have the ability to browse and stream MP3's from any folder on your system.

Features Include:
User customizable display settings (Backgrounds/Themes)
Full iTunes Library Browsing by Playlist, Artist, Album, Genre, Podcasts
File System MP3 Browser Support. (if you don't have iTunes)
Apple AirTunes Detection and iTunes audio stream control
Stream MP3 Audio Direct to TiVo
Cover Art display (if none exist it will fetch from Amazon)
Full Song information display
Duration/current play position display/control
Next/Previous song control
Star rating display/control (not available for non-iTunes users)
Playlist shuffle toggle
Music Library Shuffle display/control
Host computer name display (run it on as many systems in your home as you want)
iTunes operation via host computer triggers display/control updates
Alerts users that newer versions are available


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## budsharpe

The feature set is impressive. I am so glad you finally added streaming to the application. I will be testing this out as soon as I get home.

Now, if only we could stream -- stream, not copy -- video to a TiVo, it would make a very cheap and effective media center.


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## Stormspace

budsharpe said:


> The feature set is impressive. I am so glad you finally added streaming to the application. I will be testing this out as soon as I get home.
> 
> Now, if only we could stream -- stream, not copy -- video to a TiVo, it would make a very cheap and effective media center.


I think I'll stick to Galleon. Has most of the same features and I don't use itunes anyway.


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## budsharpe

I just appreciate that there is a Mac-native version of the application. I have played with Galleon and never gotten it to work consistently on my Mac.

To the developer: do you have any plans to make a companion app that works with iPhoto or a directory of photos? I would love to skip the standard TiVo Desktop since I find it lacking.


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## JuryDuty

Galleon's ok, but I prefer this interface.

That said, I have had several bugs since installing this. Do you want us to post them here? Would that be useful to you?


P.S. One thing I'd REALLY like to see is the ability to make this program minimize to the Windows task tray. Otherwise, when it's open, it's kind of in the way of my workspace.


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## eleazar

Well, I am assuming I am in the minority here, but I can't even get this to work. 

On My PC:
windows xp pro sp 2
tried with no firewall or virus scan

Problems - can't get it to recognize that I have iTunes at all (4.9 version) and when I select my itunes folder as the mp3 folder it can start, but the tivo just won't connect to it at all. gives me an h-t-t-p connection error: 0x50005 All of my other HME apps work just fine on this PC. 

(sorry about the h-t-t-p but I can't type that word since my post count is under 5)

On my Mac:
Tiger 10.4.2
also no firewall when tried

Problems - it recognizes iTunes and does in fact start on the tivo, however, my artists, genre and everything else except for pod casts appear empty on the tivo. When I try to play a podcast, it plays the first second then crashes the tivo with a "an error occured while running the application. The application closed during a read (0x50006)"

Running 7.2.0-oth-01-2-264 on a Toshiba SDH-400 with no hacks, hard drive replacements or anything.


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## SafariKC

Stormspace said:


> I think I'll stick to Galleon. Has most of the same features and I don't use itunes anyway.


FWIW it doesn't require iTunes to work... but to each his own.  Glad you chimed in anyways.

KC


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## SafariKC

budsharpe said:


> I just appreciate that there is a Mac-native version of the application. I have played with Galleon and never gotten it to work consistently on my Mac.
> 
> To the developer: do you have any plans to make a companion app that works with iPhoto or a directory of photos? I would love to skip the standard TiVo Desktop since I find it lacking.


It would be a natural progression for us to look at iPhoto as well, and we have in the past looked into doing something with it. However, right now there is enough for us to still focus on with AudioFaucet  But perhaps someday.

We're glad you like it.

Cheers,
KC


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## dmbfan36

AudioFaucet requires at least iTunes 5.0 on both mac and windows -- what version are you running on the mac?


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## SafariKC

JuryDuty said:


> Galleon's ok, but I prefer this interface.
> 
> That said, I have had several bugs since installing this. Do you want us to post them here? Would that be useful to you?
> 
> P.S. One thing I'd REALLY like to see is the ability to make this program minimize to the Windows task tray. Otherwise, when it's open, it's kind of in the way of my workspace.


Would love to hear about any problems that you are having with it. As it says in the release notes and on our webpage please feel free to email [email protected] with all the details you can.

We are working on the packaging for windows still (As well as the splash screen) and hope very much to have minimize to tray at some point in the near future. Unfortunately for Java applications, these things don't come easy.

We did however make this version a Native Windows exe and also took the time to create an installer. Hopefully that helps make the process more smooth for Windows users in general.


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## SafariKC

dmbfan36 said:


> AudioFaucet requires at least iTunes 5.0 on both mac and windows -- what version are you running on the mac?


And While John is posting here.. Might as well add that DMBFan36 is the other guy behind AudioFaucet. He's a quiet little lad, so don't scare him 

Welcome to the forums John,

Cheers,
KC


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## SafariKC

eleazar said:


> Well, I am assuming I am in the minority here, but I can't even get this to work.


We would like to think so  We did quite a bit of QA before launching this version due to its complexity and deeper intergration with the TiVo and the host PC. That doesn't however mean that something might not be going horribly wrong for you.



> On My PC:
> windows xp pro sp 2
> tried with no firewall or virus scan
> 
> Problems - can't get it to recognize that I have iTunes at all (4.9 version) and when I select my itunes folder as the mp3 folder it can start, but the tivo just won't connect to it at all. gives me an h-t-t-p connection error: 0x50005 All of my other HME apps work just fine on this PC.
> 
> (sorry about the h-t-t-p but I can't type that word since my post count is under 5)


The minimum version of iTunes we support is iTunes 5.0. (5.0.1 is out now) So the splash screen should dim that option out so you can't use it untill you install iTunes 5.0 or later.

Usually the connection error has alot to do with the HME on the TiVo not being able to talk to the advertised application, as you guessed usually caused by a firewall issue, or perhaps we're not getting along with another app.

I'd love to work thorugh this more with you if you have the time fire off an email to [email protected] or look me up on AIM: SafariKC



> On my Mac:
> Tiger 10.4.2
> also no firewall when tried
> 
> Problems - it recognizes iTunes and does in fact start on the tivo, however, my artists, genre and everything else except for pod casts appear empty on the tivo. When I try to play a podcast, it plays the first second then crashes the tivo with a "an error occured while running the application. The application closed during a read (0x50006)"


You can see iTunes because System Update probably has you on iTunes 5.0.1  (if it does not please do a system update and get to iTunes 5.0 or higher)

Curious about the failure to use the app however. Which mode is AudioFaucet in when you do this? Can you list which Audio Output settings you choose (if at all)? Have you tried switching from one audio output to another?

Again, I'd love to work thorugh this more with you if you have the time fire off an email to [email protected] or look me up on AIM: SafariKC



> Running 7.2.0-oth-01-2-264 on a Toshiba SDH-400 with no hacks, hard drive replacements or anything.


That should be fine


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## FrancesTheMute

I installed it, and like the applications for Galleon, it makes the Tivo respond very slowly. I tried to go into some of the settings and it froze the tivo up so I had to push the Tivo button to back out to the main menu. I started audiofaucet up again and went to play a song and got a error message.

I have a Tosiba RS-TX60 completely stock, no hacks or upgrades, running 7.2 and i'm NOT running iTunes, just pointed it toward a folder on my PC that has all my songs from my Ipod for backing up purposes.


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## dmbfan36

FrancesTheMute said:


> I installed it, and like the applications for Galleon, it makes the Tivo respond very slowly. I tried to go into some of the settings and it froze the tivo up so I had to push the Tivo button to back out to the main menu. I started audiofaucet up again and went to play a song and got a error message.


Are these settings in AudioFaucet that locked up or Galleon? If AudioFaucet, which settings were you attempting to access?

Also, are you running AudioFaucet using only mp3 directories, or does it also have access to iTunes? (On the splash screen when starting the application, there are checkboxes to select which modes you wish to enable).



> I have a Tosiba RS-TX60 completely stock, no hacks or upgrades, running 7.2 and i'm NOT running iTunes, just pointed it toward a folder on my PC that has all my songs from my Ipod for backing up purposes.


FYI, AudioFaucet can only stream mp3 files at the present time, so if there aren't any MP3's in there, then that could be cause for difficulty.


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## FrancesTheMute

I do not have itunes installed on my computer. as for the settings, i clicked on the settings button and on the next screen it just sat there and i couldn't choose any settings to try out. it sat frozen up for a minute or so until i hit the tivo button to bring me back out to the main menu. I also don't have galleon installed on my computer anymore, but when i did, the results were very similar.... i.e. very slow responding Tivo.

All of my music is encoded in mp3 format. I despise wma and apple aac encoding and i use EAC and LAME to encode all of my songs. I just pointed the audiofaucet program to the folder that contains all of my songs. I successfully got the list of all the songs, but when i went to actually play one, it gave me an error.


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## SafariKC

FrancesTheMute said:


> I installed it, and like the applications for Galleon, it makes the Tivo respond very slowly. I tried to go into some of the settings and it froze the tivo up so I had to push the Tivo button to back out to the main menu. I started audiofaucet up again and went to play a song and got a error message.
> 
> I have a Tosiba RS-TX60 completely stock, no hacks or upgrades, running 7.2 and i'm NOT running iTunes, just pointed it toward a folder on my PC that has all my songs from my Ipod for backing up purposes.


Have a few questions to ask:

First, What do you mean by making your tivo respond slowly? Inside the app the screens draw slowly? Or even after you run it the tivo responds slowly in general (this could be a bug in the TiVo software on that box)... If it is only while you are in the app that the TiVo seems sluggish, It could also be caused by your network.

What type of network do you have? How is the TiVo Connected to that network? If it is Wireless.. what kind of signal strength are you getting at the TiVo (it's in the network settings on the TiVo)

Sorry you are seeing issues.

Thanks
KC


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## FrancesTheMute

it's just the audiofaucet app that responds slowly. or sometimes doesn't respond at all. I went back and tried again, and it seemed to respond a bit better. it's more of a hanging than anything else. i scroll through the list of artists and it hangs up for about 15 seconds and then seems fine. I'm using the Linksys USB200 hooked into a Linksys wireless bridge, so I can't check to see what the signal strength is. I have no way of hooking the Tivo up to the wired network as the Tivo is downstairs and the cable modem/router are upstairs.

The slowly responding tivo I can live with, my real concern is that i wasn't even able to play a song. There was an error message as soon as I hit the play button, and this has happened twice now:

"An Error occured while running the application. The application closed during a read (0x50006)"


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## SafariKC

FrancesTheMute said:


> it's just the audiofaucet app that responds slowly. or sometimes doesn't respond at all. I went back and tried again, and it seemed to respond a bit better. it's more of a hanging than anything else. i scroll through the list of artists and it hangs up for about 15 seconds and then seems fine.


Ahh.. in MP3 mode, we read the entire file tree ahead of time every time you start the application on the TiVo or the Audio Setting is changed, once it's done reading that tree it should be relativly quick. Which might explain why you saw a difference between the times. We currently in MP3 mode do not give feedback that we are indexing your music although in our testing of 1700 songs it indexes in a few seconds and we never see a problem. So if you have a large tree, it could just be that that is making life slow. How big is your MP3 library? Can you try letting it sit open for a few minutes and see if the Browser works faster after that?



> I'm using the Linksys USB200 hooked into a Linksys wireless bridge, so I can't check to see what the signal strength is. I have no way of hooking the Tivo up to the wired network as the Tivo is downstairs and the cable modem/router are upstairs.


*nod* I can see how that might make it difficult to get signal strength. How long does it usually take you to transfer a show? (and in what quality?)

What is the specs of the host computer you are running this on?



> The slowly responding tivo I can live with, my real concern is that i wasn't even able to play a song. There was an error message as soon as I hit the play button, and this has happened twice now:
> 
> "An Error occured while running the application. The application closed during a read (0x50006)"


We think we duplicated the issue here.. can you do me a favor? Can you please run the app again, and this time when the error happens could you please go to your Windows Program Files / AudioFaucet directory and email us the error log. Please email that to [email protected] along with a brief description letting us know who you are and what the issue is (so we can tie it to this issue in our bug system)

Thanks, 
KC


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## FrancesTheMute

i've been scouring the forums here learning about transfer speeds and such. It takes freaking forever to transfer a show for me. I'm talking somewhere in the neighborhood of 3-4 hours for a 1 hr program on "high" quality. I'm a bit disappointed because Tivo touts the whole transferring of shows to other tivos and your computer but conveniently forgets to mention how slow it is. Anyway, my computer is an AMD64 3500+ with 2GB of DDR400, 2x WD Raptors in RAID 0.

I can also see why i was having hanging issues now that I know how your program works. i have 3509 songs in that mp3 folder, which would definitely account for a delay!!!!


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## Stormspace

SafariKC said:


> FWIW it doesn't require iTunes to work... but to each his own.  Glad you chimed in anyways.
> 
> KC





dmbfan36 said:


> AudioFaucet requires at least iTunes 5.0 on both mac and windows -- what version are you running on the mac?


OK. So which is it. 

I'm partial to open source and all that means. It does seem though that you have a market with Mac users. Good luck with that!


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## budsharpe

I cannot get AudioFaucet to recognize and enable iTunes Audio as a source. I am running it on an iMac G3 with 10.3.9, and I just updated to iTunes 5.0.1.

It will allow use of a Local MP3 Directory, and it appears as an app on the TiVo, but I get an http timeout when I try to access the music.

Any help is appreciated.


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## FrancesTheMute

Ok, safariKC, i've emailed my error log. I appreciate the timely responses here on the forums. I'd like to be able to get this program to work, and if it does, I will definitely be on the look out for it when you guys go retail. I had tried Galleon, but honestly the only two features of galleon i liked were the transferring of shows (which i get from tivo desktop) and being able to play my mp3's from my computer thru my home theater speakers downstairs. I had many many issues with galleon and frankly just didn't care for it. I really like what you guys have come up with, so hopefully i can get it working!!


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## SafariKC

Stormspace said:


> OK. So which is it.


For the benifit of others in this thread so they aren't derailed by Stormspaces comments.

It Requires iTunes 5.0 or higher.. IF you are using iTunes as a music source.

It doesn't require iTunes however to run.

KC


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## SafariKC

FrancesTheMute said:


> Ok, safariKC, i've emailed my error log. I appreciate the timely responses here on the forums. I'd like to be able to get this program to work, and if it does, I will definitely be on the look out for it when you guys go retail. I had tried Galleon, but honestly the only two features of galleon i liked were the transferring of shows (which i get from tivo desktop) and being able to play my mp3's from my computer thru my home theater speakers downstairs. I had many many issues with galleon and frankly just didn't care for it. I really like what you guys have come up with, so hopefully i can get it working!!


Ah ha! found the bug.. We'll have a fix tonight.

Thanks.
KC


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## HDTiVo

FrancesTheMute said:


> It takes freaking forever to transfer a show for me. I'm talking somewhere in the neighborhood of 3-4 hours for a 1 hr program on "high" quality.


Your wireless performance is very poor. You need to work on that, I am sure you know.


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## FrancesTheMute

yes i do know, but i'm not sure what to do about it. Any suggestions? The only thing i can think of is the wireless bridge. My roommates have a laptop that they connect wirelessly to our network from the same general location downstairs just fine, no connection issues at all. I've also never had any problems with the tivo missing a scheduled "call" due to lack of connectivity. I also have a PS2 hooked into the bridge that can play online just fine. The bridge is actually located almost directly UNDER where the router is upstairs, and I have the bridge sitting on top of my audio component rack. I'm at a complete loss as to the problem. I did read in another thread on these forums where a guy did some tests using the same setup I have and had abysmal transfer rates.


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## SafariKC

We have updated AudioFaucet to fix the Background Settings and MP3 Stream bugs fatal errors.

Users that have AudioFaucet installed should notice a message in the main menu asking them to get the newer version on our website.

AudioFaucet 1.5PR - 20050922 for OSX and Windows

Enjoy!
KC


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## JuryDuty

I just sent you my latest error log. Currently, I get the "Application Closed 0x50006 error" almost everytime I try to play a song or change the background color.

I've tried restarting AF on my PC each time I get an error to hopefully "refresh" it. When I FIRST installed, it worked for one song, but then once I got the error, I couldn't get it to work again no matter what.

Hope this helps!

EDIT: Oh, trying the latest version now...


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## SafariKC

JuryDuty said:


> I just sent you my latest error log. Currently, I get the "Application Closed 0x50006 error" almost everytime I try to play a song or change the background color.
> 
> I've tried restarting AF on my PC each time I get an error to hopefully "refresh" it. When I FIRST installed, it worked for one song, but then once I got the error, I couldn't get it to work again no matter what.
> 
> Hope this helps!
> 
> EDIT: Oh, trying the latest version now...


Please do let us know if this makes your life better  It should. We made a boo boo in packaging after our last QA pass... it always helps to actually include the files you tested 

KC


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## FrancesTheMute

I also just sent my latest error log. I just got the updated version. It worked better than it did before, but I still got the 50006 error. Weird thing is, one time I got the error message, but the song i chose started to play in the background and played until i hit the select button on my peanut.


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## SafariKC

There are 2 things that can cause it to bonk out in the middle of a song if you weren't interacting with it. 1) would be a whacky MP3 file. 2) would be the network having congestion and the TiVo just freaking out over it. By the sounds of the way your TiVo is reacting i'm guessing that it's in direct relation to your network congestion on your wifi. I'll keep trying to re-create it here however. Is anyone else seeing normal MP3 Playing bonking out? (non-shuffle mode?)

I was however able to duplicate your shuffle bug . 

If anyone is playing solely in MP3 mode please stay away from Shuffle Music on the main menu until we find why it's bonking out.

Thanks,
KC


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## JuryDuty

FrancesTheMute said:


> I also just sent my latest error log. I just got the updated version. It worked better than it did before, but I still got the 50006 error. Weird thing is, one time I got the error message, but the song i chose started to play in the background and played until i hit the select button on my peanut.


I got that, too, with the new version. Everything now works for me except Shuffle and trying to play music with a display other than "Now Playing". Sometimes my Album Art isn't coming through either...though most the time it does.


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## JuryDuty

Just for the record, that error you mentioned doesn't come in the middle of the song. It happens immediately, but the song starts playing anyway, and then just plays over any Tivo menus until you stop AF on your PC.


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## FrancesTheMute

I had the album art come through, which was super cool, by the way!! I made it through about 1 min of Coldplay's Speed of Sound and it bonked out. I have been trying different songs everytime in case like you suggested one song was messed up. I can't think of anything that would cause my network to get congested. We 6 computers on the network, 3 wired and 3 wireless. one of the wireless clients is almost always off (2nd computer in my bedroom, hardly ever use it...i should really sell it, don't you think?) and the other 2 wireless are my roommate's computer in his bedroom, which is only used for surfing the internet and doing email, and my other roommate's laptop computer which is used downstairs in the other living room (diff room than the tivo is in) and it is only used to check up on the various Fantasy sports leagues and when the third roommate goes outside to smoke, she uses it to play various Yahoo games. neither of these two wireless computers would ever put any strain on a .11g setup. I'm thinking of maybe playing around trying different wireless channels to see if i'm getting interference from somewhere.


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## SafariKC

JuryDuty said:


> Just for the record, that error you mentioned doesn't come in the middle of the song. It happens immediately, but the song starts playing anyway, and then just plays over any Tivo menus until you stop AF on your PC.


That screams of a network/HME bug. The stream isn't able to get to your tivo successuflly.. I would love to hear what others are seeing with it however.. and will try to get some debugging code in a version for you tomorrow to see if we can figure out where it's failing exactly.

Cheers,
KC


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## FrancesTheMute

JuryDuty said:


> Just for the record, that error you mentioned doesn't come in the middle of the song. It happens immediately, but the song starts playing anyway, and then just plays over any Tivo menus until you stop AF on your PC.


that's weird, cuz it happened to me same as yours, at the beginning of the song, but it stopped as soon as i hit OK to clear the error message and drop back to the menu to choose to start audiofaucet again.


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## JuryDuty

OK, most everything is looking good for me now except the Full Mirror viewing option. It always crashes me in both iTunes and MP3 mode. The others work great though.


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## JuryDuty

Frances--I'm not getting a crash at all mid-song. I think that sounds like a network issue, too. It'll be interesting to see what happens when you try different channels.


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## JuryDuty

JuryDuty said:


> OK, most everything is looking good for me now except the Full Mirror viewing option. It always crashes me in both iTunes and MP3 mode. The others work great though.


P.S. I just tried this on another TiVo in my house and get the exact same thing with Ful Mirror viewing option. I don't think another TiVo makes a difference, except that it was a "fresh" system where I had to input my options. All I did was choose the Full Mirror option, then go to play a song. Once I selected a song, it gave me that same crash error.

I'm logging for the night, but will be available tomorrow all day if needed for any bug squashing.


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## z0ner

I started with 921 (MP3's only) and got nothing but read errors for almost every option. I was about to dump it and move on but I read further and found that this program won awards and it actually works for some people  

922 seemed better, but one of three things will happen when I try to play an MP3:

1) No album art and no info at the top end of the screen. I get a playback countdown and the pointer moves (as if it's playing) but no sound.

2) Album art (very cool) displays briefly, and it looks like it's caching songs from the entire directory i'm on. Then immediately crashes with a read error.

3) Instant crash - instant read error, just like version 921 on almost every option.

I'm running the applets on Windows 2003 server, using a Netgear 802.11b adapter. I have a few other HME applets - all work. My connectivity has never been a problem - there is no firewall between the WAP and TiVo. I can stream MP3's using Tivo Desktop.

My output file is available if you'd like to see it - but so far I haven't heard a single MP3 using this program, and it looks so promising


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## SafariKC

Good Morning,

You can expect a 20050923 release this evening that fixes the Mirrors Playing Theme and MP3 Shuffle Play for the users that are having issues with it.

We hope to also jam in some more MP3 streaming fixes as well.

Z0ner... If you could email [email protected] with the some exact step details that you've taken (what input mode AF is in, what settings you've set in the Settings screen, what you exact steps are for getting to where you are crashing). We can also give you a script that will get you some more advanced logging and hopefully we track down your issue quickly.


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## budsharpe

Are there minimum system requirements for Macs? I have been unable to select iTunes as an audio source under OS X 10.3.9 on my music iMac -- it's grayed out. I do have iTunes 5.0.1. I can select iTunes on my PowerMac under OS X 10.4.2.


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## SafariKC

budsharpe said:


> Are there minimum system requirements for Macs? I have been unable to select iTunes as an audio source under OS X 10.3.9 on my music iMac -- it's grayed out. I do have iTunes 5.0.1. I can select iTunes on my PowerMac under OS X 10.4.2.


Hi There,

There are minimum system requirements as noted in the Release Notes. Honestly we are not able to test on 10.3.9, we've only been able to test on 10.4.x so it's possible that there is an error in the logic for being able to find iTunes on 10.3.x.

if you could please email [email protected] with the details of your computers config that would be extreemly helpful and help us track this in our bug system.


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## Dan203

Does this program support AAC? If not then you should consider adding it. There is a free AAC decoder library called FAAC available on sourceforge. You should be able to use it and LAME to convert AAC to MP3 so people can finally play unencrypted AAC files on their TiVo. (people can find their own way to convert protected AAC files to unprotected AAC )

Dan


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## SafariKC

> Does this program support AAC? If not then you should consider adding it. There is a free AAC decoder library called FAAC available on sourceforge. You should be able to use it and LAME to convert AAC to MP3 so people can finally play unencrypted AAC files on their TiVo. (people can find their own way to convert protected AAC files to unprotected AAC )


We have looked at aac transcode but had some issues that I really can't go into here at the moment.

We do however have the code working to some extent and decided to push the aac transcode to a future release.


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## eleazar

Hey Safari, 

Sorry it took long for me to reply to this thread. I was going to shoot you an email but I noticed that you said you are going to put out a new version (20050923) tonight so I'll wait to test that out and see if that fixes some of my issues. 

I did get the windows version to come up with iTunes 5 so that part is fine but I am still having other issues that look like they are getting addressed by others. I'll download the new version when it's out and send you any errors I get. Are there custom error logs for me to send using OS X or are they stashed away in /var/log? I will be testing both so I can send the windows logs as well. 

e.


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## SafariKC

eleazar said:


> Hey Safari,
> 
> Sorry it took long for me to reply to this thread. I was going to shoot you an email but I noticed that you said you are going to put out a new version (20050923) tonight so I'll wait to test that out and see if that fixes some of my issues.


Please do feel free to send an email to support as well if you can. It will help us keep track of things better, plus assist with pinpointing the existing bug fixes and making sure they help you as well.



> I did get the windows version to come up with iTunes 5 so that part is fine but I am still having other issues that look like they are getting addressed by others. I'll download the new version when it's out and send you any errors I get. Are there custom error logs for me to send using OS X or are they stashed away in /var/log? I will be testing both so I can send the windows logs as well.
> e.


In OSX it is in the standard console log.

if you clear the log.. and start AF you will see our entries. The next version of our release will come with an Advanced Logger Config File as well as a AF Settings reset tool.

KC


----------



## SafariKC

Hi Gang,

New version was just posted, your main menu should let you know as well.

AudioFaucet 1.5PR - 20050923

We believe we fixed in this version: 
- Shuffle Play no longer bonks out while in MP3 Mode
- Full Length Mirror Theme is now active again
- iTunes MP3 Streaming Artwork now properly checks iTunes first
- Audio Output Settings correctly re-highlights the previous setting upon enter
- Splash screen now has an Icon and Window Name

If you find problems with this build, please email [email protected] with as many details as you can (don't forget to tell us what mode AF is in and what settings you have set in the Settings menu for Audio Output) We should get back to you shortly. Also please do try to include the Error log file if you can:
Windows: /Windows/Program Files/DigitalDroplet.net/AudioFaucet 1.5PR - 20050923
OS X: We are listed in the System Console Log. To help identify the issue better it helps us greatly if you can clear the log before running AF to re-create your issue.

Currently we are being told that some people who have iTunes 5.x installed are unable to access iTunes mode, if you are experienceing that please contact us via the email mentioned above as we need more details around this error.

Cheers,
KC


----------



## SafariKC

Hi Gang, 

Our Webhosting server seems to be down at the moment. 

It should come back shortly. But this brought to light an issue with the Version Checker that stops AF from launching if it can't find the version information. So anyone who is running AF will be unable to re-start it on their host computer while our webserver is down. Obviously we're working on a fix for that as well 

Sorry,
KC

UPDATE: We exceeded our Download bandwidth quota from our web provider. It's back up and running now but we have moved the downloads to be mirrored on my .mac account for now.


----------



## JuryDuty

I guess I downloaded just in time!

I'm *SO impressed *with the latest bug fixes--I think all the issues I was having now work fine.

--The Shuffle option works great.

--The Mirror view works great (and WOW--how nice that view is!)

--I just tried about everything out and got NO program crashes!

--All my album art comes right from iTunes first, rather than Amazon (Yay!)

Now any issues I have are more minor. Here's what I would like to see still:

--I'd like AF to be able to start when my computer does and have no "click-throughs" and then disappear and not have to be on my desktop. (In other words, give an option to just let it run in the background.)

--I'd like the song list view to be wider. Some of my titles are chopped off and there is still plenty of room on screen to expand this box.

--My biggest issue is load time. I have nearly 4000 songs, and when I select a small list like a playlist (a few hundred songs), it comes up rather quickly. But when I select a list like Genre or Artist (all my songs), it takes nearly 5 minutes before I can start playing a song. So, for instance, I press Genre (2 minutes to come up), then Artist (2 minutes to come up), then Album (1 minute to come up). This keeps me, in practice, from using any menu option except Playlist or Shuffle, both of which are quick-loading in comparison.


----------



## SafariKC

Glad it's working again for ya 



> --I'd like AF to be able to start when my computer does and have no "click-throughs" and then disappear and not have to be on my desktop. (In other words, give an option to just let it run in the background.)


We are working on on native wrappers (what you see now when you start AF isn't the final AF splash screen in fact it's quite horrid but we threw it together quickly to let people test the core of the application) So on Windows for instance it will live in the system tray. In any event.. we are aware of this and are working to fix it.



> --I'd like the song list view to be wider. Some of my titles are chopped off and there is still plenty of room on screen to expand this box.


The bigger issue here is finding a ballance between long titles and short titles. If it's too big, it would look silly with people that have an average sized titles. Perhaps a way to work on this is for me to set a preference for the browser width.



> --My biggest issue is load time. I have nearly 4000 songs, and when I select a small list like a playlist (a few hundred songs), it comes up rather quickly. But when I select a list like Genre or Artist (all my songs), it takes nearly 5 minutes before I can start playing a song. So, for instance, I press Genre (2 minutes to come up), then Artist (2 minutes to come up), then Album (1 minute to come up). This keeps me, in practice, from using any menu option except Playlist or Shuffle, both of which are quick-loading in comparison.


We are aware of this. We currently use a live iTunes pull to get the information from itunes. The good side on this is that it's always accurate and up to the second with your information, and even supports the smart playlists. the down side is that the larger your library the larger the step is into each layer of the browser. We noted this in our release notes and are looking at XML iTunes Library pulls for a future release (2.0).

Thanks for the feedback, 
KC


----------



## loonyboi

Awesome!

I love the skins...

One feature request: the ability to customize the info that is shown. I don't particularly need the stars, since I never rate music, but play counts would be nice, or the ability to see what's next in the queue.


----------



## oxjox

I just found this app today and started playing around with it. From reading the forum it seems that you have fixed a lot of the little bugs and issues from previous versions. ver. 923 here and I have to say this is a wonderful utility!! The interface is wonderful - but deffintely suffers from some lag time.

Going from one screen to the next isn't quite as snappy as the standard TiVo interface. If I am listening to a song and manually go to the next track, the music plays right away but the video takes about 5 seconds to catch up. Kind of takes away from the really sleek look of the interface. I'm pretty sure this just a problem when streaming to the TiVo though. I am plugged directly into my DLink router with both my Tivo and my G5.



> It overcomes a fundamental limitation of the Airport Express (no display) and allows users to be able to control the playing of music from the iTunes Music Store (which would otherwise be unstreamable due to DRM) with the help of AirTunes Express Units.


I misread this at first and thought there was a problem with streaming itms files to the Tivo. We have to get Apple to open this up to developers!!!

The only way around this (well, not the ONLY way) is if you have a Mac Mini hooked up to your entertainment center to play it's audio through your stereo receiver.


----------



## SafariKC

Howdy

Thanks for the feedback

We are going to be focusing on speed enhancements in the 2.0 release. It requires us to rearchitect the way we ask itunes for data which is quite the large undertaking.

Airtunes units are the easiest and net way to get protected aac audio to the sound system of your choice. We have a tivo based interface for finding and telling itunes to use the airtunes units.

Please do pass and feedback or bugs you have to our support email address.

Thanks
Kc


----------



## SafariKC

The next song in queue is displayed on the screen now unless you are in playlist shuffle mode. We plan on making a change to the playlist shuffle mode next song in a future version.

The ability to customize data is not an easy task. I will see if we can add that to the 2.0 roadmap.


----------



## FrancesTheMute

Just a quick update. I went out and got a Netgear WG111 adapter to replace my USB200M/WET54GS5 combo, and let me tell you, it was like night and day. all of the features of audiofaucet worked fantastic. i put it in shuffle mode for a while and just started flipping through songs and never got an error once. it does kinda stutter for about a second or so after choosing a new song while it displays the new album art. not sure if there is anything you guys can do about it. I tried all three "now playing" themes, all worked great, although the Mirror one is by far the coolest!! i did have a question about the album art. where does the program get it? is it encoded with the mp3 files, or is it downloaded by the program. just curious cuz sometimes it seems a bit erratic. by this i mean it will have album art for a song where i dont' even have the full album and didn't do the rip myself(i'm just watching those songs for a friend while he's away on business, honestly I am...  ) and other albums which i ripped myself and have the entire album where it has no album art. for the songs/albums where there is no art, is there a way to add this in? This applet completely rocks. It's gonna be cool the next time we host poker night at our house cuz then i can provide the musical entertainment via my tivo!!!

one more comment about shuffle mode...i was able to see what the next song was, so i'm not sure what was being referred to before. Is playlist shuffle different than just regular shuffle?


----------



## loonyboi

SafariKC said:


> The next song in queue is displayed on the screen now unless you are in playlist shuffle mode. We plan on making a change to the playlist shuffle mode next song in a future version.


Ah, that explains it. Gotcha.



SafariKC said:


> The ability to customize data is not an easy task. I will see if we can add that to the 2.0 roadmap.


Yeah, I figured it was a biggie. No rush, at least not from me, but it would be a great feature.


----------



## dropd

AudioFaucet doesn't work at all for me, latest download as of 5 minutes before I wrote this post.

I start up the program on my mac (powerbook), select the audiofaucet on my tivo (humax drt-800), get the audioFaucet startup screen on the tivo (the little droplet with the os x-like 'wait' circle animation), then i got the "An error occurred while running the application. The application closed during a read (0x50006).


----------



## dropd

SafariKC said:


> We are aware of this. We currently use a live iTunes pull to get the information from itunes. The good side on this is that it's always accurate and up to the second with your information, and even supports the smart playlists. the down side is that the larger your library the larger the step is into each layer of the browser. We noted this in our release notes and are looking at XML iTunes Library pulls for a future release (2.0).
> 
> Thanks for the feedback,
> KC


Let me know if you need any assistance with the itunes xml parsing... that was one thing that rodeoTunes does quite well. though i did notice a couple recent rodeoTunes downloads from my website lately that might be related


----------



## SafariKC

dropd said:


> Let me know if you need any assistance with the itunes xml parsing... that was one thing that rodeoTunes does quite well. though i did notice a couple recent rodeoTunes downloads from my website lately that might be related


I agree. rodeoTunes does do the XML pull quite well.  We'll be sure to take you up on your offer when we get there.

Cheers,
KC


----------



## SafariKC

dropd said:


> AudioFaucet doesn't work at all for me, latest download as of 5 minutes before I wrote this post.
> 
> I start up the program on my mac (powerbook), select the audiofaucet on my tivo (humax drt-800), get the audioFaucet startup screen on the tivo (the little droplet with the os x-like 'wait' circle animation), then i got the "An error occurred while running the application. The application closed during a read (0x50006).


I'd like to get some more info on this from you.. Can you email [email protected] with the details on your config, what other HME apps are running, which mode you set AF to on the splash screen? I can also pass you some info about more advanced logging.

We have a few others having that same issue and would like to collect a bit more information.


----------



## SafariKC

FrancesTheMute said:


> Just a quick update. I went out and got a Netgear WG111 adapter to replace my USB200M/WET54GS5 combo, and let me tell you, it was like night and day. all of the features of audiofaucet worked fantastic. i put it in shuffle mode for a while and just started flipping through songs and never got an error once. it does kinda stutter for about a second or so after choosing a new song while it displays the new album art. not sure if there is anything you guys can do about it. I tried all three "now playing" themes, all worked great, although the Mirror one is by far the coolest!!


Glad things are working well for you now. I had the feeling it was your network for the most part. The Performance on the network can either make or break an HME app. Seeing that all the magic of HME for the most part takes place on the Host Computer. If you are doing MP3 streaming to TiVo, it's very possible that it could studder while passing along the Cover Art. What is your Tivo Telling you the network strength is there?



> i did have a question about the album art. where does the program get it? is it encoded with the mp3 files, or is it downloaded by the program. just curious cuz sometimes it seems a bit erratic. by this i mean it will have album art for a song where i dont' even have the full album and didn't do the rip myself(i'm just watching those songs for a friend while he's away on business, honestly I am...  ) and other albums which i ripped myself and have the entire album where it has no album art. for the songs/albums where there is no art, is there a way to add this in?


The Cover art for iTunes based MP3 is always pulled directly from the Music File unless we hit an error along the way. If we hit and error, or there is no cover art, we go out to amazon and find what we hope is a good match and display it on screen.

In MP3 File Stream Mode (no iTunes) we always get the artwork from amazon. We're on the hunt for a better ID3 tag grabber that would be able to get artwork from standalone MP3's but havn'et found anything we like yet.

If you want to add coverart to any song and are in iTunes mode, you can do that within iTunes itself. find the artwork you want to add, save it somewhere on your Hard drive. Open the song information in iTunes (right click- get info). Drag the artwork you want into the section called artwork.



> This applet completely rocks. It's gonna be cool the next time we host poker night at our house cuz then i can provide the musical entertainment via my tivo!!!


We appreciate the kind comments. 
Cheers,
KC



> one more comment about shuffle mode...i was able to see what the next song was, so i'm not sure what was being referred to before. Is playlist shuffle different than just regular shuffle?


Depends on what mode you are in with the app. If you are in iTunes mode w/o MP3 streaming we don't try to guess the next song. If you are in Mp3 mode we do always know the next song, as we are busy setting up it's stream 

KC


----------



## dropd

SafariKC said:


> The Cover art for iTunes based MP3 is always pulled directly from the Music File unless we hit an error along the way. If we hit and error, or there is no cover art, we go out to amazon and find what we hope is a good match and display it on screen.
> 
> In MP3 File Stream Mode (no iTunes) we always get the artwork from amazon. We're on the hunt for a better ID3 tag grabber that would be able to get artwork from standalone MP3's but havn'et found anything we like yet.


I had artwork-grabbing working from my last version of rodeoTunes as well (i don't know if i ever posted that version publicly, can't remember) -- it works independently of the itunes library, which sounds like what you're looking for. I can't remember which ID3 parsing package I was using though. I can look that up later.


----------



## dropd

SafariKC said:


> I'd like to get some more info on this from you.. Can you email [email protected] with the details on your config, what other HME apps are running, which mode you set AF to on the splash screen? I can also pass you some info about more advanced logging.
> 
> We have a few others having that same issue and would like to collect a bit more information.


Actually I'm wondering if it's a java 1.4 vs java 1.5 issue... I can't recall right now which vm i've set as my default on that powerbook. I'll have to check when I have access to that computer later.


----------



## SafariKC

dropd said:


> Actually I'm wondering if it's a java 1.4 vs java 1.5 issue... I can't recall right now which vm i've set as my default on that powerbook. I'll have to check when I have access to that computer later.


Please do, under OSX we've only tested on 1.4x (the default VM)

KC


----------



## DaddyBC

I tried faucet. Using the MP3 mode. First directory I tried had 300+ MP3's in it. When trying to play it scanned about 30 or so and then errored out.

2nd try was with a directory that had 6 mp3s. It did scan and it did run but no sound came out. I checked and it was set to use the TV (tivo)for sound.

So the questions are:
What are the mp3 file directory limits?
Does it have to scan the files every time it tries to play?
Why no sound?
Does it use the same ports as Galleon or Tivo desktop?
Is there a jukebox style of selecting songs to be played? My wife will not create playlists on the computer and wants to create a playlist every time she wants to listen to music and for whatever mood she is in.


----------



## SafariKC

DaddyBC said:


> I tried faucet. Using the MP3 mode. First directory I tried had 300+ MP3's in it. When trying to play it scanned about 30 or so and then errored out.
> 
> 2nd try was with a directory that had 6 mp3s. It did scan and it did run but no sound came out. I checked and it was set to use the TV (tivo)for sound.
> 
> So the questions are:
> What are the mp3 file directory limits?
> Does it have to scan the files every time it tries to play?
> Why no sound?
> Does it use the same ports as Galleon or Tivo desktop?
> Is there a jukebox style of selecting songs to be played? My wife will not create playlists on the computer and wants to create a playlist every time she wants to listen to music and for whatever mood she is in.


Can you please email [email protected] with all the details about your configuration, what platform you are running on, how your tivo is connected to the network etc.

Have you considered installing iTunes?  The browser will help alot with configuing playlists on the fly and it's free.


----------



## SafariKC

Hi Gang,

In case people haven't yet picked up on my general response when people need help with AF, we really would like to request that if you are having an issue to Pretty Please with Sugar on Top email [email protected] with all the details about your setup, how you TiVo is connected, how you are using AF.

It helps us greatly to be able to have a 2 way conversations with people and to have as much detail as possible to help answer and track questions 

Thanks Bunches,

KC


----------



## DaddyBC

SafariKC said:


> Have you considered installing iTunes?  The browser will help alot with configuing playlists on the fly and it's free.


Actually I have Itunes installed. My daughter uses it. Everything in her playlists are M4a's so I didn't bother trying it. I guess I could setup a MP3 playlist for Mom though. I will email you the other info.


----------



## Austin Bike

I tried it but it was excruciatingly slow over wireless. Notebook is wireless, songs are on the server, played through the Tivo.

Not interested in putting itunes on the server unless I know this will work well. Tivo is hard-wired on the same network as the server.


----------



## SafariKC

Austin Bike said:


> I tried it but it was excruciatingly slow over wireless. Notebook is wireless, songs are on the server, played through the Tivo.
> 
> Not interested in putting itunes on the server unless I know this will work well. Tivo is hard-wired on the same network as the server.


Wireless can cause issues in general, but your bigger issue is that we currently do not support NFS shared iTunes Libraries.

Depending on the size of your iTunes Library browsing can still be a bit slow, and we are pushing foward with a fix to that now that we should be ready to test in a week. We suggest for now people that would like a fast browser to either use the MP3 File Implementation (which also doesn't support remote NFS shares at this time) or use Playlists (the playlist browser should work rather quickly)

Cheers,
KC


----------



## SafariKC

Hi Gang,

I just pushed out a new build, anyone who is using any current build should have a notification in their main menu and on the splash screen that the version they are using is out of date.

Changes:
-- New Tivo HME SDK 1.3.1 
-- iTunes Volume Control in Audio Settings is now Dynamic (no need to press select)
-- Slight Speed Increases (more to come)
-- New method for calling iTunes Interactions that should help people who in the past had iTunes but AF couldn't find it (we have no way of testing this as we can't re-create the problem here but we think this is what was causing the issue).
-- Turned on Advanced Logging for all users. There is now a AudioFaucet Log file that is dropped into the directory that AF lives in.

Please kick the tires on this new build, If you have any comments/questions/concerns, Please email [email protected] and remember go give as much detail as you can about your configuration, what mode you have AF in, how your TiVo is connected, etc. We also request that if you do hit an error, that you exit AF, re-create the error and then exit AF again. Take the AudioFaucet Log file and send it along with your email 

SPECIAL NOTE: 
-- We currently don't have support for Music Files that don't live on the main system drive. (iTunes or MP3 File Directories) We are working on a fix.

Thanks
KC


----------



## saejin

I installed 1.5PR last night and it is working good... much nicer than the standard TiVo music player. Being able to see the album art is great!

A couple of minor issues:
1: The Interface is quite slow and jerky (especially with the screen transitions) even on my G5 dual 1.8 on a wired ethernet connection. I assume you are working on that for the final release.

2: The text on the floating banner is pretty tiny and kinda hard to read. It would be nice to be able to set font attributes or at least enlarge the text.

All in all, this is an awesome product with great promise.

So when's PhotoFaucet coming out?


----------



## SafariKC

saejin said:


> I installed 1.5PR last night and it is working good... much nicer than the standard TiVo music player. Being able to see the album art is great!


Glad to hear it is working and you enjoy the presentation layer.



> A couple of minor issues:
> 1: The Interface is quite slow and jerky (especially with the screen transitions) even on my G5 dual 1.8 on a wired ethernet connection. I assume you are working on that for the final release.


Is this while streaming MP3's to the TiVo directly? The TiVo itself is wired, or the G5 is wired? or both? Which network adaptor are you using? It's very possible that while streaming MP3's directly to the TiVo that the UI could be sluggish. That's mostly due to the fact that we have to push the UI over the same bandwidth pipe that the MP3 is streaming over.

When not streaming Mp3's you should notice that the UI is snappy? If not, then there's something else going on with the network or bogging down the TiVo. If it is while streaming Mp3's direct to the TiVo I've considered putting in an option (and setting it by default) to pause the MP3 stream while not on a Now Playing screen. (ie, if you are in the menu's you probably want to change songs) Haven't decided which way to go with that yet. Feedback would be helpful.

Feel free to email [email protected] and we can start a dialog to figure out the root cause of your issue.



> 2: The text on the floating banner is pretty tiny and kinda hard to read. It would be nice to be able to set font attributes or at least enlarge the text.


I can definately work on making the text bigger, Right now it's the same size as it is on all the other screens, Is the problem actually that it is slightly transparent? (faded) and not actually the size of the font?

Again, feedback is welcome.



> All in all, this is an awesome product with great promise.
> 
> So when's PhotoFaucet coming out?


Thanks for the kind words.

We have done some work with a Photo app in the past. I'm sure we will go back to it once we are happy with AF.

Cheers,
KC


----------



## saejin

> Is this while streaming MP3's to the TiVo directly? The TiVo itself is wired, or the G5 is wired? or both?


Yes, when I stream Mp3s directly to the TiVo box. The TiVo and the G5 are both wired.



> Which network adaptor are you using?


Linksys USB200M Ver. 1



> It's very possible that while streaming MP3's directly to the TiVo that the UI could be sluggish. That's mostly due to the fact that we have to push the UI over the same bandwidth pipe that the MP3 is streaming over... When not streaming Mp3's you should notice that the UI is snappy?


I think that's exactly what it is. The UI is quite smooth when music is not playing. Only when an MP3 is playing does the UI become sluggish.



> I've considered putting in an option (and setting it by default) to pause the MP3 stream while not on a Now Playing screen. (ie, if you are in the menu's you probably want to change songs) Haven't decided which way to go with that yet. Feedback would be helpful.


That would be a nice option, but IMHO, I would rather it be sluggish than have to pause the music while I browse. I tend to browse through my library a lot while I'm listening to a song. (maybe I should change my ways  )



> Is the problem actually that it is slightly transparent? (faded) and not actually the size of the font?


Yes, you're right. I do notice that it is slightly faded, which made it look blurry to me.

Thanks for the help! Great product!

Do you have any idea how much you plan on charging for the retail version?


----------



## ajwillys

FrancesTheMute said:


> AMD64 3500+ with 2GB of DDR400, 2x WD Raptors in RAID 0.


NICE!! :up:


----------



## FrancesTheMute

ajwillys said:


> NICE!! :up:


blood money from my 8 years military service!!!


----------



## SafariKC

saejin said:


> Yes, when I stream Mp3s directly to the TiVo box. The TiVo and the G5 are both wired.
> 
> Linksys USB200M Ver. 1
> 
> I think that's exactly what it is. The UI is quite smooth when music is not playing. Only when an MP3 is playing does the UI become sluggish.


Good to know it's not something new causing the issue.  Unfortunatly it just has a ton to do with the fact that the TiVo Just doesn't have alot of bandwidth over that USB Port. Plus MP3 Playing sucks up CPU power on the TiVo itself.

The other thing you could do to make the menus wiz by is to get an Airtunes unit  with the added benifit that you get to listen to all of your music that isn't MP3 as well.



> That would be a nice option, but IMHO, I would rather it be sluggish than have to pause the music while I browse. I tend to browse through my library a lot while I'm listening to a song. (maybe I should change my ways  )


I tend to agree that It should just stay playing. If people want to browser faster they can just hit pause before exiting to the menu system 



> Yes, you're right. I do notice that it is slightly faded, which made it look blurry to me.


I'll lighten up the dimming a bit. I'm surprised I haven't gotten much complaints about the fact that i dimmed that screen so much. I've also noticed that depending on the TV's settings, perhaps you TV might need some fine Brightness/Contrast adjustments as well 



> Thanks for the help! Great product!


We're glad to be working on it. Thanks again for the kind words.



> Do you have any idea how much you plan on charging for the retail version?


Ahh.. surprised this questions hasn't been asked sooner. ... I think *pinky to lip* around 100..... billion... dollars! *muah ha ha ha ha*

Honestly, our current thinking is around the $20 mark per household. This should cover our distribution/bandwidth/support costs... we hope *cringe*. Anyone who was kind enough to have donated to the iSeeiTunes coffee fund will recieve a copy wrapped in a hug from us as well. We think that's fair.

Cheers,
KC


----------



## Austin Bike

Put iTunes 5 on the server and with a 100GB music library with ~20K songs, I never got it to work. 

I could import one folder and it worked great. But when I import my entire library into iTunes, AF just spins and spins. After I few minutes I just gave up. Hoping the new version picks this up a bit. I like the interface a lot more than Tivo, but it needs to be speedy.


----------



## Austin Bike

Oh, and everything is wired, when I tried it wirelessly I couldn't get anywhere.


----------



## Austin Bike

Oh, and HUGE feature request - autostart. 

I run a server to feed the Tivo and if there is a reboot, I can put the program in the startup folder, but what I really need is autostart so I don't have to log on and push a button.


----------



## SafariKC

Austin Bike said:


> Put iTunes 5 on the server and with a 100GB music library with ~20K songs, I never got it to work.
> 
> I could import one folder and it worked great. But when I import my entire library into iTunes, AF just spins and spins. After I few minutes I just gave up. Hoping the new version picks this up a bit. I like the interface a lot more than Tivo, but it needs to be speedy.


Howdy.

As i stated in your email, the bigger the library the slower the browser.. The way that the script based implementation works (which allows us to use Smart Playlists) it has to look at every song in your library each time you go into each browser level. I would bet if you let it sit for a long time it would finally make the jump to the next level.. then you get to wait all over again 

The good news is that a fix that we origionally had pushed to 2.0 we've decided to port over to the 1.5 tree. We should have something shortly that will speed up browsing quite a bit. Hang in there... a fix is coming.

KC


----------



## SafariKC

Austin Bike said:


> Oh, and HUGE feature request - autostart.
> 
> I run a server to feed the Tivo and if there is a reboot, I can put the program in the startup folder, but what I really need is autostart so I don't have to log on and push a button.


The spalsh screen/config screen is temporary (right now it's in java and will soon move to native OS code). We do plan on supporting autostart but didn't want to confuse people with a poor UI. I'll look into something in the short term.

KC


----------



## SafariKC

Austin Bike said:


> Oh, and everything is wired, when I tried it wirelessly I couldn't get anywhere.


If Wireless performace or available bandwidth is poor... We can't send the UI elements at an acceptable speed. (in fact the SDK sometimes will completely drop the elements if the resource doesn't show up in time)

How is your signal strength? How long does it take you to transfer a show to that same wireless computer and at what bitrate?

Cheers,
KC


----------



## JuryDuty

SafariKC said:


> The good news is that a fix that we origionally had pushed to 2.0 we've decided to port over to the 1.5 tree. We should have something shortly that will speed up browsing quite a bit. Hang in there... a fix is coming.
> 
> KC


Yay! Glad to hear it. I'll love that.


----------



## SafariKC

JuryDuty said:


> Yay! Glad to hear it. I'll love that.


What's a few sleepless nights between friends right?


----------



## SafariKC

Request for Info:

Hi Gang,

I am currently working with TiVo to track down a bug where users get the AudioFaucet / Digital Droplet Splash Screen on their TiVo but can't get past that point (the TiVo Errors out).

I request that if any of you are having this issue that you please email [email protected] along with the Make/Model number of your TiVo.

Thank You, 
KC


----------



## Austin Bike

Wired speeds are fine. I can transfer a show to my server in ~1/2 the time it would take to play it.


----------



## SafariKC

Austin Bike said:


> Wired speeds are fine. I can transfer a show to my server in ~1/2 the time it would take to play it.


So what you are saying if i understand you correctly is this:

1) Under Wired, The UI comes up and everything works as expected (other than the fact that the Browser takes a long time to locate and catagorize all of your music - which is something we are working on)

2) Under Wireless, All you've stated is that "i couldn't get anywhere". What does that mean? Can you describe that experience/process better?

If you could send all the major details over to [email protected] it would be appreciated.

Thanks
KC


----------



## miller890

App looks great, well done. For some reason my delay between each window to drill-down is about a 20-30 second for the next. I am using Java 2 Runtime Environment, SE v1.4.2_09 on a 3.2GHz XPS with a fresh install of XP pro, 1GB mem, on a wired network, and a TiVo Series2-140 with v7.2. I am using iTunes and I have about 45GB of MP3's. I typically use the Genre to find a specific album to play. I am also running TiVo's Desktop app if that makes a difference. That's it. Any suggestions KC?


----------



## SafariKC

miller890 said:


> App looks great, well done. For some reason my delay between each window to drill-down is about a 20-30 second for the next. I am using Java 2 Runtime Environment, SE v1.4.2_09 on a 3.2GHz XPS with a fresh install of XP pro, 1GB mem, on a wired network, and a TiVo Series2-140 with v7.2. I am using iTunes and I have about 45GB of MP3's. I typically use the Genre to find a specific album to play. I am also running TiVo's Desktop app if that makes a difference. That's it. Any suggestions KC?


Howdy,

Glad you like the app.

Long Story Answer:

As stated in the release notes and a few times in the thread here, we know that the iTunes Browser is slow at the moment. The method that we used was the best way to always know we had the most current information about your iTunes Library. We decided not to abandon it a few months ago and to complete the feature set and then go back and re-write the code for a 2.0 release that would have a much speedier interface.

Due to all of the feedback, we decided to take some functionality we had planned for 1.5 and delay it (things we haven't released yet) and to instead focus on getting the new 2.0 browser code in place and working now.

Short Story Answer:

We're painfully aware that this is a problem for alot of users. And we should have something to show people very very soon that should speed up the iTunes Browser speed quite a bit.

KC


----------



## Austin Bike

SafariKC said:


> So what you are saying if i understand you correctly is this:
> 
> 1) Under Wired, The UI comes up and everything works as expected (other than the fact that the Browser takes a long time to locate and catagorize all of your music - which is something we are working on)
> 
> 2) Under Wireless, All you've stated is that "i couldn't get anywhere". What does that mean? Can you describe that experience/process better?
> 
> If you could send all the major details over to [email protected] it would be appreciated.
> 
> Thanks
> KC


Under both the UI came up. Under wired with 1 artist I was able to access and play music.

Under both, with the full library (100GB) I could never even browse artists (gave up after 5 minutes on wireless and 1 minute on wired).

Speed is essential, if it isn't faster than media center then there is no point in switching. It's always hard to convince the wife that something is "better" if it what used to be simple is now difficult.


----------



## SafariKC

Austin Bike said:


> Under both the UI came up. Under wired with 1 artist I was able to access and play music.
> 
> Under both, with the full library (100GB) I could never even browse artists (gave up after 5 minutes on wireless and 1 minute on wired).
> 
> Speed is essential, if it isn't faster than media center then there is no point in switching. It's always hard to convince the wife that something is "better" if it what used to be simple is now difficult.


As I said, the larger the library, the slower the current method will take. The accellerated browser is coming, and very soon.

KC


----------



## FrancesTheMute

booo! this thread is way down on the 2nd page!! we can't have that!! any news on the AudioFaucet front?


----------



## SafariKC

*gasp* the horror 

We should have an update soon. The update we're working on now is a big one but we're making some headway.

KC


----------



## FrancesTheMute

Cool! good to hear. we'll be looking forward to an update!!


----------



## SafariKC

as do we  

as do we. 

KC


----------



## mjcmjc

dropd said:


> AudioFaucet doesn't work at all for me, latest download as of 5 minutes before I wrote this post.
> 
> I start up the program on my mac (powerbook), select the audiofaucet on my tivo (humax drt-800), get the audioFaucet startup screen on the tivo (the little droplet with the os x-like 'wait' circle animation), then i got the "An error occurred while running the application. The application closed during a read (0x50006).


I'm having this same problem. Downloaded most current version of AudioFaucet on 10/11/05. Running latest iTunes, latest OSX, and have Tivo software 7.2xxxx.

Have been searching for a fix. Any suggestions?

mjc


----------



## dropd

mjcmjc said:


> I'm having this same problem. Downloaded most current version of AudioFaucet on 10/11/05. Running latest iTunes, latest OSX, and have Tivo software 7.2xxxx.
> 
> Have been searching for a fix. Any suggestions?
> 
> mjc


I hear that a fix for that may be coming sometime soon. AFAIK it's not a problem on your end.


----------



## Dougieha

Any news for the fix for not playing files that aren't on the main system drive? All my music files are located on my G: drive, with C: being the main system drive...thus, I can't use the app...which is very frustrating!

Thanks in advance,
Dougieha


----------



## briguymaine

cue the crickets? any progress updates?


----------



## SafariKC

Check back in a few hours 

We're doing a final pass through the build we've been working on for the past few weeks now. 

It's a rather large update to the backend which is why it took so long. 

KC


----------



## SafariKC

Dougieha said:


> Any news for the fix for not playing files that aren't on the main system drive? All my music files are located on my G: drive, with C: being the main system drive...thus, I can't use the app...which is very frustrating!
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> Dougieha


This will be fixed in the build released tonight.


----------



## SafariKC

dropd said:


> I hear that a fix for that may be coming sometime soon. AFAIK it's not a problem on your end.


Dropd is correct. He's actually tested the code himself and we finally seem to have fixed the spash screen bug. A new build with the fix in it will be released later tonight.


----------



## mcharkowski

What's the deal with leaving the Windows guys out in the cold? 

When did you ever think you'd hear Windows owners complaining that the Mac owners always get the software updates first?

Any idea on when you'll be able to drop a new Windows version?


----------



## SafariKC

mcharkowski said:


> What's the deal with leaving the Windows guys out in the cold?
> 
> When did you ever think you'd hear Windows owners complaining that the Mac owners always get the software updates first?
> 
> Any idea on when you'll be able to drop a new Windows version?


We tend not to release any code on one platform without it being ready on the other.

Check now? It was uploading while you checked i assume 

KC


----------



## SafariKC

Hi Gang,

New version was just posted, your main menu should let you know as well.

AudioFaucet 1.5PR - 20051016

We believe we fixed in this version: 
- Play music from any location on your machine/network (mounted drives)
- Preferences System Default Setting Highlights Added
- iTunes Version Checking refinements
- TiVo Splash Screen should no longer crash
- Channel Up/Down now change Song in Now Playing (use Browser to pick Playlists)
- Faster iTunes Browser
- Number Pad Jumps Quickly throuhg Long Playlist/Browser Results
(1 = top, 0 = bottom, 2-9= Percentage of List Size )
- Now Playing Pause button toggles Play/Pause

If you find problems with this build, please email [email protected] with as many details as you can (don't forget to tell us what mode AF is in and what settings you have set in the Settings menu for Audio Output) We should get back to you shortly. Also please do try to include the Error log file if you can:

Windows: /Windows/Program Files/DigitalDroplet.net/AudioFaucet/

OS X: We are listed in the System Console Log. To help identify the issue better it helps us greatly if you can clear the log before running AF to re-create your issue.

Cheers,
KC


----------



## SafariKC

FYI: Looks like we're having some unicode text issues with the browser. It's possible that if you have special characters in your album/artist/song name it may not play. We're looking into the issue, but most likely won't have a fix for a week or so. 

KC


----------



## mjcmjc

SafariKC,

I downloaded and installed the new build tonight (Sunday). 

It fixed my problem and I'm enjoying / getting to know your program for the first time.

Looks great. 

Works fine when I have music stored on the computer's internal drive. Doesn't seem to find music stored on my external drives, though. I'll read the threads on this.

Thanks for the hard work and the responsiveness. 

mjc


----------



## SafariKC

Glad it's working for you now.

We would like to know more about your music not playing off remote drives.. Can you please email [email protected] with all the details and your AudioFaucet log file?

Thanks
KC



mjcmjc said:


> SafariKC,
> 
> I downloaded and installed the new build tonight (Sunday).
> 
> It fixed my problem and I'm enjoying / getting to know your program for the first time.
> 
> Looks great.
> 
> Works fine when I have music stored on the computer's internal drive. Doesn't seem to find music stored on my external drives, though. I'll read the threads on this.
> 
> Thanks for the hard work and the responsiveness.
> 
> mjc


----------



## Dougieha

I have a problem with the latest release. It is finding my music (on G: drive) just fine now, but it fails horribly at finding my iTunes installation. iTunes is definitely installed (the latest version - 6.0), and the previous release of AudioFaucet found it without a problem. Any ideas? I'm attaching my log in a zipped file.

iTunes is installed at "c:\Program Files\iTunes" (the default), and AudioFaucet is installed at "c:\Program Files\AudioFaucet". My music is on the G:\ drive, and the iTunes XML file is at "G:\Music\iTunes".

Thanks in advance!


----------



## midwest303

when i run the pr release, it just scans through the songs and does not play anything.....it shows one song and it looks like it should but then it goes right to another then another then another.....2-3 per second......

it never stops and actually plays anything...the iseeitunes version works better, but i would like to be able to fast forward through a song


----------



## SafariKC

Dougieha said:


> I have a problem with the latest release. It is finding my music (on G: drive) just fine now, but it fails horribly at finding my iTunes installation. iTunes is definitely installed (the latest version - 6.0), and the previous release of AudioFaucet found it without a problem. Any ideas? I'm attaching my log in a zipped file.
> 
> iTunes is installed at "c:\Program Files\iTunes" (the default), and AudioFaucet is installed at "c:\Program Files\AudioFaucet". My music is on the G:\ drive, and the iTunes XML file is at "G:\Music\iTunes".
> 
> Thanks in advance!


Hi There,

In the future please don't attach your AF log files here. Can i ask that you please email us at [email protected] with the same information so that we can keep you in the loop when we fix this. We know what the issue is and it's something we should be able to fix in the next release.

KC


----------



## SafariKC

hardacid said:


> when i run the pr release, it just scans through the songs and does not play anything.....it shows one song and it looks like it should but then it goes right to another then another then another.....2-3 per second......
> 
> it never stops and actually plays anything...the iseeitunes version works better, but i would like to be able to fast forward through a song


Are you running the latest version that we released a few hours ago? If not could you please re-test with that version (the simpthoms you describe should have been fixed with todays release). If you are having this issue under the new release from today please email [email protected] with the AudioFaucet log file and a complete decription of your configuration.

As for fast forward/rewind - it is something we are working on and one of the main reasons why in this version next/previous track have been moved to channel up/down. (to free up the rewind/forward buttons for rewind and forward when it's ready)

thanks
kc


----------



## mjcmjc

SafariKC said:


> Glad it's working for you now.
> 
> We would like to know more about your music not playing off remote drives.. Can you please email us with all the details and your AudioFaucet log file?
> 
> Thanks
> KC


I sent you the log file along with a description of the set / config of my system.

In sum, the newest AudioFaucet works great on the computer's user that has about 40 songs, which are stored in the iTunes fold on the internal hard drive. Another user on the same computer stores significantly more songs on a firewire drive. When running AudioFaucet on that user, the Audiofaucet menu selection doesn't even appear under the Tivo's Music, Photos, & More menu. Same computer, different users.

I also noted that, when I checked it remotely, that computer appears not to have been updated to iTunes 6, but is probably running iTunes 5. I have no idea is that would cause AudioFaucet to run perfectly for one user on the machine, but not at all for the other user.

Thanks again for your responsiveness / letting us help you make this a great application,
mjc


----------



## Dougieha

SafariKC said:


> Hi There,
> 
> In the future please don't attach your AF log files here. Can i ask that you please email us at [email protected] with the same information so that we can keep you in the loop when we fix this. We know what the issue is and it's something we should be able to fix in the next release.
> 
> KC


Done. Thanks!


----------



## SafariKC

Dougieha said:


> Done. Thanks!


Thanks,

Now that i have your email i'll let you know directly when we have a fix.

Cheers,
KC


----------



## mjcmjc

mjcmjc said:


> ...
> 
> I have no idea is that would cause AudioFaucet to run perfectly for one user on the machine, but not at all for the other user.
> ...
> 
> mjc


Aftter several eamils with SafariKC, it looks like the large size of my iTunes collection on one user is causing the problem. They are working on a fix.

Kudos to SafariKC and the AF team for working hard to make this an great app.

mjc


----------



## Timber

(Right now running on a Mac but I will be doing this on a PC as well)

First time user and I'm amazed at how cool this is! 

However I'm not getting any artwork. Is there something I should be turning on?

Thanks!

-=Tim=-


----------



## SafariKC

Hi there,

There should be no particular reason why artwork isn't working off the top of my head, but without any details it's difficult to even speculate (As you can probably imagine).

Please email [email protected] with all the details about your setup and also if you could inclue the audiofaucet log file.

KC



Timber said:


> (Right now running on a Mac but I will be doing this on a PC as well)
> 
> First time user and I'm amazed at how cool this is!
> 
> However I'm not getting any artwork. Is there something I should be turning on?
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> -=Tim=-


----------



## davedonohue

I've just installed the latest build, and even wireless over 802.11b it represents a *huge* browser speed improvement.

This is, by far, the best HME app I've seen for the TiVo, and it's all kinds of spouse-friendly - which is important as we're an iTunes-based household.

Thanks!


----------



## SafariKC

Thanks for the kind words.....

We know there are still some people where this doesn't work.. We're working hard on getting a newer build out that hopefully fixes the startup issues pepole are seeing and.. as an added bonus we've had the time between builds and testing cycles to add a new Now Playing Theme 

If people are still out there having issues.. keep your eyes open for a new build before the weekend.

Cheers,
KC



davedonohue said:


> I've just installed the latest build, and even wireless over 802.11b it represents a *huge* browser speed improvement.
> 
> This is, by far, the best HME app I've seen for the TiVo, and it's all kinds of spouse-friendly - which is important as we're an iTunes-based household.
> 
> Thanks!


----------



## markp99

A little help getting off square one, please 

I'm trying to play with AF, but cannot seem to get any result. I have used a number of other HME app without problem (except trafficcam, never connects with firewall on). WHne I launch AF on my laptop (wireless), I do not see AF on my TiVo. Tried with firewall on and off.

Any suggestions? Am I missing something obvious??

Thanks!


----------



## SafariKC

markp99 said:


> A little help getting off square one, please
> 
> I'm trying to play with AF, but cannot seem to get any result. I have used a number of other HME app without problem (except trafficcam, never connects with firewall on). WHne I launch AF on my laptop (wireless), I do not see AF on my TiVo. Tried with firewall on and off.
> 
> Any suggestions? Am I missing something obvious??
> 
> Thanks!


We broke something when implementing the new browser. It's specific to a few people's configs, and you happen to be a winner. We have been working on a fix all week and should have something out tonight.... we hope.. at least.. that to be the case.

Keep your eyes open 

KC


----------



## markp99

SafariKC said:


> you happen to be a winner.


Ding, ding, ding. Hey, I'm a winner.

Not quite powerball, but glad to hear you guys are on it!


----------



## SafariKC

markp99 said:


> Ding, ding, ding. Hey, I'm a winner.
> 
> Not quite powerball, but glad to hear you guys are on it!


If you are around.. and want to help test the next build, can you ping me? I'm on AIM: SafariKC. In fact anyone that's having issues with AF is welcome to IM me and we can throw some builds back and fourth this evening.

Thanks
KC


----------



## SafariKC

Hi Gang,

New version was just posted, your main menu should let you know as well.

AudioFaucet 1.5PR - 20051021

We believe we fixed in this version: 
- Most Startup Issues should be gone.
- New Now Playing Theme: Artwork On Display
- MP3 files with Unicode filenames should now Play

If you find problems with this build, please email [email protected] with as many details as you can (don't forget to tell us what mode AF is in and what settings you have set in the Settings menu for Audio Output) We should get back to you shortly. Also please do try to include the Error log file if you can:

Windows: /Windows/Program Files/DigitalDroplet.net/AudioFaucet/

OS X: We are listed in the System Console Log. To help identify the issue better it helps us greatly if you can clear the log before running AF to re-create your issue.

Cheers,
KC


----------



## SafariKC

markp99 said:


> Ding, ding, ding. Hey, I'm a winner.
> 
> Not quite powerball, but glad to hear you guys are on it!


Hey Mark,

I tried to email you and unfortunately it would seem the return email address in the email you sent me doesn't work. *sigh* Gotta love technology sometimes. 

I see you are running in MP3 only (no iTunes - who would ever do that?) mode, how big is your MP3 file library? It's very possible it's just taking us a while to chomp through it to make the hashmap. We plan on working on an opitmization on that shortly. I wonder if that's what you are seeing.

In the AudioFaucet Program Files Directory there is an AudioFaucet log and possibly an error log file. can you please email those to [email protected] (check your return address in your email client as well before doing so, so we can write you back)

Also, Have you ever been able to run HME (not HMO) apps from that laptop to that TiVo?

can you try running:

http://tivohme.sourceforge.net/?page=3Dquickstart

And see if that shows up?

Thanks
KC


----------



## Dougieha

SafariKC:

The latest update fixed my problem with recognizing iTunes, but now, everytime I launch AudioFaucet on the Tivo, iTunes opens on my computer...is that really necessary?

Also, it seems that just navigating the menus while the music is playing causes a good deal of skipping...is this just something that will be corrected as things get optimized?

Great job on the latest release!

Dougieha


----------



## Dougieha

Also...in the file/folder browsing option, is there any chance of recognizing playlists (.m3u) files? That would be awesome, as I have a folder of playlists in with my music files.

Thanks in advance,
Dougieha


----------



## SafariKC

Dougieha said:


> SafariKC:
> 
> The latest update fixed my problem with recognizing iTunes, but now, everytime I launch AudioFaucet on the Tivo, iTunes opens on my computer...is that really necessary?


We launch iTunes if you are using iTunes mode - becuase we use iTunes... while in iTunes mode  If we don't launch it at the splash screen, the first time you go to use AF it will take a very long time to do anything that we ask iTunes to do (because it would have to launch it first)

So.. yup.. necessary.



> Also, it seems that just navigating the menus while the music is playing causes a good deal of skipping...is this just something that will be corrected as things get optimized?


Unfortunately you will need to optimize your network to get better performace while streaming MP3's to the TiVo and Trying to use the menu's. We've pretty much gotten the menu's as optimized as they can be. We can't give priority to the stream, that's all up to TiVo. So we pretty much optimize each screen the best we can and hope for the best 

One way to offload alot of horse power from the TiVo is to use an AirTunes unit for sending audio to your Reciever instead of having the TiVo Do it. MP3 playing isn't hardware based on the TiVo.

Anywho, we're always trying to nip/tuck here there and everywhere to get better performance... so.... it may get better for you, but.... in the end, alot of what happens on the tivo is very dependant on your CPU Horse Power and your Network Bandwidth Quality.



> Great job on the latest release!
> 
> Dougieha


Thank you for the kind words.

KC


----------



## SafariKC

Dougieha said:


> Also...in the file/folder browsing option, is there any chance of recognizing playlists (.m3u) files? That would be awesome, as I have a folder of playlists in with my music files.
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> Dougieha


At this point we don't support M3U's. We'll put it on the list. The whole MP3 file browser needs some love, so if anyone out there has suggestions for how that should work feel free to send them along to [email protected] and we'll try to get them in there.

KC


----------



## Dougieha

Thanks for the quick replies...at the moment, the only thing on my network are my computer and the Tivo...and there is plenty of CPU horsepower available on the computer...I guess I'll just have to live with the skipping...it's too bad you can't programmatically choose to prefer the stream over the visuals...

As for the MP3 file browser, the playlist files would be a really great feature...I'll give it some thought and let you know via email if I have any more suggestions for that side of the app.

One last thing...is it possible to make a setting where the AudioFaucet window that stays open on the computer can be minimized to the system tray, instead of living in the taskbar? That'd be a real improvement, as well.

Keep up the good work!


----------



## SafariKC

Dougieha said:


> Thanks for the quick replies...at the moment, the only thing on my network are my computer and the Tivo...and there is plenty of CPU horsepower available on the computer...I guess I'll just have to live with the skipping...it's too bad you can't programmatically choose to prefer the stream over the visuals...


Are your machines/tivo's wired or wireless? Wired should perform quite well



> As for the MP3 file browser, the playlist files would be a really great feature...I'll give it some thought and let you know via email if I have any more suggestions for that side of the app.


Thanks



> One last thing...is it possible to make a setting where the AudioFaucet window that stays open on the computer can be minimized to the system tray, instead of living in the taskbar? That'd be a real improvement, as well.


We are working on that actually ... Not sure when it will be done. But we are indeed working on it 



> Keep up the good work!


Cheers


----------



## Dougieha

Nope...it's wireless via 802.11g (should be faster than b), but the strange thing is that the Tivo's own digital music player functionality via Tivo Desktop doesn't seem to have any skipping issues while playing music and moving through the menus at the same time. I'll have to try AudioFaucet with a wired connection at some point to see if there is an improvement. One would think that the wireless should work, but I know how touchy the Tivos can be with regards to wireless connectivity. I'm sure the problem is on my end because of the wireless.


----------



## universeman

Guys: This is a great piece of software. I'll be buying it when it comes out. Does exactly what I wanted - putting a remote interface on iTunes! Awesome!

Now, on to the wishlist:

1. Windows - collapse AudioFaucet to the system tray. (AND make icon hideable - my system tray has so many icons already it looks like a toolbar for a CAD program)

2. Mirror what's showing on the Tivo in the AudioFaucet window - so I can see what's playing in the living room from my computer

3. AAC support - big one! That would be great

4. Another Screen Saver choice like the moving banner but maybe called "jumping banner" where it jumps a random number of pixels up/left/down/right every few seconds - I don't like the pong-style banner but like being able to see what's on

5. Update Play Count/last played in iTunes library - this is important to me cause I like to keep track of that kinda thing

6. Change rating on Tivo? Can I do that now?


----------



## jgs2n

With the prior version, I couldn't see audiofaucet on my tivo. I was looking forward to the new version but am unable to load it on my computer. 


When I try to run the new installer,I get the message the feature you are trying to use is on a network resource that is unavailable. I have tried to uninstall the old version (I guess without success). Any suggestions?


----------



## SafariKC

jgs2n said:


> With the prior version, I couldn't see audiofaucet on my tivo. I was looking forward to the new version but am unable to load it on my computer.
> 
> When I try to run the new installer,I get the message the feature you are trying to use is on a network resource that is unavailable. I have tried to uninstall the old version (I guess without success). Any suggestions?


Howdy,

You can't even run the installer? The installer uses no network resources at all. The uninstaller is found in Control Panel.

Can you please email [email protected] with all your details and possibly a screenshot of your error message so we can see what it might be coming from? Is it possible you have some kind of firewall installed that is producting that message?

THanks
KC


----------



## SafariKC

universeman said:


> Guys: This is a great piece of software. I'll be buying it when it comes out. Does exactly what I wanted - putting a remote interface on iTunes! Awesome!


Good to hear  Glad you are enjoying it.



> Now, on to the wishlist:
> 
> 1. Windows - collapse AudioFaucet to the system tray. (AND make icon hideable - my system tray has so many icons already it looks like a toolbar for a CAD program)


We're working on it. Very popular request, we know.. and we don't like the current way it works ourselves, bigger fish to fry at the moment.. but it WILL happen at some point in the near future we think.



> 2. Mirror what's showing on the Tivo in the AudioFaucet window - so I can see what's playing in the living room from my computer


Interesting Idea that we didn't think of. This will most likely have to wait until verision 2.0. The difficulty is that you can have it running on more than one tivo at any one time. So it's a bigger task than one would origionally think.



> 3. AAC support - big one! That would be great


Another popular request. We are indeed working on this as well. Not sure when it will be put into the released builds. We may have to do a special beta at some point past the 1.5 release to have people test the impact of re-encoding the audio on the AF experience.... Keep your ears open.



> 4. Another Screen Saver choice like the moving banner but maybe called "jumping banner" where it jumps a random number of pixels up/left/down/right every few seconds - I don't like the pong-style banner but like being able to see what's on


I can do that. Any other suggestions for Now Playing themes are always welcome.



> 5. Update Play Count/last played in iTunes library - this is important to me cause I like to keep track of that kinda thing


While in iTunes Stream to Airport/iTunes Host mode.. it will.. but you are correct we don't currently do it for MP3 mode. We should, and I'll try to get that on roadmap for a future build before the 1.5 release if i can. Good Catch.



> 6. Change rating on Tivo? Can I do that now?


You can. There is a readme file, and a help menu in the app that both point to you being able to set Ratings (and you should be seeing the ratings in the now playing screens as well) I'll let you read those to figure out how.. but I bet you it's alot like how TiVo Does it with normal TV Shows. *hint* 

Cheers,
KC


----------



## SafariKC

Hi Gang, 

Just wanted to post a quick message that John and I are both out of town for the week, and Internet Access has been few and far between. We currently don't have a way to reply to email (but can recieve it). 

We're working on getting some better connectivity, but this might be a slow Posting/Email week for us. Sorry about that. 

Cheers,
KC


----------



## mjcmjc

Great job on the latest build KC and John,

This program is really what I am looking... integrate my tivo remote and dispaly so that it controls the iTunes stream from my mac to my receiver. Thanks for making it work on larger iTunes libraries. 

I've been playing with the latest build for a couple days. Prior loading issues have been solved. Take a break, then we'll hit you with our continuted wish lists  


mjc


----------



## shutterfriend

I am able to install AudioFaucet 1.5 no problem but after I click start now and look on my Tivo in the music, photos and more I only see the TiVo and Galleon applications and no Audio Faucet. What am I doing wrong.

I have attached the log files.


----------



## SafariKC

shutterfriend said:


> I am able to install AudioFaucet 1.5 no problem but after I click start now and look on my Tivo in the music, photos and more I only see the TiVo and Galleon applications and no Audio Faucet. What am I doing wrong.
> 
> I have attached the log files.


Hi there,

Please send us an email at [email protected] with these log files (so we know who you are) and all the details about your system configuration, so we can help you better. It looks like you are having a crash in the version frame (the splash screen where you set the initial settings). It would be nice if you could include a step by step of exactly what you are checking/setting on that screen as well.

Thanks
KC


----------



## SafariKC

mjcmjc said:


> Great job on the latest build KC and John,
> 
> This program is really what I am looking... integrate my tivo remote and dispaly so that it controls the iTunes stream from my mac to my receiver. Thanks for making it work on larger iTunes libraries.
> 
> I've been playing with the latest build for a couple days. Prior loading issues have been solved. Take a break, then we'll hit you with our continuted wish lists
> 
> mjc


Glad it's working for you now! 

KC


----------



## LagunaSol

Here's another feature request. Not sure if it's possible, but here goes.

How about for the browser functions (artist, album, etc.) you have a Search option where you select the starting letter and the list is filtered down accordingly? That would be helpful for libraries with hundreds of artists and albums.


----------



## SafariKC

LagunaSol said:


> Here's another feature request. Not sure if it's possible, but here goes.
> 
> How about for the browser functions (artist, album, etc.) you have a Search option where you select the starting letter and the list is filtered down accordingly? That would be helpful for libraries with hundreds of artists and albums.


We currently don't have a keyboard based search engine, but we're working on one.. not sure when it will show up. In the mean time, if you are in a large list.. use your remote control buttons 1 through 0 to jump from the top of the list to the bottom of the list or any percentage between  See if that helps you.

KC


----------



## LagunaSol

SafariKC said:


> We currently don't have a keyboard based search engine, but we're working on one.. not sure when it will show up. In the mean time, if you are in a large list.. use your remote control buttons 1 through 0 to jump from the top of the list to the bottom of the list or any percentage between  See if that helps you.
> 
> KC


Thanks for the tip. I wasn't even thinking "search engine" functionality; perhaps at the top of every list (artist/album) have an "Alpha Sort" line item. By selecting that it gives you a list of letters A-Z. Scroll down to the letter you want, arrow right, and the appropriate artists/albums are shown. Not complex, but helpful when you have 800+ artists.

I'll try the jump trick too.


----------



## Timber

Some people remove the "The" from group names so they alphabetize correctly. Can you adapt AF so that for example it searches for cover art for "Beatles" as well as "The Beatles"?



Thanks!

-=Tim=-


----------



## SafariKC

Timber said:


> Some people remove the "The" from group names so they alphabetize correctly. Can you adapt AF so that for example it searches for cover art for "Beatles" as well as "The Beatles"?
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> -=Tim=-


Good suggestion, we need to look at bettering the engine behind Amazon coverart fetching anyway. So we'll see what we can do 

KC


----------



## SafariKC

LagunaSol said:


> Thanks for the tip. I wasn't even thinking "search engine" functionality; perhaps at the top of every list (artist/album) have an "Alpha Sort" line item. By selecting that it gives you a list of letters A-Z. Scroll down to the letter you want, arrow right, and the appropriate artists/albums are shown. Not complex, but helpful when you have 800+ artists.
> 
> I'll try the jump trick too.


I'll see what we can whip up.. not promising anything for short term though. We're right now focusing on getting 1.5 finished and out the door.


----------



## Timber

SafariKC said:


> Good suggestion, we need to look at bettering the engine behind Amazon coverart fetching anyway. So we'll see what we can do
> 
> KC


Thanks, it would make a HUGE difference for me. 

Great program btw.

-=Tim=-


----------



## SafariKC

Hi Gang, 

If you are a mac user, you will find today that we've completely disabled all previous versions. Through the unfortunate events of a few people who lost MP3 files that were streamed to the TiVo from their iTunes Library. While it was specific to special circumstances, we decided to invalidate all previous versions and issue a new build specifily for OSX that has a fix. 

Windows users were not effected by this bug and thier build was left the same as before 20051021. We hope to have a new build that fixes some other bugs in the next few days. This one however, couldn't wait. 

Cheers,
KC


----------



## Aquapple

Hello! First off I have to say that this program is just outrageously good. I don't think that Apple could have made this any better... really. Thanks for all of your hard work - it really looks and works well. 

I have one suggestion to improve the program on the Mac side... Instead of launching the program on the dock as an icon and then bringing up a giant splash screen to customize it, why not make a menu bar icon? (ie, just like the airport signal indicator) The icon could look like a little blue "play" symbol just like you currently have. When clicked, it would give you a drop-down menu with options like "Start Now", "Stop", "Choose Music Location", "Currently Playing" (greyed -out, just to tell you what iTunes is playing) and finally "Preferences". This way you could start the program up every time the computer boots and it would be completely unobtrusive. 

I can't wait to see where this goes - I will gladly help with whatever I can. 

Thank you!


----------



## SafariKC

Aquapple said:


> Hello! First off I have to say that this program is just outrageously good. I don't think that Apple could have made this any better... really. Thanks for all of your hard work - it really looks and works well.
> 
> I have one suggestion to improve the program on the Mac side... Instead of launching the program on the dock as an icon and then bringing up a giant splash screen to customize it, why not make a menu bar icon? (ie, just like the airport signal indicator) The icon could look like a little blue "play" symbol just like you currently have. When clicked, it would give you a drop-down menu with options like "Start Now", "Stop", "Choose Music Location", "Currently Playing" (greyed -out, just to tell you what iTunes is playing) and finally "Preferences". This way you could start the program up every time the computer boots and it would be completely unobtrusive.
> 
> I can't wait to see where this goes - I will gladly help with whatever I can.
> 
> Thank you!


Thanks for the kind words.

Alot of the issues surrounding why it acts the way it does today is because it's just not that easy to fully integrate a java application into any OS's native environment. We decided to focus more on core functionality for the initial release, and then once we got those under control moving over to doing some native work on each platform to make sure that the user experience outside of the TiVo blended in the best it could.

The splash screens you see today are actually temporary, they are just something we quickly threw together to allow people to use the core app. So it won't look like it does today in it's final form when we launch. But... It probably won't live in a menu bar anytime soon either (unfortunately). We are working on ways to make it easier to launch automaticly at startup however 

Cheers,
KC


----------



## LagunaSol

What happened to the next build of AudioFaucet (Mac version)? I'm dying here...need my tunes!


----------



## dpark

On my first run on Tivo, the purchases songs on my playlists played fine. I changed the setting to direct the audio to the TV and all songs other than the purchased ones appear on my playlists. Going through the iTunes xml file, those songs are in the file and they appear and play fine through iTunes.

Any ideas?


----------



## Tresy

While I love the look and feel of this product, as well as the ability to play AAC songs (and rate them!), I am having so many problems getting AF to play dependably that I'm not planning to buy the final product without assurances that I won't continue to have my current user experience. 

In a nutshell, AF is unstable on my G5 Mac. Sometimes it plays through Airport, usually it doesn't. The maddening thing is that it will show playlists and songs, but when I try to play something, the Now Playing screen will say 'Use Browser to Pick Song'", which is of course what I just did. Quitting AF and restarting it won't fix the problem, nor will relaunching iTunes. What seems to help--though it's not 100% guaranteed--is restarting both my Airport devices. Needless to say, that is not a happy solution. (Nothing else about my network indicates any problems.) Nor is having to run upstairs virtually every time I start up AF to find out why I'm unable to play music.

Moreover, I have NEVER been able to get album art through streaming iTunes play. You asked me to supply log files about this problem, which I did a week ago. I have not heard further from you about this. The album lookup feature does not work either. 

And responsiveness to user input is just slow enough to be a pain. It's not unusual to get in a situation where I've punched pause (or next song) one more time than necessary, and the lag in response leads to continual overshooting as I try to figure out how many button presses are needed to undo what I did.

Other problems include AF's failure to stop iTunes music play when exiting AF via the Now Playing Tivo remote button and the ensuing inability to regain control of the playing music when returning to AF. Again, one has to run upstairs and kill the music manually, and then go through the rigamarole of getting AF and the rest of my system to play again. Not fun.

I am a 10.4.3 user for whom Tivo Desktop works just fine except for not being able to play AAC files, which are a large portion of my library. I also have Griffin Technologies AirClick device, which enables me to play AAC and MP3s through Airport Express, albeit without visual feedback from the TV or the ability to browse. AF therefore has the potential to really meet a need for me, but not if it means constantly fiddling with my software and hardware. 

I hope that you get these bugs fixed before the commercial release so I can stop searching for the solution that Tivo frankly should have provided from the outset. As I say, I think AF shows a lot of promise.


----------



## SafariKC

LagunaSol said:


> What happened to the next build of AudioFaucet (Mac version)? I'm dying here...need my tunes!


Sorry for the delay in getting back to people, I've been on the road much more than I intended the past few weeks for personal reasons that i'd rather not go into here.

In any event, we have been working hard on AF the past month, mostly removing logging, re-attaching the front end to the back end xml changes we made to take advantage of the speed increases and stability we can get from using our own database to get song info, and re-creating the setup/startup experience to make more sense for the average end user.

Unfortunately these changes left AF in a state where frequent public builds were not a possibility. The existing builds should work just fine for most users (there are a few users having issues that we hope to be tracking down with this latest update we are working on now).

We hope to have a Release Canadate build out shortly (few days if our next QA sweep goes well).

Hang tight... and sorry again for the delay

KC


----------



## SafariKC

dpark said:


> On my first run on Tivo, the purchases songs on my playlists played fine. I changed the setting to direct the audio to the TV and all songs other than the purchased ones appear on my playlists. Going through the iTunes xml file, those songs are in the file and they appear and play fine through iTunes.
> 
> Any ideas?


We do not stream anything but MP3's directly to TiVo's. Due to the legal issues around Protected AAC I don't think that we'll ever do those, but we do have some test code that we hope to get into 2.0 if there is enough interest in 1.5 when it's realeased to transcode AAC on the fly to MP3 and stram that to the TiVo.

If you have an AirTunes unit we will tell iTunes to stream anything to that.

Cheers,
KC


----------



## SafariKC

Tresy said:


> While I love the look and feel of this product, as well as the ability to play AAC songs (and rate them!), I am having so many problems getting AF to play dependably that I'm not planning to buy the final product without assurances that I won't continue to have my current user experience.


Keep in mind that what you are using is a Pre-Release. And obviously we are working as hard and as quick as we can to fix peoples experience with the product. Support is also pre-release. Until the product is officially released this is a "spare time" project as we still need to find a way to put food on our table between coding/support sessions 

Your issue in particular we've been trying to figure out (as you know from our back and fourths in email)

Feel free to hit me up in Instant Messenger and we can try to run through your issue together. I'm SafariKC on AIM.

Cheers,
KC


----------



## CKS

Can you please post, or include as a PDF with the download, general instructions on how to set up the system? (Note: I'm a very basic user with limited IT skills) Ideally, I'd like to see a description, or even a diagram explaining all the required pieces and how to connect them.

I am super excited about AF, but can't get it to work. I can get it up and running on tivo to the point where I can operate it from the TV, but can't get the music to play. Is it a requirement to use AirTunes or an Airport Express for the audio, or can Tivo manage everything? 

On the "Audio Output" screen of AF, I see my computer under "Stream to Tivo (iTunes) but when I click "select" on the TiVo remote, I get the TiVo error "bonk" sound, not the successful "chime".

Current Setup: 
PC Laptop with iTunes and music DB running locally, no firewall.
Netgear wireless network
Tivo with Microsoft USB wireless access point
L/R/Vid patch cords running from TiVo into VCR, then from VCR to video-in on the receiver
Coax cable from wall to TiVo, then in/out of VCR, then to TV

(I have airtunes and an airport express, but would rather not use it unless absolutely necessary since I'd rather keep it for wireless printing, but I could always buy another if I need to)

Thanks!


----------



## craigrb

Downloaded and installed AudioFaucet on Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004, no problems. Streams to TiVo Series 2 nicely on wired 100 connection. Very nice interface with easy navigation using the TiVo remote. Nice job. Only problem is that "shuffling" songs takes forever (I have an extensive MP3 collection).

Question: How do I get AudioFaucet to display the cover art or any jpeg I want to associate with an album/CD? With the right settings, AudioFaucet does display cover art for those albums it can find on the Internet, but much of my MP3 collection was converted from old vinyl. I've scanned the album covers and want my jpeg to show up if one is not found on the Internet, or sometimes I just like my original cover art image better anyway.

And it would be nice if I could associate an image (jpeg only?) with any given song so that playing an entire album would also display differnt artwork for each song.

Thanks for the nice work on AudioFaucet.
Craig Balthrop
Bastrop TX


----------



## sumnerp

I have an iTunes playlist devoted to streaming radio stations (ie, Shoutcast stations). When I try to play these through AudioFaucet, I get silence, even though the elapsed time indicator continues to increment.

Are streaming stations supported by AudioFaucet now, or will they be supported in the future?

I'm using AudioFaucet 1.5 on Mac OS 10.4.3 in iTunes mode, usually streaming the sound to my Tivo.


----------



## maggard

craigrb said:


> Question: How do I get AudioFaucet to display the cover art or any jpeg I want to associate with an album/CD?
> 
> ...
> 
> And it would be nice if I could associate an image (jpeg only?) with any given song so that playing an entire album would also display differnt artwork for each song.


MP3's are typically tagged with an assortment of information: Artist, Album, Song Title, etc. Also Artwork.

That set of tags, how they're encoded, and where they're added onto the music portion of the file has evolved over time. The more recent versions of these tagging semi-standards allow for embedding album artwork into the MP3 file. Typically the artwork is in JPEG format though there's no reason (other then common practice & wide support) other formats couldn't be used. There's also provision for more then a single piece of artwork in each MP3.

How you add these tags is up to you. Apple's free iTunes software for Mac & Windows allows graphics dragged to the song list be added to MP3's individually or in blocks. Thus if you've scanned in your album covers this would be a quick and painless way of incorporating them.

My preferred tool is the $30 Windows-only MP3 Tag&Rename, which will do searches on various Amazon.com sites for album information, automatically add the basic tags, including artwork, for selected albums, rename files by various strategies you define, synchronize the sometimes multiple versions of tags embedded in your MP3s, etc.

Once you've embedded the artwork into your individual MP3 files it can then be displayed by most player programs.

Sometimes there are slight version problems (the 'standards' really are a hash and have evolved rather quickly, it's not uncommon for player software to only know about last week's tagging 'standard', not the very latest 'n (presumably) greatest tagging 'standard'.

Finally, if you're using MS Windows there's a convention on it where album art is stored in an album folder as a JPEG named "album.jpg". While it would seem natural for player applications to take advantage of this few do, though using it yourself now will incur little overhead and might be useful in the future.


----------



## jamesp11

First, I love the product.

I had it working fine for an entire day with the sound being sent to my stereo directly from my server. I later tried streaming to my Tivo but it did not work. None of my music is stored as MP3's which may have been the problem. The songs were either purchaced or ripped by iTunes and store in the iTunes default formats. I then set it to go back to the direct connection. But ever since I did this I have had a problem with the music stopping right in the middle of a song, usually after just one or a few songs. The AF progress bar continues to move on the Tivo, but the iTunes progress bar stops moving. If I try to go to another song in iTunes, the iTunes bar never starts moving and no music comes out.

It almost seems like AF is trying to stream the music even though it is not being told to do so, it is turning off the sound for some reason, or it is semi-locking up iTunes playing ability.

Shutting down iTunes and AF and then restarting one or both does not fix the problem. The only way that I can get sound to start working again is to reboot the server. If I do that, and only start iTunes, it works fine. If I start AF again, music will stop playing again one or a few songs later.

Any thoughts?

I'm running XP plus all of the latest patches.
The latest version of iTunes
The latest version of AF


----------



## SafariKC

jamesp11 said:


> First, I love the product.
> 
> I had it working fine for an entire day with the sound being sent to my stereo directly from my server. I later tried streaming to my Tivo but it did not work. None of my music is stored as MP3's which may have been the problem. The songs were either purchaced or ripped by iTunes and store in the iTunes default formats. I then set it to go back to the direct connection. But ever since I did this I have had a problem with the music stopping right in the middle of a song, usually after just one or a few songs. The AF progress bar continues to move on the Tivo, but the iTunes progress bar stops moving. If I try to go to another song in iTunes, the iTunes bar never starts moving and no music comes out.
> 
> It almost seems like AF is trying to stream the music even though it is not being told to do so, it is turning off the sound for some reason, or it is semi-locking up iTunes playing ability.
> 
> Shutting down iTunes and AF and then restarting one or both does not fix the problem. The only way that I can get sound to start working again is to reboot the server. If I do that, and only start iTunes, it works fine. If I start AF again, music will stop playing again one or a few songs later.
> 
> Any thoughts?
> 
> I'm running XP plus all of the latest patches.
> The latest version of iTunes
> The latest version of AF


Hi James,

Thanks for the email to support. I think we've got you covered in there  But your the first time we've seen this.. If others are having this same kind of problem please email [email protected]

Thanks
KC


----------



## SafariKC

sumnerp said:


> I have an iTunes playlist devoted to streaming radio stations (ie, Shoutcast stations). When I try to play these through AudioFaucet, I get silence, even though the elapsed time indicator continues to increment.
> 
> Are streaming stations supported by AudioFaucet now, or will they be supported in the future?
> 
> I'm using AudioFaucet 1.5 on Mac OS 10.4.3 in iTunes mode, usually streaming the sound to my Tivo.


Unfortuantely we haven't tested URL tracks at all. I'll look into it in a future release.. but i don't think it's something that will hit 1.5 final. (we're about to release the first Release Canadate and features are frozen)

Please email [email protected] so that we can get this in our tracking system as a feature request and can let you know when it's there.

KC


----------



## SafariKC

craigrb said:


> Downloaded and installed AudioFaucet on Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004, no problems. Streams to TiVo Series 2 nicely on wired 100 connection. Very nice interface with easy navigation using the TiVo remote. Nice job. Only problem is that "shuffling" songs takes forever (I have an extensive MP3 collection).
> 
> Question: How do I get AudioFaucet to display the cover art or any jpeg I want to associate with an album/CD? With the right settings, AudioFaucet does display cover art for those albums it can find on the Internet, but much of my MP3 collection was converted from old vinyl. I've scanned the album covers and want my jpeg to show up if one is not found on the Internet, or sometimes I just like my original cover art image better anyway.
> 
> And it would be nice if I could associate an image (jpeg only?) with any given song so that playing an entire album would also display differnt artwork for each song.
> 
> Thanks for the nice work on AudioFaucet.
> Craig Balthrop
> Bastrop TX


The version of AF that we should be releaseing finally in a day or 2 will pull artwork from the MP3 file directly if it can. otherwise it will go out to the net to find it. We can consider putting in a check for album.jpg in a folder, but quite frankly we haven't had much requests for it.

Are your current artwork's in the MP3 files themselves? Or is it a seporate file? album.jpeg form?

Please email [email protected] so that we can get this in our tracking system as a feature request and can let you know when it's there.

KC


----------



## SafariKC

CKS said:


> Can you please post, or include as a PDF with the download, general instructions on how to set up the system? (Note: I'm a very basic user with limited IT skills) Ideally, I'd like to see a description, or even a diagram explaining all the required pieces and how to connect them.
> 
> I am super excited about AF, but can't get it to work. I can get it up and running on tivo to the point where I can operate it from the TV, but can't get the music to play. Is it a requirement to use AirTunes or an Airport Express for the audio, or can Tivo manage everything?
> 
> On the "Audio Output" screen of AF, I see my computer under "Stream to Tivo (iTunes) but when I click "select" on the TiVo remote, I get the TiVo error "bonk" sound, not the successful "chime".
> 
> Current Setup:
> PC Laptop with iTunes and music DB running locally, no firewall.
> Netgear wireless network
> Tivo with Microsoft USB wireless access point
> L/R/Vid patch cords running from TiVo into VCR, then from VCR to video-in on the receiver
> Coax cable from wall to TiVo, then in/out of VCR, then to TV
> 
> (I have airtunes and an airport express, but would rather not use it unless absolutely necessary since I'd rather keep it for wireless printing, but I could always buy another if I need to)
> 
> Thanks!


Odd this should work. There is a full Readme within every zip file we've released. I even think it's in your program group when it was installed. And its up on our webpage as well  That being said it could use some help here and there and we'll be focusing on that more now that the Release Canadate is about to be pushed out the door.

We have a much cleaner and more friendly setup wizard in the next version, and lives in the system tray in Windows as well.

I haven't found a bug where hitting select on the iTunes MP3 mode didn't work however. Can you email [email protected] with any more details you have about your setup?

Perhaps we can chat live if your on AIM and walk through it together. i'm SafariKC if you have it installed


----------



## SafariKC

Hi Gang,

New version was just posted, your main menu should let you know as well.

AudioFaucet Build 20051217

New in this version:
- Info Button jumps to Now Playing from any menu
- Pause Button will pause currently playing song from any menu
- Setup Wizard on First Run
- New Preferences Screen on PC
- Tray Icon for Windows
- IP Interface/Port selection available
- Speed & Stability Refinements
- Removed Debug/Logging Code

If you find problems with this build, please email [email protected] with as many details as you can (don't forget to tell us what mode AF is in and what settings you have set in the Settings menu for Audio Output) We should get back to you shortly.

Cheers,
KC


----------



## ccagle

Hello,

AudioFaucet is an awesome application! I got it running tonight in just a few minutes. Quick question: Does it support viewing video podcast from itunes? I am using AudioFaucet 1.5 pre-release build 20051218 and itunes 6.0.1 on mac os x tiger 10.4.3.

I receive an error when trying to view video podcast. Sorry I don't remember the exact error message. 

Thanks
Clint


----------



## Fluffybear

Just downloaded a copy of AudioFaucet and looks like a nice program BUT..

I do not see an ability to send audio to the Tivo directly. It offers me the host computer and Airport Express but what if I want to listen to audio in a room where the airport is not located. 

Am I missing something?


----------



## SafariKC

Fluffybear said:


> Just downloaded a copy of AudioFaucet and looks like a nice program BUT..
> 
> I do not see an ability to send audio to the Tivo directly. It offers me the host computer and Airport Express but what if I want to listen to audio in a room where the airport is not located.
> 
> Am I missing something?


There should be at the top of the Audio Output list a "Stream to Tivo (iTunes)" option  This will play any MP3 format audio you have in your library. AAC or Protected AAC files are not supported (as they aren't played nativly by the TiVo -- We are working on a solution for Unprotected AAC. Protected AAC will require the use of an Apple AirTunes unit.

AudioFaucet will remember which output is being used and switch it to that output per TiVo as well, so if you use more than one tivo each with a different output device in a home, there's no need to set it up every time.

If that's not working, please do email [email protected] or hit me up on AOL Instant Messenger (SafariKC) I would like to trouble shoot this one further if the option isn't listed.

KC


----------



## SafariKC

ccagle said:


> Hello,
> 
> AudioFaucet is an awesome application! I got it running tonight in just a few minutes. Quick question: Does it support viewing video podcast from itunes? I am using AudioFaucet 1.5 pre-release build 20051218 and itunes 6.0.1 on mac os x tiger 10.4.3.
> 
> I receive an error when trying to view video podcast. Sorry I don't remember the exact error message.
> 
> Thanks
> Clint


Hi Clint,

There is currently no way to play video content to the TiVo over their SDK interface. So at the moment there is no way to play Video over AudioFaucet.

I would be interested to see how you were able to select Video to play, we should have it blocked in the browser so that none show up.


----------



## Fluffybear

SafariKC said:


> There should be at the top of the Audio Output list a "Stream to Tivo (iTunes)" option  This will play any MP3 format audio you have in your library. AAC or Protected AAC files are not supported (as they aren't played nativly by the TiVo -- We are working on a solution for Unprotected AAC. Protected AAC will require the use of an Apple AirTunes unit.
> 
> AudioFaucet will remember which output is being used and switch it to that output per TiVo as well, so if you use more than one tivo each with a different output device in a home, there's no need to set it up every time.
> 
> If that's not working, please do email [email protected] or hit me up on AOL Instant Messenger (SafariKC) I would like to trouble shoot this one further if the option isn't listed.
> 
> KC


Thanks for the help. That option was not available the first time out but I do see it now.

AudioFaucet is a very nice product and you must have figured something out because I do believe it is playing protected ACC files. I purchased some music from Itunes Music Store last week and they will not play using the native Tivo music program but they do play on AudioFaucet.


----------



## Nu2Tivo

Great app... I just wish I hadn't burned all my CD's into iTunes. AF does not show any songs in the AAC format. I can't wait for the AAC support.


----------



## Fluffybear

Nu2Tivo said:


> Great app... I just wish I hadn't burned all my CD's into iTunes. AF does not show any songs in the AAC format. I can't wait for the AAC support.


Why not convert your itunes library to MPEG3. Half my library was ACC files and I converted them with ITunes to MPEG3 and that solved everything.


----------



## Nu2Tivo

Thanks for the advice. I will check into that. I am not really sure how to convert the whole library of several thousand songs to MPEG3. Is there a way to convert a group of songs over, or do you have to do each individually? Thanks.


----------



## SafariKC

Fluffybear said:


> Thanks for the help. That option was not available the first time out but I do see it now.
> 
> AudioFaucet is a very nice product and you must have figured something out because I do believe it is playing protected ACC files. I purchased some music from Itunes Music Store last week and they will not play using the native Tivo music program but they do play on AudioFaucet.


No problem,

We don't play anything but MP3 format music in the current version while in stream to TiVo Mode. If it is in an AirTunes or Computer Speaker mode it will tell iTunes to play the Protected AAC or normal AAC music.

KC


----------



## SafariKC

Nu2Tivo said:


> Great app... I just wish I hadn't burned all my CD's into iTunes. AF does not show any songs in the AAC format. I can't wait for the AAC support.


We are looking forward to Stream to TiVo AAC support as well. We've been working on it, but so far it's unreliable so it's not made it into any external builds. Most of our music is in AAC as well.

KC


----------



## SafariKC

Nu2Tivo said:


> Thanks for the advice. I will check into that. I am not really sure how to convert the whole library of several thousand songs to MPEG3. Is there a way to convert a group of songs over, or do you have to do each individually? Thanks.


If you want to convert some music over just set the iTunes default ripping type to MP3 in the Options/Preferences Dialog... then search for AAC files in your library ....select them all and use the Advanced - Convert Selection to MP3.


----------



## SafariKC

Hi Gang,

New version was just posted, your main menu should let you know as well.

AudioFaucet 1.5 Pre-Release Build 20060101

New in this version:
- Automaticly Locates non-default iTunes Libraries
- Speed & Stability Refinements
- Internal Database Improvements
- Fixed New Version always showing on Main Menu 
- Fixed MP3 Mode Durration showing 00:00 
- Fixed MP3 File Mode on Remote Drive 
- Many other fixes 

If you find problems with this build, please email [email protected] with as many details as you can (don't forget to tell us what mode AF is in and what settings you have set in the Settings menu for Audio Output) We should get back to you shortly.

Due to the fact that there was a bug in the Version check code in the prior version, we decided to expire the older versions of AudioFaucet and force an upgrade to 20060101. Sorry for the inconvience.

Cheers,
KC


----------



## gsgmac

I downloaded AudioFaucet 1.5.0.20060101 and installed it in my applications folder. When run the program I get a splash screen and then nothing. When I click on AudioFaucet in the top menu bar (next to the blue apple icon) the only thing that responds in the "About Audiofaucet" selection and then it will not allow the window to close and have to quit the application to get rid of it. 

So far, I am not too impressed. I have spent a couple of hours searching forums and your website for answers. The included PDF is a little thin and lacking step by step instructions, FAQs, or troubleshooting help. I am running a Mac with OSX 10.4.3 and have had zero luck getting anything to work. Any help is welcome.

Thanks in Advance!


----------



## beaver999

Same problem here. On OS X.


----------



## SafariKC

Sorry to hear you're having problems. A few questions:

Have you installed AudioFaucet previously? If so were you using iTunes mode?

Is your music in a non-standard location (i.e. not in ~/Music/iTunes)?


Things to try:

There is a file in your home directory, inside Library / Preferences called com.thepond.TiVoPod.plist. 

Try quitting AudioFaucet, removing that file, and re-running AudioFaucet -- this will trigger the Wizard, which will (hopefully) regenerate good preference data. 


Please let us know how this goes, or if you need any help with this.

John

AIM: statbit


----------



## SafariKC

beaver999 said:


> Same problem here. On OS X.


See above please.

People can also try removing both our pref file and also the iApps preference file...
(feel free to make a backup of your iApps pref file somewhere.. it bascily holds information on where your iTunes and iPhoto library's live.)

relaunch iTunes and exit iTunes and it should re-write the iApp file.

then re-launch AF and the wizard should pop up.

We've been unable to re-create the issue on our machines here through a simple upgrade or clean install, we definately appoligize for this happening to those of you that are seeing it.

Cheers,
KC


----------



## beaver999

Tried all of the above with no success. Anything else I can try?


----------



## SafariKC

beaver999 said:


> Tried all of the above with no success. Anything else I can try?


We are working changing a segment of our code that we think might be causeing this for some users. There are 2 issues at play here.

1) We can't seem to properly parse the com.apple.iApps.plist file on some machines using the method in 0101.. we're switching to a new method that we hope will have better success on a wider range of machines.

2) We don't handle the issue of not being able to parse the file in a way that lets the app keep on rolling  ... We are fixing this as well.

Sorry again for breaking a few OSX users. We hope to have a fix for this in a few hours.

KC


----------



## gsgmac

I tried the same as Beaver999 and had the same result. Look forward to the new release of code.

Thanks again for all the help.


----------



## SafariKC

Hi Gang,

A new build for Mac OS X users is available that should fix the startup lockup issue.

If you did not have the startup lockup issue, the new build has no further fixes we did not change the internal build number.

Please feel free to re-download 20060101a from the webpage.

AudioFaucet 1.5 Pre-Release 20060101a

Cheers,
KC


----------



## gsgmac

It worked for me! Thank you for the quick turn around. Everything seems to be working as specified.

Thanks Again!


----------



## SafariKC

gsgmac said:


> It worked for me! Thank you for the quick turn around. Everything seems to be working as specified.
> 
> Thanks Again!


Good to hear 

Feel free to send any feedback you have on it to [email protected]

We are getting very close to a release. So if anyone at all is having issues please do let us know.

Cheers,
KC


----------



## davige

The last 2 builds of AF did not work with my setup. Problems:

1. AF did not automatically launch iTunes.
2. Could not access settings from system tray icon.
3. Could not exit AF from system tray icon. Had to Restart computer to quit.
4. Continually launched Norton Worm Protection (NAV 2005). Would not accept 'permit' command but shows that it is listed as an exception in Norton settings. (Latest version only)
5. Intermittent connection errors in TiVo.

Now I cannot re-install build 10212005. Get 'this version has expired' message. Very disappointed in last 2 versions. Loved AF when it worked.

Win XP Pro SP2
Dell Latitude D600
1.6 GHz PenM
1 GB RAM
iTunes v6.0.1.3
iTunes library on external USB drive


----------



## SafariKC

davige said:


> The last 2 builds of AF did not work with my setup. Problems:
> 
> 1. AF did not automatically launch iTunes.
> 2. Could not access settings from system tray icon.
> 3. Could not exit AF from system tray icon. Had to Restart computer to quit.
> 4. Continually launched Norton Worm Protection (NAV 2005). Would not accept 'permit' command but shows that it is listed as an exception in Norton settings. (Latest version only)
> 5. Intermittent connection errors in TiVo.
> 
> Now I cannot re-install build 10212005. Get 'this version has expired' message. Very disappointed in last 2 versions. Loved AF when it worked.
> 
> Win XP Pro SP2
> Dell Latitude D600
> 1.6 GHz PenM
> 1 GB RAM
> iTunes v6.0.1.3
> iTunes library on external USB drive


Sorry you are having some issues, We would love to try and get to the root of the problem. We did indeed expire the older versions of AF and do not intend on turning them back on. We would rather fix the issues that people are having in the newer code 

Will you please email [email protected] with the details above so that we have your contact information and can open a trouble ticket and do some interactive troubleshooting with you? It would be greatly appreciated. We would love to get you to love AudioFaucet again.

KC


----------



## SafariKC

Hi Gang,

A settings cleaner was just posted on our website for both Windows and OSX users. This will allow people to remove all previous failed or successfull settings and run AudioFaucet clean.

AudioFaucet Settings Cleaner

Cleaning settings can often help with AudioFaucet startup and iTunes XML issues that many people have. We are working on building this functionality directly into AudioFaucet in a future release.

If you find problems with this, please email [email protected] with as many details as you can. We should get back to you shortly.

Cheers,
KC


----------



## SafariKC

Hi Gang,

We are tryign to track down the source of the issue that is causeing some people who launch AudioFaucet to not show the wizard, let you into the settings menu or show up on tivo. If you are having that issue, please take a moment and email [email protected] with as much detail about you setup and the location of your music files as possile.

Thanks
KC


----------



## robaustin

SafariKC said:


> If you want to convert some music over just set the iTunes default ripping type to MP3 in the Options/Preferences Dialog... then search for AAC files in your library ....select them all and use the Advanced - Convert Selection to MP3.


BTW - this will not work with songs purchased from the iTunes store. You will need to burn them to a CD and reimport them as MP3s to get protected AAC files in MP3 format.

This is not that big a deal. Create a playlist, burn the CD. While the burned CS is still in the drive, immediately reimport. IT will retain all song information except the artwork. Since you now have two copies of the song in your library go to your library, click the edit menu and select show all duplicate songs. Copy the art from the old AAC to the new MP3 and delete the AAC files (I like to keep the "Date added" field on so I can be sure which is which). Voila - no more protection and MP3s in the clear that can be played by any device. You will waste a CD to burning, but I look at it this way - you can get blank CDs for what - 15 cents each or less. Figure about 15 songs on average fit on a CD. You add a whole penny a song to the cost by burning and reimporting.

--*Rob


----------



## SafariKC

Hi Gang,

We are aware of a change in iTunes 6.0.2 that has stopped the automagic selection of Airtunes from working when an iPod is connected. We're working on a fix.  We'll get it out asap. 

KC


----------



## SafariKC

Hi Gang,

New version was just posted, your main menu and startup splash screens should let you know as well.

AudioFaucet 1.5 Pre-Release Build 20060214

New in this version:

- Better ID3 Tag Reading Support
- Faster Play from Music Browser
- Better Support for Amazon Artwork Lookup
- Supports JPEG files in same directory for File MP3 Mode
- Less CPU intensive on OSX
- Alphabet Skip Next/Previous Letter with Trick/Replay buttons in Browser
- Added slight pause between moves on Wandering Banner Mode
- Fix for Bugs created in iTunes 6.0.2 Airport Audio Switching 
- Increment Playcounts and PlayDates in iTunes Stream to TiVo Mode

IMPORTANT NOTE: We are very near our commercial release of AudioFaucet. We would like to ask you to please let us know if you find any problems with this build.

When submitting a bug, please email [email protected] with as many details as you can (don't forget to tell us what mode AF is in and what settings you have set in the Settings menu for Audio Output) We should get back to you shortly.

Cheers,
KC


----------



## turnipsun

I love usin' AudiFaucet BUT I hate no AAC to tivo support.

I know tivo will not plau AAC files, but the only files I have on my mac are AAC, and so I can not use AudiFaucet to play the files threw my tivo.

So I end up using tivo desktop with LAME installed so that my computer can encode the AAC files on the fly and it will play threw my tivo.

I was wondering if there is any way to install LAME to be used by AudioFaucet.
Or if there is any other way/program to make AudioFaucet transfere AAC to tivo.

If this was a option for the program, it would seriously be the best program EVER!!!

Please let me know your thoughts, or if anyone else has the same suggestion, or if they have solutions.

GREAT WORK on the this great program and I am sure it will continue to get better..

Chris


----------



## aforkosh

My solutions (actually the pieces were in place first) is to connect my Tivo to have an Airport Express associated with my Home Theatre and Tivo. The Tivo uses an Ethernet connection to the Airport Express which handles the network connection (with WPA2 security) to the server across the house (the Express also serves a repeater to give allow me to use a portable computer in the room). The audio output of the Express connects to the Tape ports of my receiver. When I wish to play music from the server, I start Audio Faucet and have the receiver play audio from the Tape inputs while showing video from Tivo. I can then view what's going on with Audio Faucet and control the whole shebang through Audio Faucet with my Tivo remote. However, I also have no problem with AAC output.


----------



## turnipsun

That was my long term plan, but as of right now I only have my tivo, and TV.

In the future I plan to buy a nice harmon/kardon reciver, but for right now I am enjoying the simpliticty of just the TV and TIVO, and as of right now I dont want to worry about getting a airport express, and a reciver.

I want to know if there is any way to intergrate LAME into Audiofaucet, (like the tivo desktop uses lame).

I would really areciate and ideas on the subject..

thanks
Chris


----------



## bkeny01

Hi there,
Just thought id drop a note in to say something a bit different. I installed it with no problems, dont have itunes (dont like it very much at all). And so far its worked really well and im really really 1. impressed by it and 2. enjoying it! I'm starting to use my tivo for music instead of my modded xbox running XBMC. I love having the album art as big as the screen!
So i just stopped by to say thanks and keep up the great work!


----------



## davezatz

KC, fix your personal pond email man... it's bouncing and you gots no PM active here.


----------



## SafariKC

AudioFaucet was created initially to be the ultimate iTunes Remote Control. Mostly becuase we have alot of AAC's ourselves and didn't want to worry about which files would play and which would not.

That being said, we have alot of Generic AAC's and not every one of our TiVo'd rooms have Airports... soo.... We do indeed value the need for AAC transcoding.

It probably woudn't surprise anyone to know that we do have code in our builds that support AAC transcoding however externally we disable the bits to let users try it as we feel that it's more important to fix the other bugs that are in the general release before adding more complexity external to our own testing.

In the most recent builds for OSX, we made alot of tweaks to offload CPU usage in the app, to make room for a quality experence in AAC transcoding... We still have work to do in Windows to lower CPU usage to make room for a seamless transcode there as well.

Will we get this done for the first release? We're not sure. But we are working on it.. and do want to release the feature at some point, hopefully sooner rather than later. But for now... we do suggest people use AirTunes units (plus it gives you support for ANY audio format that iTunes can use)

KC



turnipsun said:


> I love usin' AudiFaucet BUT I hate no AAC to tivo support.
> 
> I know tivo will not plau AAC files, but the only files I have on my mac are AAC, and so I can not use AudiFaucet to play the files threw my tivo.
> 
> So I end up using tivo desktop with LAME installed so that my computer can encode the AAC files on the fly and it will play threw my tivo.
> 
> I was wondering if there is any way to install LAME to be used by AudioFaucet.
> Or if there is any other way/program to make AudioFaucet transfere AAC to tivo.
> 
> If this was a option for the program, it would seriously be the best program EVER!!!
> 
> Please let me know your thoughts, or if anyone else has the same suggestion, or if they have solutions.
> 
> GREAT WORK on the this great program and I am sure it will continue to get better..
> 
> Chris


----------



## SafariKC

bkeny01 said:


> Hi there,
> Just thought id drop a note in to say something a bit different. I installed it with no problems, dont have itunes (dont like it very much at all). And so far its worked really well and im really really 1. impressed by it and 2. enjoying it! I'm starting to use my tivo for music instead of my modded xbox running XBMC. I love having the album art as big as the screen!
> So i just stopped by to say thanks and keep up the great work!


Glad you like it.


----------



## SafariKC

davezatz said:


> KC, fix your personal pond email man... it's bouncing and you gots no PM active here.


Yeah, I had to turn off PM here when we enabled the ticket system to help us support AF better. It's inconvienient at times, but in the end it keeps life happier for everyone all around...

Check your personal email... the pond was indeed down for a few hours on valentines day and i did miss a few along the way.

Thanks
KC


----------



## punkysdilemma

Incrementing play counts and times is AWESOME! Now I can play my collection at random without hearing things over again for at least 8 weeks, using my pre-existing time based playlists. Before I was playing stuff from the "recently unplayed" playlist and then adding & "playing" each song quickly in Party Shuffle just to update its playcount & date. That was a workable solution, but a pain; having AF do it for me is very cool! 

Thanks much!


----------



## ScaryMike

Is it possilbe to run Audiofaucet as a service (like galleon)?


----------



## HDTiVo

With AudioFaucet, can I multicast a single MP3 stream (or playlist) to multiple devices throughout the house?

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=287721


----------



## SafariKC

punkysdilemma said:


> Incrementing play counts and times is AWESOME! Now I can play my collection at random without hearing things over again for at least 8 weeks, using my pre-existing time based playlists. Before I was playing stuff from the "recently unplayed" playlist and then adding & "playing" each song quickly in Party Shuffle just to update its playcount & date. That was a workable solution, but a pain; having AF do it for me is very cool!
> 
> Thanks much!


Howdy...

You are welcome  We've been wanting to do it for a long time, and glad we were able to get it in there in this build.

Cheers,
KC


----------



## SafariKC

ScaryMike said:


> Is it possilbe to run Audiofaucet as a service (like galleon)?


Not yet. One of the big things stopping us from doing this is that in order to extract the info we need from iTunes and cant get from the XML or Audio Files Directly we need to make an direct calls into iTunes itself. If it's as a service, it's very possible we won't have access to the proper user of iTunes, or the Proper iTunes Library.

Cheers, 
KC


----------



## SafariKC

HDTiVo said:


> With AudioFaucet, can I multicast a single MP3 stream (or playlist) to multiple devices throughout the house?
> 
> http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=287721


We've looked into it, but haven't found a way to do it consistantly and easily understandable by the end user.

It is something that we agree would be cool. Right now we've stuck to one Device.

KC


----------



## SafariKC

Hi Gang,

New version was just posted, your main menu and startup splash screens should let you know as well.

AudioFaucet 1.5 Pre-Release Build 20060219

New in this version:

- Fixed Settings Screen not saving settings
- Fixed Artwork in File MP3 Mode
- Fixed AirTunes Selection Logic
- Speed up Shuffle Play in Windows iTunes Mode

IMPORTANT NOTE: We are very near our commercial release of AudioFaucet. We would like to ask you to please let us know if you find any problems with this build.

When submitting a bug, please email [email protected] with as many details as you can (don't forget to tell us what mode AF is in and what settings you have set in the Settings menu for Audio Output) We should get back to you shortly.

Cheers,
KC


----------



## flip123

SafariKC said:


> New version was just posted, your main menu and startup splash screens should let you know as well.
> 
> AudioFaucet 1.5 Pre-Release Build 20060219


I will get an real bug-report together to submit to the appropriate place, but I just wanted to mention two problems I have noticed.

1) With this release on XP-Pro I am unable to switch users as long as AudioFaucet is running. I never noticed this on previous releases because I was running on a computer where we did not have multiple users.

2) With the previous release I noticed memory leaks over time. I have not been able to check with this version to see if we had the same problem.

The ultimate problem is that this app will not be useful if it cannot stay open 100% of the time without using minimal resources.

I will get a full email report to [email protected] this weekend.

Phil


----------



## SafariKC

flip123 said:


> I will get an real bug-report together to submit to the appropriate place, but I just wanted to mention two problems I have noticed.
> 
> 1) With this release on XP-Pro I am unable to switch users as long as AudioFaucet is running. I never noticed this on previous releases because I was running on a computer where we did not have multiple users.


Not sure why that's happening, but honestly i've never tried to do a fast user switch while running AF. Technically, AF won't work any more if you aren't logged in as the same user who ran it (we don't run as a system service due to our need to interact directly with iTunes on the system in iTunes mode)



> 2) With the previous release I noticed memory leaks over time. I have not been able to check with this version to see if we had the same problem.


We would definately need more information about how you use AF in order to track this down. We shouldn't have any memory leaks from what we're aware of.



> The ultimate problem is that this app will not be useful if it cannot stay open 100% of the time without using minimal resources.


Once we know more about your configuration (hopefully included in your support email) can try to figure out what's going on with AF on your config.



> I will get a full email report to [email protected] this weekend.
> 
> Phil


Look forward to our interactions.  You may also hit me up on AIM. I'm SafariKC

Cheers
KC


----------



## wfusz

I'm sure this has been beaten to death, but to be sure I understand, is there a way to play protected AACs through the tivo with audiofaucet if I have an apple airport? Thanks and great job with AF!


----------



## HOSSinNH

I just downloaded this program for the first time today. It looks like what I was looking for in terms of a media from my computer to the Tivo.

I read in earlier posts there was a shuffle error and it was fixed. But, I've got the latest verson and get an error when I try the shuffle feature. Any ideas?


----------



## jimmymac

I download this last night and think the it's great. I was fully expecting it not to work on my new iMac because nothing else does, but so far it's working great.


----------



## kptrebr0

I downloaded and installed this program onto my Windows XP Pro machine.... *worked perfectly* with my Series 2 Tivo......and I love the long, full-length mirror option for display the album artwork - very nice display.

Nice Work!


----------



## SafariKC

wfusz said:


> I'm sure this has been beaten to death, but to be sure I understand, is there a way to play protected AACs through the tivo with audiofaucet if I have an apple airport? Thanks and great job with AF!


If you have an airport.. just set your AF to use the AF as an output source. In that mode we will remote control iTunes and let iTunes create the stream. We will also automacitcly select the airport output in the iTunes output menu. In that mode, we expose all of your music in the browser and you will be able to stream your Protected AAC's (and nonprotected AAC's or whatever else you have in iTunes) to the audio out on the Airport and use the AF interface to control it all.

KC


----------



## SafariKC

HOSSinNH said:


> I just downloaded this program for the first time today. It looks like what I was looking for in terms of a media from my computer to the Tivo.
> 
> I read in earlier posts there was a shuffle error and it was fixed. But, I've got the latest verson and get an error when I try the shuffle feature. Any ideas?


We've found a few issues in the latest version we released due to use using our internal database more. In many very large librarys it will run out of memory (the Java VM only allocates 128 megs to it for use in each active Java program.) We are working on optimizing the database and also utilizing disk space instead of RAM when we can. This should re-fix this for people with large libraries.

Please feel free to submit a ticket to [email protected] and we'll be sure to let you know when it's fix, and also look to see if you are having another problem.

KC


----------



## SafariKC

jimmymac said:


> I download this last night and think the it's great. I was fully expecting it not to work on my new iMac because nothing else does, but so far it's working great.


Glad you are enjoying it. We just got our first Intel machine, but we've had some good feedback that it works just fine on them as well. Keep us posted on how it goes.

KC


----------



## SafariKC

kptrebr0 said:


> I downloaded and installed this program onto my Windows XP Pro machine.... *worked perfectly* with my Series 2 Tivo......and I love the long, full-length mirror option for display the album artwork - very nice display.
> 
> Nice Work!


Thank YOU. It's always fun to get some positive feedback as well as the normal support emails.  Glad you are enjoying AF.

KC


----------



## AJ500

Any chance that AudioFaucet will support iTunes files that are located on UNC locations in addition to mapped drives?


----------



## saramj

While using "AF" will it also allow me to play my Podcasts that I have set up under iTunes? Does it support the most recent iTunes updates? I just updated iTunes and now have run into a problem with Galleon because from what I have read Itunes has updates the way the music is saved. I have over 300 songs. I do not want to have to go back and save everything over again as MP3.


----------



## SafariKC

AJ500 said:


> Any chance that AudioFaucet will support iTunes files that are located on UNC locations in addition to mapped drives?


It's not an easy task in Java to follow Samba shares.. So we moved support for non mapped drives in windows to some time after the initial retail release in order to get this thing finally out the door. We will continue to work on it, but there is no promises.

KC


----------



## SafariKC

saramj said:


> While using "AF" will it also allow me to play my Podcasts that I have set up under iTunes? Does it support the most recent iTunes updates? I just updated iTunes and now have run into a problem with Galleon because from what I have read Itunes has updates the way the music is saved. I have over 300 songs. I do not want to have to go back and save everything over again as MP3.


AF will work with your podcasts and group them appropriately in the browser.

We do work with the latest iTunes updates.

We do not yet transcode audio from AAC to MP3 in our public releases. We hope to have a public version of transcoding out at somepoint. But for now if you have no AirTunes unit or audio run through your PC (ie.. you want to listen to the audio through your TiVo) we will filter your library down to MP3's.

If you have an AirTunes unit, we can control the streams to that from iTunes directly, and play anything that is in iTunes over it 

KC


----------



## rrr22777

Which version of iTunes is compatible with Audiofaucet? I have tried several older versions but when I launch Audiofaucet I get "version of iTunes installed is not compatible with Audiofaucet"


----------



## SafariKC

rrr22777 said:


> Which version of iTunes is compatible with Audiofaucet? I have tried several older versions but when I launch Audiofaucet I get "version of iTunes installed is not compatible with Audiofaucet"


Why would you be trying older version? 

We run with iTunes 6. We will be keeping our iTunes compatibility in sync with the latest release of iTunes. We rely on the iTunes XML file (which changes slightly with each version of iTunes released) to catalog your music appropriately.

KC


----------



## rrr22777

SafariKC said:


> Why would you be trying older version?
> 
> We run with iTunes 6. We will be keeping our iTunes compatibility in sync with the latest release of iTunes. We rely on the iTunes XML file (which changes slightly with each version of iTunes released) to catalog your music appropriately.
> 
> KC


I have the latest version of iTunes but after installing AudioFaucet I get the message "version of iTunes installed is not compatible with Audiofaucet"

I have version 6.0.4.2 of iTunes. I am attaching the error message.


----------



## SafariKC

rrr22777 said:


> I have the latest version of iTunes but after installing AudioFaucet I get the message "version of iTunes installed is not compatible with Audiofaucet"
> 
> I have version 6.0.4.2 of iTunes. I am attaching the error message.


You should email that and all the particulars about your config to [email protected]. As you can imagine, we like to be able to have a dialog with our users in order to better support them, a forum unfortunately isn't the best place to do that 

You can also feel free to hit me up in AIM: SafariKC

I'm sure we can get this working for ya.

Thanks, 
KC


----------



## SafariKC

Hi Gang,

New version was just posted, your main menu and startup splash screens should let you know as well.

AudioFaucet 1.5 Pre-Release Build 20060326

New in this version:

- Improved Memory Management
- Speed up to Shuffle Play in all modes

There are no known bugs in this version of AF.

IMPORTANT NOTE: We are very near our commercial release of AudioFaucet. We would like to ask you to please let us know if you find any problems with this build.

When submitting a bug, please email [email protected] with as many details as you can (don't forget to tell us what mode AF is in and what settings you have set in the Settings menu for Audio Output) We should get back to you shortly.

Cheers,
KC


----------



## rjmitche

:up: Nice application. I'm enjoying it. 

With my setup (iTunes - playing music through the TiVo) there seems to be a slight "hiccup" when manually skipping to the next track. I don't seem to notice it when one track ends normally and the next begins. 

Also, is there a way to always have AudioFaucet start playing in shuffle mode? 9 times out of 10 I want to shuffle play my playlists and I always need to wait until it loads and starts playing before I can switch to "shuffle mode". 

Thanks.


----------



## rrr22777

Is there a way to play songs and playlists directly from the ipod if it is connected to the computer? I dont have some of the ipod music and playlists on my computer and was hoping I could just connect the ipod to the PC and that would be it.


----------



## millertivo

What is the latest on AudioFaucet? I don't know if Galleon supports this, but this was the only app on which I was able to rate my iTunes and have it almost immediately synced with my iTunes library along with updated playcounts and last played. Now that iTunes has added skipcounts and last skipped are there any plans to support that feature?


----------



## DAPitzrick

Just downloaded and installed AudioFaucet. Am running on an Intel Mac (10.4.8) on a wireless network. On the TiVo 2, I can see the music files with AudioFaucet 1.5. When an MP3 file is selected, it will start to play. But, the TiVo doesn't output any audio. iTune 7.0.2 will start running on my computer playing the chosen track with sound. 

Have used the Reset function. No change. Everything else seems to be working. I can change backgrounds, etc. 

Have been using Macs forever, but am not overly knowledgeable of what goes on in the background with the OS, etc. Any suggestions on things to try?

Thanks!


----------



## DAPitzrick

Doh! Just got it figured out. Everything's running great. Thanks!


----------



## SafariKC

By Default (for some unknown reason even to us) we default to iTunes control mode. I think we will change that for the next release  We get alot of questions about it. 

Enjoy AF. And keep your eyes out for the next version should be out in a few weeks. 

KC


----------



## pkscout

bump just to see what's up with this and find out about the status of AAC transcoding. I would absolutely pay for this if it did AAC transcoding. I love the look and feel of the app and the fact that it pulls album art (which is really the only thing I don't like about the built in TiVo Desktop for Mac).

Thanks.


----------



## marlee

I cannot get sound from AudioFaucet on my Tivo (I have changed the settings to have the audio go through Tivo). Everything else looks OK. I can get sound when it's playing through my PC?

Ideas?????

Thanks.


----------



## pkscout

marlee said:


> I cannot get sound from AudioFaucet on my Tivo (I have changed the settings to have the audio go through Tivo). Everything else looks OK. I can get sound when it's playing through my PC?


There's a setting somewhere that tells AudioFaucet whether to play sound out of the PC (the default behavior I believe) or stream it to the TiVo. If you do the latter remember that only MP3 files are supported.


----------



## Agent86

Hey SafariKC,

Couple quick AudioFaucet questions: 

1) Can AudioFaucet tune an Internet stream and redirect it to the TiVo, or point the TiVo at it?

2) Any chance AudioFaucet can be made to run under Linux? I'm not looking for an installer, or anything pretty, just some way to get it up and running.

Since its Java, I'm hopeful that we can cajole it into working somehow.


----------



## marlee

> If you do the latter remember that only MP3 files are supported.


So you are saying that it won't play my itunes library even though it shows up?


----------



## pkscout

marlee said:


> So you are saying that it won't play my itunes library even though it shows up?


When I tried AudioFacuet, it wouldn't even show the AAC files it I had it set to stream to the TiVo. It did once, but trying to play them resulted in no sound. After that they never showed up again. The AAC files only show up if you have the audio set to play through the computer.

I had some other issues with AF, and since it feels like to me it's never going to make it out of beta, I gave up and went back to the TiVo Desktop software with LAME installed. It works, but I don't get any album art. I can live with that.


----------



## pufftissue

Does audiofaucet work with series 3 dvrs?


----------



## pkscout

pufftissue said:


> Does audiofaucet work with series 3 dvrs?


It seemed to on mine. I couldn't get the shuffle stuff to work, and since it doesn't support AAC streaming it isn't much good to me. But it did seem to launch and run.


----------



## urbanbohemian

I have a LOT of music, so I'm well used to AF taking a while to get my lists, but recently I put it on a Vista machine. The system tray icon has a weird issue where all the options are skewed to the right and down so they can't be read (thankfully I remember what each line it) and when the songs play on my TiVo, they all report as null/null for song/album. They play in order properly, and album art is fine, but don't report rating and song length properly.

The system tray icon is just a Vista issue, I'm sure, but the on screen stuff, is that also Vista or an iTunes issue or am I experiencing a fluke?  

Thanks in advance for assistance.


----------



## swace123

Has anyone gotten AudioFaucet to work on a new Vista computer? I was able to get it installed but I think something is blocking it in Vista from Tivo being able to see it. I installed the same AudioFaucet version on my XP laptop and Tivo saw it right away. So it must be some security setting in Vista. Again, I get AudioFaucet to run ok on the computer, and I am able to get into the settings to adjust it to the MP3 folder. But Tivo just does not see it. I did not adjust the IP or Port settings in AudioFaucet. I didn't have to for my XP laptop, but maybe I do for this Vista desktop? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!


----------



## bitchysix

I have a large library (125gigs) on a macG5, wireless, no airport, playing thru my tivo s2. There's a hiccup/pause/skip at the top of each track. How can I get rid of this? And when is the commercial release coming, I love the look of this app?


----------



## bitchysix

no one?


----------



## ScaryMike

*****ysix said:


> I have a large library (125gigs) on a macG5, wireless, no airport, playing thru my tivo s2. There's a hiccup/pause/skip at the top of each track. How can I get rid of this? And when is the commercial release coming, I love the look of this app?


As far as I know (and I could be mistaken), development of this application has been dead in the water for over a year.

Its a shame too, because its easily my favorite HME application. But currently, I have a strange bug. When I play a song or a playlist, it plays something else entirely. I select playlist 1, and it seems to play songs from some other playlist, possibly even songs not on any playlist.


----------



## Dan203

According tho this thread...

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=4983341&&#post4983341

It's still being actively developed. SO you could see a new version eventually.

Dan


----------



## pufftissue

I have vista ultimate and audiofaucet working, so I can confirm that it is possible.
I have the Series 3.
Butt expensive, sloppy menu resolution, annoying vertical line on some channels...but otherwise so much more preferable to my homebrew solution.


----------



## FreeBSD_user

I loaded AudioFaucet on a Windows 2000 box and everything was working. But now when I go to AudioFaucet on my TiVo, it shows the screens, but when I select Album or Artist, I get a screen with nothing showing. Has anyone had this problem?

My signature hasn't been updated, I do have a Series 2 box


----------



## ScaryMike

FreeBSD_user said:


> I loaded AudioFaucet on a Windows 2000 box and everything was working. But now when I go to AudioFaucet on my TiVo, it shows the screens, but when I select Album or Artist, I get a screen with nothing showing. Has anyone had this problem?
> 
> My signature hasn't been updated, I do have a Series 2 box


Make sure Itunes is launching on your Win2k box, also, try the settings cleaner available from the audio faucet homepage.

-Mike


----------



## Francesco

Just a note to say that 1.5PR is awesome -- despite the dearth of instructions! -- and I can't wait for the next major release (only about a quarter of my 100 GB collection is .mp3). AAC and a cleaner, native OS code... I will gladly pay for something that I find so useful!

Thanks for a great HME app, Kyle & John!


----------



## keysman

I just found this app over the weekend while looking for a solution to get AAC files to play on my TiVo. I now know that I can do this with LAME installed in the proper spot on my Mac but I wanted to give Audio Faucet a try instead.

I have an old G4 tower that wasn't doing anything except collecting dust. I setup Audio Faucet on it and copied my music library over that machine from my primary computer (a Macbook Pro). Things seemed a little quirky at first but Audio Faucet is a pretty nice app. The biggest issue that I have right now is that my G4 is chugging pretty hard with iTunes and Audio Faucet running. It's a little slow on the TiVo side to change tracks but it works. The G4 I'm running is only 400 Mhz, that's below even the minimum specs for Audio Faucet so it's no fault of the application.

I like the fact that Audio Faucet gives me AAC playback support and shows me the cover art. The application is very full featured. I don't have an Airport Express so I didn't try setting it up that way but I like that Audio Faucet supports that as well. For right now, I just turned my G4 tower on it's side and placed it on a shelf behind a cabinet door in my custom built entertainment center. The G4 isn't silent like a Mac Mini or Shuttle style PC but since it's only 400 Mhz it doesn't run that hot so the the fan is pretty quiet and with the door closed I can't hear it running unless I stand right next to the entertainment center.

After having the computer on for several hours, I put my hand by the fan output at the back of the cabinet and the air coming out was still cool so I don't think I need to worry about it overheating. I don't have a monitor attached to the G4 since it's in the entertainment center but I am using Apple Remote Desktop to remote control the machine from my laptop if needed.

I setup OS X with a generic user account and set it up to login automatically with that account on bootup. I also setup that account to launch both iTunes and Audio Faucet at login so all that I need to do is power on the computer and wait a few minutes before I can start using Audio Faucet on the TiVo.

I'm thinking about setting up the Scheduled startup and shutdown feature in the Energy Saver System Preferences pane to have the computer only on during the hours when I might use Audio Faucet. There's no sense in having the computer on all the time but I don't think that would hurt much either. I could just have it schedule shutdown every night at a certain time and then just power on the computer manually when I want to use it as another option.

As an added benefit, I setup iTunes sharing on the G4 and now my wife can listen to any of the tunes on that machine when she is in her home office on her XP box through iTunes.

I just thought I would share my experience with Audio Faucet for anyone who might be interested or for anyone who cares.  I think it's a good use for a computer that was just collecting dust anyway. It's not as fully featured as an AppleTV but it didn't cost me anything either.


----------



## mattman

I also love this app, but since the last TiVo update I notice that my jpg album art seems to be causing video problems. Nothing that prevents the service from working, but it fills the bottom of the now playing screen with the last couple lines of the .jpg (or possibly .gif) album art intermittently.

If anyone has any suggestions for this I would love to hear them.

I'm on the latest release of AudioFaucet, have cleaned prefs and reinstalled to no avail.

I have a TiVo Series 2 60 hour and am using Mac OSX 10.4.10.

Thanks!


----------



## f0gax

Does Audio Faucet support AAC on Mac? Cause it doesn't seem to do so on Windows. And the release notes even mention the lack of AAC support.

And on that topic... is there a time table for AAC?


----------



## mrainwater

I have an older TiVo (Phillips DirecTV) which has been user upgraded to support HME options and installed on my network. I am able to use the TiVo desktop software on my Windows computer, and the Windows computer is discovered automatically by the TiVo when I choose "Music & Photos". Note: This is not actually a Series 2 TiVo. But this still works fine.

But I am trying to get Audio Faucet to installed and working on my Mac. This is where I keep my iTunes Library, and the audio can be played from this computer to the whole house (using AirTunes).

It sounds like Audio Faucet is exactly what I need.

But when I run it, the TiVo is neither able to discover it nor will it work when I use "Add Server" on the TiVo to directly enter the IP Address of the Mac.

Is there something else you would suggest? Is the default port correct, or is there something I can do with this? It seems to be the only setting I haven't messed with.

Thank You


----------



## morninghill

Audiofaucet recent download and install. Works fine on my tivo hd with a windows xp home machine. I get artists, albums, and genre, but no playlists. Am I missing something? Also, I get the cover art if itunes has it. No access to amazon cover art. Is this just a Mac thing?


----------



## DrLivingstone

I just installed v1.5PR on my Vista laptop (Vista Home Premium SP1) and I can confirm that it works. The only obvious problem, as noted in a post by urbanbohemian earlier on this page, is that the system tray menu is skewed way right, so that only one letter of each system tray command is showing - S in bold (which opens the Preferences dialog), H (which takes you to the DigitalDroplet.net web site), A (which opens the About dialog), and E (which exits).

For those that know how to debug and fix/patch such problems, the amount of right skew appears to be almost exactly the width of the AudioFaucet logo that's part of the pop-up when you right-click the system tray icon. So I'm guessing that a workaround would be to remove that logo (or make it very small, say 1x1 pixels). I looked at the icon resources in audiofaucet.exe and tray.dll, but neither one has this logo in it - so it's probably in one of the JAR files...


----------



## DrLivingstone

I did a bit more poking around and found the offending graphic that causes the system tray menu command to skew way right. It is winlabel.png, in the file af.jar. As a test, I cropped winlabel.png to 1x1 pixels and updated it in af.jar (it shows up 2 places), then started AudioFaucet. The system tray menu now displays properly - alas, without the AudioFaucet logo, but I'd rather see the commands in full!

See attached screen shots for before and after.

[I also posted this in the "Audio Faucet?" thread in the HME Developer's Corner. Sorry for the cross-posting, but I don't have enough posts yet to simply provide a link to that post. Which seems silly - like the difference between 3 posts (the number I have to date) and 5 (the required number to post a link) is gonna magically make a difference in the quality of my post, or prevent me from being a spammer or something...  ]


----------



## richsadams

I just discovered AudioFaucet. It looks like a great program. I installed it on my Mac, asked it to use iTunes. It starts up and it appears on our TiVo's in the Music, Photos & Showcases but when I select it I get a "Can't Run" error:

"An error occurred while running the application. The application closed during a read (0x50006)"

I've tried every preference setting possible, downloaded the cleaner and started from scratch several times, but still no love. A search of this thread turned up some info from 2005, but nothing that applies that I can see.

iMac 24" 
v10.6.2
iTunes 9.0.2
AudioFaucet 1.5.0.20060326
TiVo HD & Series3 v11.0d

Any help would be appreciated. TIA!


----------



## westside_guy

Okay this won't be particularly helpful, but I just loaded it onto my MacBook Air running 10.6.2 (+ iTunes 9.0.2) and, once I'd let it through the firewall (which BTW it didn't prompt for, I had to do it manually), it worked just fine for me when I accessed it from our Tivo HD.

AudioFaucet is of limited usefulness to me because it's MP3 only - it doesn't handle AAC at all. But I can report that it _should_ work just fine under Snow Leopard; so at least it's not a compatibility issue. Being a PPC app it does require Rosetta, of course.


----------



## richsadams

westside_guy said:


> Okay this won't be particularly helpful, but I just loaded it onto my MacBook Air running 10.6.2 (+ iTunes 9.0.2) and, once I'd let it through the firewall (which BTW it didn't prompt for, I had to do it manually), it worked just fine for me when I accessed it from our Tivo HD.
> 
> AudioFaucet is of limited usefulness to me because it's MP3 only - it doesn't handle AAC at all. But I can report that it _should_ work just fine under Snow Leopard; so at least it's not a compatibility issue. Being a PPC app it does require Rosetta, of course.


That's very helpful indeed. I am running Rosetta but I didn't manually set it up with my firewall...might try that. Now that I think of it, that's probably exactly what I need to do.

However, after reading umpteen earlier posts I thought I had read that AudioFaucet handles AAC now. If not, agreed, not of much or really any use to me since I use LAME to rip all of my music in AAC to iTunes. If it doesn't handle AAC then I guess I'm not missing anything...although the interface looks great and it would be terrific to be able to use my iTunes playlists and such.

Thanks for the advice...see you never know how valuable what you do might be! :up:

EDIT: Well, I updated my firewall settings to allow AudioFaucet to connect and made sure Rosetta was running (sudo sysctl -w kern.exec.archhandler.powerpc=/usr/libexec/oah/translate) but AudioFaucet is still a no-go with TiVo.


----------



## Berone

Hey, let's revive a dead thread about dead software!
I tried AudioFaucet last night on a MacMini running Snow Leopard and got the same error message: "An error occurred while running the application. The application closed during a read (0x50006)"
Wondering if Rich ever got it working or anyone might know what could cause that.

Thanks,
Anthony


----------



## richsadams

Wow! It's been almost exactly a year since I fooled around with AudioFaucet...I almost completely forgot about it. I've probably completed about three "scape and paves" on my iMac since then.  I never tried it again. It doesn't sound like it's changed much. It's too bad, it had a lot of potential. IIRC 0x50006 is a generic crash error so it's probably nothing to do with TiVo.

I'm looking at adding an Apple TV to the mix now, so although it's not as convenient as being able to stream iTunes from TiVo, it'll be close.

Best of luck!


----------



## Berone

Yeah, it's good to revive a thread once a year. I don't know enough about the programming to have any idea why this would happen. So far I can't get any of the music programs to work right; Galleon, AudioFaucet, TiVo Desktop- they all fail on some level. I thought about an Apple TV, but I'm not sure I want to introduce another piece of hardware. I'm thinking about an HDMI 4x4 True Matrix switch and just play from the Mini itself.


----------



## richsadams

Berone said:


> Yeah, it's good to revive a thread once a year. I don't know enough about the programming to have any idea why this would happen. So far I can't get any of the music programs to work right; Galleon, AudioFaucet, TiVo Desktop- they all fail on some level. I thought about an Apple TV, but I'm not sure I want to introduce another piece of hardware. I'm thinking about an HDMI 4x4 True Matrix switch and just play from the Mini itself.


I had the same experiences with Galleon, et al (although someone on another thread said Galleon works quite well now). I have a Mac Mini HT setup right now but I don't use it often enough to justify its existence and the whole computer startup thing takes too long (at least for my wife  ) and then maneuvering to the right media, etc. is a bit of a hassle. So for what I use it for (iTunes, some movies and Pandora) I think I'm going to pull it. For $99 I can do the same, plus stream from my iPad, etc. and based on the architecture I can't imagine that their won't be some sort of ATV apps to expand its functionality down the road. I guess it boils down to price, convenience and knowing that it will work seamlessly with the rest of my setup. I feel kind of badly because I upgraded the HDD and memory in the Mini and had high hopes...and it works quite well, but... So I guess I can sell the Mini, pay for the ATV and have some $$ left over.

BTW, I'm not sure what you're looking at with respect to HDMI, but I have one of these HDMI switchers I no longer use (bought a new Sammy Plasma w/HDMI inputs, etc.). PM me if you'd like.


----------



## Berone

We use the Mini for backups of our 2 MacBooks as well as the TiVo. Currently it has 5 external hard drives attached with backups, music, movies, etc. So it makes sense to hook it up to the televisions and go direct from there. That will eliminate the streaming issue. The whole system is on 24/7, so start-up time isn't an issue for us. 
Thanks for the offer on the switch. What I need is to be able to take 4 devices and pipe them to 4 televisions. The one I'm looking at is the Monoprice 4x4. I like that it will let me watch different inputs on different sets, or the same thing on multiple sets and something else on another.


----------



## richsadams

Berone said:


> We use the Mini for backups of our 2 MacBooks as well as the TiVo. Currently it has 5 external hard drives attached with backups, music, movies, etc. So it makes sense to hook it up to the televisions and go direct from there. That will eliminate the streaming issue. The whole system is on 24/7, so start-up time isn't an issue for us.
> Thanks for the offer on the switch. What I need is to be able to take 4 devices and pipe them to 4 televisions. The one I'm looking at is the Monoprice 4x4. I like that it will let me watch different inputs on different sets, or the same thing on multiple sets and something else on another.


Ah, got it...and makes sense. I have all of our iTunes, videos, etc. on a NAS and everything here is hardwired so it works fine but yours sounds a little more complicated. Good plan though. :up:


----------



## resnick

I haven't see any word from KC on this recently. Is he still around? (I tried sending e-mail.) Any word on whether there is any forward path on AudioFaucet (or any other HME that has the same functionality)? AudioFaucet fails for me under Snow Leopard / iTunes 10 / TiVo Premiere (an error reading 0xFFFF).


----------



## jcthorne

You might give Harmonium a look see. I switched from AudioFaucet to Harmonium about a year ago due to lack of development on AF. Works pretty slick and is very stable java app so should be able to set up on a mac.


----------



## resnick

jcthorne said:


> You might give Harmonium a look see. I switched from AudioFaucet to Harmonium about a year ago due to lack of development on AF. Works pretty slick and is very stable java app so should be able to set up on a mac.


Correct me if I'm wrong, but Harmonium will only deal with MP3 files. In particular, it's not going to deal with Apple Lossless. The nice thing about AF is that it can simply act as a remote control for iTunes, causing iTunes to play songs over the network to an Airport Express or the like (even those encoded in Apple Lossless).

Still hoping for a solution.


----------



## SafariKC

resnick said:


> I haven't see any word from KC on this recently. Is he still around? (I tried sending e-mail.) Any word on whether there is any forward path on AudioFaucet (or any other HME that has the same functionality)? AudioFaucet fails for me under Snow Leopard / iTunes 10 / TiVo Premiere (an error reading 0xFFFF).


Howdy,

Sorry for being so quiet. Apart from the silence from TiVo on the future of HME (the platform that AF is written on) there's been quite a bit that got in our way of getting 2.0 out the door. The good news is there's really great solutions out there that solve the problem.

We did do quite a bit of work on AF to re-write over the past few years, but found it near impossible with our day jobs to keep up with the changes Apple was making to the iTunes ecosystem at the time to get something out there that was releasable. It seemed like every time we were ready to push something out they sneak attacked us with a great new release of iTunes that either deprecated an API we used, changed the XML format, or moved around UI elements that we used to "hack" some of the cool functionality in place (like choosing your external AirTunes speakers) We also struggled to get Java to behave with 64 bit versions of iTunes in Windows 7 (and Vista at times). Apple has at this point completely deprecated the Java/OSX bridge that we used quite heavily to control iTunes and we expect it to be all but gone in Lion later this year.

We had a great time working on AF while it lasted. I would highly suggest folks who really care about great iTunes integration run out and get a new AppleTV. At $99 bucks the new platform Apple has is a steal and works flawlessly with the iTunes world regardless of what platform your music lives.


----------



## richsadams

Thanks very much for all of your hard work on AF...it was a worthy cause. I guess innovation is good, but when you're trying to keep up it can be, well, not so good.

I can vouch for our new Apple TV being as great as you say it is. iTunes and iPhoto are seamless and it actually streams Netflix better than our TiVo! Streaming from our iPad is pretty remarkable as well. (Not to mention the other options it offers.) Hopefully they'll be adding some apps to it one of these days. If/when they end up signing more networks and providers the Apple TV2 @ $99 will be nothing short of awesome.

Thanks again for checking in and letting us know how things are...and best of luck in all of your endeavors in the New Year!


----------



## wmcbrine

If you're officially abandoning AudioFaucet, would you consider open sourcing it?


----------



## jim _h

I hope to revive this thread 

I used Harmonium quite a while ago, but it had problems and the installation/configuration was too tedious. I see a couple of new names here - Galleon, AudioFaucet. I am wondering what's available that

1. Is actually 'finished' or at least still in active development by people who intend to finish it.

2. Doesn't require an afternoon spent fiddling with .bat files and cofiguration scripts. 

3. Doesn't depend on ITunes. I hate Itunes.

Am I just dreaming?


----------



## windracer

Galleon and AudioFaucet are both older than Harmonium and also like Harmonium are no longer actively being developed or supported.


----------



## jim _h

Sadly, it's looking more and more like Tivo is a dead end.


----------



## jim _h

Ok wait a minute. No sooner do I make the preceding pessimistic post, than I receive a promotional email from Tivo about new features that inlude, under a "Music" heading, "your computer's music library". Beneath that are icons for Pandora and Rhapsody, neither of which relate to my local files, and no further explanation.

What's this about? Is Tivo hoping to charge me a monthly fee to stream my own files? Good luck with that...

Or is this just another attempt to push creaky, creepy old Tivo Desktop?


----------



## richsadams

jim _h said:


> Ok wait a minute. No sooner do I make the preceding pessimistic post, than I receive a promotional email from Tivo about new features that inlude, under a "Music" heading, "your computer's music library". Beneath that are icons for Pandora and Rhapsody, neither of which relate to my local files, and no further explanation.
> 
> What's this about? Is Tivo hoping to charge me a monthly fee to stream my own files? Good luck with that...
> 
> Or is this just another attempt to push creaky, creepy old Tivo Desktop?


That sounds strange. I doubt that it's any kind of fee service (they don't charge for Pandora, etc.) but I'd also like to know what that means.


----------



## windracer

jim _h said:


> What's this about? Is Tivo hoping to charge me a monthly fee to stream my own files? Good luck with that...


Pandora and Rhapsody are online music streaming services that you can access through the Premiere and other HD boxes. Pandora is free (and has a premium option, I believe) but Rhapsody is a subscription service.

On the Premiere, these options (along with TiVo Desktop) would appear under the Music & Photos menu. If you're running a third-party music app like AudioFaucet or Galleon they would appear under the Showcases menu on the Premiere.

Streaming your own files is free ... they're not trying to charge you. Sounds like maybe you got a newsletter or something advertising the different music options they offer.


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## jim _h

windracer said:


> Pandora and Rhapsody are online music streaming services that you can access through the Premiere and other HD boxes. Pandora is free (and has a premium option, I believe) but Rhapsody is a subscription service.
> 
> On the Premiere, these options (along with TiVo Desktop) would appear under the Music & Photos menu. If you're running a third-party music app like AudioFaucet or Galleon they would appear under the Showcases menu on the Premiere.
> 
> Streaming your own files is free ... they're not trying to charge you. Sounds like maybe you got a newsletter or something advertising the different music options they offer.


Yes, I basically know what Pandora and Rhapsoday are about. But you say "streaming your own files is free". Are you talking about Tivo Desktop? If that's all the promo mailing was referring to, why didn't it just say so?

I tried Tivo Desktop quite a while back and it was an embarassingly dated piece of junk that bogged down my system even when it wasn't being used. Maybe there's an updated version? I have a Series 2. Is streaming of local files handled better on the Premiere?


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## windracer

jim _h said:


> Yes, I basically know what Pandora and Rhapsoday are about. But you say "streaming your own files is free". Are you talking about Tivo Desktop? If that's all the promo mailing was referring to, why didn't it just say so?


Having not seen this mailing, I couldn't say.



> I tried Tivo Desktop quite a while back and it was an embarassingly dated piece of junk that bogged down my system even when it wasn't being used. Maybe there's an updated version? I have a Series 2. Is streaming of local files better on the Premiere?


It's been updated, but it's still basically the same thing you tried back then. And no, there's no difference with using TiVo Desktop and your S2 or the Premiere.

There are other alternatives to TiVo Desktop, like I suggested above, if you want to play your music library on your TiVo. Are any of them shiny and cool like the Pandora and Rhapsody interfaces? No. Do they work? Yeah.


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## jim _h

windracer said:


> Do they work? Yeah.


From what I see on other threads, some of them work, maybe, some of the time. And when they don't, you're on your own.

I work on software - my Tivo is supposed to be entertainment. If I want to spend a day debugging network protocols I guess I could drive back to the office. It's disappointing that Tivo has never been able to get this together, and I certainly have no interest in upgrading to a Premier if it doesn't do things better and easier than the S2.

There. I feel better now.


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## windracer

jim _h said:


> From what I see on other threads, some of them work, maybe, some of the time. And when they don't, you're on your own.


None of these things are commercial packages. They're free apps from people writing them in their spare time. And when/if you do have problems, there are a lot of people here in TCF who will try to help.

I've been using Galleon since its JavaHMO days to play my music and have very few (if any) problems with it.

But, I'm not here to convince you ... do what you like.


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