Naim Apps and CD booklets
Posted by: nbpf on 25 December 2014
Do the new Naim Apps show a CD booklet in PDF format if the current folder contains one ? Do you know if there are MPD clients supporting this functionality ? Thanks, nbpf
The Naim app does not.
The Naim app does not.
Thanks Bart, that's disappointing: so many bits and bobs and a main functionality still missing ... MPD clients also seem not to be better in this respect ... Best, nbpf
You can do this with AppleScipts and iTunes or with J River Media Centre. Using iTunes through Apple Screen Sharing lets me display all the song lyrics, biographies of the artists, the Wiki page (if it exists for the album) with details of who plays what and any PDF I care to create. There is even an app that will enable me display chord tabs for some songs. It is whole new industry growing up with iTunes.
Thanks Wat but I am not in the Apple universe. I run MPD on a Linux / Gnu Debian microserver into Naim's DAC (through a M2Tech USB to S/PDIF converter). For control I use MPD clients on my laptop and on my wife's iPad and iPhone. MPD clients are available for virtually every device but they do not support album booklets. Best, nbpf
You can do this with AppleScipts and iTunes or with J River Media Centre. Using iTunes through Apple Screen Sharing lets me display all the song lyrics, biographies of the artists, the Wiki page (if it exists for the album) with details of who plays what and any PDF I care to create. There is even an app that will enable me display chord tabs for some songs. It is whole new industry growing up with iTunes.
To ask Naim to create an app that did all these things I think is beyond any reasonable expectations I could have - hence one of the reasons for my Mac n DAC preference, but .....
Right. On the other hand: a cover, a booklet and, of course, the data are the three most tangible "products" defining a material CD album.
It is ridiculous that applications which are designed to interact with digitalized CD albums provide access to cover art and data but completely neglect booklets.
Access to lyrics, Wikipedia biographies etc are nice adds-on. However, they should not prevent applications from implementing the most basic functionalities !
I think one thing Naim could do is support the URL tag in the song's metadata and then you could choose for each track something to display. It could be a Wiki page or it could be your own PDF or anything really. I don't think this would be hard to implement and would enable users of its apps to tap in to lots of information. It would remove the need for Naim to add lots of information display functions to its apps whilst giving users and easy way to display more or less what they wanted.
This is an interesting approach which could be used for both booklets and cover art. Or applications could simply look for locally stored cover.jpg and booklet.pdf files. Providing these functionalities is trivial and I do not mind how functionalities are implemented as far as the implementations works fine.
What I find strange is that there seems to be little user consensus on what control applications like n-stream or MPD server / clients shoulld provide as a minimum ! Best, nbpf
Do the new Naim Apps show a CD booklet in PDF format if the current folder contains one ? Do you know if there are MPD clients supporting this functionality ? Thanks, nbpf
This is exactly the type of functionality that the MPD community dismisses as a non-essential feature; that said-provided you actually know what display size you want-there are open source utilities out there to convert from PDF to JPEG. You would still need an image browser client to browse the contents, which is an obstacle but consistent with the mission of what MPD is about, if not a bit hairshirt, IMHO.
A search for Music Player Daemon Album Covers should give you a sampling of thoughts on the matter from the true believers....
In the UPnP realm, there also exists no standard for the handling of PDF CD booklets in the context of a collection of audio tracks.
Do the new Naim Apps show a CD booklet in PDF format if the current folder contains one ? Do you know if there are MPD clients supporting this functionality ? Thanks, nbpf
This is exactly the type of functionality that the MPD community dismisses as a non-essential feature; that said-provided you actually know what display size you want-there are open source utilities out there to convert from PDF to JPEG. You would still need an image browser client to browse the contents, which is an obstacle but consistent with the mission of what MPD is about, if not a bit hairshirt, IMHO.
A search for Music Player Daemon Album Covers should give you a sampling of thoughts on the matter from the true believers....
In the UPnP realm, there also exists no standard for the handling of PDF CD booklets in the context of a collection of audio tracks.
Thanks David ! The main problem is that in many technically oriented communities the main focus is on how to do things, not on what things to do, let apart on what things not to do.
I would have expected an MPD client (or a Naim app) which runs on a device with a PDF reader installed, to be able to request a PDF file from a LAN server and display it with the local reader.
Such server would not necessarily need to be MPD or a UPnP server: as far as I remember, the MPoD MPD clients for iPad and iPhone rely on a HTTP server to fetch cover art information, for instance (I had to install one on my music server for my wife to be able to see CD covers on her iPad). Best, nbpf
Do the new Naim Apps show a CD booklet in PDF format if the current folder contains one ? Do you know if there are MPD clients supporting this functionality ? Thanks, nbpf
The naim app provides metadata, reviews, photo images, similar artists, etc., by using the Rovi database. I have enjoyed using this feature, but agree that being able to view actual CD booklets and/or vinyl jackets online would be a welcome addition.
Hook
I have to say, I find the Rovi facility to be pretty shit. But those of us who don't like it can ignore it. I would love a facility to put in my own accurately compiled and carefully researched information, reams of which I already have recorded in my music collection software (Orange).