Confused on how the 'queue' feature works

[Duarian]

I'm on build 814 and a little confused how the queue feature works.

My understanding was... if I add an album to the queue, and then decide I want to just hear a specific song from a different album that I could just long press on that song and press 'queue'. It would then put this song 'next' in line to be played.

Is that not how the Poweramp queue works? I notice it is sending the song to the bottom of the queue which makes sense.. but is there any way to just say 'play next' and then continue on with the playlist/queue?

 

[invaderzim]

Hi. If you put an entire album on queue, it will be played in sequence. Then, when you add a single track or song, it will be added to the bottom as you have noticed. Queue is a temporary playlist. It's like you just want to quickly hear another song from your usual playlist. Quickly I mean if you set Queue options to play immediately the track.

Settings > Library > Queue

[w3wilkes]

I use the queue for many things. I use it for road trips to pre-select the albums I want to listen to so I don't have to mess with the music while driving. I use it for workouts like walking, running, weights so I don't have to mess with the music while working out. Etc. If I had the option to completely disable the "regular" method of using Poweramp and having everything be queue oriented it would be just great. I would add features like "play next" to insert something into the queue after the current playing song or album along with the current way it adds to the end of the queue.

[blaubär]

4 hours ago, Duarian said:

but is there any way to just say 'play next' and then continue on with the playlist/queue?

What you would need is a multi-level-queue: you start with level 1 and add to the bottom there, but then you can add to queue level 2, and this would play immediately, as long as there are items in level 2. And so forth, with arbitrary queue levels, it would always first play the ones with the highest number first, and you could decide in which level to put the next new songs.

Might be a bit overblown, though.😀

[Urchin]

32 minutes ago, blaubär said:

What you would need is a multi-level-queue: you start with level 1 and add to the bottom there, but then you can add to queue level 2, and this would play immediately, as long as there are items in level 2. And so forth, with arbitrary queue levels, it would always first play the ones with the highest number first, and you could decide in which level to put the next new songs.

Might be a bit overblown, though.😀

That actually sounds like a pretty cool feature! I don't know how often I'd use it but I could see the potential.

[Duarian]

4 hours ago, blaubär said:

What you would need is a multi-level-queue: you start with level 1 and add to the bottom there, but then you can add to queue level 2, and this would play immediately, as long as there are items in level 2. And so forth, with arbitrary queue levels, it would always first play the ones with the highest number first, and you could decide in which level to put the next new songs.

Might be a bit overblown, though.😀

Haha yeah, there are other players that simply have a 'play next' option that adds the song to the next in line and will continue with the queue afterwards. Guess I was looking for something similar. I rarely use it but it was nice to have

[blaubär]

2 hours ago, Duarian said:

there are other players that simply have a 'play next' option that adds the song to the next in line and will continue with the queue afterwards

You are aware of the fact that "queue", as used in Poweramp, has a specific meaning ? It is not a general term for the songs being played, that would be "playlist". What you describe with the "play next" option is exactly what the queue in Poweramp does.

[andrewilley]

18 hours ago, Duarian said:

My understanding was... if I add an album to the queue, and then decide I want to just hear a specific song from a different album that I could just long press on that song and press 'queue'. It would then put this song 'next' in line to be played.

Is that not how the Poweramp queue works? I notice it is sending the song to the bottom of the queue which makes sense.. but is there any way to just say 'play next' and then continue on with the playlist/queue?

No, that's not how the PA queue works, it is not really intended to be used as a regular listening mode (even if some users do use it that way).

To play an album in regular playback mode you go to that album in the list and tap on the Play icon (or choose a track to start from if you wish). You could also choose an Artist, or a Folder, or a Playlist, etc. Whichever one you choose, that will be what Poweramp plays. There is no need to use the queue at all for that.

The queue is a completely separate feature to temporarily break away from your normal playback mode (which in this case would mean leaving the album you are listening to) and hear a few selected tracks in the meantime. Once the queued tracks are finished,  your normal playback will resume from where it left off (i.e. carry on with the album that you were listening to).

Andre

[Herbie]

Wish Poweramp had a YouTube learning service. 

[andrewilley]

17 hours ago, Herbie said:

Wish Poweramp had a YouTube learning service. 

What, app usage tutorial videos you mean? Not a bad idea actually, I wonder if anyone fancies making some?

Andre

[Herbie]

All the deep sound settings from opensl to other stuff like dithering etc. I Really haven't a clue but always wanted to maximise my Poweramp to it's full potential. 👍 

[fyourself]

@Herbie With some of the settings such as dithering I think it's more of a matter of learing about what dithering is,  to get an understanding of how it affects the sound of hour music, rather than an instructional video specific to Poweramp. There are probably tons of educational videos on dithering.

I'll try to be a little more constructive and do my best to explain dithering in brief. 

When music is digitalized from an analog signal, there is some loss of data from quantization, as shown below (the original anolog signal in green, the digitalized signal in blue.)

This loss of data is audibly noticeable (quantization artifacts). Dithering is a way to solve this issue, or rather cover it up so it isn't audibly noticeable. 

What dithering does is add constant background noise to the digitalized signal try to, in a way, fill gaps in the signal (quantization artifacts). It doesn't recover the information lost from the anolog signal, just makes the artifacts far less noticeable. 

Music is usually created at much higher bit/sample rates than the typical 16bit/44.1kHz (or whatever) music is sold in. Thus it need to be downsampled making the gaps in the digital signal bigger (more artifacts). The dither is added to the track before it's downsampled, and this process is usually the very last thing done during the mixing/mastering of music. So most likely all you music, if professionally made, has already been dithered, whether perchanced, pirated or distributed for free. 

Although, I'm not sure why (or if there's a need to) add a dither if you are upsampling not downsampling. Perhaps an explaination of when to use a dither and the differences between the different dithers available in Poweramp would be helpful in the FAQ? Also an explaination of what the Resampler Cutoff Frequency Ratio is/does would be helpful, because I have no clue and couldn't find anything on it on Google Search. 

Anyways I hope that helps, I can explain quantization but your probably better off looking it up, as this was already not very "brief". Lol

* I'm not a professor so you may want to fact check this, I could be wrong about some stuff.