A small rant about Poweramp's UI

[andrewilley]

@BooFar Any discussion of Categories (e.g. Albums, Folders, Artists, Genres, Years, etc) in relation to enqueued tracks is meaningless. The Queue contains nothing more than a simple list of audio files to be played in order - think of it as a temporary Playlist.

You can re-sort that list based on the properties of each audio file (e.g. to sort the files based on Artist tags, or by Year or file timestamp, or by folder/filename), or insert new content (including multiple selections such as all the songs in one album or folder) and then move stuff around - but the result is still a long flat list of songs, just in a revised order. So there would be no way you could use Repeat or Shuffle on one 'album' or one 'folder' within the queue as those concepts do not exist - and can not exist if you have the ability to move tracks randomly around in the queue.

Thus any "Queue Only" mode could not have a facility to use any Category-based functionality - such as Repeat Album, Shuffle Folder, or Advance-to-next-Category - as there are no categories in the Queue, just as there aren't in Playlists either. But that is what Poweramp's Category-based playback is for, and it's hugely flexible when used as intended.

In Category mode, playback behaves exactly as you state in your first poin abovet: Clicking on an item plays it immediately, and all upcoming tracks in that category get played subsequently in the order you have defined in List Options.

Or if you don't like that, use the Queue or Playlists.

But if you don't like either, feel free to use foobar or another app which is more to your taste. Poweramp has no plans to copy them though - and even if a Queue Only mode is introduced, it will be Poweramp's Queue that is used.

Andre

[BooFar]

@andrewilley No, it does not have to be meaningless, even when you're operating with a queue. And I have literally just explained in detail why... What I am suggesting is the best of both worlds.

[andrewilley]

The Queue is a simple list of audio files to play. No Folders, Artists, Albums, Years, Genres, Composers, or any other Library Categories - just song files. Those individual song files can be added to, deleted, or otherwise reordered in any way you like.

Please explain how you think any category-based actions could ever apply to such an un-ordered list of audio files which has no concept of ordered categories?

In short, if you want to listen to your music organised by Albums, Folders, Years, Genres, etc then use the relevant Library Categories, that's what they are there for. If however you want to listen to individual songs without any Category organisation - so one audio file after another, as chosen by you - use the list-oriented options provided by the Queue or Playlists.

Sorry if this is not what you'd like to hear, but that's the way it is.

Andre

[BooFar]

@andrewilley  A track is still in the same folder even if you use a queue. It is still made by the same artist and it's still within the same album and genre. The categories are still there no matter how much you move the tracks in the queue. Therefore you can still shuffle and repeat based on that information. I have already provided an example of how that could work in the general case of a rearranged queue, but maybe it's better if I am more concrete.

1. Let's say I have a small library containing only two albums: Album1, which contains tracks A, B and C, and Album2, which contains tracks X, Y and Z. I go to the library view, click on Albums and choose the first one in the list, Album1. There I press on track A. Then A plays immediately while B and C are added to the queue, it is now [A, B, C]. Say I reach the end of the list. The next category would be Album2. I press >>>, advancing to the next album, the queue is now [X, Y, Z].
2. Suppose I'm playing Album1 but now I want to also listen to X from Album2. I enqueue X and maybe also move the tracks a bit to obtain a new queue [A, C, X, B]. But I have still chosen the "Albums" category, and A, B, C belong to Album1, and X belongs to Album2. So why shouldn't I be able to advance to the next category? In this case, I'd first advance to X (skipping C because it is in the same category as the currently playing track A), then back to Album1, track B. Clicking >>> now once more would again set my queue to [X, Y, Z], because Album2 is the next category after Album1 to which track B belongs.
   Alternatively, you could make all category functions ignore queued items altogether, so in the example above you'd immediately jump from [A, C, X, B] to [X, Y, Z] upon pressing >>>, because you originally started playback at Album1. This second approach would make it work the same way as PA does right now, although maybe you'd need some sort of visual indicator in the queue view that X has been manually added and will therefore be ignored when using category playback options.

[samuelawachie]

There's a lot of what you say that is already able to be done by PA's Q in the way it currently operates.

I just want to point out something though that you're getting wrong. Foobar's Q doesn't operate like Spotify's and certainly not like PA's. Foobar's Q operates like what they call Linked Lists in Computer Science. 

In Foobar, if I were playing from an Album A (so song a,b,c,d,...) and I put in something from Album B (so song 1), it will play song 1 and then continue to song 2, then 3, then 4 and so on. It will NOT go back to playing from Album A. That implementation is modelled after a linked list.

In Spotify, the Q actually does operate like PA's. It does take you back to album A, after you're done with the escapades into Album B (that are in the Q).

The only thing that PA does that Spotify doesn't do is give you the options to shuffle what's currently in the Q, and perhaps some other functions as it relates to the Library in general. It just works the way Andre described.

All in all, the Q is a separate playlist that works independently from the main playlist wherever that playlist is got from (categories, artist, album, songs).

Another point of difference but is related to the Q operations is how the shuffling options in Foobar are different to those in PA.

In PA, you can play a category (Albums, Songs, Genre, Folder) in order and then play within each category in (order or shuffled). And then you can play a category in shuffle and then play items within that category in (order or shuffled). You can decide to just shuffle categories, and shuffle within each category as well.

That is some brilliant setup and it's the only player that I've seen that does this. Spotify doesn't do it. MusicB doesn't. Neutron does not. iTunes does not. Winamp does not. And neither does Foobar. And those are the ones I've used

[BooFar]

@samuelawachie

17 minutes ago, samuelawachie said:

In Spotify, the Q actually does operate like PA's

It does not, but we're talking about different things. Play an album in Spotify, all of its tracks get added to the queue. To be clear, I'm calling everything that I see in the queue view "the queue". So when you click on the list button in the bottom left, you see everything. If you play an album in PA and then go to Library > Queue, there's nothing because you haven't queued anything manually.

Edited June 28, 2023 by BooFar

[samuelawachie]

5 minutes ago, BooFar said:

@samuelawachie

It does not, but we're talking about different things. Play an album in Spotify, all of its tracks get added to the queue. To be clear, I'm calling everything that I see in the queue view "the queue". So when you click on the list button in the bottom left, you see everything. If you play an album in PA and then go to Library > Queue, there's nothing because you haven't queued anything manually.

That's not what I call a Q then. And it's not what Spotify calls their Q. 

When you play an album in Spotify all it's tracks are added to a list for play. The Q is different and has a separate button next to the other buttons for playback. When you add anything to the Q, it gets played and then control is returned to the current list-of-play (however long it may be).

You're sadly mistaken.

[BooFar]

@samuelawachie Yes, looking at Spotify now I realize that only the section with the manually queued items is called the queue. I admit this may have confused people, sorry for that. I am referring to the list of all upcoming tracks. So the queue plus everything in "Next From". The distinction doesn't actually matter that much in Spotify because you can freely rearrange everything in that view anyways. My point still stands, I think you can implement this while keeping the category shuffle, repeat and advance functionalities.

Edited June 28, 2023 by BooFar

[andrewilley]

To reiterate what I said earlier, the Queue in Poweramp is just a list of song files - effectively a temporary Playlist. Because you can move stuff around that list at will, it has no defined organisational structure or ordering of the songs. They could be in absolutely any order - so the concept of Repeating or Shuffling or Advancing to the next Album, Folder, Artist, Composer, Genre, etc is meaningless. Even if some or all of the songs happen to have been added from one particular album or folder, there is no guarantee of that - nor of whether they have stayed that way.

For example, here is my current Queue, broadly featuring a selection of 80s Power Anthems (a couple did come from the same albums as it happens).

So what should 'Repeat Category', or 'Shuffle Category', do with this list?

Now do you understand why Category functionally can only be applied to Category-based playback, not to a Queue-Only concept?

Andre

[BooFar]

@andrewilley

>To reiterate what I said earlier, the Queue in Poweramp is just a list of song files

Yes it is a list of songs.. where each song belongs to a particular album, or artist, or genre. The category is still there and it could be used for additional shuffling, repeating, sorting and whatnot. Of course what I'm describing would need to be added to the app first so yes, right now, this additional information is unused and you could say it's just a list of song files. But it doesn't have to be. In terms of the code, there's nothing that would make this fundamentally impossible.

>Even if some or all of the songs happen to have been added from one particular album or folder, there is no guarantee of that - nor of whether they have stayed that way.

This doesn't matter. The player still knows the category. The category would be determined by what you chose in the library view, like it already does now.

>So what should 'Repeat Category', or 'Shuffle Category', do with this list?

This will depend on your chosen category. If you started in Album view (i.e you chose the album category), then "Repeat Category" could repeat all queued tracks from that album. For instance, if you're currently playing "Faster Than the Speed of Night" and you activate category repeat, it would play

1. Faster than the speed of night
2. Holding out for a hero
3. Repeat 1. (Assuming there's nothing else in the queue)

This is because you used album category and these two tracks are the only ones from the album "Greatest Hits" by Bonnie Tyler in your list.

Similarly, "Shuffle Category" could shuffle these two tracks.

This would keep the current behavior if you don't have any manually queued items. That is, if you play "Faster than the speed of night" from the album view, all tracks from that album would be added to the list, and then repeating, shuffling and advancing category would obviously behave the same as it already does now. However, if you do queue an item manually then repeat category would be slightly different: Whereas PA right now will just play until it exits the manually queued items list and then continue with the category & repeat it, this would repeat even the manually queued items (according to their category). If you don't want that, you just activate "repeat category" once you're at the album you want to repeat.
Or, you know, this could be implemented differently to skip manually queued items like it already does.

The bottom line is that you have all the information necessary in order to make these buttons work. The only question is, what is the most reasonable thing they could do for rearranged lists?

Edited June 28, 2023 by BooFar

[andrewilley]

3 hours ago, BooFar said:

you could say it's just a list of song files. But it doesn't have to be. In terms of the code, there's nothing that would make this fundamentally impossible.

Not only could I say the Queue is a list of song files, but I did say that because that's exactly what it is. Nothing more, nothing less, just a temporary playlist. Like other Playlists, you can re-organise it manually or sort it based on tag contents or other criteria. But it's still a list of audio files to be played one by one.

Could Poweramp be re-written to make the Queue a fully Category-driven process? Yes, of course it could. Given enough time and effort, and putting all other feature requests on hold for six months, I'm sure Poweramp's Queue could be made to look more like other apps. But given that Poweramp already has a very powerful Category-driven playback system (rather more sophisticated than most other apps IMHO) I don't think that's very likely.

What is more likely to happen is an option may be added to make the current Queue system available as a stand-alone playback Category of its own, so it does not revert back to other playback methods when it finishes - a "Queue Only" mode.

So to close this thread now, as all we're doing is going round in circles:

• If you want to listen your music by Category, use the Library Category system which is designed for that purpose.
• If you'd prefer to listen to a curated sub-selection of your music collection, use the Queue or create a Playlist. But that will be an entity in its own right, not subdived into smaller groups.
• And if neither of these methods work for you, you might be better using another app that more closely meets with your own very specific personal needs.

Any further input as to whether it's worth all the time and effort for one Request would have to come from Max the developer, not me.

ndre

[BooFar]

@andrewilley  Yes, no doubt that would be more work. Although I would already be happy if there was a setting to make playback more similar to Spotify and other popular players (nothing fancy like merging the queue and categories into one unified way of playing music). The "queue only mode" + pressing a track to play it immediately, if I understand it correctly, would basically be it.

That, and the back button issue.

[andrewilley]

The default action of tapping on a track is already to start playback immediately. That's what List Item Click Action does, make sure it's set to "Play and go to Main UI" (although not if you are enqueing - that currently adds the track to the queue but does not immediately start playback, so that would be something for the "Queue Only" mode if it does get implemented at some stage).

Andre

[BooFar]

@andrewilley Yes I know, I just added this because you mentioned that in the queue only mode all tracks would get enqueued when clicking on them. Should probably be an option for both if it does get implemented.

[andrewilley]

I don't know if Max has any specific plans for "Queue Only" as yet - could still be a long way down the line - buy my guess would be the Play and Shuffle icons would enqueue the content that would normally be played, and playback of the newly queued material would commence immediately. There would be quite a lot of work to be done to avoid conflicts and make it a logical process though: for example, when you tap on a song and it starts playing via the Queue, should just that one song get enqueued or the whole of rest of the list that is being viewed too? (Even in 'All Songs' mode?)

Andre

[BooFar]

@andrewilley Why not just queue everything in the list that is being viewed? I can't think of anything else that would make sense and other players do this as well. If you wanted to listen to only a chunk of the list, you'd just multi-select and queue via the menu.

[andrewilley]

1 hour ago, BooFar said:

@andrewilley Why not just queue everything in the list that is being viewed? I can't think of anything else that would make sense and other players do this as well. If you wanted to listen to only a chunk of the list, you'd just multi-select and queue via the menu.

The irony is, queueing everything from the current song onwards would just mimic the current Category-based behaviour that you seem so keen to get away from.  But yes, it would probably make sense.

The counter-argument about being able to use the multi-selection option of course is that if you DID want to listen all the way to the end of the current list, you could multi-select it enqueue it. Which again is already available in the current app.

Andre

[maxmp]

@BooFar the issue is performance, mostly. Try to queue 10k songs in other players (that won't work - either app will freeze or there will be some implicit limit on number of songs in the queue).

[BooFar]

@maxmp  I feel like I'm missing something. In PA I can select all songs in my library and queue them. I don't have 10k songs, but I assume this option would still be there if I did. Or am I wrong? I don't really see how queuing 10k songs could cause performance issues on any modern device.

@andrewilley For me it's less about getting away from category-based playback and more about having an editable list of all upcoming tracks, but also being able to play with a single click.