I have been busy, the past couple weeks, and kind of missed the initial news on StarPlayr2, but busy is a good problem to have.
I did eek out the time to download and install Starplayr2 Alpha 4, and the only thing I can say is that if you liked Starplayr1, you will love StarPlayr2…
I fully understand that it is still in Alpha, and all that Alpha implies, and I have read Goodtime’s to do list, but here goes…
The problems that I have have, are not that bad, and probably more of an annoyance, then a problem except for one.
- Locks up in the presence of other audio programs, including StarPlayr1, this one I have confirmed, because I still have my StarCast scripts running on StarPlayr1, and when it kicks in and Starplayr2 is running it is all stop for both, I have resolved that issue, and put an old MacMini into service to as a StarCast Machine (I had planned to do that for a while). I have not been able to replicate or prove that same issue with Sound Studio, nor am I able to point the problem specifically to Sound Studio or StarPlayr, as I have had different things going on when I had the crash.
- Instant Replay, goes to the beginning of the stream, when fast forwarding, I have not totally isolated what the case is when this happens, but it seems after I pause a bit, you know when work gets in the way of Howard, I attempt to seek forward through the commercials, and all of a sudden I am at the beginning of the buffer. I am pretty sure it only happens once per run, and I think it only happen the first time I try to seek forward, but not the first time I click the seek button, it almost seems like if I seek past the end of the buffer, it will wrap around to the beginning.
- The other issue that I have observed, is another Instant Replay issue, and I have only noticed it after I have paused, it seems that the buffer slowly builds up, to a point where the StarPlayr stream is several minutes behind the stream on a physical radio. I noticed the other day, when I had paused StarPlayr for a couple of seconds, and resumed, a little later I left the house, and I walked by my radio which was on the same station, and the song was in pretty much the same place, and I got in my truck, same station, same song. I returned a few hours later (4+), and the truck and the radio were on the same song, but the stream on StarPlayr was a little over a full song behind. I am going to try some stuff to verify this further…
- Seek and Super Seek, Seek I think should be an 8 10 or 15 second thing (Maybe user defined), and Super Seek should be to the next/previous song, and if a slider is included in a later version, there should be a marker on the slider where each break is.
- Buttons on the bottom, I think they should be on the options screen, at a minimum the bitrate, presets and tracker buttons on the lower left side.
- Madison, there has got to be a way to detect when this annoying woman is speaking, and insert white noise or something. I know it is not a StarPlayr problem, but I can dream… 🙂
I guess I’m being a bit of a whiner, but if you don’t whine in Alpha, you won’t see it in Beta, and if none of these were to change I’d still love it, except for the Madison part, she needs to be a causality of the merge…
I love the lyrics page, even though they are not alway there, not a StarPlayr issue, but it is cool. The other nice thing is the “Remove StarMP3” capability (Currently having issues), but I would like to recommend a minor mod here, maybe a delete after X days, I have had the issue, where iTunes has had an pending update, and was in the agree to license terms screen, and the MP3 was not copied over, could have been a bigger issue if I had the Remove StarMP3 option on.
So far so good, a mostly solid application, and actually even though it is currently Alpha, I have seen production applications less stable of other (Windows) applications less stable then this release.
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