Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Streaming New 'Core Control' iPad App Impressions & Comments

Ado, I numbered your points to help with responses.

1 - Roland explained that M decided the safest place to perform edits was on C-PC, C-Mac or Control screen. Avoids danger of accidental iPad edits by kids/guests etc. I can see the logic. It could be a setup option however as it is on the Control screen. Not a big issue perhaps.

2 - I agree. A sound would be useless as I'd never hear it over the music . Maybe empty tabs could be greyed out or a different colour.

3 - Roland noted this issue on Saturday and was planning to mention it to the dev team today. It was unclear what causes it as sometimes it is a problem and other times it is OK. I was able to readily demonstrate it to him so the issue is clear and it exists in the old and new app regardless of IOS version used.

4, 5, 6 - I agree. well noted.

We had zone linking problems on Saturday via the new app. I think the C15 was used to unlink the 8k and 5200 that we'd tried.

Again, I think Roland and or Paul took note of this.

I'm interested to see what others find with the cover art cache and screen refresh.

Performance on the iPad in Bristol was said to be related to the iPad 1 that it was on. My iPad 2 seems much the same.

M said that the app doesn't cache the whole library as it could be very large. It apparently caches what you have looked at only. However, I'm not sure I see it doing this consistently and it only does it for the session you are in. Once closed and reopened it starts again. Will check this out some more.

Looking at data use the Core App is taking 1.2Mb. i.e. not much.

By comparison - iPeng (for Squeeze) with c.8000 cover art fully cached is using 16.8MB it seems. I could be reading the data incorrectly.

I wonder if the new app could do more w.r.t. caching artwork.

What are others finding ?

I'd really like to be able to edit metadata via the app. As it is, if I am playing something and find that I want to groom the data I have to go to my PC. Not convenient.

Hi Nick
For the same reasons, had done some quick calculations yesterday

Using Carl's figures from his recent post about Cover sizes etc.........and then calculating how much space you would need to Cache "local" versions of these on the iPad, you get the following

Obviously, a lot depends on which version and size you choose to cache locally

cover.jpg...........................1000x1000......778 Kb.........6.2Gb

cover_img02resize170.jpg........0170x0170......19.9 Kb.......160Mb

cover_img02resize256.jpg........0256x0256......24.6 Kb.......196Mb

cover_img02resize512.jpg........0512x0512......48.2 Kb.......384Mb

It's a pity they didn't implement CoverArt Caching in the new App..........iPeng and Aurender already do it..........and from a close Visual inspection, I believe that the Aurender app even Caches the High Res version

For the reasons I briefly mentioned on Saturday, I believe that the new App still won't appear "quick" even on the newest iPad 3.............if they're not implementing local caching, then the App is pulling Art from Storage, which will take a finite amount of time.........no matter how "fast" your device is

Looking at the debug screen, it appears it takes a while for the resized images to become available. I did a couple of imports this evening and thought it was a major bug. But if you leave it long enough, they will turn up. I noticed the transcoded MP3 files also take quite a long time to appear.

The thing to remember is you will have restart the app to see them because of caching issues.

All in all, I'm very happy with the new interface.

Cheers
Greg

Having just ripped The Wall Immersion Set I notice that disc x of y info is not displayed at all on either the cover view or the more detailed album view.

This is quite significant if you have tagged your multi-disc sets using the common album title plus 1of3, 2of3, 3of3 etc. Unless you can recognise disc by the track names then you have to guess or use the old app style listing where it is visible.

Dearest M please can you fix this ?

Zone linking is working for me. I can link and unlink zones without problems once I worked out the correct sequence.

I am using an Ensemble as the core maybe that is the difference

Just started playing with the APP.

So far the search engine answers most of my earlier crits. It breaks up the findings into "Albums" and "Tracks" where previously the search engine only found tracks - & a confusing number of them!

I tried the "EDIT TAGS" option in the hope I could correct a spelling error but the only choice was to remove it, and that could be helpful for later tidying up, BUT when I tried coming back to that function again later it was non responsive. It will probably reappear when the system is rebooted.

Overall though it is looking very good and is a leap forward in user friendliness. The Control:10 is now tucked away in a corner so the iPad assumes the main controller function.

John

Simple but frustrating bug in otherwise very positive app....

Anyone else noted...??? when you queue an album in many instances it plays instead of queuing !!!!

Meridian please fix! The old app doesn't do this and I may need to revert to the old one as this would drive me crazy!

Bruce

Hmmm maybe too late at night and my clumsy fingers!! Will check in am!!!


Bruce

First up I feel the decision by Meridian to only edit via Control:10/15 or Control:PC was a wise one. The iPad is a very flexible and useful item but its relatively small touch screen has its limitations with a misplaced finger easy to alter what was intended.

For non editing purposes the new APP via iPad does all I want. My basic requirements:

1. Swim in tags etc (the old APP did that too)

2. Find an album using the search engine - now much improved as set out in the post above

3. Let it swim in some chosen tag etc until something particularly appealing is heard
-> go to the folder with that music to view album details
-> play all or other selected part of that album

Items 2 & 3 were not possible with the old APP or AFAIK with Control:PC but are with the new iPad APP as an alternative to Control:10/15.

I've now set the APP to not go to sleep and now manually turn the iPad ON/OFF as required - avoids the irritation of finding it asleep when I want to see what is going on. This will challenge the battery life more but it is not too much bother to leave it plugged in to the power beside where I normally sit. In effect it is then behaving as the Control:10 did.

All of which now makes the iPad a much more useful acquisition.

So a BIG thumbs up from me.

John