QuasarMX - Awesome music player!
 

I just find out about QuasarMX for the N9/N950.

I used Sigma Player before (free version) but it lagged from time to time when doing some other stuff (while the song is running in the background)

QuasarMX is still at beta stage but it works very great for me.
The UI is very slick!

The only feature that I'm missing is the equaliser. But this is coming soon!

Landscape supported

Official QuasarMX Website:
http://katastrophos.net/quasarmx/
new website:
https://www.meteorasoftworks.com

The beta is also available on the OVI Store.

Edit:
Soon available for Windows, OS X, Maemo, Android and Symbian.

Edit 2:
It's now available for Harmattan, Sailfish OS, Symbian, Android, Windows and Linux (Ubuntu)

Please buy the PRO version if you like it to support the developers! :)
http://katastrophos.net/quasarmx/scr...creenshot1.png http://katastrophos.net/quasarmx/scr...creenshot2.png
http://katastrophos.net/quasarmx/scr...creenshot3.png http://katastrophos.net/quasarmx/scr...creenshot4.png
http://katastrophos.net/quasarmx/scr...creenshot5.png http://katastrophos.net/quasarmx/scr...creenshot6.png

Re: QuasarMX - Awesome music player!
 

Thanks for posting my app here! :)
The version for Fremantle / N900 will follow soon.

Re: QuasarMX - Awesome music player!
 

When the graphic equalizer is added in it will be a truly awesome app.

Can it do playlists? Or favorites?

Re: QuasarMX - Awesome music player!
 

Hey there,

I've just installed QuasarMX Beta on N9 PR1.1 and it works fine. Using Denon AH-C710 and the sound quality is very good. I am experiencing a few issues though. I hope we can talk about them in here.

For better understanding what's up, I keep my music as FLAC in */MyDocs/Music/Artist - Album (year) [FLAC]/*.flac

For example a path to a file:

*/MyDocs/Music/Pink Floyd - Division Bell (1994)/01 - Cluster One.flac

The issues so far, tested only with FLAC:

• All items are listed twice (after doing 'scan for music')
• If the internet connection is set to "no background transfers" the player does not initiate a new WLAN connection but just infinitely waits doing nothing .e.g if I want to download an album cover or submit listened tracks to last.fm. If the internet connection is set to be persistent so the phone never disconnects from WLAN; stays always online, all works okay.
• Downloaded album covers do not show instantly. The player has to be restarted (unless this is intentional, if so, won't be very useful).

Apart from that:

• Very good sound quality (way better than annoying Sigma Player). Looking forward to experiencing the equalizer. By default bass is quite flat.
• last.fm wiki and scrobbling works okay (still, the internet connection has to be set to "always on")
• Excellent UI, usability and ergonomics. Finally something foobar like.

If you have any questions or need more help with testing, don't hesitate to ask. I was quite looking forward for your player to show up.

Features I'd like to see if you will ever have time:

• Accepting album art from local files
• Ability to change playlist order under the list view (the 3rd option)

Re: QuasarMX - Awesome music player!
 

Does the app have an effect on the sound quality? I thought they all use the same music player API.

Re: QuasarMX - Awesome music player!
 

Men i love this a new app coming for us great.
we have very good options now you can take ideas from them and add themto yours.
thank you

Re: QuasarMX - Awesome music player!
 

Thanks for testing!

Could you please send me the database file in /home/user/.config/Katastrophos Labs/quasar/quasar.sqlite3 to quasarmx@katastrophos.net (big files are okay). This file should help shed a light on why you have duplicates in your playlist.

QuasarMX is very conservative in requesting new connections as I personally find it really annoying when applications constantly ask for internet connections (e.g. Nokia's Mail App). Either way, for imperative operations (e.g. "Download all covers" or Last.fm addon's "Submit now") it actually should ask. Probably fixed in next release.

Okay, will look into the issue.

Should work out of the box. It looks for image files in the same directory that the music file is in.

The playlist management should be completed in one of the next versions. Adjusting the sorting order is one of the features.

I hope to have a new beta ready by Sunday.

Thanks again for the feedback.

I would love to read more feedback or bug reports either here or emailed to quasarmx@katastrophos.net .

Re: QuasarMX - Awesome music player!
 

QuasarMX supports many different back ends. It is using Qt Mobility on the N9 because this back end integrates best with the media stack and has the lowest power consumption.
Other back ends are Phonon, GStreamer and MPlayer. Phonon or GStreamer are probably what the other players use in order to get the EQ functionality. Most of the EQ filters do not use the DSP and as a matter of fact will drain the battery because the CPU has to do all the hard work.
I hope to have a better solution ready but it might take some time. I am brutally honest here, the EQ is low on my short-term to-do list. There are more pressing issues right now.

To answer your question: No, the player does not have any effect on the sound quality.

Re: QuasarMX - Awesome music player!
 

Landscape mode switch would be great, auto rotation sometimes get annoying, great work dude

Re: QuasarMX - Awesome music player!
 

Sent.

Good thinking there. Just please make it connect when it is really necessary (e.g. by "Download all covers" or last.fm "Submit") and it will work just fine.

Nada, doesn't work. Is there any specific format of the image files? tried cover.jpg and <albumname>.jpg. Both didn't work.

Just today I also noticed another issue. There is a problem with horizontal (so 'landscape' view when the phone is turned to the side and works horizontally). If e.g. playback option number 4 is selected (so the view of the single track with huge album cover, 4th from the left) in vertical view, so the phone is in its default position but then is rotated to horizontal view, the view is switched to another view, but not the one previously selected in the vertical setting. Then again, if the phone is turned vertically again, yet another view kicks in.

I hope you get what I mean. I play a file using the 4th view, then I put my phone horizontally and the view changes to the 'full playlist' view (the 3rd view from the left). Then again, if I turn the phone vertically again, it does not go back to the 4th view but rather to the 5th view (so the i letter in a box).

Quite weird. Screenshots below. BTW, you can notice all items listed twice under playlist view.

Step 1: Vertical view
http://i.imgur.com/JRoew.png

step 2: turning the phone to the side
http://i.imgur.com/S6hDg.png

step 3: turning the phone back to vertical position
http://i.imgur.com/rDTIZ.png

Re: QuasarMX - Awesome music player!
 

Actually, the issue seems to be the player's inability to properly detect if it's online or not. For example, the player starts when no connection to a WLAN is established = it works only in offline mode. Connecting to a WLAN after the player was started does not help. The player reports to be in offline mode without any change (e.g. under the last.fm tab in regard to queued tracks submitting). I have to restart the player so it can actually detect a WLAN connection is on.

There is no problem with the player detecting offline state,though, so e.g. I switch the player on when a WLAN is connected -> the player correctly detects it's online -> the WLAN connection is dropped -> the player correctly detects it's now offline. In other words, it works one way, and doesn't work the other.

Re: QuasarMX - Awesome music player!
 

One word only, is what I've got for you: Nice! Very nice!

Re: QuasarMX - Awesome music player!
 

i am gonna wait for fremantle version and between lovely outlook of this app ,i really wish to use this app but since i have got maemo device i prefer waiting.
one Request ,whenever u make that app for maemo pls add that little switch option into the main menu ,it would be cool to have it all like n9 Qt cute app. nice

Re: QuasarMX - Awesome music player!
 

Thanks much for the app, it's solid. How is gapless playback currently prioritized as a feature? That's all I need on this and I will be quite happy to make it my primary player (since all other music apps, inclduing stock, neglect gapless on the N9). Good work.

Re: QuasarMX - Awesome music player!
 

Thanks so much for this player! Looks awesome.

Re: QuasarMX - Awesome music player!
 

For N900 soon :)

Don't go and do an Instinctiv on us guys ;)

Re: QuasarMX - Awesome music player!
 

Thanks for sending the DB. I checked it and it seems QuasarMX got something wrong while initially scanning for the correct location of the "Music" folder. Due to a fallback option, it now recursively scans your home directory. The problem is that the same music files are actually in two sub-trees:

1. /home/user/.obex-root/Data/Music/
2. /home/user/MyDocs/Music/

My guess without having checked in detail is that Nokia binds /home/user/MyDocs/Music/ to /home/user/.obex-root/Data/Music/ to make it available for Bluetooth file transfers. This problem should be fixed in Beta 2.

Alright, just checked the code again and it sure is a bug. I probably introduced it while porting the core codebase from Qt 3 to Qt 4 earlier last year, meh. Should be fixed in Beta 2.

Yes, this is a known problem. Actually it is hard to fix and might as well be a bug in Qt Quick's ListView, but I still need to investigate. It is on my bug list.

I hope to have Beta 2 ready by sunday night. Taking the whole weekend to refine and polish QuasarMX.

Re: QuasarMX - Awesome music player!
 

What happened to Instinctiv? Have not followed these guys recently.
If it is about dropping support, well no. I have been doing Quasar Media Player since the good old Zaurus days (2005) and have ported it to every device I have owned since then. This is about scratching my itch and "dogfooding" it every day. QuasarMX is just a new incarnation with a more refined user interface.

Re: QuasarMX - Awesome music player!
 

Gapless playback will be there eventually. Similar to the Equalizer feature it might not be in version 1.0 as I do not want to rush it. Good things take time, sorry. :)

Re: QuasarMX - Awesome music player!
 

They were "told" to cease development, supposedly by Nokia, via email. No reason was given AFAIK and they went ahead and stopped work on the Maemo5 version.

Re: QuasarMX - Awesome music player!
 

Very nice work, EvilJazz! If a beta comes out for the N900. I'll be happy to test it. Looks for the UI are not in my taste but other than that, this player is amazing.

Re: QuasarMX - Awesome music player!
 

Will it support file directory?

Re: QuasarMX - Awesome music player!
 

hey,nice UI waiting to use it in my N900.BY the way when its comming to n900 aka maemo?

Re: QuasarMX - Awesome music player!
 

evilJazz, thanks for your attention in this thread and your outstanding work. Is there any chance you are planning to add an option to edit IDv1/ IDv2 and Vorbis tags? That would quite helpful.

Re: QuasarMX - Awesome music player!
 

Yes, a proper tag editor is actually the last feature that is left in order to ditch iTunes on my main system.
It is on the long-term feature list, but I can not make any promises yet. QuasarMX has to get feature parity with Quasar Media Player first, eg. the missing play list manager and a desktop UI.

Now back to squashing the last bugs in Beta 2.

Re: QuasarMX - Awesome music player!
 

sorry,for repost but noone replied to my 1st post so i am peposting it....

and ya i tried installing the n9 version of quasar mx and to my surprize it got installed but no desktop icon was created and i m not able to open it... so plz eviljazz compile it for maemo fast...

THANX in advance

sorry guys i posted the similar question on QUASARMX OFFICIAL site and i have been told that the maemo version needs some UI polish and may be released this month(hopefully nt confirmed).....

Re: QuasarMX - Awesome music player!
 

nisheet, all good things come to those who wait, my young padawan. Let eviljazz work. There's no rush, is there?

Re: QuasarMX - Awesome music player!
 

One more idea. I just reviewed what's up with your cover search engine, eviljazz, and I believe that you may want to consider using another sources, something more international and way more complete so it can find covers for anything, not just mainstream stuff. buy.com or walmart won't suffice so very often. let's be serious about covers.

How about discogs.com? Quite an excellent database with covers with very well documented database API:
http://www.discogs.com/developers/
http://www.discogs.com/developers/re...e/release.html

Got already three albums (out of 8 I copied to the phone) which covers the player cannot find. Obviously I will attach my own cover.jpg in the future, yet a properly complex cover database would surely be a nice feature making the player even better.

Re: QuasarMX - Awesome music player!
 

This is insanely great!

Re: QuasarMX - Awesome music player!
 

Another two ideas:

1) Bitrate is displayed in Megabits which seems quite unusual. Why not revert to the classic notation of "kbps" or "Kbit/s"? E.g. FLAC -> 1203 Kbit/s, and not 1.2 Mbit/s

2) Instead or additionally to more advanced equalizer QuasuarMX could feature a simplified hi-fi amp-like "bass" and "treble" knobs. That could be effective enough and quite unusual.

Re: QuasarMX - Awesome music player!
 

Beta 2 is now available from my website: http://katastrophos.net/quasarmx
Nokia Ovi Store should follow soon, hopefully.

Re: QuasarMX - Awesome music player!
 

Thanks, good suggestion, added that to my todo list... :)

Mileage varies a lot. Of my 600 albums only 13 cover art images could not be found. :)
Also, Beta 2 has the fix for the local cover.jpg file. If not, try resetting ~/.cache/media-art and ~/.cache/quasarmx and let QuasarMX rebuild the cache.

Re: QuasarMX - Awesome music player!
 

I just checked out Beta 2 and the vertical-then-horizontal view bug is fixed, excellent, as well as detecting cover.jpg. Last.fm works okay.

All items are still listed x2 and in the details music is indeed listed in /home/user/.obex-root/ so it seems Quasar would have to exclusively focus on */MyDocs to work properly.

The "next" ( |>|>) button does not work, although AFAIR it used to. Now after clicking it takes me several track forward instead of next file on the list. The "previous" (<|<|) button does not work at all.

This is what I've noticed so far. Generally excellent work. Well done evilJazz.

Re: QuasarMX - Awesome music player!
 

I sent this by email already, but I'll post my findings here also. (mainly based on B1 though)

- If shuffle play is selected I would like to get also random first song. I.e., if I just press play it would be nice to start from a random song, not the first song always. Maybe remember what song played last?
- When I start the program, I get the "no song is playing" text, I may be wrong but before the screen did nothing, but it seems to work in beta 2 so that it plays something (or the first song in the library) when I touch the screen. Maybe a "play" button would make that function more apparent?
- The album cover list seemed to "flip" or reload some albumcovers when I left the list still for a few moments. I.e., the album art turned to black for a short moment and then displayed again. It was always the middle column and only some of the albums. I did not see the problem with B2yet so maybe you optimized it already.
- B1 did not let me skip track backwards, the "<" button did nothing. Another problem is that the remote in B2 does not let me skip back, but until the first played song. I only tested it briefly though, start playing, skip to next track, skip to next track, skip back, skip back (i.e., first song) skip back (no change). It should skip to somewhere (random) at least when random/shuffle is selected.

- B1 was not able toi skip track by pressing edges of the album art, B2 works - good.

Re: QuasarMX - Awesome music player!
 

@Arpa, @DarkSkies, I have not received any reports like that before. Do you have the random mode activated? If so, you can not skip backwards if you are on the first random track and repeat is not enabled. The reason for that is the way the random playlist order is generated internally.
I'll see if I can improve the random playback function.

Yes, this is caused by a problem with the hardware accelerated surface, which seems to have trouble when too many text objects are displayed on the screen. There is a fix for that but the overview list (genre, artist, album) will be re-worked anyway in one of the next versions.

Also: The N900 version will take a few days longer than expected. I broke the display yesterday. Now waiting for the replacement part to arrive.

Re: QuasarMX - Awesome music player!
 

Just checked and the problem with |>|> and <|<| was there with shuffle/random switched off, so I restarted the device... and the problem disappeared. This clears up the problem it seems. I will reboot next time after installing QuasarMX. Apparently it may be necessary.

Anyway, evilJazz, thanks for paying attention to what we are saying.

Re: QuasarMX - Awesome music player!
 

this is a very nice player the only problem :( tha i have is this one see at the image soory for my bad english. :o

Re: QuasarMX - Awesome music player!
 

Yeah, everything's x2. That's a known issue.

Ideas : dlna feature and play to feature would be great:) thx for a great program:)