Notices

Yes, ok, when the buffering is reaching the end of track then because I hitherto saw the stops as somewhere into the track ... performancewise the 90 secs seems quite ok for train journeys thought.

A buffering value of 90 secs is probably a good choice (as it should not still impact memory performance significantly). The problem with sudden stops of playback at track change is also directly related to the speed of the internet connection (as I have observed that the problems occurs much more frequently on e.g., slower 3g connections than on faster (wifi) connections).

Should long pressing work? Because it doesnt for me...

I meant this

The screenshot is from the version that is currently under development (which I hope to release sometimes next week..). Also, the next version will have the album browsing / playing functionality only (artist browsing will be added in a later version).

So now it is finally time to announce the new QSpot version (0.1.0-6), which is now available from the extras-devel repository, as well as from the garage page. The changelog is as follows:

* Added new Album view (artist view accessible by longpress in playlist / search results / playqueue views).
* Added support for long pressing on track in the playlist / search results / playqueue views (brings up a Context menu, from which user can currently select to Play / Browse Album; Browse Artist is not yet implemented).
* Added support for selecting preferred streaming bitrate (low 96kbps / standard 160kbps / high 320kbps) to the login dialog (selected bitrate option saved to application settings).
* The FM Transmitter can now be enabled / disabled (and frequency changed) from the playlist / track view / playqueue menubars (opens up the default Maemo settings dialog for the FM Transmitter).
* Playback state synchronisation added via libplayback (e.g., playback paused when initiating playback from the stock media player, and vice versa).
* Playback now also works in silent profile.
* Misc. fixes and optimizations (e.g., to the pre-buffering handling; the min. buffersize value should now be set correctly).

The Album view will still be optimized in forthcoming versions (and the Artist view will be added later). Anyway, I hope you will enjoy the new version..

Thanks! 320 kbps sounds amazingly good!

True.

With this in mind I would like to make a feature request: would it be possible that Qspot automatically used this high bitrate option when on WLAN and lower bitrate when on GPRS connection. Ideally of course this could be a setting that user could set however he prefers.

Thanks for your feedback! It should be possible to add such a feature (e.g., set bitrate based on detected connection type); I will add it to my todo list. It could also be possible to change the preferred bitrate for WLAN/GRPS in the Settings dialog.

An updated version 0.1.0-7 is now available available from extras-devel and the garage page. The only change is a minor fix related to handling of buffering status update in track pre-buffering mode.

QSpot is a great piece of software, thank you! My experience & comments of the previous version a month ago and before (no Premium at the moment):

- Sometimes it loaded only 2-5 playlists in the start - restart helped often

- Music jittering sometimes, even when not doing anything with the phone. Swappolube & other tuning would probably help on this. Maybe renicing some processes could help? If music is played, it should be one of the highest priorities.

- Crashed sometimes in the middle of a song

- Buffering works mostly well, but when connection is bad and buffer gets empty, then it plays the song 0.5sec at a time, stops, 0.5secs more, stops, etc... So a better way would be to wait until at least a bit more of buffer has been filled (the whole song even). The buffer keeps the song in compressed format, right? Memory consumption explodes otherwise.

- I'm not sure if these are implemented: Playlist management (add/remove songs to playlists), Starring of songs, Loading playlists to offline mode (this would be a real killer feature)

- Support for different bitrates is very good! 3G is not available on the road

- QSpot looks very good and the usability feels very good!