I've published my first music album

All work and no play... 

Well, I decided to have a little fun (while still working) and published an album of my music! 
Finally! 

They are all composed and played by me (I play electric guitar; all the rest are via MIDI) 
There are many more tunes in the pipeline; alas, it takes quite a while to finalise a tune. 
Hopefully, more will be out in the next 6 months. 

Check it out on Google Play​, SoundCloud​ ​and BandCamp​

Enjoy!

ps: Comments and/or links to this article are most welcome!

Make Logitech keyboard media keys work with AIMP and Google Play Music

If your Logitech keyboard media keys are not working, it is probably because Logitech's Setpoint software does not support your media player.

I have an MK300 MK520R keyboard and when I press the volume up/down, mute and pause keys, all is well.

However, when I press the prev/next keys, nothing happens.

Here is a solution that works with my keyboard and Setpoint

- Find the file players.ini 
(in my case, it is in:  C:\Program Files\Logitech\SetPointP)

- Open it with an editor and add the 2 lines I've highlighted
(please note that due to line-wrap, things look a little messy.
I have used <CRLF> in places where the line needs to break.
Any line breaks anywhere else are actually just word-wraps)


#List of supported players<CRLF>
#{btn|key|msg|emg|cmd|wac},exeName, wndClass,wndCaption,xxx,play_delayplay,pause,stop,prev,next,remove_flags,ShowOSD,menu_item<CRLF>
#special char --> ^ ctrl;+ shift+ctrl; $ ctrl (no translation); * alt (no translation); @ ctrl+alt (no tanslation); & (no translation) <CRLF>
<CRLF>
[Players]<CRLF>
AIMP3=cmd,AIMP3.exe,Winamp v1.x,xxx,xxx,40045,40046,40047,40044,40048,0,1,WinAmp 5<CRLF>
AIMP2=cmd,AIMP2.exe,Winamp v1.x,xxx,xxx,40045,40046,40047,40044,40048,0,1,WinAmp 5<CRLF>
MusicMatch7=wac,MMJB.EXE,MMJB:MAINWND,xxx,xxx,xxx,xxx,xxx,xxx,xxx,0,1,MusicMatch<CRLF>

[EDIT 3 may 2017]

Modified to suit Google Play Music
In the players.ini file, add the following to the corresponding sections

[Players] GooglePlayMusic=key,chrome.exe,Chrome_WidgetWin_1,xxx,xxx,&0xB3,&0xB3,&0xB2,&0xB1,&0xB0,0,1,Google Play Music 

[Players.Run] GooglePlayMusic=path,%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Web Applications\_crx_icppfcnhkcmnfdhfhphakoifcfokfdhg\Google Play Music.ico 

Players.Display] 

GooglePlayMusic=Google Play Music

You then need to kill the SetPoint process and re-start it, for the changes to take effect.

[EDIT 5 feb 2019]

[Players]

AIMP3=cmd,AIMP3.exe,Winamp v1.x,xxx,xxx,40045,40046,40047,40044,40048,0,1,WinAmp 5 AIMP2=cmd,AIMP2.exe,Winamp v1.x,xxx,xxx,40045,40046,40047,40044,40048,0,1,WinAmp 5 

AIMP4=cmd,AIMP.exe,Winamp v1.x,xxx,xxx,40045,40046,40047,40044,40048,0,1,WinAmp 5 

[Players.Display]
AIMP=AIMP
AIMP2=AIMP2
AIMP3=AIMP3


[Players.Seek]
AIMP=cmd,40060,xxx,1,1
AIMP2=cmd,40060,xxx,1,1
AIMP3=cmd,40060,xxx,1,1

[Players.Rewind]
AIMP=cmd,40061,xxx,1,1
AIMP2=cmd,40061,xxx,1,1
AIMP3=cmd,40061,xxx,1,1


Remember to restart Setpoint after you made your changes to the INI file.

Playing my music from my NAS to a Raspberry Pi player ... and beyond

[work in progress]

Due to audio issues with Win7 and 8, I had to move my music playback off the PC and onto a Raspberry Pi.

Here is a brief description of what I have:

Raspberry Pi 

I use a Model B+ (Model B also works perfectly) with MPD.

MPD is configured to output sound to the HDMI output, as well as stream it over HTTP. That way, I can also listen to my music from any of the connected devices (such as tablets, phones etc)

USB sound card

The Pi has 2 music outputs:

a) 3.5mm analog audio jack. This works ok but the sound is not of high quality.

b) HDMI. Digital output. This is a much better option

c) USB. Digital output. This requires an additional USB sound card that plugs into one of the Pi's USB ports. The quality is very good. (Audiophiles with a golden ear will probably disagree.)

I use option C, with one of these USB 2.0 Virtual 7.1 Channel Audio Sound Card Adapters.

NAS 

All my music is stored on a NAS, so it can be accessed from anywhere by anyone of my players (currently, just the one)

Cantana

This is the software that I use on the PC to play music. The software runs on the PC; the sound comes out of the USB sound card (connected to the Pi) and is fed to my amplifier/speakers.

MPDroid

I use this MPD client on my phone, so I can also choose what to hear, without needing to fire up the PC.

Additionally, if MPDroid detects an incoming or outgoing phone call, it pauses the music and resumes it once the call is finished. Very nice!

If you need more info on how this is all set up, leave me a comment.

[Blatant plug! See my article about my album on Google Play.]

ps: Comments and/or links to this article are most welcome!

I can't update Android apps installed on the sd card anymore

Connect your device to your PC (you may need to have the USB drivers that came with your phone installed)I've recently started having a problem with updating my Android apps.

If they were located on the SD card then the update would fail after it was downloaded.

After searching around for quite a bit, the following did the trick:

• Connect your phone to your PC
• When the connection is detected by the phone, it may ask you if you wish to switch to USB storage. Say yes.
• From your PC, go to the phone's drive (that should have just appeared in Explorer) and navigate to /sdcard/.android_secure/. 
• Find the file called smdl2tmp1.asec and delete it
• Disconnect the phone
• Done!!

[UPDATE 1dec2014]
A number of people have commented that they can no longer find the file smdl2tmp1.asec.
I have been told by others (but have not tested myself, as I don't have the problem) that another option is to connect the phone to a PC and use Windows Explorer to look at the SD card and try to find that file.

I am afraid I don't have any other suggestions :-(




[Blatant plug! See my article about my album on Google Play.]


 ps: Comments and/or links to this article are most welcome!

Saffire Pro 26, Firewire, Windows DPC latency

For the last 6 or so months, I've had a big problem with crackles and pops when playing or recording music, due to DPC latency issues.

When I ran DPC Latency checker v1.3, it would show sudden red spikes every time there was heavy network traffic. Sometimes, just refreshing Chrome would do it.

This was not only happening within Reaper, while recording but also when playing back MP3 files via AIMP.

Extensive searches through the web failed to find anything that would work for me. The best I could do, was reboot the PC and the start recording.
Once the PC had been up for a while (especially if it had been put in 'Sleep' mode and then woken up), the crackles would come back.

At the time, I was running Win7-64 and used USB3 for all external devices.

So, in order to overcome this I decided to move the sound generation to external hardware and I bought a Focusrite Saffire Pro 26 for recording my music.

This provides me with A/D conversion from my guitar --> PC, as well as D/A when playing back music from the PC.

In addition to that, I get to use some of the best pre-amps around.

Alas, it would seem that USB3 does not provide sustained  high throughput, so most audio equipment manufacturers (including Focusrite) use Firewire.

Given that I was going to move to Win8 at some point, I wanted to make sure the card I bought worked well with Win8.
(It appears that MicroSchmuck saw it fit to stop supporting Firewire in Win8 and only a few chipsets actually work with it).

I ended up taking a chance and buying a generic Firewire card from CPL in Notting Hill, Victoria.




Against all odds, it worked perfectly well in Win7-64.
A few days later, I moved to Win8.1 and that card still works fine!

Additionally, the DPC latency seems to now hover around 1-3 ms, no matter what I do with the network!
I was copying 220GB over the network without any problem.

I hope this helps others struggling with DPC issues while recording/playing back music.

[UPDATE 16aug2014]
Hmmm, it would seem that VirtualBox can sometimes mess with DPC latency...
It is quite amazing running an i7 CPU and yet still struggle with performance at this level.
Something tells me Billy-Boy's creation is at fault.
If only Reaper and the VSTs I use were available under Linux!

[UPDATE 13oct2014]
So, even though I now run an i7-4790 CPU @3.6GHz, I still (sometimes) get atrocious clicks and buzzes when generating music from the PC itself.


See my article on how I moved my music playing off the PC and onto a Raspberry Pi.

ps: Comments and/or links to this article are most welcome!

Laravel, Composer, WAMP/PHP 'missing open_ssl' fix

If you are trying to install Laravel and are encountering the 'The openssl extension is missing' error with the Composer installer, here is a fix:

WAMP maintains a different php.ini for the Apache dir and the PHP dir.
The WAMP control panel maintains the PHP.INI in the apache dir 
(for example   C:\wamp2.4\bin\apache\Apache2.4.4\php.ini)

There is also another PHP.INI, using by the command-line PHP, in the PHP directory 
(for example   C:\wamp2.4\bin\php\php5.4.16\php.ini)


Edit the PHP.INI file in the PHP dir and uncomment the following line

extension=php_openssl.dll

Done!

ps: Comments and/or links to this article are most welcome!

Compile LESS CSS files and compress/minify CSS and JS files using node.js

Here is what you need to do, in order to

- compile your LESS files into CSS whenever they are changed and also compress those CSS files into .min.css (*1)

- compress your JS files into .min.js whenever they are changed

The 2 scripts described here will automatically perform the above actions upon invocation and will then also set up a file-watcher on the specified directory.

But first:

- Download and install node.js from here.

- Download and install uglifyjs from here, using

npm install uglify-js --global

- Download and install LESS compiler from here, using

npm install less --global

Download this RAR file, which contains all the script files that I have modified, so all you need to do is adjust the contained sample batch file and off you go.

These scripts allow you to specify a source and a target directory.
For LESS/CSS, the LESS file is compiled into CSS in the same directory.
The CSS is then compressed into the target directory.

For JS, the js file is compressed into the target directory.

When you run the batch file, it will scan and process all matching files and then it will stay in the background, monitoring the source directory.

Many thanks to the guys that have created all of the above tools.
The original idea for this was from Jonathan Cheung's code here.



[Blatant plug! See my article about my album on Google Play.]

ps: Comments and/or links to this article are most welcome!