QQ Media Player NUC Buyers Club - Discussion

[Marplot]

I suggest you make a comp of 12ish classical songs, and play with different genre and composer tags until you are satisfied with the outcome and then go ham on your files.
I feel for you, even naming classsical tracks is a challenge, then composer and genre...almost as hard as tagging the singers on an Ayreon album.

 

[LuvMyQuad]

I don't currently stream Tidal and have no way of listening to its multichannel output. I am hoping I can do so through the new unit, hopefully it is possible. If not, I will look at other ways to stream it. I am a new Tidal user and this is really the the first time I have looked into it.

Thanks again, for all of your work on our behalf.

You know that kodi isnt going to decode atmos for you, right? Im assuming you have an atmos capable AVR?

 

[HomerJAU]

You know that kodi isnt going to decode atmos for you, right? Im assuming you have an atmos capable AVR?

To clarify, to play Atmos as Atmos you must use HDMI pass-through to an AVR to decode to your speaker layout.

Kodi can also play Atmos from the Atmos core (5,1 or. 7.1) and outputting ‘normal’ 5,1 or 7.1 audio via HDMI if your audio system can’t decode Atmos

 

[J. PUPSTER]

yeah, for me at least, Genre is overrated and really messy and not a primary concern (I guess I can see the functional usage as far as Kodi is concerned however, as far as I understand it now.) Until I learn more with actual usage in Kodi, I believe I'll take LuvMyQuad's advice and start with a small sample of titles and work up from there.

However I do consider Frank Zappa to be in the "Genre" 'Frank Zappa'; a Genre of ONE!

 

[Marplot]

Frank and Tom Waites are my only tagged avant-garde because they follow their muse in whatever style they feel and we are along for the ride.

 

[HomerJAU]

Genre is overrated and really messy

It’s a state of mind (Athough I have genres, I don’t use them) I play by artist or album and by category.

I feel like an Atmos session , what’s in Recently Added? Or, that Bowie I heard in the car today! I’m playing Bowie tonight.

 

[humprof]

Genre is overrated and really messy

It’s a state of mind (Athough I have genres, I don’t use them) I play by artist or album and by category.

I feel like an Atmos session , what’s in Recently Added? Or, that Bowie I heard in the car today! I’m playing Bowie tonight.

I get that genre is "problematic" (as we say in egghead-land) for all sorts of reasons. But I can envision wanting to sort my library in such a way that I can see everything I've labeled, say, "String Quartet" or "Electropop" at a glance.

Really glad that Kodi will serve up "Recently Added" on its own. Do we know what timeframe it considers as "recent," or are those parameters user-adjustable? (We all know how easy it is to build up a backlog of unlistened-to items, right? I've got discs on my physical "Recent Acquisitions" shelf that are 3 years old already....)

 

[LuvMyQuad]

What progress. Garry and I have the 1st finished NUC. This is what you get out of the box once you tell it where to find your files.

 

[HomerJAU]

I get that genre is "problematic" (as we say in egghead-land) for all sorts of reasons. But I can envision wanting to sort my library in such a way that I can see everything I've labeled, say, "String Quartet" or "Electropop" at a glance.

Really glad that Kodi will serve up "Recently Added" on its own. Do we know what timeframe it considers as "recent," or are those parameters user-adjustable? (We all know how easy it is to build up a backlog of unlistened-to items, right? I've got discs on my physical "Recent Acquisitions" shelf that are 3 years old already....)

It’s a reverse order of Date Added to the Kodi music database.

I think the list only shows most recent 200, but that’s a user setting, so you could change to 500 or more I guess.

Also, it may not be accurate when you first load your entire collection though, but it does know the file's last modified date so maybe it uses that. I guess you’ll find out!

 

[LuvMyQuad]

So this first NUC is mine and its the one we are doing testing with and such. Ive been using kodi for years, but this setup Garry has put together is quite slick. The artist artwork is beautiful.

I like having on-screen lyrics. So I'm pm-ing with Garry today and i notice i dont have an option to turn on lyrics. He didnt install them because he dosent use them. It literally took less than 3 minutes to get them from the kodi repository and boom..... There was lyrics. When the need comes, i can show you how to turn them on if its something you want.

I used to laugh when people told me they prefer to play physical discs because they get to read the lyrics. Kodi does that. The ironic thing is, kodi can provide lyrics for albums that never included lyrics to begin with.

Ever hear of replay gain? If not, youre going to love this. There is a tag for replay gain. The tag holds a number. It gets the number by computing the average volume of a given album and comparing it to a standard. The tag is the difference between the standard and the average of the album volume. Typical RG tags might look like -1.8, -3.2, + 0.8; +1.1, the number is what needs to be added or subtracted from the volume to get closest to the standard. Kodi will perform that volume adjustment, digitally and transparently. This dosent affect volume differences within any given album at all. The dynamics of the individual tracks are never altered. The advantage is, you arent constantly reaching for the volume control because the volume on a track from album X is 10dB louder than a track from album Y.

Discuss amongst yuuselves.

 

[LuvMyQuad]

Another neat thing is this. I think Garry has told you about this but it bears repeating. These NUCs are just small footprint PCs and can easily run windows. For all the setup we've been doing, we sometimes needed to use windows. To do that, we use a bootable USB drive with a functional copy of windows on it. The machine is set to look for a bootable USB drive first. If it finds one, it runs it and windows pops up. If not, it just does its media player thing. So, if you are an apple guy, now you not only have a great media player, you also have access to a windows machine. Just add a keyboard and mouse and maybe an external drive (and dont forget a windows license) and you are in business to do those couple of things you always wish you could do but only windows can do them.

 

[HomerJAU]

I’m pretty sure the WinToGo Windows setup runs Windos without a license key, but the Keys can be purchased online very cheaply. The key is emailed to you, no wait on shipping.

 

[Old Quad Guy]

I’m wondering if one has Windows and license, can you add that as a backup drive? I have one for Windows 10.

Also understand that Windows 10 and 11 are supposed to be obsolete by the end of this year. No big deal if I’m not going to use it online, one would suppose. Thank you for your help.

 

[LuvMyQuad]

I’m wondering if one has Windows and license, can you add that as a backup drive? I have one for Windows 10.

Also understand that Windows 10 and 11 are supposed to be obsolete by the end of this year. No big deal if I’m not going to use it online, one would suppose. Thank you for your help.

Win 11 too? I didnt know that.

 

[HomerJAU]

I’m wondering if one has Windows and license, can you add that as a backup drive? I have one for Windows 10.

Also understand that Windows 10 and 11 are supposed to be obsolete by the end of this year. No big deal if I’m not going to use it online, one would suppose. Thank you for your help.

Old license keys may be ok. If not, new are as cheap as chips:

I can only presume these a legal as they re being sold on Ebay in the US:
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=windows+11+pro+key

Or these guys who have been selling keys for ages, with many reviews:
https://www.productkeys.com/product/windows-11-professional-retail/

And despite what many say, you should use Win 11, its damn good, stable and will be supported for several years. Win10 will be unsupported soon.

 

[Old Quad Guy]

Win 11 too? I didnt know that.

Ah, I’m more of a Mac guy, so I’m probably wrong. But Windows 10 support after October 14, 2025 will not get security updates. That’s my understanding of it.