iPad control point comparison

[Glareskin]

One of the best features of streaming music, next to the wonderful sound quality Linn offers, is the comfort it offers searching and controlling especially when using an iPad. All the different control point software I know has positives and negatives. None seems to be perfect (to me). So it's time for a comparison! I will kick this of with some plusses and minusses and hopefully a lot of you will add or give different opinions. This might just be an encouragement to the developers to offer new and better features! Some argue that since the free Kinsky is available that the independant suppliers are not interested any longer but I'd like to challenge that. Linn owners are not saving the last penny but are searching for the best possible controller.
Well let's give it a try....
Kinsky
Linn's own software.
+ nice black background, full screen cover art
- rotary volume (or just + /-), even though it's black the bg is boring monotone, no mirror effect on cover, no artist info
Chorus HD
+ lot of information visual
- search screen black on white, even though it's black the bg is boring monotone, no mirror effect on cover, no covers in search when folder is, no artist info selected
Songbook Lite
+ nice visualisation in full cover mode
- always asking locations at start-up, second song from album with small cover art only, not as stable as the others
eLyric
+ best looking in full mode, artist info
- always uses internet cover even when wrong or shows LastFM page, not a lot of infor or settings
PlugPlayer
Ugly.

Now I am just hoping for a lot of reactions and hopefully some customer based responses from the manufacturers!

[Rik]

Oi, what about:

Konductor
+ I wrote it
- I wrote it

If anyone is still interested in Konductor then I've posted a mockup of the new UI in a recent post, feel free to comment.

It should be said that since the release of Kinsky sales have all but dried up - I would guess that this is true of most / all of the Linn specific control points.

[klimaxer]

This thread was done recently. Will try and link to it for you.

For me Kinsky is close to being good, but I hate the fact that you can't change the playlist without turning on, or have an overview of power status across the network. All the UIs are designed with one DS in mind.

Plug player has some good features (including to I-device streaming), kinsky has a nice UI, songbook light has the best power control for multiple DSs and chorus allows great playlist an power control of one device at a time.

There is definitely a gap for one brilliant one pulling together all the right features. Why Elyric does not allow power control is beyond me.

[rowlandhills]

Plugplayer Pros:
1 - Cheapest of the paid for apps
2 - Seems least sensitive to poor networks

If I can't get Kinsky to work (which often happens) then I fall back to Chorus. This solves 90% of issues. I can solve another 8-9% by using Plugplayer (the others are hardware faults, like the cleaner unplugging the router! )

[stunta]

(2012-05-04 23:52)rowlandhills Wrote:  Plugplayer Pros:
1 - Cheapest of the paid for apps
2 - Seems least sensitive to poor networks

If I can't get Kinsky to work (which often happens) then I fall back to Chorus. This solves 90% of issues. I can solve another 8-9% by using Plugplayer (the others are hardware faults, like the cleaner unplugging the router! )

+1. PlugPlayer is not the best looking but it is very reliable.

Kinsky is broken on the latest iOS. When it does work, reload times (after app switching) on the iPad (original version) are too long. Sometimes won't show track time. Sometimes cuts off up to half the album while adding to playlist. Search is limited to current view and is mostly useless for me. If these issues are fixed, I will hop right back on to Kinsky. Good thing it was free.


Overall no app is really satisfying on the iPad. It just takes too long to start the app, wait for it to sync with server and DS, browse to the artist/album you want (top level -> Artist -> Alphabet pick -> Artist pick -> Album) and then play.

We need voice recognition - "Play Radiohead All" should play all my Radiohead albums. Or at least have voice recognition for playlists. Hierarchical navigation by tapping through the tree is just too slow. Maybe its just me and my miniscule tolerance levels.

[Glareskin]

(2012-05-04 22:01)Rik Wrote:  Oi, what about:

Konductor
+ I wrote it
- I wrote it

If anyone is still interested in Konductor then I've posted a mockup of the new UI in a recent post, feel free to comment.

It should be said that since the release of Kinsky sales have all but dried up - I would guess that this is true of most / all of the Linn specific control points.

Thank you Rik for posting. Since you are the only developer we are going to support you to design the perfect control point!
Now I have downloaded it and immediately come to a point where you have to work on: I can't get it started.... It seems to be complicated to set it up where all the others so far have auto-discovery for media server and streaming device.
I have filled out the IP of Twonky but don't know what oi fill out at URL. Didn't find anything likeyour example in both Twonky settings or Konfig. I found this on Kinsky http://192.168.72.108:9000/TMSContentDirectory/Control but that is not working.

So I am happy to try your app but so far it is not the best. It is not working. Please guide me through finding the URL you are referring to in your settings. Oh, and I do use QNAP, not ReadyNAS as in the description.

[sofa]

I have done some work in tagging my classical music collection. So I would like to choose which information is shown and in which order. But none of the existing control apps is able to show me all my tags. I think this is really poor.

But what is worse and makes every control app unusable on my iPhone in certain situations is, that the track names are cut off when they are too long. Let me give an example: My collection contains a folder for JS Bach, within this folder I have one folder "Sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord", one other folder "Sonatas for violin and harpsichord", one folder for "Sonatas for violin and basso continuo", one for "Sonatas for cello (in german it's violoncello) solo", and one for "Sonatas for violin solo". When browsing through my collection all the control apps show only one line for the title and so I see "Sonatas for viol...", "Sonatas for viol...", "Sonatas for viol...", "Sonatas for viol...", and so on.

[Lefreck]

(2012-05-04 23:29)klimaxer Wrote:  This thread was done recently. Will try and link to it for you.

For me Kinsky is close to being good, but I hate the fact that you can't change the playlist without turning on, or have an overview of power status across the network. All the UIs are designed with one DS in mind.
+1
Plug player has some good features (including to I-device streaming)
+1
kinsky has a nice UI,
+1
songbook light has the best power control for multiple DSs
I don't like the fact that Songbook powers on automatically.
and chorus allows great playlist an power control of one device at a time.
+1 my favorite on iPhone
There is definitely a gap for one brilliant one pulling together all the right features. Why Elyric does not allow power control is beyond me.
Elyric comes from PSAudio and I guess they are not so interested in offering the perfect control software for Linn devices

I would love to buy Chorus for iPad. but as I fear there's no support from Sean anymore, I won't invest in a dead end.
I've also got Konduktor, but don't use it on the iPad because I don't like to turn it around... but maybe that will change with the new interface Rik is preparing...
What surprised me is, that if no other cp works, Plug Player normally does. Most of the time, I use ChorusDS, but sometimes it has problems finding the DS I want to listen to (Searching... doesn't end. If I then use Plugplayer to start listening, Chorus eventually works...

[Rik]

(2012-05-05 07:33)hansvanmierlo Wrote:  I have filled out the IP of Twonky but don't know what oi fill out at URL. Didn't find anything likeyour example in both Twonky settings or Konfig. I found this on Kinsky http://192.168.72.108:9000/TMSContentDirectory/Control but that is not working.

Answered offline.

[Glareskin]

Update.

Songbook Lite updated. Becomes one of the best now, if not the very best.

---

Here is the comment on the updated Songbook Lite that I have written in the thread about this.

Wow, it is pretty good now! The failure of shrinking cover art dissapeared.

The log discovery function saves a hssle at start-up. I also appreciate the big slider for the volume control. This might become my favourite cp for now. Give me a few days gaining experience but all the signs are green now.. So far it was Chorus DS HD but that looks boring now. Still a few little failures: The file type, i.e. FLAC is standing in the middle of the coverin full screen mode and the upper part of the cover dissapears behind the upper control bar, again in full screen mode.

And of course a few encouragaments. Show thumbs of the cover art in the search instead of the open box (what is that good for anyway?) And I really like the artist info and even more gorgeous background in eLyric.

But overall a pretty good job!