Author: Gábor Hargitai

Colibri 1.8.6 is now live!

Posted on by Gábor Hargitai

UPDATE: 1.8.6 contains an urgent bugfix, below you can read what is new in 1.8.5

As of a few moments ago Colibri has been updated to version 1.8.5 with the update prompts appearing shortly for everyone through the Mac App Store application if automatic updates are disabled on your system as part of the somewhat steadier (and albeit slower) release cycle that I’ve adopted recently – this concludes the Winter Update.

This patch has been long coming in a sense that a few critical (and nasty) bugs were finally fixed and the frequently requested MOD/MIDI support has been implemented  – you can read the full changelog here.

At the end of the previous post I’ve mentioned a customization option that I haven’t seen in any other player so far on macOS and that turned out to be the per song adjustment of sample mixing in the case of MOD music files, whereas in the case of MIDI files it is the per song SoundFont attachment – all with realtime bank switching and quasi uninterrupted playback as the playhead maintains the current position within the song.

MOD sample mixing and MIDI SoundFont assignment in Colibri – per song!

Another small yet useful addition is the ability to control Colibri from the Dock – right/alt-click on its’ icon and you will be treated to a slightly improved menu that allows basic control of the playback function, along with showing the currently playing song’s title, artist and album:

Right/Alt-click on the Dock to bring up an improved menu (vaporwave/future funk music is not included)

Just after submitting the finalized update to Apple for review I’ve got an email regarding a crash that happened just as Colibri would start up: it turned out to be one of those bugs that I had been chasing around for a while now but never managed to find the correct environment to reproduce it. I’ve instantly pulled back the update to address the issue which in the end translates to less Sandbox Permission asking dialog boxes popping up when you add new songs.

For those of you trusting Colibri by allowing top level access to your music collection, this issue shouldn’t really have come up as it affected the negotiation part of handling different permission bookmarks for folders and songs simultaneously.

Once again, thank you for your continued support, it truly means a lot! The great majority of feature requests via emails/reviews/comments I’ve received so far have been added to the roadmap and will be implemented in the future.

What’s high on the TO-DO list? Currently, the equalizer and a better playlist so please look forward to those in the near future.

That’s it for now, take care and happy listening!

Winter update is just around the corner

Posted on by Gábor Hargitai

Hello and welcome to the first of hopefully many posts about my misadventures in developing (and bug fixing) Colibri – hope you enjoy your stay!

Some time ago I’ve made the decision to switch to a slower release cycle in order to have a bit more time to polish new features and enhancements before they are released in the form of an update and also to not annoy my users with constant updates as I’ve heard that most people find frequent updates inconvenient.

Doing a quick search in the Mac AppStore lead me to believe that the current selection of MIDI players is scarce at best – which brings us to the main element of the upcoming update: as the BASS engine has native support for both MOD and MIDI music (via plugin) it was a no-brainer to teach our bird how to chirp glorious video game music and Nokia ringtones aka MOD/MIDI music.

MIDI SoundFont selection

Having entangled myself in a series of doubts regarding the legality of bundling MIDI SoundFonts with Colibri I’ve come to the conclusion that the best way to avoid angering the reviewers at Apple (and copyright holders of said soundfonts in general) is to ship the next update with a free, publicly  available soundfont as I’m sure most of you would like to try your MIDI files right away – user supplied SoundFonts are supported and are strongly encouraged!

There’s also a neat new feature currently entering the finalization phase that introduces a new customization convenience option for playing back MIDI files that I personally haven’t seen before in any other player.

That’s about it for now, happy listening!

Colibri 1.8.1 Changelog

Posted on by Gábor Hargitai

Album art support has been extended

  • all supported audio files with proper ID3 tags and/or iTunes metadata will have their album artwork shown
  • including, but not limited to: ALAC, AAC, M4A and MP3 files

Colibri has a brand-new CUE sheet reading engine

  • all file encoding types readable by macOS are now supported (UTF8/UTF16/Unicode/Shift-JIS and more)
  • further enhanced data separation detection

Enhanced multithreading for Colibri’s internals

  • playback has been rewritten to use asynchronous read-ahead
  • reduced lag/stuttering during network storage/high-latency playback
  • reduced playback lag/stuttering when your computer is under stress (high CPU load)

Sound Output settings

  • Selected output is properly saved and loaded
  • If the saved device is absent when Colibri is started the the default output will be used
  • The frequency allowed by CoreAudio is now visible under the Output select box

Exclusive/Hog mode

  • Enable Exclusive/Hog mode in Settings – Output to cancel any other sound sources on your Mac for a truly undisturbed listening experience

Further Enhancements

  • Added macOS Notification Center support, try it at the slightly revamped Settings panel
  • Added missing Retina display app icons
  • Pressing the return/enter key immediately starts the playback from the selected song in the playlist
  • Sandbox permission windows are now shown directly above Colibri’s main window
  • Due to popular request, an on/off switch for the volume, seeking and pause pop-up notifications has been added in the Settings menu

PLUGIN UPDATES

  • BASS FLAC updated to version 2.4.4
  • BASS MIXER updated to version 2.4.9

BUGS FIXED IN THIS UPDATE

  • The playlist would have floating and duplicating album titles upon column switching
  • The title and artist name would not properly center horizontally on switching to 2-column mode
  • Colibri would not load songs from Folders dragged and dropped on the Dock icon
  • Colibri Playlist files would not always load properly via drag and drop
  • Open Playlist would not always clear the whole playlist
  • The selection cursor would disappear on song change or when the playlist is reordered/modified
  • Switching loop modes directly before a song would end could cause the song details to not update properly
  • Right-clicking/Option-clicking on empty space the Playlist and selecting ‘Reveal in Finder’ could cause Colibri to crash
  • CUE sheet PERFORMER data was not being read correctly
  • Initial playlist style was not properly initialized after a fresh install
  • Sandbox permission granting could not always load the file the permission was asked for
  • Mass-deleting and quickly re-adding multiple files at the same time could cause Colibri to crash
  • In some cases corrupt/missing files would cause a bit of a chaos: titles and their respective songs would get mixed up
  • Songs originating from CUE sheets that were not in UTF-8 BOM format would have ‘Unknown Artist’ shown as their Performer after exiting and relaunching Colibri – even though they had been correctly read the first time they were added

Colibri 1.6 changelog

Posted on by Gábor Hargitai

General improvements and changes:

  • Added DSD codec support (.dsf and .dff file extensions)
  • Added Respond to Media Keys switchable option in Settings
  • Added “Pre-cache next song” function and option to Settings (and is also enabled by default)
  • Fixed a bug where cover art loading could cause a delay in song info update during song change
  • Seeking will only reposition the playhead when you let go of the seeker
  • Seekbar has been reworked to provide a smoother seeking experience
  • Fixed a bug where the Colibri title bar would stay white on macOS 10.11 El Capitan
  • Fixed a bug where the Playlist header (or even first row) would have white background color on first run
  • Fixed a bug where having the current song on loop wouldn’t work if it originated from a Cue sheet

CUE Sheet handling improvements (when a folder is opened/dragged to the playlist)

  • Colibri first looks for the CUE sheet and loads the songs described in it
  • If the CUE sheet is malformed then Colibri reads what is salvageable and tries to guess the missing contents
  • If the CUE sheet is unusable/unreadable then Colibri adds all the songs in the containing folder one by one
  • The scanning is done recursively through all the subfolders of the opened/dragged folder

Playlist handling updates:

  • Colibri can now save/load its’ playlist to a custom file format (.colibriPlaylist)
  • Added M3U / M3u8 playlist file format loading/appending support
  • Added File -> Load Playlist (wipes current playlist and loads selected playlist)
  • Added File -> Append Playlist (adds selected playlists’ items to current playlist)
  • Dragging a playlist file to Colibri appends its’ contents to the current playlist

Playlist layout additions:

  • Added option to customize playlist with the following styles:
  • 2 columns centred (as before)
  • 3 columns without headers
  • 3 columns with headers – resizable and rearrangeable