Frequently Asked Questions

General

- When is the next update coming? What is in store for the future?
  I’m working on smaller fixes at the moment – feel free to check out the Devblog for news and updates.

- Will you stop updating Colibri? Are you planning to sell it?
  No and no. Colibri is a passion project which means I do it as a hobby. I am not selling it and I intend to develop and keep it running indefinitely. I also use it on a daily basis, so it isn’t a cash-grab of sorts that would turn into abandonware.

- Colibri is not saving my settings and the playlist looks weird!
  This happens on the rare occasion of Sandbox deciding to invalidate Colibri’s access to its’ own stored data – in order to resolve this, we have to help Colibri re-negotiate the credentials with the system by removing the leftover files (as Colibri can no longer touch them). You are kindly requested to follow these steps:
  1. Start Colibri
  2. Click on the Menu -> Colibri -> Clear Sandbox Security Cache
  3. Quit Colibri
  4. Open Finder
  5. Press CMD + Shift + G (or click on “Go -> Go to Folder” in the menu)
  6. Enter the following: ~/Library/Containers
  7. Delete the folder there named: gaborhargitai.colibri
  8. Restart your Mac using the Apple Menu -> Restart

DSD

- What are DoP / DoPA modes?
  DoP and DoPA are DSD-over-PCM data sending modes that allow Colibri to circumvent a limitation of CoreAudio that disallows any macOS app to send raw audio data directly to an audio device. Using PCM frames and special markers (DoP: 0x05/0xFA, DoPA: 0xAA) to encapsulate DSD data, we can provide a lossless way to send the DSD data to the DAC even through CoreAudio. Your DAC most likely supports either the DoP or DoPA sending mode, try both with a DSD64 file. For more info on this topic, please read the DSD page.
- DSD playback is not working
  Try this set of options together, at once:
  – disable EQ if it is enabled
  – enable ‘Exclusive / Hog mode’
  – data sending: ‘Native with fallback to Auto’
  – enable ‘set volume to 0 dB for DSD’
  – ‘Try bridging DAC and CoreAudio’
  – ‘Use highest supported kHz’Also please note that the BASS audio engine does not support DST encoded DSD files, meaning that those DSD files that are encoded with DST will not play with Colibri
- DSD playback is silent/is garbled! And seeking causes Colibri to crash!
  Open Settings -> Output and check the DSD signal output section. If you are not using an external DAC then it is recommended that the Automatically detect option be the selected option here as silence/garbled audio means that your DAC does not support the currently selected method. Additionally, Colibri does not support any other mode than ‘Automatically detect’ for the ‘Built-in Output’ of your Mac, which is normal and your DSD file should be playing back without fault – given that you are using the internal Audio DSP of your Mac. For and external DAC, feel free to experiment with the data sending methods if ‘Automatically detect’ does not work.

- When are you adding DST and SACD ISO support?
  Not in the near future as those are heavily license-bound. I’ve contacted the license holders and they refused to help me at this time, stating that “it is not possible to respond” to my query. I did ask for a re-evaluation and the answer was negatory. I do not wish to get in legal trouble by reverse-engineering anything or use a third-party solution that essentially does the same. If and when the licensing situation changes, I am willing to reconsider – but until then, DST and SACD / SACD-ISO support will not be added, and yes, I am fully aware that other players support these formats just fine and some of them even have the source code available for it. Consider converting your SACD / DST files to a compatible format using the awesome free XLD app!

- Spotify songs are not playing in Colibri!
  Spotify is an on-demand audio streaming service that, while it does indeed have and offline mode (and cache), it does not support exporting said audio files to other apps, such as Colibri. This means that dragging a song from Spotify to Colibri will not work. Those songs are encrypted and you would need a third-party program to decrypt them first – which is something Colibri will never do.

- Are there In-App Purchases?
  No and there will never be such a thing! Colibri is a one-time purchase. You own the copy you have bought and all future upgrades are delivered free of charge for a lifetime. I wouldn’t want it any other way for the apps I adore either.

- Is Colibri Subscription-based? Do I have to pay regularly?
  No, Colibri does not belong to any of those payment models. It is a simple one-time purchase through the Mac AppStore – upon purchasing you own a copy of it with free lifetime upgrades and this will never change, I personally guarantee it.

- Why did you bother writing Colibri? We have a lot of players already!
  Colibri was born as a result of me not being able to enjoy my lossless music collection on macOS flawlessly as varying inconveniences constantly hindered my playback experience so I ended up writing my own audio player – it was also the perfect excuse to try out and begin learning Swift.

- Does Colibri collect analytics? How do you know which audio hardware is supported?
  Colibri does not phone home or collect any statistics – this includes your audio hardware. I do not think an audio player should be collecting user info, although I do admit that sometimes it could be useful. But, most of the time when a problem arises then the ones who report them are kind enough to let me know what their audio setup is. We then work to find the bug / solve the problem and if everything goes according to plan, the issue is solved and I add their audio hardware to the list of devices that are known to be working. It also happens sometimes that I receive emails from users who explicitly want to let me know that their hardware is working and should be listed as such.I’m aware that this isn’t the fastest way of growing a list of supported devices – but then again, this way the user privacy is never compromised and in all honesty, I’m perfectly fine with this kind of occasional feedback.

- Does Colibri support gapless playback?
  Yes! Colibri preloads the next song a few seconds (can be adjusted in Settings!) before the currently played song ends and appends it to the end of the current song for a seamless transition.

- Is there a Default audio output?
  Yes.

- Does Colibri support Automatic Sample Rate Switching?
  Yes! Colibri does a round of handshakes and negotiations with CoreAudio and your DAC before sending any audio signal out – and only when it is really needed. All devices are queried for supported frequencies and before the start of each song the frequencies are matched and if need be, the DAC / DSP is re-initialized with the supported output frequency. This is also true for preloaded songs.
- How can I reorder / resize the playlist columns?
  It’s fairly easy! To reorder them, just click and hold the title of the column header (eg.: Title, Artist, Album) and start moving it either to the left or to the right. If you would like to resize them, you just have to grab onto the edge of said header – at this moment the mouse cursor will change, notifying you about the resizing possibility. If it is still not happening, here is a video tutorial of it in action:

- Does Colibri have a demo version?
  No. Unfortunately I do not have means of offering a demo version as I’m against adding DRM (Digital Rights Management) to Colibri. Any added layer of cryptographic protection would also mean computing power usage overhead – something that is contrary to the core concept of Colibri’s existence! I’d rather spend time developing Colibri than deal with in-app purchase verification. However, there is the Colibri DAC/DSD Test application free from the Mac AppStore with which you can test out how your audio setup would sound with Colibri (it uses the same audio core). It is also great if you are wondering whether your DAC would work with Colibri. For a list of tested devices, please check the DSD page here.

- Aren’t people going to pirate it then?
  I’m honestly happy that people find Colibri useful and enjoy using it! However, as you’ll soon see in the questions regarding Sandboxing – there is a reason why applications are strictly verified by Apple in the Mac App Store; it is most likely safe to assume that apps downloaded from the Mac App Store are thoroughly inspected and are highly unlikely to contain any piece of malicious code – which can not be firmly said about anything that originates from an unknown source.

- What is Sandbox and why is there a window popping up about it? It’s annoying!
  Sandbox is Apple’s way of protecting the user (and the files) from any infection or ill intent that would originate from a downloaded app as regardless of programming with security in mind – all human-made software can be hacked/infected. Sandbox is a macOS protection layer provided by Apple (and is turned on by default) which does not allow an application to freely peek around the users’ files. To access anything outside of the app’s tight-shut container an explicit user permission must be granted – this is why any Mac App Store app would pop-up dialogs to open anything.

- Sandbox is acceptable for music – but every time I open a Cue Sheet it still pops up! Why?
  When you Open a song (or drag it to Colibri’s playlist from the Finder) it is done via an action that originates from the user which means the user explicitly declares that he/she gives the app access to the specific file he/she drags/opens. However, .cue sheets are technically nothing more than detailed playlists telling Colibri where can it find the accompanying albums’ songs. Although the user drags the cue sheet to Colibri it does not grant further access to the files written within the Cue Sheet – access to those files must be asked for separately. This is the reason why the Sandbox pops up if you haven’t granted permission to that folder beforehand (or the folder containing said folder).

- How can I prevent this? I mean c’mon this is downright frustrating!
  Colibri does not have a way of modifying files – it only asks for read-only permissions from the system so what I advise you is to give Colibri permission to access the top level of your music collection more so because if you have Album Art display turned on then it will also need permission to read the cover art files.

- Aren’t covers embedded? Why use Sandbox dialogs here as well?
  Album art loading is only supported for files with FLAC / ID3 / iTunes artwork metadata (mainly for FLAC / ALAC / M4A and MP3 files). If you load up something else (or if the file does not have a recognizable embedded album image) then Colibri tries its’ best and looks around the song containing folder for a cover image – and we’ve discussed looking around folders above.

- What album art / cover images does Colibri look for?
  The following filenames with .jpg, .jpeg and .png extensions are looked for: “folder”, “albumart”, “front”, “cover” all in a case-insensitive way. If that fails, then Colibri will try and display the first readable image file in this order: .jpg, .jpeg and finally .png. Should this yield no result then Colibri falls back to displaying its’ wonderful logo.

- Media keys are conflicting with iTunes! Whenever I press Play on my Mac Keyboard iTunes suddenly opens!
  That’s because iTunes is the default application that responds to media key events. To modify this we have to manually disable this behavior – please see my step-by-step guide in this post over at my blog. Be advised, that starting from macOS Sierra 10.12.4 (16E195) disabling this behavior is significantly harder and requires additional steps!

- I can’t switch sound output! Is AirPlay even supported?
  You can select your desired sound output device at the Settings – Output section. AirPlay support is currently under development – so it is currently not supported. A workaround could be to route all the system audio thru your speakers using “System Preferences -> Sound -> Output”. Recent versions of macOS have drastically changed how AirPlay is made available to apps to the point that it needs to be completely re-implemented – and this takes time.

- When is AirPlay support coming?
  Apple has been dropping 3rd party support for AirPlay with increasing magnitude in each macOS version to such an extent that the AirPlay support in BASS is currently non-functional. I’ve been in touch with them and as it stands I’ll have to implement it from the ground up. Yes, I’m aware of other players that support AirPlay – in fact, I’ve looked into licensing a solution from a third party, but as we do not share the same technical vision I was forced to rule that idea out and decided to implement it from scratch. AirPlay 2 is coming and is said to be more compatible – although nothing is currently known about the way it will behave on macOS. It is also good to remember the fact that if you are not using the built-in Audio Player framework from Apple (which Colibri doesn’t) then by using the reverse-engineered proprietary protocol implementation (which is documented and available online) you always run the risk of having your application rejected from the AppStore. Rest assured, I am working on bringing AirPlay support to Colibri – but I do not have a time estimate on it, for the reasons mentioned above. I will let you know about it via the Devblog if I achieve notable progress with AirPlay that is worth mentioning.

- What about Sonos?
  After I finish AirPlay sometime in the future, I’ll start looking into ways of bringing Sonos support to Colibri. This – just as AirPlay – requires a hefty amount of implementation.

- All my MIDI files are silent! What’s happening?
  Open Settings -> MIDI and check whether you have an a working SoundFont and also whether it is selected as Default. If that doesn’t work please try adding an other SoundFont.

- DSD playback is silent/is garbled! And seeking causes Colibri to crash!
  Open Settings -> Output and check the DSD signal output section. If you are not using an external DAC then it is recommended that the Automatically detect option be the selected option here as silence/garbled audio means that your DAC does not support the currently selected method. Additionally, Colibri does not support any other mode than ‘Automatically detect’ for the ‘Built-in Output’ of your Mac, which is normal and your DSD file should be playing back without fault – given that you are using the internal Audio DSP of your Mac. For and external DAC, feel free to experiment with the data sending methods if ‘Automatically detect’ does not work.

- The Seek Bar sometimes stops moving when an other window/app has focus
  That is due to the fact that macOS is trying to conserve power and halts the animation cycles of inactive windows a bit. Colibri does its’ best to fight it: it labels itself as an important ‘user intiated’ application and also it declares itself as an app ‘incapable of sleeping’ – but sometimes it is forced to take a nap for a few CPU cycles. I’m looking into implementing my own seek bar, but the performance trade-off between such a solution and the built-in slider by Apple currently is in favor of leaving it like it is for the time being.

- The Seek Bar sometimes doesn’t register my clicks, how can I seek to the point I want to?
  That happens mostly with a mouse and sadly there currently is very little I can do to correct this behavior as the built-in slider component from Apple not always registers the ‘click’ event sent from the mouse correctly. I’ve experimented with multiple ways of capturing mouse gestures and it seems like this is as far as I am able to enhance it – please, try and click once more if it did not work the first time.

- Where can I choose the output frequency/bit depth?
  Colibri adjusts its’ output to match the audio format it currently plays – meaning this is done automatically every time a song starts to play.

- Where can I download skins? Can I change the appearance? Are themes supported?
  Colibri has Custom Theme support along with a Dark and a Light color tone switcher. Check out the Themes page for more!

- Can Colibri burn discs?
  No and it will probably never will as there already are free and commercial products that offer disc burning for the Mac.

- Can Colibri convert audio files?
  No. I’d advise You to use native macOS software that is specifically crafted to handle such tasks – like the industry-standard (and also, free) XLD.

- Can Colibri play network streams?
  As of version 1.8 it can! Please use File -> Open Network Stream (or use the hotkey: CMD + K) to add your network URL to Colibri. This has been tested with various M3U and PLS based streams that use the MP3/AAC codec for transmission.

- Does Colibri support Last.fm scrobbling?
  Currently, Colibri does not support Last.fm scrobbling. I do have plans about adding Last.fm support into Colibri later on, so it is on the TO-DO list, but other tasks are higher. All in all, it is on the roadmap and will likely be added in the future – no ETA on it at the moment though!

- Does Colibri have a Library? Can I organize the Playlist?
  No, Colibri does not have a media library nor is it currently possible to organize / group the songs in any way. Currently the Playlist is a simple one – the main idea is that you already have your music collection the way you want it to be and just need a hassle-free player. Colibri does not modify your files, nor does it keep track of them in a database. If does remember your playlist contents (if you do not disable it in Settings) but those are not part of a media library: they are merely a collection of Sandbox permission links that macOS had given Colibri so that it can play those files.

- Can Colibri edit metadata?
  No it can not and this behavior is not really likely to change as the core concept of Colibri is that it does not modify files or make changes to anything outside of its’ settings. If the demand is high enough then I will of course consider, but honestly there are metadata editor applications that serve this very purpose and do so with high efficiency.

- I’m listening to a network stream and it does not show the remaining time
  Network streams are continuous in the sense that they do not have and ending timestamp that Colibri could extract from the metadata

- Can Colibri download lyrics or missing album art/metadata?
  No. Colibri is not designed to search around the Internet for “third party” content – be it lyrics, album art or metadata in general and it is highly unlikely that this behaviour will change. Like everything mentioned here before – if it is requested then it might be considered.

- Why should I pay for Colibri? Free, open source software do so much more!
  You are welcome to use any media playback software you like – that’s the beauty of it!
  Colibri does one thing: it plays back popular lossless audio files in a truly gapless way with or without cue sheets while using the least amount of power possible. What really makes Colibri stand out is the sanitizing method it uses to reprocess .cue sheets; many of you could have experienced how malformed/corrupt/disorganized these files can be and editing them by hand is not really an option. This is one of the main differences that distance Colibri from other available options, other than being completely native to Apple’s ecosystem and doing true gapless playback of lossless files.

- Total time and number of tracks are inaccurate in the Status Bar
  Please go to open Settings – Display and disable, then re-enable the option ‘Number of songs and total time‘

- Did you make these questions up? Some feel forged and/or out of place
  No I did not and as a matter of fact, you would be surprised as to what hits my inbox – these are all legit (even the piracy and the logo stuff!).

- I really hate the Colibri logo! Can’t you change it or disable it?
  Sorry to hear it, I personally really like it and find it fitting so it stays.

- I really love the Colibri logo! Can I have it?
  Glad to hear it, you can download the high-res versions here: Colibri logo (black) and Colibri logo (white).

- I have a question not listed here, where can I contact the developer?
  Feel free to drop me a line via email using this address: gabor@barefootwebdesign.co.nz.

- I’m using a K’ed / pirated / torrented version, can I still contact the developer?
  Sure, ask away! Drop me a line via gabor@barefootwebdesign.co.nz. Please do bear in mind that in some occasions crashes and weird behavior might be related to the macOS Gatekeeper whacking the patched software distribution signature that is present in said pirated versions. Also, please verify your sources as much as possible as some repackers tend to inject malware into the app bundles.

- I’m working for an anti-piracy firm, are you interested in us hunting down the pirated copies of Colibri or sending out DMCA takedowns?
  Thank you but no. I am fully aware of the consequences caused by Colibri being DRM-free and I like it how it is – also, this will never change. I like to believe that if people like Colibri enough to pirate it then they will consider supporting the development later on by buying it when they can afford it, simple as that. I won’t issue DMCA’s, Cease & Desist letters or anything else of that sort. If someone does that under my name then please contact me immediately.
- Did the BASS engine really win an award? It did say so on the main page!
  At the time of looking around for a suitable audio engine I found a forum post that mentioned BASS as a really great ‘award-winning’ audio library that also drives XMPlay (which I love) – hence I decided to try it out as well. I never fact-checked this and having read a post asking about it, I decided to look it up. As I couldn’t find a single mention about BASS winning an award anywhere I took that part out of the intro text as I am not a fan of ‘marketing gas’. If someone does find a mention of it, please let me know!

ReplayGain

- The songs I listen to have ReplayGain, but I also want to modify the preamp in the equalizer. Won’t this cause problems?
  Absolutely not, go ahead! Colibri has three separate effect channels: one for ReplayGain, one for the Pre Amp and the third one for the Equalizer bands exclusively. They all affect the sound sent to the audio output, per se, but their settings do no interfere with each other.

- ReplayGain is not working even though I’ve enabled it in Settings
  Please go to open Settings – Behavior and disable, then re-enable the option ‘Enable ReplayGain‘. If this does not fix your problem then please try removing and re-adding your song(s) while ReplayGain is enabled in the Settings as per above.

Equalizer

- How can I add custom EQ profiles?
  Open the Equalizer using the icon that looks like three sliders at the top-right corner of Colibri’s main window. Experiment with the different band settings by moving the sliders and the press the Save as New button. Be sure to give your new profile a unique name!
- I accidentally deleted all of the EQ profiles! What can I do to get them back?
  Go to Settings – EQ and press the ‘Re-add Default EQ Profiles‘ button at the bottom right of the Settings window.

- I can’t delete the ‘Off / Reset to Zero’ EQ profile!
  That’s expected behavior as it is needed by Colibri, it acts as an ‘Off’ button for the Equalizer.

- The Update button is inactive/greyed out! What can I do?
  If it is grayed out then either you have ‘Off / Reset to Zero’ selected – in which case please select an other profile – or the band sliders of the EQ are in sync and completely match the values of the currently selected profile, try moving one of the sliders and the Update button should light up!

- The Save as New button says ‘EQ name already exists’! What now? I can’t save!
  The name you are trying to give to your new profile already exists, please give it a unique name.

BS2B

- What is BS2B and why should I care?
  In essence, it aims to reduce stereo fatigue when using headphones for extended periods of time. For more, please read this section

- How can I add custom BS2B profiles?
  Go to Settings – BS2B, move the Cut-off and Crossfeed sliders to your hearts content and then press Save as New

- How can I save a BS2B profile to my headphones?
  Go to Settings – BS2B, select the desired Profile or move the Cut-off and Crossfeed sliders as needed and then press Save value for output device

- Does Colibri remember multiple custom BS2B headphone profiles?
  Yes, it does as long as the devices have separate names and device driver identifiers

- When I delete a BS2B profile, will it affect the songs in the playlist?
  Yes, if a song has the same profile set as the one you are deleting, then all of those songs will have their BS2B reset to ‘Off’

- I don’t think BS2B is working – how can I be sure?
  Go to Settings – BS2B and check the status info at the top of the window

- I can’t update the Default / Chu Moy / Jan Meier BS2B profiles!
  That’s expected behavior – they are write protected to give a point of reference. You can create your own profiles by pressing Save as New

- When I delete the Default / Chu Moy / Jan Meier BS2B profiles they appear next time I start Colibri! Why is this?
  You are free to modify the factory default BS2B profiles (Default, Chu Moy, Jan Meier) but when you delete them, Colibri will re-add them upon reading your saved BS2B profiles if they are missing. This behavior is for the sake of the BS2B library to be fully operational. Why aren’t you set those values to zero then? – some may ask. The answer is simple: to conserve memory and CPU time! Colibri preloads the base library and properly initializes it with acceptable values while not enabling the effect chain. The other reason is that these three profiles provide some initial values you can use as reference to build your profiles upon.

ZXTune

- How do I enable / disable ZXTune?
  Visit Settings -> Behavior and you can toggle ZXTune there.

- My MOD/Tracker songs sound weird! What should I do?
  That’s because ZXTune is interfering with the built-in format support of BASS. You should disable ZXTune as per above if it hinders your listening experience.

- Dragging and dropping MPEG-4 Audio files seems to load slower, what happened?
  This is a well known issue and although I did try to do all in my power to circumvent this, the BASSZXTUNE module simply overlaps with a few file formats and tries to load them. This is especially bothersome with a large amount of files. You should disable ZXTune when adding multiple files that are not of chiptune/mod origin. I also have an additional workaround for this in the works, so stay tuned!

Get Colibri from the Mac AppStore or visit the FAQ if you have any further questions.

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

Frequently Asked Questions

Top Questions

General

DSD

ReplayGain

Equalizer

BS2B

ZXTune

Top Questions

General

DSD

ReplayGain

Equalizer

BS2B

ZXTune