Jetaudio 5.0 Is Out (spidercrab)

Hi all,

I just thought I'd pass along the word that jetAudio 5.0 has been released.

Here's the url with info about the release: jetAudio 5.0 release news brief

I've been testing it out most of the night and quite like it. The audio quality is *very* nice and the encoder now has the option to do 64 bit floating point decoding for extra precision and fidelity.

Here's a pic of it in action on my desktop:

As a side note: SpiderCrab if you read this, from what I can gather jetAudio now seems to support free form skinning. I'm sure a skinner of your talents would be able to do some absolutely incredible skins with it.

I would give it a go myself, but here lately I am tired as **** and now with my stepson on a 6 week vacation aboard, all I want do is enjoy some real peace and quiet for awhile.

In terms of a comparable Mac OS X app, about the closest match I've seen is SoundJam. jetAudio seems to have many of the same feature and a few that SoundJam doesn't have.

Anyway all, I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Happy Holidays and the best of New Years to each and everyone of you.

Regards,

Grusic

#7797

Grusic - JetAudio is one of many interesting audio applications out there. I have not looked in depth into how it skins but I can't see any reason for me to do this.

I did look at JetAudio a while ago and the skins on their site were at best terrible. That is usually a sign that the application is either difficult to skin or the application creators don't appreciate how to create a good skinning engine.

QCD skins really well and it is such a solid application with many unique features that make it the best music media player I have found. I can see no reason to use any other player for music media.

Audion is the Mac media application you need to look at. Now there are some wonderful skins for Audion.

By the way "64 bit floating point decoding for extra precision " is utter bollocks for PC (or MAC) music playback. That makes me think the JetAudio people are full of sh*t.

#7825

Originally posted by SpidercrabX@Dec 30 2002, 11:10 PM
I did look at JetAudio a while ago and the skins on their site were at best terrible. That is usually a sign that the application is either difficult to skin or the application creators don't appreciate how to create a good skinning engine.

QCD skins really well and it is such a solid application with many unique features that make it the best music media player I have found. I can see no reason to use any other player for music media.

It's got some cool features.

Ie: (ctrl+c - v) Audio CD burning. Various sound effects (X-Bass, Surround, Wide, Reverb, Flange, Reverse Flange, Robot...).

I could only find one skin on their site. The default one.

The default skin isn't that bad, well not terrible....

Are there too many smilies in this post?

Big download though...

#7827

QCD has Cd burning via the Elephant plug-in using your CD burner of choice - one click from QCD calls up Nero for example. QCD will also use winamp2 DSP plug-ins which are the best.

But once a media player starts to build all this into the application it usually gets too big, buggy and slow.

Yeah, the default Jet skin is very good, but the ones I saw somewhere (can't remember where) were not good - believe me.

#7828

"Audion is the Mac media application you need to look at."

You just lost me right there with that comment. Don't tell me what I *need* to do. I hate that. It comes across as arrogance.

"By the way "64 bit floating point decoding for extra precision " is utter bollocks for PC (or MAC) music playback. That makes me think the JetAudio people are full of sh*t."

Are you a DSP programmer? I happen to be one. 64 bit floating point precision does make a difference, in terms of headroom for the audio signal and a reduced amount of error when calculating effects processors.

Also the higher the numerical precision used to decode the digital signal and calculate the effects, the closer the resultant output comes to representing the original analog signal. More precision equals less "stairsteps" in the signal.

Not everybody here is listening to audio via a SoundBlaster. I can pretty much make a safe bet that there are several people here that own $500+ audio cards. I happen to be one of them.

Had I known I was going to get such a negative response from you I would not have asked in the first place.

I won't make that mistake again.

Slam me once, shame on you. Slam me twice, shame on me!

Grusic

#7829

Originally posted by SpidercrabX@Dec 31 2002, 02:02 AM
QCD has Cd burning via the Elephant plug-in using your CD burner of choice - one click from QCD calls up Nero for example. QCD will also use winamp2 DSP plug-ins which are the best.
But once a media player starts to build all this into the application it usually gets too big, buggy and slow.
Yeah, the default Jet skin is very good, but the ones I saw somewhere (can't remember where) were not good - believe me.

All those things aren't built into jet per say. If one takes the time to examine the installed application folder, one will see that the main application is actually quite reasonable in size. Around 1 megabyte to be exact.

The remainder of the functionality, effects, cdr handling etc are actually dynamic link libraries. Essenctially what any other audio player would use for processing.

All WinAmp effects are built in the same way. A dynamic link library built to use standard API calls that the WinAmp programmers decided upon when they created the amp.

So if I go compare install size alone. I have a QCD folder with 18 meg, a Nero folder with 31 meg for a total of 49 meg to get a player with burning capabilites.

I have a jetAudio folder size of 37 meg. All from the download of one program instead of two.

So where's the bloat here?

Grusic

#7830

Spider,

I have to agree with Grusic here.

Tho I totally support Quinnware, I have to say that after playing around a bit with this, I am impressed. It has the EQ visuals, Burning, Album listing/editing, ripping, recording, video playback, dvd playback, alarm clock, timer, numerous sound effects...the list goes on.

I say try it. The skinning is VASTLY improved from previous versions.

They have a pdf on their site with all the specs.

#7831

Hey Grusic take it easy.

We are all here because we chase after applications that mimic the Mac thing. JetAudio does not do that but you suggested that it migt have the skinning capabilities for someone to do this. I agree.

I just said that I can see no reason to use it and that I see many reasons not to use it.

64 bit FP for a media player that takes 16 bit data is bollocks. Upsampling to 32 bit FP can be argued to be a good thing for DSP effects, then downsample to 16 bit output with a perceived increase in "quality" due to dithering. Eats up processor cycles though - not good. Do this for a few DSP effects and it becomes a real hog. No need whatsoever to do this for decoding simple mp3 files. But 64bit FP - what the hell do they thing PC uses have got inside their machines? An array of TigerSharcs? A RaceWay connected bank of 7450's? Does this mean they provide optimized Athlon and Pentium versions? Or do they expect users to do Space Time Adaptive analysis on their media files?

JetAudio is a 19MB download. Most people already have a CD burning application so why download another that might create a ASPI conflict. The bloat also comes from loading up all this CD and DSP, video player, etc stuff when all you want do do is listen to some mp3's. Compare your CPU and RAM usage with Jet against winamp2 or QCD to see what I mean.

Will JetAudio overburn a CD and write CD text using the latest CD Burners. I don't know, but this stuff is always where All in One Media applications start to fall down.

There is also a reported 16Khz cut off for playing mp3's with Jet.

Actually the Soundblaster128 is one of the few cards that does not do HW resampling to 48KHz. Nothing wrong with that. Even lots of $500 cards still resample and convert to 48Khz o/p.

But hey these are my reasons for not using it.

#7832

Duckie - I speak from bitter experience of All in One applications. Firstly with RealJukebox1 and then version 2. All the 100's of tracks I ripped were faulty and had to be ripped again.

I went through the MusicMatch, MediaJukebox, dBPoweramp and Steinbergs MyMp3Pro 3 then 4 phase. Each one promises to do everything well. Steinberg's player does skin well. I was 60% fininshed on an iTunes skin for this when it deleted 2,500 mp3 tracks due to a bug. I'm not kidding here.

They each have big flaws.

The only way that I have found to get good media results is to use the best tools available. EAC with Lame for ripping. mp3Gain for normalizing and your CD burner of choice for burning. Each tool is the very best in it's field.

#7834

Try the new version. You could like it.

I do. It got a heapo nifty features.

Cheers

#7856

well it's nice but it's bloody HUGE! :blink:

nice features though, with the built in recording and stuff...cool find but not one for me.

#7868

Originally posted by SpidercrabX@Dec 31 2002, 03:07 AM
Hey Grusic take it easy.

No, I will not take it easy. The bottom line is that you were being rude.

And I am not going to argue technicalities with you, even though I have the figures right in front of me that shows the difference in RAM/CPU utilizied is not as vast as one might think on first glance.

Like I said, I wont make the mistake of asking you for something again, I'll do it my damn self next time.

Grusic

#7924

Grusic - I was indeed being rude. But not to you. ""64 bit floating point decoding for extra precision " is utter bollocks " was aimed at the Cowan people who develop Jet for coming up with such marketing rubbish. It was not my intention to be rude to you.

Best wishes for the New Year.

#7931

Originally posted by SpidercrabX@Jan 2 2003, 02:55 AM
Grusic - I was indeed being rude. But not to you. ""64 bit floating point decoding for extra precision " is utter bollocks " was aimed at the Cowan people who develop Jet for coming up with such marketing rubbish. It was not my intention to be rude to you.
Best wishes for the New Year.

Then write it to Cowan, not to me!

If you want to be rude, do so someone elses time, not mine!

As far as I'm concerned, you were acting like an asshole. And as I said earlier, I wont be directing any further inquiries to you.

As for your "Best wishes for the New Year", you must be f**king insane if you think I'm going to reciprocate!

#8046

Well, to be honest, JetAudio 5 is really a nice piece of Jukebox Software, and an iTunes3 skin for it will make it better, I don't care about what JetAudio was or their marketing strategy, and although JetAudio cannot be compared with QCD because one is a music player alone and another is a jukebox. I prefer to set JetAudio 5 to be my default player for filetypes than QCD.

And as an end-user, I hope SpidercrabX can consider develop skins for JetAudio 5.

#8319

Currently there is no support for skinning Jet 5. The existing documentation is for the previous versions and is not compatible with v5. The Jet skinmaker program has not been released for the new version. Anyone, who developed skins for the beta version of 5 will have to redo them. No wonder there are no skins available.

However, I still see Jet as an "All in One" Jukebox with a pretty looking standard skin that has been released onto the market before it is ready, in a restricted functionallity version. Looks like someone has bought it from Cowan and hopes that enough people will pay to add in the functionllity that exists for free elsewhere.

$39 seems a bit steep to me just to encode mp3 and mp3Pro files. (This is where their marketing strategy starts to become relevant). Why didn't they just allow you to select your own encoder of choice? Naughty.

The one reason I can see for using Jet is to gain a limited compatibility with some (not all) Real audio files. But why not install RealPlayer8 without all the Real junk options and spyware?

So assuming it is even possible, I can't see a skinner investing the time needed to skin an iTunes version of Jet until it becomes stable, well supported and functions as well as currently available alternative free Jukebox components.

#8335

Originally posted by SpidercrabX@Jan 5 2003, 01:35 AM
Currently there is no support for skinning Jet 5. The existing documentation is for the previous versions and is not compatible with v5. The Jet skinmaker program has not been released for the new version. Anyone, who developed skins for the beta version of 5 will have to redo them. No wonder there are no skins available.

I don't know where in the hell you are getting your information, but you are way off, again!

I have the Jet 5 skin docs and skinmaker program right here on my hard drive, and I got them from Jet Audio's website. The doc is correct and the skinmaker program works. I just tweaked, compiled and applied one a few days ago.

Instead of being discouraging to others about Jet Audio, by feeding them incorrect and misleading informantion, I suggest you just be silent.

Grusic

<_<

#8363

Originally posted by SpidercrabX@Jan 4 2003, 01:35 PM
However, I still see Jet as an "All in One" Jukebox with a pretty looking standard skin that has been released onto the market before it is ready, in a restricted functionallity version. Looks like someone has bought it from Cowan and hopes that enough people will pay to add in the functionllity that exists for free elsewhere.
$39 seems a bit steep to me just to encode mp3 and mp3Pro files. (This is where their marketing strategy starts to become relevant). Why didn't they just allow you to select your own encoder of choice? Naughty.

Mmm....Anyway, I think jetAudio now have MP3 encoding support as a built-in function and need no upgrades...

#8385

I got the info from the Jet site and in their support forums.

Mp3 & Mp3Pro encoding link here and here.

Has anyone successfully encoded an mp3 and mp3Pro file with the basic Jet Audio 5? If so then it is good news.

$39 link here and at HydrogenAudio link here.

Skinning documentation only applies to beta version, link

here. If the existing documentation and skinmaker relates to the version released on 24 Dec then again good news. I'm only going on what their site says.

#8399