AudioFaucet 1.5 Public Pre-Release

[bitchysix]

no one?

[ScaryMike]

I have a large library (125gigs) on a macG5, wireless, no airport, playing thru my tivo s2. There's a hiccup/pause/skip at the top of each track. How can I get rid of this? And when is the commercial release coming, I love the look of this app?

As far as I know (and I could be mistaken), development of this application has been dead in the water for over a year.

Its a shame too, because its easily my favorite HME application. But currently, I have a strange bug. When I play a song or a playlist, it plays something else entirely. I select playlist 1, and it seems to play songs from some other playlist, possibly even songs not on any playlist.

[Dan203]

According tho this thread...

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=4983341&&#post4983341

It's still being actively developed. SO you could see a new version eventually.

Dan

[pufftissue]

I have vista ultimate and audiofaucet working, so I can confirm that it is possible.
I have the Series 3.
Butt expensive, sloppy menu resolution, annoying vertical line on some channels...but otherwise so much more preferable to my homebrew solution.

[FreeBSD_user]

I loaded AudioFaucet on a Windows 2000 box and everything was working. But now when I go to AudioFaucet on my TiVo, it shows the screens, but when I select Album or Artist, I get a screen with nothing showing. Has anyone had this problem?

My signature hasn't been updated, I do have a Series 2 box

[ScaryMike]

I loaded AudioFaucet on a Windows 2000 box and everything was working. But now when I go to AudioFaucet on my TiVo, it shows the screens, but when I select Album or Artist, I get a screen with nothing showing. Has anyone had this problem?

My signature hasn't been updated, I do have a Series 2 box

Make sure Itunes is launching on your Win2k box, also, try the settings cleaner available from the audio faucet homepage.

-Mike

[Francesco]

Just a note to say that 1.5PR is awesome -- despite the dearth of instructions! -- and I can't wait for the next major release (only about a quarter of my 100 GB collection is .mp3). AAC and a cleaner, native OS code... I will gladly pay for something that I find so useful!

Thanks for a great HME app, Kyle & John!

[keysman]

I just found this app over the weekend while looking for a solution to get AAC files to play on my TiVo. I now know that I can do this with LAME installed in the proper spot on my Mac but I wanted to give Audio Faucet a try instead.

I have an old G4 tower that wasn't doing anything except collecting dust. I setup Audio Faucet on it and copied my music library over that machine from my primary computer (a Macbook Pro). Things seemed a little quirky at first but Audio Faucet is a pretty nice app. The biggest issue that I have right now is that my G4 is chugging pretty hard with iTunes and Audio Faucet running. It's a little slow on the TiVo side to change tracks but it works. The G4 I'm running is only 400 Mhz, that's below even the minimum specs for Audio Faucet so it's no fault of the application.

I like the fact that Audio Faucet gives me AAC playback support and shows me the cover art. The application is very full featured. I don't have an Airport Express so I didn't try setting it up that way but I like that Audio Faucet supports that as well. For right now, I just turned my G4 tower on it's side and placed it on a shelf behind a cabinet door in my custom built entertainment center. The G4 isn't silent like a Mac Mini or Shuttle style PC but since it's only 400 Mhz it doesn't run that hot so the the fan is pretty quiet and with the door closed I can't hear it running unless I stand right next to the entertainment center.

After having the computer on for several hours, I put my hand by the fan output at the back of the cabinet and the air coming out was still cool so I don't think I need to worry about it overheating. I don't have a monitor attached to the G4 since it's in the entertainment center but I am using Apple Remote Desktop to remote control the machine from my laptop if needed.

I setup OS X with a generic user account and set it up to login automatically with that account on bootup. I also setup that account to launch both iTunes and Audio Faucet at login so all that I need to do is power on the computer and wait a few minutes before I can start using Audio Faucet on the TiVo.

I'm thinking about setting up the Scheduled startup and shutdown feature in the Energy Saver System Preferences pane to have the computer only on during the hours when I might use Audio Faucet. There's no sense in having the computer on all the time but I don't think that would hurt much either. I could just have it schedule shutdown every night at a certain time and then just power on the computer manually when I want to use it as another option.

As an added benefit, I setup iTunes sharing on the G4 and now my wife can listen to any of the tunes on that machine when she is in her home office on her XP box through iTunes.

I just thought I would share my experience with Audio Faucet for anyone who might be interested or for anyone who cares. :) I think it's a good use for a computer that was just collecting dust anyway. It's not as fully featured as an AppleTV but it didn't cost me anything either.

[mattman]

I also love this app, but since the last TiVo update I notice that my jpg album art seems to be causing video problems. Nothing that prevents the service from working, but it fills the bottom of the now playing screen with the last couple lines of the .jpg (or possibly .gif) album art intermittently.

If anyone has any suggestions for this I would love to hear them.

I'm on the latest release of AudioFaucet, have cleaned prefs and reinstalled to no avail.

I have a TiVo Series 2 60 hour and am using Mac OSX 10.4.10.

Thanks!

[f0gax]

Does Audio Faucet support AAC on Mac? Cause it doesn't seem to do so on Windows. And the release notes even mention the lack of AAC support.

And on that topic... is there a time table for AAC?

[mrainwater]

I have an older TiVo (Phillips DirecTV) which has been user upgraded to support HME options and installed on my network. I am able to use the TiVo desktop software on my Windows computer, and the Windows computer is discovered automatically by the TiVo when I choose "Music & Photos". Note: This is not actually a Series 2 TiVo. But this still works fine.

But I am trying to get Audio Faucet to installed and working on my Mac. This is where I keep my iTunes Library, and the audio can be played from this computer to the whole house (using AirTunes).

It sounds like Audio Faucet is exactly what I need.

But when I run it, the TiVo is neither able to discover it nor will it work when I use "Add Server" on the TiVo to directly enter the IP Address of the Mac.

Is there something else you would suggest? Is the default port correct, or is there something I can do with this? It seems to be the only setting I haven't messed with.

Thank You

[morninghill]

Audiofaucet recent download and install. Works fine on my tivo hd with a windows xp home machine. I get artists, albums, and genre, but no playlists. Am I missing something? Also, I get the cover art if itunes has it. No access to amazon cover art. Is this just a Mac thing?

[DrLivingstone]

I just installed v1.5PR on my Vista laptop (Vista Home Premium SP1) and I can confirm that it works. The only obvious problem, as noted in a post by urbanbohemian earlier on this page, is that the system tray menu is skewed way right, so that only one letter of each system tray command is showing - S in bold (which opens the Preferences dialog), H (which takes you to the DigitalDroplet.net web site), A (which opens the About dialog), and E (which exits).

For those that know how to debug and fix/patch such problems, the amount of right skew appears to be almost exactly the width of the AudioFaucet logo that's part of the pop-up when you right-click the system tray icon. So I'm guessing that a workaround would be to remove that logo (or make it very small, say 1x1 pixels). I looked at the icon resources in audiofaucet.exe and tray.dll, but neither one has this logo in it - so it's probably in one of the JAR files...

[DrLivingstone]

I did a bit more poking around and found the offending graphic that causes the system tray menu command to skew way right. It is winlabel.png, in the file af.jar. As a test, I cropped winlabel.png to 1x1 pixels and updated it in af.jar (it shows up 2 places), then started AudioFaucet. The system tray menu now displays properly - alas, without the AudioFaucet logo, but I'd rather see the commands in full!

See attached screen shots for before and after.

[I also posted this in the "Audio Faucet?" thread in the HME Developer's Corner. Sorry for the cross-posting, but I don't have enough posts yet to simply provide a link to that post. Which seems silly - like the difference between 3 posts (the number I have to date) and 5 (the required number to post a link) is gonna magically make a difference in the quality of my post, or prevent me from being a spammer or something... :( ]

[richsadams]

I just discovered AudioFaucet. It looks like a great program. I installed it on my Mac, asked it to use iTunes. It starts up and it appears on our TiVo's in the Music, Photos & Showcases but when I select it I get a "Can't Run" error:

"An error occurred while running the application. The application closed during a read (0x50006)"

I've tried every preference setting possible, downloaded the cleaner and started from scratch several times, but still no love. A search of this thread turned up some info from 2005, but nothing that applies that I can see.

iMac 24"
v10.6.2
iTunes 9.0.2
AudioFaucet 1.5.0.20060326
TiVo HD & Series3 v11.0d

Any help would be appreciated. TIA!

[westside_guy]

Okay this won't be particularly helpful, but I just loaded it onto my MacBook Air running 10.6.2 (+ iTunes 9.0.2) and, once I'd let it through the firewall (which BTW it didn't prompt for, I had to do it manually), it worked just fine for me when I accessed it from our Tivo HD.

AudioFaucet is of limited usefulness to me because it's MP3 only - it doesn't handle AAC at all. But I can report that it should work just fine under Snow Leopard; so at least it's not a compatibility issue. Being a PPC app it does require Rosetta, of course.

[richsadams]

Okay this won't be particularly helpful, but I just loaded it onto my MacBook Air running 10.6.2 (+ iTunes 9.0.2) and, once I'd let it through the firewall (which BTW it didn't prompt for, I had to do it manually), it worked just fine for me when I accessed it from our Tivo HD.

AudioFaucet is of limited usefulness to me because it's MP3 only - it doesn't handle AAC at all. But I can report that it should work just fine under Snow Leopard; so at least it's not a compatibility issue. Being a PPC app it does require Rosetta, of course.That's very helpful indeed. I am running Rosetta but I didn't manually set it up with my firewall...might try that. Now that I think of it, that's probably exactly what I need to do.

However, after reading umpteen earlier posts I thought I had read that AudioFaucet handles AAC now. If not, agreed, not of much or really any use to me since I use LAME to rip all of my music in AAC to iTunes. If it doesn't handle AAC then I guess I'm not missing anything...although the interface looks great and it would be terrific to be able to use my iTunes playlists and such.

Thanks for the advice...see you never know how valuable what you do might be! :up:

EDIT: Well, I updated my firewall settings to allow AudioFaucet to connect and made sure Rosetta was running (sudo sysctl -w kern.exec.archhandler.powerpc=/usr/libexec/oah/translate) but AudioFaucet is still a no-go with TiVo. :(

[Berone]

Hey, let's revive a dead thread about dead software!
I tried AudioFaucet last night on a MacMini running Snow Leopard and got the same error message: "An error occurred while running the application. The application closed during a read (0x50006)"
Wondering if Rich ever got it working or anyone might know what could cause that.

Thanks,
Anthony

[richsadams]

Wow! It's been almost exactly a year since I fooled around with AudioFaucet...I almost completely forgot about it. I've probably completed about three "scape and paves" on my iMac since then. :eek: I never tried it again. It doesn't sound like it's changed much. It's too bad, it had a lot of potential. IIRC 0x50006 is a generic crash error so it's probably nothing to do with TiVo.

I'm looking at adding an Apple TV to the mix now, so although it's not as convenient as being able to stream iTunes from TiVo, it'll be close.

Best of luck!

[Berone]

Yeah, it's good to revive a thread once a year. I don't know enough about the programming to have any idea why this would happen. So far I can't get any of the music programs to work right; Galleon, AudioFaucet, TiVo Desktop- they all fail on some level. I thought about an Apple TV, but I'm not sure I want to introduce another piece of hardware. I'm thinking about an HDMI 4x4 True Matrix switch and just play from the Mini itself.

[richsadams]

Yeah, it's good to revive a thread once a year. I don't know enough about the programming to have any idea why this would happen. So far I can't get any of the music programs to work right; Galleon, AudioFaucet, TiVo Desktop- they all fail on some level. I thought about an Apple TV, but I'm not sure I want to introduce another piece of hardware. I'm thinking about an HDMI 4x4 True Matrix switch and just play from the Mini itself.I had the same experiences with Galleon, et al (although someone on another thread said Galleon works quite well now). I have a Mac Mini HT setup right now but I don't use it often enough to justify its existence and the whole computer startup thing takes too long (at least for my wife ;) ) and then maneuvering to the right media, etc. is a bit of a hassle. So for what I use it for (iTunes, some movies and Pandora) I think I'm going to pull it. For $99 I can do the same, plus stream from my iPad, etc. and based on the architecture I can't imagine that their won't be some sort of ATV apps to expand its functionality down the road. I guess it boils down to price, convenience and knowing that it will work seamlessly with the rest of my setup. I feel kind of badly because I upgraded the HDD and memory in the Mini and had high hopes...and it works quite well, but... So I guess I can sell the Mini, pay for the ATV and have some $$ left over.

BTW, I'm not sure what you're looking at with respect to HDMI, but I have one of these HDMI switchers (http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=101&cp_id=10110&cs_id=1011002&p_id=4088&seq=1&format=2) I no longer use (bought a new Sammy Plasma w/HDMI inputs, etc.). PM me if you'd like.

[Berone]

We use the Mini for backups of our 2 MacBooks as well as the TiVo. Currently it has 5 external hard drives attached with backups, music, movies, etc. So it makes sense to hook it up to the televisions and go direct from there. That will eliminate the streaming issue. The whole system is on 24/7, so start-up time isn't an issue for us.
Thanks for the offer on the switch. What I need is to be able to take 4 devices and pipe them to 4 televisions. The one I'm looking at is the Monoprice 4x4. (http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=101&cp_id=10110&cs_id=1011002&p_id=5704&seq=1&format=2) I like that it will let me watch different inputs on different sets, or the same thing on multiple sets and something else on another.

[richsadams]

We use the Mini for backups of our 2 MacBooks as well as the TiVo. Currently it has 5 external hard drives attached with backups, music, movies, etc. So it makes sense to hook it up to the televisions and go direct from there. That will eliminate the streaming issue. The whole system is on 24/7, so start-up time isn't an issue for us.
Thanks for the offer on the switch. What I need is to be able to take 4 devices and pipe them to 4 televisions. The one I'm looking at is the Monoprice 4x4. (http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=101&cp_id=10110&cs_id=1011002&p_id=5704&seq=1&format=2) I like that it will let me watch different inputs on different sets, or the same thing on multiple sets and something else on another.Ah, got it...and makes sense. I have all of our iTunes, videos, etc. on a NAS and everything here is hardwired so it works fine but yours sounds a little more complicated. Good plan though. :up:

[resnick]

I haven't see any word from KC on this recently. Is he still around? (I tried sending e-mail.) Any word on whether there is any forward path on AudioFaucet (or any other HME that has the same functionality)? AudioFaucet fails for me under Snow Leopard / iTunes 10 / TiVo Premiere (an error reading 0xFFFF).

[jcthorne]

You might give Harmonium a look see. I switched from AudioFaucet to Harmonium about a year ago due to lack of development on AF. Works pretty slick and is very stable java app so should be able to set up on a mac.

[resnick]

You might give Harmonium a look see. I switched from AudioFaucet to Harmonium about a year ago due to lack of development on AF. Works pretty slick and is very stable java app so should be able to set up on a mac.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Harmonium will only deal with MP3 files. In particular, it's not going to deal with Apple Lossless. The nice thing about AF is that it can simply act as a remote control for iTunes, causing iTunes to play songs over the network to an Airport Express or the like (even those encoded in Apple Lossless).

Still hoping for a solution.

[SafariKC]

I haven't see any word from KC on this recently. Is he still around? (I tried sending e-mail.) Any word on whether there is any forward path on AudioFaucet (or any other HME that has the same functionality)? AudioFaucet fails for me under Snow Leopard / iTunes 10 / TiVo Premiere (an error reading 0xFFFF).

Howdy,

Sorry for being so quiet. Apart from the silence from TiVo on the future of HME (the platform that AF is written on) there's been quite a bit that got in our way of getting 2.0 out the door. The good news is there's really great solutions out there that solve the problem.

We did do quite a bit of work on AF to re-write over the past few years, but found it near impossible with our day jobs to keep up with the changes Apple was making to the iTunes ecosystem at the time to get something out there that was releasable. It seemed like every time we were ready to push something out they sneak attacked us with a great new release of iTunes that either deprecated an API we used, changed the XML format, or moved around UI elements that we used to "hack" some of the cool functionality in place (like choosing your external AirTunes speakers) We also struggled to get Java to behave with 64 bit versions of iTunes in Windows 7 (and Vista at times). Apple has at this point completely deprecated the Java/OSX bridge that we used quite heavily to control iTunes and we expect it to be all but gone in Lion later this year.

We had a great time working on AF while it lasted. I would highly suggest folks who really care about great iTunes integration run out and get a new AppleTV. At $99 bucks the new platform Apple has is a steal and works flawlessly with the iTunes world regardless of what platform your music lives.

[richsadams]

Thanks very much for all of your hard work on AF...it was a worthy cause. I guess innovation is good, but when you're trying to keep up it can be, well, not so good.

I can vouch for our new Apple TV being as great as you say it is. iTunes and iPhoto are seamless and it actually streams Netflix better than our TiVo! Streaming from our iPad is pretty remarkable as well. (Not to mention the other options it offers.) Hopefully they'll be adding some apps to it one of these days. If/when they end up signing more networks and providers the Apple TV2 @ $99 will be nothing short of awesome.

Thanks again for checking in and letting us know how things are...and best of luck in all of your endeavors in the New Year!

[wmcbrine]

If you're officially abandoning AudioFaucet, would you consider open sourcing it?

[jim _h]

I hope to revive this thread :)

I used Harmonium quite a while ago, but it had problems and the installation/configuration was too tedious. I see a couple of new names here - Galleon, AudioFaucet. I am wondering what's available that

1. Is actually 'finished' or at least still in active development by people who intend to finish it.

2. Doesn't require an afternoon spent fiddling with .bat files and cofiguration scripts.

3. Doesn't depend on ITunes. I hate Itunes.

Am I just dreaming?

[windracer]

Galleon and AudioFaucet are both older than Harmonium and also like Harmonium are no longer actively being developed or supported.

[jim _h]

Sadly, it's looking more and more like Tivo is a dead end.

[jim _h]

Ok wait a minute. No sooner do I make the preceding pessimistic post, than I receive a promotional email from Tivo about new features that inlude, under a "Music" heading, "your computer's music library". Beneath that are icons for Pandora and Rhapsody, neither of which relate to my local files, and no further explanation.

What's this about? Is Tivo hoping to charge me a monthly fee to stream my own files? Good luck with that...

Or is this just another attempt to push creaky, creepy old Tivo Desktop?

[richsadams]

Ok wait a minute. No sooner do I make the preceding pessimistic post, than I receive a promotional email from Tivo about new features that inlude, under a "Music" heading, "your computer's music library". Beneath that are icons for Pandora and Rhapsody, neither of which relate to my local files, and no further explanation.

What's this about? Is Tivo hoping to charge me a monthly fee to stream my own files? Good luck with that...

Or is this just another attempt to push creaky, creepy old Tivo Desktop?That sounds strange. I doubt that it's any kind of fee service (they don't charge for Pandora, etc.) but I'd also like to know what that means. :confused:

[windracer]

What's this about? Is Tivo hoping to charge me a monthly fee to stream my own files? Good luck with that...
Pandora and Rhapsody are online music streaming services that you can access through the Premiere and other HD boxes. Pandora is free (and has a premium option, I believe) but Rhapsody is a subscription service.

On the Premiere, these options (along with TiVo Desktop) would appear under the Music & Photos menu. If you're running a third-party music app like AudioFaucet or Galleon they would appear under the Showcases menu on the Premiere.

Streaming your own files is free ... they're not trying to charge you. Sounds like maybe you got a newsletter or something advertising the different music options they offer.

[jim _h]

Pandora and Rhapsody are online music streaming services that you can access through the Premiere and other HD boxes. Pandora is free (and has a premium option, I believe) but Rhapsody is a subscription service.

On the Premiere, these options (along with TiVo Desktop) would appear under the Music & Photos menu. If you're running a third-party music app like AudioFaucet or Galleon they would appear under the Showcases menu on the Premiere.

Streaming your own files is free ... they're not trying to charge you. Sounds like maybe you got a newsletter or something advertising the different music options they offer.

Yes, I basically know what Pandora and Rhapsoday are about. But you say "streaming your own files is free". Are you talking about Tivo Desktop? If that's all the promo mailing was referring to, why didn't it just say so?

I tried Tivo Desktop quite a while back and it was an embarassingly dated piece of junk that bogged down my system even when it wasn't being used. Maybe there's an updated version? I have a Series 2. Is streaming of local files handled better on the Premiere?

[windracer]

Yes, I basically know what Pandora and Rhapsoday are about. But you say "streaming your own files is free". Are you talking about Tivo Desktop? If that's all the promo mailing was referring to, why didn't it just say so?

Having not seen this mailing, I couldn't say.

I tried Tivo Desktop quite a while back and it was an embarassingly dated piece of junk that bogged down my system even when it wasn't being used. Maybe there's an updated version? I have a Series 2. Is streaming of local files better on the Premiere?
It's been updated, but it's still basically the same thing you tried back then. And no, there's no difference with using TiVo Desktop and your S2 or the Premiere.

There are other alternatives to TiVo Desktop, like I suggested above, if you want to play your music library on your TiVo. Are any of them shiny and cool like the Pandora and Rhapsody interfaces? No. Do they work? Yeah.

[jim _h]

Do they work? Yeah.

From what I see on other threads, some of them work, maybe, some of the time. And when they don't, you're on your own.

I work on software - my Tivo is supposed to be entertainment. If I want to spend a day debugging network protocols I guess I could drive back to the office. It's disappointing that Tivo has never been able to get this together, and I certainly have no interest in upgrading to a Premier if it doesn't do things better and easier than the S2.

There. I feel better now.

[windracer]

From what I see on other threads, some of them work, maybe, some of the time. And when they don't, you're on your own.
None of these things are commercial packages. They're free apps from people writing them in their spare time. And when/if you do have problems, there are a lot of people here in TCF who will try to help.

I've been using Galleon since its JavaHMO days to play my music and have very few (if any) problems with it.

But, I'm not here to convince you ... do what you like.