Introducing Signal
Today we’re very excited to announce the first public release of Signal. Signal is a remote control application that allows you to drive your Mac or PC’s media player wirelessly from your iPhone or Windows Mobile Pocket PC.
What makes Signal different from the typical remotes you use to control your stereo or PC is that it’s smart and it works anywhere. It uses your device’s gorgeous screen to display album art for the current song. It shows you the entire playlist so you can pick the next song instead of hitting “next” over and over until you find something you like. It lets you browse and search your entire media library so you can find and play exactly what you want - right from the palm of your hand.
Since these devices support Wi-Fi, you can go anywhere in the house and still control your music. Skip songs from the next room. Select a new playlist from your deck. Pull out the phone at your next party and use it to queue up your favorite songs.
But the best way to see what Signal can do is to download the demo and try it for yourself.
For those wondering what has become of RemoteAmp, it has become part of Signal. Signal provides the full set of Pocket PC control capabilities from RemoteAmp and takes them even further by adding album art support, a new media library view, Windows Media Player support, and iTunes for Mac support. Existing RemoteAmp customers can upgrade to Signal at a 40% discount, just enter the email address you used to purchase RemoteAmp on the purchase page.
July 13th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
This is precisely the program I was hoping someone would make for my iPhone. Thanks so much! I’ll be gladly paying up tonight.
July 13th, 2007 at 8:15 pm
this is great! But what’s with the constant accessing of the network while it’s running?
July 13th, 2007 at 9:21 pm
Dude. Rock on. This is awesome. I have a BBQ tomorrow, I’m all over this. Not only will my idiot friends be envious of my iPhone, but now when they see this fine piece of software running, they’ll be sure to punch me in the face with jealousy!
July 13th, 2007 at 10:11 pm
john: Good question, I should put that in the FAQ. The application maintains a persistent connection to the server, which is why the icon spins all the time. It’s not actually transmitting data, just waiting for an event from the server application. The reason it does this is so that the page can update almost immediately when something changes. If you want to see it in action, try changing songs, adjusting the volume, or playing a new playlist from your PC. The iPhone interface should pick up the change right away.
Note that this doesn’t prevent the iPhone from entering sleep mode and doesn’t consume any additional power while in sleep (the connection is closed and re-opened when the device wakes).
July 14th, 2007 at 12:37 am
I like! But where’s the ratings?
July 14th, 2007 at 6:54 pm
Matt, fish: Thanks, glad to hear you’re enjoying the app!
Jessie: Ratings are available in the Pocket PC client, but didn’t quite make it into the iPhone interface for yesterday’s release. We’ll be posting an update this weekend that includes this along with a couple of other things.
July 14th, 2007 at 9:11 pm
I consistently get a crash in CBSDSocket::GetLocalIPAddress. I really want to purchase Signal but if the demo crashes on me, I can’t justify buying it. I have an intel mac mini. it’s also running apache, so i hope that doesn’t conflict.
July 14th, 2007 at 10:52 pm
We’re looking into the crash you mentioned - hope to have a fix within the next few days.
July 15th, 2007 at 12:14 am
Installed on my mac, on my iphone, All I get is a black screen with a note symbol on it. When I click the little note button in the upper left to bring up media library, nothing ever loads on the screen.
July 15th, 2007 at 8:27 am
Matt Stevens- had a family BBQ yesterday, controlled tunes to three express base stations flawlessly the whole time from the phone while manning the grill. Everyone impressed bigtime. Thanks!
Related note- found out burger grease wipes off the iPhone no problem.
July 15th, 2007 at 10:58 am
You guys should team up with the Telekinesis crew.
July 15th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
I’m having the same problem as Tim, I just get the black note and empty library. I’ve opened port 3569 and I have iTunes sharing on, personal sharing is on.
July 15th, 2007 at 10:44 pm
OK, call me an idiot, but can’t get this to work. Downloaded signal, it gave me a an address to access (192.168.2.1:3569), but when I enter that into my iphone safari just tries to access without success. If I enter that into my web browser on computer, it shows up just fine. I went into Sharing and opened up port 3569 without success. Any suggestions?
July 16th, 2007 at 12:58 am
Liking the app…but why can I not see “Shared” libraries? Any plans on adding the Full Left Menu hierarchy?
Thx…
B
July 16th, 2007 at 3:48 am
I just purchased Signal, and it’s BRILLIANT. Thank you!
July 16th, 2007 at 8:03 am
Hmm, I’ll buy it when I can rate songs, adjust the volume and browse my library by letter (search is great but not quite the same). Also, it’d be cool to be able to make playlists with it. At least one, ala On the Go.
July 16th, 2007 at 10:23 am
I have the same problem as TIm and Dave. I don’t see a response to their issue.
July 16th, 2007 at 11:11 am
Matt: You took your iPhone within splatter range of the grill? You’re a brave man
Other Matt: The 1.0.1 update should provide you with most of what you’re looking for. Song ratings are in (tap the album art once to view) and you can queue up songs and collections of songs into the “Signal Queue” playlist.
Tim, dave, jeff: By any chance are you running the application directly from the disk image or a location other than your Applications directory? This can prevent the application from being able to read the media library or save album art, which would explain the behavior you’re seeing.
If you continue to experience problems please send an email to support@alloysoft.com and we’ll help get it sorted out.
July 16th, 2007 at 11:37 am
I entered the web address Signal gave me on my iPhone. It won’t connect. It eventually quits and says Safari couldn’t open the page because the server stopped responding.
I tried entering the address in my computer’s browser and it works there.
July 16th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
To everyone having difficulties with getting this thing to work. Be sure the application is placed in your applications folders and you are not running it off a disk image. THis will allow signal to access your itunes music.
July 16th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
Greg: If you have your Mac’s firewall turned on you may need to open a port to allow your iPhone to connect to Signal on your system. To do this, open System Preferences, click Sharing, then the Firewall tab. If the firewall is on, click “New…” and select “Other” for the port name. Enter 3569 for TCP Port Numbers and Signal for the description, then click OK and try connecting again.
Matt: One other note I missed from your last comment, you actually can control volume with Signal. In the last update we re-positioned this an added volume up/down buttons to make it a little easier to use (tap the album art image to access).
BK: You’re right, currently the server can’t access shared libraries. I’ll look into adding this in a future update.
July 16th, 2007 at 7:37 pm
Hi Matt,
Good job.
I however cant seem to find the volume control for itunes from my iphone quite yet.I am using the demo ,is that why?
Thanks
July 16th, 2007 at 9:11 pm
Does Signal work over the internet?
July 16th, 2007 at 10:17 pm
Nofixedadderess: Tap once on the album art to bring up the additional controls (similar to the iPod application on iPhone). The volume bar will appear above the playback controls. You can tap anywhere in the bar to jump directly to a particular volume level, or tap on the volume up/down icons to raise or lower the volume by 10%
icomment: Technically it should be possible if you forwarded the port on your router, although I haven’t tried this myself. I’d be curious to hear your results if you decided to give it a try. It should work identically to running on your LAN, but browsing the media library may be a bit slow.
July 17th, 2007 at 12:35 am
Yeah thanks Mat,
i havent even put any music on iphone itself yet so had no idea bout the volume control.pretty sweet ,just like the rest pf the controls.
A few issues though that i have noticed,
1.Not all album art is being displayed.
2.any plans to introduce feature to play songs at any point in theormfile using tje slidernlike in itines?
Thanks again
July 18th, 2007 at 5:31 am
I bought the program yesterday, this is GREAT!!! Now i found even more love for my iphone. I have all of my family coming this weekend and i will definetely be showing it off. I tried it yesterday and i became the DJ, i hooked up my laptop to my Bose system and just started playing music through the iphone. I used the “trial” and it worked fine, sometimes it “froze” i guess so i just opened a new window and typed the already bookmarked ip address. I didnt find any volume controls though, so i thought maybe it was because i was using the “trial” version so i went ahead and paid the $29.95 but there was no difference. Still a great app cant see myself without it.
July 18th, 2007 at 9:47 am
JQ: If you tap on the album art the sub-controls will be displayed, here you’ll find the volume, song rating, and shuffle/repeat controls.
nofixedaddress: I’ll look into the album art, there may be an issue with artists/titles that contain special characters not being saved correctly. As for a scrubber bar for playback position, I’ll give this one some thought. It is a little more difficult to keep a playback position indicator synced up with the web interface without exchanging frequent messages to keep it reasonably accurate.
July 18th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
Great job. I’m trying the demo for Pocket PC. Landscape support is a must. I’d also like to see album art occupy the entire width (or height in landscape mode) of the screen - more like it does on the iPhone - currently there’s wasted screen space forming a border around the album art. Also, I wouldn’t be shy about trying to emulate more of your iPhone interface on Pocket PC. An optional full-screen mode that hides the top task bar and bottom menu bars (like when watching videos) would be a nice feature.
July 18th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
I have a few comments. I did have the issue with no album artwork and the artists not appearing (using a mac) - moving the app from the disk image corrected this issue. After that minor issue - I LOVE THIS APP!
I already recommended it to a friend of mine. This is very usual and you really seem to be supporting it.
I do see that some artwork will not display - like nofixedadderess. I’ll send an email via your Contact tab with my observations.
July 19th, 2007 at 6:42 am
I’m trying to run the pocket pc demo on an Acer N311.
Nothing happens when I press connect after entering ip:port manually (auto discover mode scans for a few seconds before saying the server can’t be found).
If I browse to ip:port with the pocket internet explorer I get the option to install the client software, so there seems to be no firewall problem.
Any ideas?
July 19th, 2007 at 7:03 am
I’d also like to request full support for VGA Pocket PCs. It runs on my VGA Pocket PC, but the control buttons etc. are obviously designed for QVGA and appear blocky under VGA. Thanks!
July 19th, 2007 at 7:26 am
This is a fantastic product. Been looking at several others, and this is by far the best UI.
One piece of feedback: a major grip I have is that you can’t do a “Play All”. If you navigate to an Artist, or an Album, or a Genre, you can’t simply say play all tracks within that section. Would add greatly to the UI.
Good product overall!
July 21st, 2007 at 10:43 am
This is a great product, but I do have a few issues/suggestions (iPhone version). First of all my media library shows nothing, and when I search for a song I know I have I get no results. Secondly, I have a rather large library - would there be a way to implement a method of browsing alphabetically? Much like the sidebar A-Z control in the contacts on the iPhone. The way it is currently implemented it could take forever to find a certain band or song. Third is there a way to at least show the playlists we have created in iTunes? This would make things so my easier, especially for those of us with large libraries.
Regardless you have created an amazing product and I know its in its infancy, so I only expect it will get better with time!
Thanks, Meltdown
July 22nd, 2007 at 5:18 pm
What devices will Signal work on other than pockect PCs? i.e. will it work on PDAs also? I want the remote control capability, but I don’t want to purchace an expensive phone. What is the cheapest device I can get that will use Signal, and still look cool?
July 22nd, 2007 at 10:27 pm
Great product! I am just trying the demo and will definitely buy. Two questions:
(1) If I have multiple Airport Express units running in my house, can I switch between them using the client?
(2) I am having seeing any internet radio options using the client. What’s the trick?
Thanks!
July 22nd, 2007 at 10:51 pm
@Todd- I don’t know if this is the official way to play internet radio via Signal, but what I do is I have a playlist set up with all the internet stations I listen to (they can be dragged into playlists just like songs on your hard drive can). I can switch between stations just like switching between songs in a normal playlist. Works great-
July 23rd, 2007 at 1:51 pm
Thanks, Matt. I tried this but I’m still not able to see the playlist on my iPhone (although I can see it in iTunes on my computer). Not sure why I am having trouble…
July 23rd, 2007 at 4:56 pm
$19.95????
July 25th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
I still can’t get album artwork to show on my iPhone. I paid for the full version but it looks no different than the demo version. I have Signal in my application folder and i have no firewall set up but just to be sure i opened the port everybody else has been talking about and still no artwork, search function or anything else. It does work, but no better than the trial version. What gives?
July 28th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
i can’t get Signal to play a track from the “artist/genre/playlist” navigation screen
this worked at first, then stopped working after a reboot of the mac mini hosting my music. (may also have been caused by my random pressing of the “plus” buttons next to the tracks, which I was thinking might queue up songs in the “Signal Queue” playlist in iTunes.
the rest of the system seems to work. any ideas?
July 30th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
Hi all,
I’m using the demo version on win2005 PDA (HP HX2790) with Winamp 5.35 on my PC but I can’t see any album art, despite all my mp3 have ID3 v2 tags with album art included in the mp3. What are the requirements for seeing album arts ?
Best Regards
August 17th, 2007 at 3:19 am
This is a great product and works superbly, I also have a couple of suggestions though.
Add the ability to choose a smaller font size and include a side scroll bar on the main playlist window. A lot of my songs appear in the playlist as eg. “Rage Against The Machi” and then the description is cut off, so I cannot scroll across to see the actual song title. As mentioned above, a landscape mode would also help.
I use my phone at parties to control the music, I set up a huge playlist in Winamp and leave it on random-play. It is great to ask somebody what they would like to hear and play them the track within seconds.
However, it would be even better if multiple tracks could be enqueued and those tracks would take priority and be the next tracks to play. This means you could ask 10 people what their favourite tracks are, enqueue them all up and then get back to the party
Once the enqueue’d tracks had completed the player would resume with the random play of the whole playlist.
This would be similar to people selecting songs on a jukebox in a pub. Their songs take priority, but once they are completed the jukebox carries on playing random tracks. I realise this may be fiddly to program, as you would need a mini-playlist held on the phone that takes priority, but it would be a great feature
Please keep up with the improvements, this software is the best bit of technology I own!
August 30th, 2007 at 2:18 am
I think the software is a wonderful product. I hope that a new update support chinese simple.
September 1st, 2007 at 12:52 pm
Hi;
I just bought an IPhone and downloaded the demo version of signal for the Mac. I can access my server but then I get the black note and empty library. I am running the application from the applications folder and have turned off the firewall. Any help would be appreciated.
September 2nd, 2007 at 8:08 am
This program was so much cooler before it went mac
go RemoteAmp
September 5th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
I really fell behind on the comments! Let’s take care of that.
Dyvim: Options are definitely being looked at for improving the PPC interface, including landscape support and making it more touch-friendly like the iPhone interface.
Magge: I’m likely much too late replying to your issue, if you do happen to see this please send an email to support@alloysoft.com and we’ll help investigate the problem.
Robert: There was a bug with displaying album art for songs with metadata that included extended characters, this has been fixed in the upcoming 1.0.2 update.
Timbo: It’s possible to do a Play All now, to do this tap on the plus icon next to the artist name and select “Play Now”. This will place all tracks by that artist in the Signal Queue playlist and begin playing them.
Meltdown: I believe the empty media library issues should be resolved with the current version, please let us know if you still see this behavior. As for improved library navigation, this is being worked on and will likely incorporate an A-Z jump as you suggest.
Scott: Any Pocket PC that supports Pocket PC 2002 or any Pocket PC version of Windows Mobile will work. Some of these can be found for very reasonable prices used as Pocket PCs have been out for a while. Currently no other type of PDA is supported.
Todd: We would love to be able to provide the ability to switch between Airport Express units. I mean really love to provide this. Unfortunately Apple does not offer any clean way to do this via their iTunes programming interface. I have been asking them to add this for years, but so far they have not chosen to do so. If they ever do we will be sure to add support for it.
As for radio stations, these are not well supported currently (although the playlist work-around Matt suggests should work). The problem is that iTunes does not expose the radio station list until the user actually expands the category, as it downloads this information on demand. We should be able to have Signal detect radio stations that exist within a user playlist however, I’ll look into better organizing these within the media library.
greg: I think we got this resolved for you via email, please let me know if you’re still running in problems with album art.
Nick: Can you try this again with the current version and send us an email if it’s still not working for you?
Neo: I’ve sent you an email, let’s see if we can do some debugging to figure this one out.
Mike: Thanks for the comments! These are some great ideas. I’ve been experimenting with alternate displays for the playlist view and think I’ve come up with something that should make it easier to view. As for a “Play Next” queue, I agree this would be a useful addition but you’re right - it would be a little tricky to implement properly. The risk would be in throwing off the shuffle order of the playlist, as you might end up skipping over a lot of songs or start repeating songs again. I’ll do some experimentation here, this might be something we can work in.
Carlos: There are a couple of things to try here. The simplest is to restart Signal on your Mac and refresh the page on your iPhone. If tapping on the media library or playlist icons do nothing at all, you may have JavaScript disabled which Signal’s web interface requires. To find out, from the iPhone’s home screen tap Settings > Safari and verify that the JavaScript option is set to on. I’ll also send you an email to follow up on.
Simon: I’m curious, what do you think the app has lost by adding Mac support? Both Windows and the Pocket PC are still supported, with many new features added (see the release notes). Both platforms will continue to be supported going forward, as when cross-platform development is done right it is really not hard to deliver an app for both Windows and the Mac.
September 9th, 2007 at 5:32 am
Hi sound comes out hp laptop not iPhone. Tapped and used volume on iphone it adjust volume on laptop, but no sound on iphone
September 9th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
Protz: Signal acts as a remote control for your Mac or PC’s media player, it does not stream music directly to your iPhone. If you’re looking for a way to stream music to your stereo, Signal works great with dedicated streaming solutions like the Airport Express.
September 30th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
Hey Matt - I’ve wanted something like this (that actually looks good and works well for quite awhile) Definitely well worth the $30 - well priced, reasonable.
One thing that would be nice to add would be a few preferences - on that list you might consider:
1. How many results to display per page (track lists specifically)
2. Size of vertical height for each clickable result - I personally would experiment with smaller, while other people with hotdog fingers may enjoy a wider bar to click on.
3. I also support expedited A-Z searching as others have mentioned
Finally, I still haven’t figured out how to adjust the EQ (I think your site mentioned that you can do that?) Its not a common task, but I’m just playing around with what it can do at this point since I just bought it. And, I also haven’t figured out how to remove items within the signal queue. Is this possible? I might be being dumb, but if so it isn’t as obvious as it could/should be.
Oop, one more - re: AirPort Express, I can have many of these throughout the house all listening to the same stream simultaneously, is that correct?
Beyond that - love it, nice work, look forward to the updates and have already recommended it to 2 friends who are going to make the purchase, too!
Real nice - if you need any UI help feel free to let me know!
October 2nd, 2007 at 8:38 am
JayDeKay: Thanks, glad to hear you like the app! Let’s see if I can cover your questions.
EQ modification and queue item removal are currently only available in the Pocket PC client, the site should be updated to call this out. Support for removing queue items will be coming in a future update for the iPhone interface, adding the EQ is still questionable. The EQ controls are not very often used and the challenge with things like this is how to add them to the interface without cluttering things up. The EQ may also not be very usable on the iPhone/iPod interface as Mobile Safari doesn’t allow the drag/slide gesture for anything except scrolling the entire page.
The number of items used per page is more about performance than preference - the content is split into pages to ensure that each section loads fast no matter how many total results are available. I think the updates being made to the media library interface are going to make this much less of an issue. I’d put the item height in a similar category. Instead of allowing the height to be made tiny, update the interface to make navigation easy so the user can get to what they’re looking for fast and have a large enough target area to tap with confidence (even after a few drinks).
As for streaming to multiple Airport Express units, Apple states that 3-6 units can be streamed to at once “depending on environmental conditions”. I can’t say exactly what the real-world limits of that are, but in my experience it works pretty well. If Apple could cut down on the buffer time a bit they’d be perfect.
October 3rd, 2007 at 12:06 pm
just a note to add to the knowledge base I have an htc tytn 11. Signal works great with winamp but no media library. Don’t know why I see others have had similar problems.
October 5th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
Hi - regarding selection of airport speakers. Airfoil seems to have found a way to do that… so maybe apple is exposing somehow the speaker selection…just a thought.
October 6th, 2007 at 9:40 am
Dan: Airfoil is a little different, as it is actually in control of the audio being streamed to the different Airport Express units. What Signal is attempting to do is let iTunes continue to manage the streaming and just instruct it as to what speakers it should use. With that said, if all else fails one option may be to interface with a program like Airfoil to get the speaker control we’re looking for.
October 10th, 2007 at 8:18 am
Thanks for the replies regarding the ‘Play Next’ suggestion
Does the winamp API expose the JumpToFile methods?
I have just installed winamp 5.5 and the built-in JumpToFile plugin does pretty much what i was asking for, it allows you to add selected items to a ’subqueue’ and plays all the items in the subqueue first, removing each one as they are played. Once the subqueue is empty, it then resumes the main playlist, even in shuffle mode
If the winamp API allows you to add to the JumpToFile subqueue, then you can let winamp do all the work
October 10th, 2007 at 10:59 am
Mike: I’ll look into what can be done here. I think we can come up with some kind of solution for Winamp - its development APIs have always been great, going all the way back to version 2.1. Which unfortunately is more than I can say for iTunes at version 7, where it is still not possible to directly position an item within a playlist through the API :-\
October 11th, 2007 at 6:35 pm
I love this application. It’s what I’ve been waiting for since the Airport Express was first released. I even purchased an iPod Touch just to run it…
That said, express base station selection and removal of play list items would be great - I know they’re currently not supported/possible. Have you considered the method used by the iDisco extension to Salling Clicker for Airport Express selection? It smacks of a fudged workaround, but it does work. I have no idea how you might integrate it with your current (impeccable) UI though…
October 12th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
John: Thanks! Playlist item removal is easy, in fact it already exists in the server and Pocket PC interface, just needs to be hooked up for the iPhone/iPod UI.
Quite a bit of time has gone into looking at various work-arounds for Airport Express selection. Everything that works is, at best, horrible. Still, this is the missing piece to make Signal a real whole-house audio control solution. I think you’ll like what’s coming in 1.1.
October 13th, 2007 at 3:01 am
Tried the demo out and it all worked first time so I bought the full version and amazing it went into fully function mode without any problems with Airport Express and a G4 Powerbook!
I am using Signal with an Ipod Touch. Is ‘Coverflow’ and ‘Shuffle’ in the pipeline for development as these are the features I and others use most in Itunes.
October 13th, 2007 at 11:51 am
Terry: Glad to hear it! Toggling shuffle for the current playlist is available by tapping once on the album art to bring up the additional controls, then tapping on the shuffle icon. There were a couple of bugs found with this in the current release, these have been fixed for the next update.
A real version of Cover Flow on the iPod itself is probably not doable within Mobile Safari due to its limited animation capabilities. If you meant that you’d like to be able to toggle the Cover Flow view on the Mac you’re controlling, that’s something that could be looked into.
October 14th, 2007 at 9:23 am
Hi Matt & All,
I’ve seem remoteamp 2 in action, so I’m interested in this descendant. (FYI, I am only interested in the pocketPC version, and using winamp to test your demo.)
Here are some of my thoughts/questions, I hope you can address them, perhaps just saying why you went for some design choice.
1/ I don’t have my music library tagged that well, and consequently browsing through my library is pretty bad. I’m missing the file browser where I can just see dirnames. Will that come back anytime soon? (remoteamp 2 has it)
2/ Scrolling through tracks/albums/what have you is annoying since the list doesn’t update while I drag the scrollbar. I don’t mind that it would update slowly, but finding a track in my huge music collection is a pain.
3/ Maybe it’s just me but I can’t find any useful playlist management. I want to clear the current playlist, move items around, multi-select items (i.e. dragging my stylus across the items), etc etc etc.
4/ I’m missing all the tree-viewing options, I really liked the collapsable tree views of remoteamp.. gone.. or am I missing a setting?
And the minor things:
5/ How does the system find the album art? What database is used here and is there anything I can do to improve my tagging to help this along?
6/ When browsing I find the icon you use for ‘a track’ strange. A cube? Why not make it a black ‘note’ item. It’s a bit counterintuitive, esp for people not familiar with the thing.
7/ Id love to see compression type (flac/mp3/aac) and bitrate on the interface.
8/ When browsing for songs to add to the playlist, why not display more info than song title? Track lenght? artist? We have a slick interface capable of scrollbars.
October 15th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
Marten: Thanks for the detailed feedback! Let’s see if I can answer your questions.
First off, it’s worth noting that there has indeed been a design shift since RemoteAmp was first released - almost 5 years ago now. At that time, people who used Winamp (or MP3s at all) and Pocket PCs were generally power users who could handle and make use of every possible option, now matter how complicated the application became as a result.
Since then, digital media has moved into the mainstream and the idea of driving your music throughout the house appeals to a lot more people. Many of these people are not power users and for them complexity is not OK, it’s confusing. So one of the goals for Signal was to make it more accessible. Make as much of the configuration as possible automatic. Simplify media library access. And in some cases, remove or choose not to add features where only a small percentage of users knew what they were for. This is a tough transition for the app, but I believe it’s the right call. So with that said, on to your questions:
1. I think you have a couple options here. Winamp can be configured to use the directory and file name as the metadata source for its media library. Since Signal uses Winamp’s media library, if this can be made to work for you then you should be set. Another option is to use a program like Tag&Rename to clean all the metadata based on your directory structure.
2. Scrolling came down to a choice of either having a long load time and using a lot of memory to pull the entire view in at once, or just pulling data in as needed but losing the ability to have scrolling update live. For larger libraries pulling in the full list is really not an option due to the delay. I think what’s needed here to complete it is an A-Z jump. From there using page up/down via the scroll bar should allow for faster navigation.
3. When using the “Play Now” option the current queue is automatically cleared. Currently there isn’t support for moving an item in the playlist or selecting multiple items at once.
4. Right, the tree view was replaced in favor of the drill-down approach used currently.
5. For Winamp album art comes from a couple of places. First, if you have album art files stored in the same directory as your music Signal will pick this up. This is highly configurable - if you have album art stored this way and it doesn’t seem to be detected, let me know what filename format you use and I can tell you how to configure the app to support it.
If nothing is found locally the server will then search the internet for the best match it can find. This is based on the metadata and fairly fuzzy, but the more accurate metadata it has to work with the better the odds of it finding a match.
6.
Yes, “generic cube for generic media item”’s days are numbered
7. This one I have to say will probably stay out. I had considered adding it at one time, but it falls pretty squarely in the category of most users not knowing what it’s for.
8. Horizontal scroll bars are generally not a good thing to add to a UI unless really needed. One thing I do think would be useful to add here is to display the artist for items that have the same name.
Hope that answers some of your questions, thanks again for the feedback!
October 16th, 2007 at 3:35 am
Hey Matt,
I appreciate you taking the time to answer, but beware, I love a good discussion.
Seriously though, it’s good to hear that you consciously made some choices here and there.. it’s a pity (but maybe just for me) that some choices would not be mine.
Indeed, I am a power user, however I would not-so-subtly point out that windows ME was one of the best examples of failed simplification.. while I agree that your app needs to be welcoming for first-time users, it is a pity that some users (like me) now bump into new walls once they get the hang of the app and start to go ‘hmm, it would really be awesome if I could ‘. MS now kicks Apple’s behind simply because they realised taking options out is not the answer. Hiding them is.
That said, it does seem to me that your whole overhaul of the app, and new choices (for example using winamp’s DB instead of your own in-house) have upsides and downsides. Maybe it is simply a huge effort for you to implement (say) the file browser again. If so, then I understand.
Else, please just give us an ‘enable advanced functions’ in the settings page because well, how sure are you that people got confused by these added functions?
Now. On to the points.
1/ Regarding a FS browser vs tag-based finding: I do tag, and rename. But the effort to make one concerted and uniformly tagged dir structure is gargantuan. (I always liked that word, never get to use it much in conversation). With your app I keep on finding myself in the situation that I just -know- I have some new song in there, and I -know- its in ‘Incoming’, but I can’t find it. I have 3 different Tori Amos dirs. (silly CDDB people with their different naming systems have my 3 CDs all tagged subtly different)
2/ Regarding the scrolling: well Id love the full structure transfer for full and accurate scrolling like in remoteamp, (see my point about options) but how about a compromise then: show the starting letter (preferrably: 2 letters) of where I am.. I.e. I drag halfway, it shows ‘MA’, I drag up, it shows ‘FE’.. then at least I have some inkling where I am, when I release the scrollbar.
3/ Regarding playlist editing: I assume this is something you’re still working on? Something can be said for actually editing playlists on your PC, not on your ‘handheld device’ but may I remind you how much flak Apple has received for demanding this of users? People want to change playlists on the fly (I know I do, and my guests do!), and right now adding files to the playlist quickly is out. The drag-select stuff for changing playlist order I can do without (but would miss!) but right now adding one track to the playlist takes a click-and-hold, then a click instead of one drag. Not nice.
It’s in pretty much every modern tree-navigating system (windows explorer, websites) so people know how it works.. and it is simply much much MUCH more efficient to navigate. Just open/collapse to where you want to go, then drag what you see to the playlist, instead of the tap-and-hold stuff… ack..
4/Regarding the collapsing tree gone missing: well, give it as an option?
5/ Kudos on the album art stuff, it’s pretty efficient and surprised me a bit. I would prefer volume control and position to be on the art viewer though, not a click, then another click to drag down the volume. Interface efficiency and all that, y’know? As for what files it uses for album art, why don’t you just let it cycle through all jpegs in the album’s dir? Anyway it works pretty well already.
6/ Good, cause my cubes are too good for this.
7/ Then, perhaps let me design my own skins? It’s not a biggie I guess..
8/ Same thing regarding more info in the browser.. if a user wants it, a multi-headered view would be much slicker..
October 17th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
Looks like it might be time to start up a forum!
Let me go through your points…wait, did you just compare Signal to Windows ME??
1. I’ll put some thought into how directory-based navigation may be able to be supported easily. What I don’t want to do here is add an option that causes other things that depend on meta-data (like album art retrieval) to break. With that said, the media library access format that Signal uses is very flexible and is in fact actually based on virtual directories like “\Music\Artists\”
2. A lot of time went into trying to get the scrolling to update live, because this was something I also really liked about RemoteAmp. It just turned out not to be doable without interrupting the display, resulting in smooth scrolling for a certain portion and then a sudden jump to a new section, or other forms of inconsistent behavior.
3. I may have one tip to help you here - you can double-tap on any song to add it to the queue, the tap-and-hold to add should only be required for adding an entire artist or album. Repositioning within the playlist is being looked at in the updated UI.
4. Right now there aren’t any plans to add the tree view back. It pretty much requires horizontal scrolling, which I’m really trying to stay away from. I know that you’d really like to see it, but this one comes down to a business decision (see 7 & 8). If there is a lot of feedback asking for a tree view it can of course be reconsidered.
5. A UI refresh for the Pocket PC client is in the works that will consolidate the album art and playback controls. As for cycling through all images in a directory, this would be a problem for users that keep all of their music in one directory.
7 & 8. The issue with putting in options like this is that they have to be supported. The means they have to be tested for every release and as changes are made to the application it has to be designed to take these features into account. The expense for this can add up quickly, and if only a small number of users are making use of such a feature then one has to seriously consider if the feature is worth the cost of supporting it. Given the choice, I’d rather leave a feature out then put it in and later decide to remove it. This can make users unhappy, such as when they fall in love with a tree view only to find it has been so coldly taken from them
October 19th, 2007 at 8:05 am
Awesome bit of software love it!
Is the coverflow option a possibility (to display on iphone) or unrealistic??
October 19th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
A real Cover Flow interface is probably not doable within the web-based interface - Safari really can’t do that kind of animation. When the real iPhone SDK is available this may be more realistic.
October 31st, 2007 at 5:15 pm
Hi Matt,
I just downloaded the demo and unfortunately I get an empty Media Library.
Other items like the song currently played and the main playlist are shown correctly. I’m running Winamp 5.5 on XP SP2.
The Media Library is empty within any browser (Firefox, IE) of a remote PC and also within Signal on an iPaq PPC2003SE.
Any Idea?
Thanks
November 3rd, 2007 at 2:18 pm
Update:
According to log Signal was unable to find the Winamp Library in “Application Data” in the personal profile.
This might be due to the fact that I installed Winamp 5.5 without uninstalling the prevoiusly installed version which probably held the library in the program dir. Anyhow, I redid a clean install of Winamp 5.5 and everything is fine.
-Frank-
November 6th, 2007 at 10:14 pm
Hi Frank,
Glad to hear you got it working! I think your suspicion is correct, Signal was likely picking up on the previous Winamp installation and looking for the media library in a different location. There is a way to point the application as a specific Winamp installation - just let me know if you run into any other issues.
November 13th, 2007 at 2:15 am
Hey Matt!
I just discovered Signal and so far it seems to be a GREAT PRODUCT!
Two things would make it a huge improvement…
1) Ability to acess shared libraries (so I don’t have to consolidate all my computer’s tunes onto one poor hard drive!)
2) Coverflow!
Also, any way to make the volume control a little more responsive?
Thanks, I’ll be giving this baby a more thorough audition!
MrWizzer
November 14th, 2007 at 12:44 am
Thanks! Shared library access is available in the Windows version of the app and will be coming to the Mac version too. Cover Flow isn’t really possible through the web interface, but I’ll be eager to experiment with this if it’s available when the iPhone SDK is released next year.
November 14th, 2007 at 10:42 pm
I downloaded Signal and installed it and went to the address on my iPhone the box gave me. I can see my content on the phone but I can not control it at all. I need some help. This app. looks awesome so I am very eager to get it working.
November 16th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
Hi Matt!
Just purchased signal. Love it! Nice work!
Perusing your release notes, I discovered, thanks to you, that one can have iTunes load a different library by holding the option key when starting iTunes.
So, I can see and choose the playlists from the alternate library in iTunes, but Signal is still only displaying the original local playlists. : (
Is there a way to see the playlists that correlate to the alternate itunes library in Signal?
Also, if you can’t incorporate Coverflow for now, do you think you could find a way to let Signal browse Albums via album artwork, just without the fancy flipping animation Coverflow has? That would really bring back the good old days of browsing your album collection.
Thanks again for a great ap!
Mike
November 18th, 2007 at 9:13 pm
Jake: I’m going to take a stab here and guess that you’re using Signal on Windows with iTunes. If that’s true, try pulling up the Signal settings window on the computer and press Ctrl+Shift+D. This should bring up the application’s debug log. If you see a message in red that reads something like “iTunes is not installed or not accessible”, you have probably run into a situation where iTunes did not properly register its programming interface when it was last installed or upgraded. To fix this, exit out of iTunes, Signal, and any other application that interfaces with iTunes, then re-install iTunes. This should take care of the problem for you.
MrWizzer: Have you restarted Signal since selecting a new library in iTunes? Currently Signal doesn’t monitor for library location changes while it is running, but will check for a new library the next time it is started.
I’ve been thinking about how to better incorporate album artwork into the web interface, I’ll be playing around for a few ideas for this post-1.1.
Thanks for the comments!
December 4th, 2007 at 10:51 pm
This app is great! I love it! Thanks! I agree with some of the other people who posted here, It would be nice to be able to browse using album art. It would also be cool if it also streamed the music or video to the phone too.(maybe as an option?) I have some other ideas that I think would be cool too but I won’t go into that right now but just had to say Thanks! I think this is a great product and I have been missing something like this since I got my iPhone. I used to have a Sony ericsson k790a that I liked alot and I used to use the bluetooth to do similar things. Sure wish that apple would open up the bluetooth capabilities on the iPhone!
December 6th, 2007 at 1:19 am
Flint: Thanks! Streaming is on the list for consideration, but no promises yet.
December 25th, 2007 at 2:59 pm
DUDE THIS APP IS BAD!!!!!!!!!
I INSTALLED SIGNAL ON MY WINDOWS XP SP2, BASED VAIO LAPTOP, AND THEN READ THE BLOGS ON THIS PAGE TO MAKE SURE I DID EVERYTHING RIGHT. I THEN ENTERED THE URL ONTO MY IPHONE AND SIGNAL WORKED ON THE FIRST SHOT AWESOME. THIS IS MY FIRST APP I GOT FOR MY IPHONE AND I LOVE IT. I CAN LAY IN MY BED AND JUST CONTROL MY MUSIC RIGHT FROM MY IPHONE.
LOVE IT MAN, AND AM GOING TO PURCHASE AS SOON AS I CAN, THANKS GUYS!
January 15th, 2008 at 8:18 am
So I upgraded my Winamp Remote to Signal. I have it on a HTC Tynt in combination with Windows XP, iTunes and Airport Express. At first I installed on the SD card but that gave a lot of hangs, very slow response and a queue that you couldn’t remove and gets everlasting longer. So don’t try this at home. Reinstalling in main memory works much better. When switching it on it sometimes takes only 3 secs to contact the network and update the screen. My compliments for this. This is however not always the case. Sometimes (I’m trying to find out why) it acts extremely slow and inresponsive. The lines appear in the queue one by one with 10 secs in between. The lbrary is then inresponsive for several minutes.
When I set the up/down keys(=scroll-wheel) to control the volume, they keep doing this while browsing media. This is not the case with the left/right-buttons, These can be used for both. In Winamp Remote this worked all fine. All hardware keys could be keymapped and when browsing be used for browsing your media. Now I have to use my stylus This is realy no improvement.
Request:
When my mobile pocket pc phone gets a call, pause the music ? Would be very nice since the keymapping doesn’t work at that time. Keeping the keymapping going is also a nice solution.
Ability to copy the Signal queue to a playlist ?
An airfoil-like control would be very nice. I’m the first to upgrade when you fix this !
May 10th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
Hi Matt,
Congratulation for a great product, Love it!
I’m using O2 PDA with WM6 Professional and link it with Winamp.
Although all my music are kept in albums, with the respective album art, it doesn’t show in my PDA.
I just see it shows once, after which its gone again.
Can you please tell me what do i need to do as it really annoys me.
Thank you very much for the assistance.
Regards, R
May 11th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Reza: Thanks! Currently Signal doesn’t support native reading of album art through Winamp, but if an internet connection is available it will use this to search for album art online. If album art is available on the file system (e.g. folder.jpg) this will be picked up as well. This is highly configurable, so if the album art is stored in image files on the file system Signal can probably be configured to read it. I’ll also look into the Winamp APIs to see if these has been updated to expose album art.
September 12th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Hey Matt,
I’m trying to resurrect Signal after a time away. I’ve got it controlling iTunes on my Mac Pro, but the songs aren’t coming through the output jack on my Airport Express.
Any thoughts?
Thanks,
Mike