ianto39 wrote:
> "must not support volume control through the standard interface",
> because it seemed like at some level the Sony is allowing iPeng to
> control the volume. I'm sure it's of no use to me, just thought you
> might find it intriguing, I'll either connect via the headphone socket
> as suggested or fall back on the more traditional Sneakerware method of
> volume adjustment.
>
That's interesting because it sheds some light onto what's happening.
Still not really of use for you, I'm afraid.
There are two volume levels iPeng and the Squeezeboxes use. One if the
volume. That's what you set using the slider.
The other is the player gain, that's what the server tells the player to
use.
The two can be different, for example if you use replay gain or some
fadeout happens (e.g. sleep fade or during the fadeout transition when
pressing "pause"; this has nothing to do with cross fade, though).
A Squeezebox only uses the player gain because the Squeezebox does all
volume control by itself.
This, though, is not how iPeng works. iPeng instead primarily uses the
volume. There are a number of reasons for this:
- By using the volume and tying the iOS "system volume" to it, the
output can be lossless/bit perfect. Unlike with the Squeezeboxes,
iPeng processes the volume information separate from the audio
information so if you lower the volume it does NOT automatically mean
that you alter the audio information. In the end the volume obviously
has to be set but an external audio processor (such as your Sony) can
chose to ignore the volume information or to only use it in the analog
domain to preserve the full digital audio quality.
- You can use the lock screen volume control and external remote
controls for iOS to set the volume and also the volume keys on the
device. This works because iPeng's volume slider is essentially a
system volume slider which directly acts on the system volume.
- You always only have a single volume control. If iPeng used some
other means of volume control through e.g. altering the audio
information or introducing a mixer you could not control the volume
through this level alone. You can see this when using SqueezeCast
which does control volume separately. In SqueezeCast the "100%" volume
level means "100% of the current system volume" which you have to set
separately using the iOS controls. So if iOS is set to 10% volume,
setting the volume in SqueezeCast to 100% still means you only get 10%
volume. This is very confusing for most people.
The system volume is also what your Sony _should_ use but obviously
doesn't.
Now... only using the volume doesn't _always_ work. One case is the
replay gain and fading mentioned above another one is remotely
controlling the volume like you are doing. The reason is that the server
doesn't immediately send the volume change to the player but only the
changed player gain. It only updates the volume after there have been no
more changes for several seconds so the volume change would be delayed
by up to 10s on the remote device. This makes adjusting the volume
remotely really hard.
For this reason, iPeng monitors whether the volume is different from the
player gain and if this is the case, it uses an additional mixer to
lower the volume to a lower player gain level. When the updated volume
information then comes in, iPeng sets the mixer back to 100% and adjusts
the system volume, this is what you sometimes briefly hear on the
device, too, because it can't be exactly timed.
This only applies to reducing the volume, though, because if the player
gain level is _higher_ than the volume iPeng immediately knows it's due
to a volume change, not one of the other factors because all other
factors only reduce the gain, never increase it to avoid clipping. Also,
since you can't increase the volume using a mixer (the mixer defaults to
100% in iPeng) it immediately increases the system volume and usually
does not have to adjust it later.
[/ipengacademy]
---
learn more about iPeng, the iPhone and iPad remote for the Squeezebox
and
Logitech UE Smart Radio as well as iPeng Party, the free Party-App,
at penguinlovesmusic.com
*New: iPeng 7, the Universal App for iOS 7*
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