[JeremyLaurenson]

Almost ready with V3.0 and native Android Device support.
I just need a few folks who have Android based players like Astell&Kern to volunteer to test... any takers?

This is a demo of 3.0 working with the Onkyo DP-X1

[VIDEO]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JeNxG5aM2zY[/VIDEO]

 

[JeremyLaurenson]

Its not all in there. Please disconnect, run Dapper, connect and then submit

Any updates?

 

[JeremyLaurenson]

Dapper 3.0 has just been released on the App store. This version, if you install the Dapper Scripts supports Android devices directly. 
 
Ding Dong, Syncmate is no longer needed for Astell and Kern, Onkyo, Pioneer and other players! You save $30 or $40 bucks!
 
As usual, we hope you test first by downloading the free version on our site www.map-pin.com to test first as well as for the full user manual.
 
 
Here is an example of setup with an Onkyo DP-X1 (Android based player) in both MTP mode (normal Android) and also switching to direct-to-SDCard sync for speed:
 
 

 

[JeremyLaurenson]

ffmpeg -i <source file in iTunes> -acodec  libmp3lame -c:v copy -b:a 256k <destination on DAP>.mp3
 
Version 3.02 is under construction. In this we have a new option to leverage ffmpeg to compress music as its stored on the DAP so that you may choose to sync the library down when syncing to a smaller, on-the-go DAP, especially when youre using multiple Daps with Dapper
 
You can currently override the rate - default is 256k

 

[Moulderine]

Hey Jeremy,

I store playlist in folders of different hierarchy. Is it possible to have Dapper provide relative paths as follows:

The file listing in the M3u/M3U8 files have to be relative to the location of the playlist. So, in the case of your above example:
SD Card > Library > Artist first Alphabet > Artist > Album > musicfile.mp3
SD Card > Playlist > Playlist folder 1 > Playlist folder 2 > playlistfile.m3u

The first listing in the M3U should be:
..\..\..\..\Library\A\Abba\Gold\DancingQueen.mp3

where the .. means to go up a directory. Since your playlist file is 4 directories down (Playlist=1, Playlist folder 1=2, Playlist Folder 2=3, playlist folder=4), you would need to go up 4 to return to the root of the card. Then, you would go back down into the listing of the file structure until you reach the file.​

I manually did the above and found it worked in the case of Cyain N3 DAP. Credit goes to @docholliday for resolution and explanation. Thanks!

 

[JeremyLaurenson]

By coincidence I got my new NW-A35 today (very impressed so far!) and have managed to get it working in Dapper.

Jeremy - I have submitted my config for you.

@HSL8217 - here are my settings:

I have an NW-A35 and can not get it to recognize playlists right of the bat - did you get yours working with playlists using this config, 0rangutan?

 

[Surf Monkey]

Jeremy:

Thanks for this great software!

After a few false starts with my DP-X1A and Dapper for Mac I finally gave up transferring my library (180gig) directly to the DAP. Pulling the card and using an external SD card reader caused the transfer to happen 4x faster and not a single error or re-try.

The depth of features available in Dapper is excellent. It really makes my DAP a lot more useful, and I'm not even working with playlists yet. Just loading everything in one big folder (for now.)

Kudos.

 

[JeremyLaurenson]

Hey all,

Updated Dapper to 3.12 in the App Store. Over the past few weeks I have been working to get rid of two bugs which caused issues with crashes in some machines. I am hopeful these have been squashed.

3.12 has also been re-optimized for faster processing again, and is best under OSX 10.12

Thanks

 

[rsommerer]

Hello everyone, Hi Jeremy,

this is my first post in this forum. I have mainly created a new profile on this site because I am using Dapper and found this thread to be a useful source of information for this program. First of all, it is of course a very helpful companion with our Fiio X1 and Fiio X3. It is working reliably, results are pretty much (see below) as expected, and it is affordable. Still, there is at least one question I would like to ask - maybe anyone who subscribed to this thread may have an answer to it.

What I want to do is pretty simple: I would like to transfer my music files in my iTunes Library via Dapper and via the Dapper-playlists I created there. That works fine most of the time, only those files that are in any way protected are not copied. That´s what I would expect from such a program. Additionally, I would like Dapper to create a playlist based - exactly - on the order in the source playlist located in the iTunes library. That doesn´t seem to work right now, at least not on the mentioned Fiio X1 and Fiio X3. Both players get recognized by Dapper on first connection, and I haven´t messed around with the playlist settings. Assuming that this would create playlists based exactly on those in my iTunes library I was a little surprised, that the playlists that ended up on the players did not match the order of those in the iTunes library.

Now I kind of got to know via the Fiio forums, that they are using some special formular to sort the playlists on their devices (not all playlists are automatically sorted in the same manner)? I got that impression from their posts in their forums, but that may only apply to those playlists created on the devices themselves. In my understanding, transferred playlists should be able to be left unchanged, and therefore display the content as set by sources such as the playlists in the iTunes Library.

Maybe this topic has already been discussed, and maybe you have a quick solution for this problem. But it bothers me - as far as playlist order goes, am I doing or getting something wrong?

 

[JeremyLaurenson]

Welcome!

We may be talking about a few different things here, but let me fill everyone in.

Order of songs n the iTunes Playlist:
iTunes playlists thing is actually tricky because the playlists are read by Dapper from the .xml file in your iTubes Library... which is not always saved to the file in the same order it shows in iTunes. Its saved in the order that the songs were placed into the playlist, not the sort order.
So, for example, you may create a new playlist with three Songs, Song 1 by AC/DC, Song2 by ZZTop and then Song 3 by Norah Jones. That playlist will be written Song1, Song2, Song3 to the xml file. If you sort by Artist, youre actually not changing the order of the playlist, youre just sorting the display by artist.
This becomes ever sillier when using Smart Playlists which don't necessarily update well either.
So, to know the REAL order, click the playlist, then select View->Sort by Playlist Order

Now, if youre talking about how the actual playlists are sorted on the device, thats entirely up to the device.

 

[rsommerer]

Hi Jeremy,

thank you for the warm welcome, and the useful insight into how iTunes really handles playlists. Your description is logical to me. I know this kind of file-treatment from other software products, which have a basic file lying "underneath". The basic information is included there, with no special order. The order itself is then handled, only while using the software, and just as some kind of "overlay effect". At least that what it feels like to me - and I am not a developper or technician. Still, you may have guessed my next question: Is it possible, to apply that "overlay effect" to the basic iTunes file outside of iTunes, so that it can function as a fully equipped playlist file for players like Fiio X1 or X3? It´s just that I guess iTunes must have saved the Settings for the "overlay effect" at least somewhere, because it´s coming up with the same sort order everytime you start it up, without having to change anything. Or is that just plain impossible, requires too much efford, or anything like that? It would be a great deal, and very helpful for big libraries, if it really were possible.

 

[JeremyLaurenson]

Can you explan in more detail how you make playlists (are they also "smart playlists"), their order etc?

Mine show up on the X1 and X3, X5 in order. :-/

 

[rsommerer]

Well, now that you mention it: I have one playlist that is not a smart playlist, and also doesn´t have any special sorting on any of its fields in iTunes. As far as I remember, I was surprised that this playlist did show up on the X1 exactly as in iTunes. In this playlist, I just added a few tracks, and then manually pushed them around, so the sort order originated this way. But the rest of the playlists are indeed smart playlists, also with some kind of sort order on their fields in iTunes, such as the "date added". This has always been an important criteria for most of the playlists on our old iPods, and it still is, although now we use the Fiio X1 and X3.

 

[rsommerer]

Jeremy, just to maybe save you some time and effort - I found this thread on the internet:

https://forums.pioneerdj.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/204543985-Rekordbox-and-Itunes-playlist-issue

That´s from the official Pioneer DJ forum. Sort orders as well as their reliable exchange between different applications (hard- or software) seem to be an important factor among DJs too. Obviously, versions of iTunes prior to 12 did export smart playlists as XML files, including and respecting their filter/sort criteria in the output file. And therefore creating the same output for every application that used it. But iTunes 12 must have changed that, and now it is no longer possible to generate that output.

At the moment the most recent version of iTunes is 12.6.1. - and the thread on the pioneer Forum has been opened pretty much exactly 2 years ago. Now I don´t know, what that should tell me in terms of hope for future changes back to the old handling of file export. I am still convinced about the quality of Apple computers, but the iPhone and iTunes Music development in recent years are a different matter. Plus, I am waiting for the day when Apple officially stops iTunes support for non-streaming files from their servers, hoping I will be proved wrong. But you never know with Apple these days. It´s always in the details, and this detail is another nuisance.

 

[rsommerer]

I spent some more time on the topic, maybe there is an official workaround:

https://forums.imore.com/ask-rene/382728-apple-music-smart-playlist-not-sorting-correctly.html

If you scroll down on the website linked above, there is an E-Mail one of the users got from Apple - concerning sync problems of smart playlists via iCloud and even between their own devices. I will try to use that trick on my smart playlists as well, and then see if it works out on the Fiio X1 and X3. I will let you know.