support for DSD files

[Zanfib]

Hi,
Strawberry is a great idea to have a good HQ music player but I can't find a way to play DSD files, it's a miss in gstreamer/vlc backends or a missing filter in the app ?
Thanks !

[jonaski]

Actually the limitation is both in taglib and the engines. Strawberry only recognize files that taglib can read as audio, and taglib does not support DSD yet. There is a PR for it here: taglib/taglib#740
As for the engine, neither gstreamer or vlc support it, but I'm unsure about xine.
In the long run I plan to have ALSA directly as an option for engine, and support open lossless formats like FLAC/WavPack, then it might also be possible to also add support for DSD. I think deadbeef is doing it.

This is how far I got when trying to play DSD with xine, I modified the code to bypass taglib.

Invalid return value 0 for stream protocol
Invalid return value 0 for stream protocol
[dsf @ 0x3085240] Estimating duration from bitrate, this may be inaccurate
Input #0, dsf, from 'file:///home/jonas/Downloads/2L-139_stereo_DSF_2822k_1b_01.dsf':
  Metadata:
    encoded_by      : Merging Technologies Album Publishing
    comment         : Generated by Merging Technologies Album Publishing
                    : Label Code: 2L
    title           : Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in D minor, BWV 903: Fantasia
    artist          : Christian Grøvlen
    album_artist    : Christian Grøvlen
    composer        : Johann Sebastian Bach
    album           : BACH - Inside Polyphony
    track           : 1/30
    disc            : 1
    TSRC            : NOMPP1707010
                    : 7041888523024
    publisher       : 2L
    date            : 2017
    genre           : Classical
  Duration: 00:06:55.09, bitrate: 5644 kb/s
    Stream #0:0: Audio: dsd_lsbf_planar, 352800 Hz, stereo, fltp, 5644 kb/s
    Stream #0:1: Video: mjpeg, yuvj444p(pc, bt470bg/unknown/unknown), 1200x1200, 90k tbr, 90k tbn, 90k tbc
    Metadata:
      comment         : Cover (front)
__logging_message__17:29:08.833 WARN  unknown                          "There is no audio channel!"

[jonaski]

Looks like DSF is already coming to gstreamer in version 1.15.1
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=721186
So this might not be so far off, gstreamer is released pretty frequently.

I already have taglib builtin so I can possible just add the PR to it.

As for xine, I think it might just read the metadata, and not actually have codec to play it, but there is so little info on xine.

[Zanfib]

Thanks for the comments, I've see the support is coming soon in gstreamer, a good news !
Soon in Strawberry ! ;)

[jonaski]

I've added support for DSF and DSDIFF now, updated the builtin taglib to support it and added them as accepted filetypes and made the tagreader read them.
I installed gstreamer from git, you need gstreamer, gstreamer-plugins-base and gst-libav, I also installed gst-plugins-good.
I have tested playing some of the files from: https://www.oppodigital.com/hra/dsd-by-davidelias.aspx
It works great, except gstreamer makes the artwork embedded in the file appear in a large outside window (actually maybe it is kinda cool). There is probably a way to disable it.
Reading embedded artwork needs to be implemented too, it does not work
But atleast it works for now.