Caldera Music Release Notes

Plex Labs
41

Caldera v1.2.0-beta.1

A beta of every Caldera player:

  • Headless v1.2.0-beta.1
  • Amp v1.2.0-beta.1 (macOS, Windows, Linux)
  • Apple TV v1.2.0 (build 43), TestFlight
  • Google TV v1.2.0 (versionCode 20), Play beta

The Apple TV and Google TV builds reach testers once Apple and Google finish reviewing them.

New

  • Caldera can now share a DAC with other players on the same box. It runs scripts you choose just before it takes the audio device and just after it gives it back, so the platform can stop and restart Spotify Connect, AirPlay or Squeezelite around it. (Headless)
  • The daemon can be told to hand the audio device to another service and take it back later, over its local API or the new calderactl command. (Headless)
  • A room that hands its audio device to another service drops out of the music it was playing with the group, and rejoins when it gets the device back, instead of the group streaming to a room that cannot play it. (Headless)
  • Xita Buffer Floor setting: the smallest jitter buffer a room will accept, so a room on a solid wired network can hold less than the starting buffer instead of the whole group waiting on what the weakest link needs. A room will not go below what its own audio device can be served from, so setting the floor too low no longer causes dropouts.
  • Caldera Amp’s visualizer window can show a soft gradient in the album’s colors instead of the visualizer, and in greys when nothing is playing. V switches between them, and a new Display menu holds both this and the overlay choice (None, Now Playing or Compact Chip, also on N, O and C). (Amp)
  • Caldera Amp on Windows has Shuffle Presets and Preset Transitions settings. (Amp)
  • Artists, albums and tracks have a long-press menu with Play Next, Add to Queue, Add to Playlist, and Play Track Radio for tracks. Add to Playlist lists your playlists by title, with the one you used last at the top. The artist page has the same actions in its … menu. (Apple TV, Google TV)

Fixed

  • A room playing to a group no longer shifts its own timing slightly a second after music starts or resumes.
  • A Plex server reachable only over IPv6 is found and plays, instead of “Couldn’t load content”.
  • Rooms stay in step with the room they play from through skips, seeks and pauses, and from the moment music first starts, instead of drifting apart by up to tens of milliseconds for a minute after each.
  • Rooms playing from a Pi or other Linux player hold their timing steadily instead of shifting a few milliseconds every half minute.
  • Pause, resume and seek are heard sooner across a group of rooms.
  • Linux players start and resume playback sooner, and rooms grouped with them play with less delay. (Headless, Amp)
  • A room grouped while its source was paused no longer stays silent when the music starts.
  • Moving playback from Plexamp to a paused player no longer fails with “Could not switch to player” after 10 seconds.
  • Connecting to a Plex server uses the first address that answers instead of waiting up to 3 seconds for its local address, and switches to the local address once it answers.
  • When a Plex server’s address changes, such as a server on DHCP or in a container getting a new IP, the player finds it at its new address instead of failing to connect until its saved device list is deleted.
  • A room on a slower link, or a computer with both Ethernet and Wi-Fi, keeps lining up with the rest of the group. Before, it could stop correcting and drift a few milliseconds out of step.
  • A track with no playable audio no longer crashes the app when it finishes, or on every launch afterwards until a reinstall.
  • Rooms playing together line up within about a millisecond of each other and hold there, through pauses and resumes, instead of drifting a few milliseconds back and forth or sitting up to 20 ms behind the room they play from. They settle within about a minute of pressing play, without a dropout as the music starts.
  • Players in a synced group show their names in the room list even when the network blocks their discovery announcements. Before, they could appear with a blank name.
  • Moving speakers to a different source room now stops the previous room streaming to them, and each speaker plays the room it was moved to. Before, a speaker could keep playing the old room, or silence, until it was toggled off and on.
  • When the system output switches to a device at a different sample rate, such as AirPods connecting or disconnecting, playback now follows it. Before, music and synced rooms could run at the wrong speed and drift seconds out of sync until playback restarted. (Headless, Amp)
  • Playing after another app has grabbed the audio device now waits for it to be free instead of staying silent until something else woke the player. (Headless)
  • A device another application is holding is reported as in use rather than as a generic failure, and is retried with a backoff for up to thirty seconds. (Headless)
  • Fixed rare crashes when the player shuts down in the middle of a seek, or while still connecting to a server.
  • Fixed a rare crash when a track finished downloading just as it was stopped or skipped.
  • Playback no longer occasionally stays silent after skipping, seeking or starting a new queue while paused, stopping, or taking over a queue from another player.
  • A track whose server accepts the connection but never answers is skipped after about 30 seconds instead of a minute.
  • A transcoded track whose download is interrupted now picks up where it left off, instead of replaying its opening or playing garbled audio.
  • Transferring a queue to a Caldera player that already has one now plays the transferred queue. Before, the transfer failed and left that player idle with its old queue cleared.
  • With PipeWire output, Caldera releases the audio device after 5 seconds idle, so other apps can use it without quitting Caldera. (Headless, Amp)
  • Max streaming bitrate now applies when you play from a specific server. Lossless tracks well above the cap were streamed at full size, ignoring the setting.
  • With output set to Match Source, the channel count, and on outputs that can change rate the sample rate, follow each track through uninterrupted playback of a mixed queue, not only when you skip. A track whose format differs gets a short gap while the audio device changes, and crossfades are skipped across those boundaries only.
  • With Match Source, DSD albums and other tracks at rates the DAC cannot play directly play gaplessly at the closest rate it supports, instead of reopening the audio device at every track. (Headless, Amp)
  • With repeat all on, the end of the queue wraps back to the first track instead of replaying the last one over and over.
  • Turning a player’s equalizer on from Plexamp no longer quits the player.
  • Playing an album or track from Plex Web works again instead of doing nothing. The player treated the server’s own library as an unknown music service and gave up before it started.
  • Starting up with a paused queue no longer keeps the audio device open for good. Other apps sharing the same DAC could not use it until the queue was cleared by hand.
  • Changing the Xita Buffer while music is playing now re-times the room you are streaming from as well, instead of leaving it on its old delay until the next restart.
  • Rooms hold their timing steadily on a busy network instead of wandering when packets arrive unevenly, and settle back faster after a dropout.
  • Surround albums sent to other rooms no longer come through distorted. Folding 5.1 or quad down to stereo for the network could push the mix past full scale and clip it, while stereo albums were unaffected.
  • Rooms now line up using each speaker’s measured output delay rather than one fixed number, and hold to within a few milliseconds of each other, so a room whose audio device is slower than the rest no longer plays behind.
  • Caldera Amp’s now-playing overlay shows the waveform again when a group stops and then resumes the same track through it, instead of leaving it blank. (Amp)
  • Caldera Amp’s now-playing overlay holds a paused track’s time still, instead of jumping back and forth by a couple of seconds. (Amp)
  • In Caldera Amp’s now-playing overlay, the next track’s cover fades in over the last one, and the overlay no longer blinks when the track changes. (Amp)
  • Caldera Amp’s visualizer and menu show the track and cover a group is playing through it, instead of its own paused queue. (Amp)
  • The visualizer catches back up after its window is hidden or the app is busy, instead of staying up to half a second behind the music. (Amp, Apple TV, Google TV)
  • The visualizer allows for the delay a TV or soundbar adds after the player, as measured by the room’s calibration chirp, so it lines up with what you hear. (Amp, Apple TV, Google TV)
  • The visualizer on a room playing another room’s music is as lively as on the room it plays from. Loud tracks used to look up to 10 dB duller there. (Amp, Apple TV, Google TV)
  • The app no longer quits on its own when a room in the group drops its connection. (Amp, Apple TV)
  • Caldera Amp no longer crashes when it quits. (Amp)
  • In exclusive mode, Caldera Amp sets the audio device to its highest bit depth while it plays, so 24-bit music is no longer cut down to 16 bits when the device is set lower in Audio MIDI Setup. The previous setting comes back when Caldera Amp lets go of the device: after playback has been idle for a few seconds, when exclusive mode is turned off, or when you switch devices. (Amp)
  • Choosing a track in the play queue plays it again. Before, selecting a track there did nothing. (Amp, Apple TV, Google TV)
  • Caldera Amp’s now-playing overlay clears when a group stops playing through it and nothing is queued locally, instead of keeping the last track’s title. (Amp)
  • Caldera Amp’s tray menu and tooltip on Windows show the track a group is playing through it, instead of “Not Playing”. (Amp)
  • The letter bar on the Albums page jumps to albums starting with that letter, instead of a position counted from artist names. (Apple TV, Google TV)
  • Sorting albums by title sorts by album title alone, instead of by artist first. (Apple TV)
  • The letter bar in the library sits further from the last column of covers. (Apple TV)
  • With Match Source on Google TV and Apple TV, the output sample rate now follows each track whose rate differs, with a short gap at those tracks, instead of only after pausing and resuming. (Apple TV, Google TV)
  • With Match Source on older Apple TVs that only play at 48 kHz, playback stays gapless apart from one short gap the first time a new rate comes up. (Apple TV)
  • The Apple TV stays visible to other players after the box wakes from sleep, instead of needing the app force-quit and restarted to reappear. (Apple TV)
  • Speakers in other rooms no longer sit noticeably behind the room doing the streaming. The gap grew over the first couple of minutes of playback and only a stop and start cleared it. (Apple TV, Google TV)
  • Albums whose files carry cover art in an ID3 tag play again instead of skipping straight through every track. Once a track had been cached, it was mistaken for an MP3 and reported as having no audio. (Apple TV, Google TV)
  • After a surround track, stereo tracks play in stereo at their own sample rate, instead of staying on the surround output at 48 kHz until the app is restarted. (Google TV)
  • On Google TV, sorting albums by title sorts by album title alone, instead of by artist first. (Google TV)
  • With Match Source on Google TV and Android TV, stereo output now reaches the receiver at the music’s own sample rate instead of always 48 kHz. (Google TV)
  • Diagnostic logs now say why album art did not appear. A request that failed before the server answered, or an item that arrived carrying no artwork at all, previously left no trace, so logs from a box with no art at all looked identical to a healthy one. (Google TV)