VUPlayer

Submit portable freeware that you find here. It helps if you include information like description, extraction instruction, Unicode support, whether it writes to the registry, and so on.
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__philippe
Posts: 687
Joined: Wed Jun 26, 2013 2:09 am

VU-Meter playback monitor for WinXP

#16 Post by __philippe »

:idea: Just discovered VU-Meter v1.1 (WinXP rel 11JUL06) can also monitor *playback* levels,
despite the product restrictive purpose statement: "A standalone analog VUMeter for monitoring *recording* levels."

Alleluia :!: :D

Minor drawback compared to VU-Meter 1.2 (Win7): VU-Meter 1.1 is NOT resizeable :(

Code: Select all

c:\>dir vumeter* | grep -i meter
11/07/2006  21:00           973,312 VUMeter.exe
11/07/2006  21:00             1,453 VUmeter.txt
14/12/2018  13:07           856,187 vumeter.zip

c:\>sigcheck -a -q -v vumeter.exe
c:\mytools\VUMeter.exe:
        Verified:       Unsigned
        Link date:      21:26 11/07/2006
        Publisher:      n/a
        Company:        James Chapman
        Description:    Analog VUMeter
        Product:        VUMeter
        Prod version:   1.1
        File version:   1.1
        MachineType:    32-bit
        Binary Version: 1.1.0.0
        Original Name:  VUMeter.exe
        Internal Name:  VUMeter
        Copyright:      Copyright ⌐ 2005-2006 James Chapman
        Comments:       Analog VUMeter
        Entropy:        7.568
        VT detection:   0/64

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__philippe
Posts: 687
Joined: Wed Jun 26, 2013 2:09 am

VU-Meter playback monitor for WinXP

#17 Post by __philippe »

Yeahbut...it's not portable ©®™, I hear someone muttering... :shock:

Code: Select all

Registry Key            Name	Type	        Data		  Length

HKCU\Software\VUMeter3	device	REG_DWORD	0x00000000 (0)	  4	
HKCU\Software\VUMeter3	xpos	REG_DWORD	0x0000028f (655)  4	
HKCU\Software\VUMeter3	ypos	REG_DWORD	0x000000a2 (162)  4	
HKCU\Software\VUMeter3	topmost	REG_DWORD	0x00000001 (1)	  4	
HKCU\Software\VUMeter3	dbscale	REG_DWORD	0x00000010 (16)   4
Alright then, for portability's sake,
@zorro's nifty registry manipulation script will do the deed indeed:

Code: Select all

@echo off
REG IMPORT vumeter.reg
start /wait "" "VUMeter.exe"
REG EXPORT HKCU\Software\VUMeter3 vumeter.reg /y
REG DELETE "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\VUMeter3" /f
exit

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__philippe
Posts: 687
Joined: Wed Jun 26, 2013 2:09 am

VU-Meter playback monitor for WinXP

#18 Post by __philippe »

Wanna give it a whirl ? :wink: ... GO :arrow:

freakazoid
Posts: 1212
Joined: Wed Jul 18, 2007 5:45 pm

Re: VUPlayer

#19 Post by freakazoid »

Just discovered this audio player. Better late than never as they say!

To make VUPlayer portable, launch with the "-portable" command line flag. As zorro mentioned, this player highly resembles 1by1 with its directory tree and album artwork sidebar. Going to review this against 1by1 since both are very similar in my eyes.

Pros:
- WASAPI and ASIO output. Great for audiophiles. 1by1 only offers WaveOut and DirectSound as output options.
- Track conversion. You can convert tracks directly within VUPlayer to FLAC, Opus, MP3 (Lame) and WAV. You can't do this in 1by1.
- File tagging. 1by1 has a rudimentary tagger only for MP3 files. VUPlayer can tag any audio file and also multiple files at the same time.
- Visualization options. Switch between album artwork, peak meter, oscilloscope, spectrum analyzer and VUPlayer's very-own VU meter.
- Pitch control. Want to change the pitch of your current song? You can do that with VUPlayer.
- Dedicated Streams and Playlists options in the sidebar. 1by1 also supports streaming, but only if the stream is listed in your .m3u files. Having a dedicated Streams filter makes things easier for categorizing and sorting web radio streams. On-the-fly playlists are a nice feature as well as you don't have to deal with .m3u files.
- Audioscroller support. If you use Audioscroller, VUPlayer can scrobble your audio as you play your music.
- MOD playback with libopenmpt or BASS. 1by1 only supports BASS for MOD playback.
- MIDI support.
- MusicBrainz support

Wishlist:
- Favorites option only favorites individual tracks. Depending on your preferences, this might be a good thing. However, I'd prefer VUPlayer follow what 1by1 does, which is favorite by folders instead of tracks.
- VUPlayer was originally devised as a music database player, so when you load tracks in VUPlayer, file markers are stored in its VUPlayer.db file. 1by1 doesn't store file markers or a file database, so I'd love to see an option to disable the database feature entirely. If this supposed option was disabled, you would lose access to VUPlayer's sidebar filters which sorts your music by Artist, Album, Genre, etc. I don't tend to use these types of filters personally, but some do.
- Missing a compact player mode. 1by1 has one and I use it all the time.
- Winamp input plugin support. 1by1 supports older Winamp input plugins.

XMPlay is still my favorite audio player, but I tend to use 1by1 more since my music is sorted by folders. VUPlayer is a very good alternative to 1by1 and in some respects, surpasses it depending on what you look for in an audio player.
is it stealth? ;)

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Midas
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Re: VUPlayer

#20 Post by Midas »

VUPlayer is looking more and more like a sleeper hit -- thanks for the extensive review, freakazoid. 8)

I sort my audio files by folders, too (one album = one folder, with one big '_Misc' with sub-dirs for random files), but as I do most of my listening on Android now, I use other options...

freakazoid
Posts: 1212
Joined: Wed Jul 18, 2007 5:45 pm

Re: VUPlayer

#21 Post by freakazoid »

Midas wrote: Fri Jan 05, 2024 4:26 am I sort my audio files by folders, too (one album = one folder, with one big '_Misc' with sub-dirs for random files), but as I do most of my listening on Android now, I have to use other options...
1by1 exists on Android. Try that out! It's barebones like Windows 1by1, but it does the job. Might be too barebones for some though.
is it stealth? ;)

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Andrew Lee
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Joined: Sat Feb 04, 2006 9:19 am
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Re: VUPlayer

#22 Post by Andrew Lee »

Will move this to the "Submissions" forum, since it can be made portable.

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Midas
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Location: Sol3

Re: VUPlayer

#23 Post by Midas »

freakazoid wrote: 1by1 exists on Android. Try that out! It's barebones like Windows 1by1, but it does the job.
I was aware of that -- but I'm plenty satisfied with fully offline Musicolet (https://krosbits.in/musicolet/) which does everything I want including metadata management; if only VUPlayer ever came to Android, it could be a worthy alternative... :)

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