slimserver – Nico's Blog

Controlling your Sqeezebox Volume with your PC Keyboard

Now, this is something that I should have done a long time ago, as I was missing it for the last 8 years or so, that I have Squeezebox music players. The original remote is pretty weak, and if you don’t have your SB on your desk, you’ll probably have to turn yourself around if you want to change the volume using the remote (if you can actually find it on your desk), of course, controlling it through the web interface is also an option, but I sometimes prefer hardware keys.

As you might know, there’s a Squeezebox Server CLI, so it’s obvious to use it. Then, there’s the possibility to assign a “shortcut key” to a shortcut in Windows. The missing part is the Windows version of Netcat, some shortcuts, and a small “parameter” file for each function.

Step by Step, for volume Control:

1. Download Netcat, extract it to a folder, that you want to use for the whole thing.

2. Create the parameter files, my volup.txt looks like this:

XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX mixer volume +1
exit

Be sure to add an extra line break, because otherwise, Netcat will stay open. Create config files for every function you want to use.

3. Create the shortcuts, my volume down shortcut looks like this:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c "C:\Program Files (x86)\squeezevol\nc.exe" aese-02 9090 < volup.txt

4. Add a "shortcut key", like CTRL ALT +

Set it to run minimized.

It's working good and fast, I hope you enjoy it too.

MP3 tagging for Squeezebox Server, Foobar2000, iTunes

This little article is about MP3 tagging, or to be more precise about MP3 compilation album tagging. Since I’m a Squeezebox, Foobar2000, and iPhone (and therefore also iTunes) user, I’m only addressing these products, but I’m sure other products work the same, or a very similar way.

Now to the problem, compilation albums appeared under each individual artist on my players (see title), this can be very annoying, especially if you have lots of artists within your compilations, from whom you don’t have any albums.

The solution(s):

Foobar:

Add an “Album Artist” tag to all tracks of the specific album.
foobar-tag

In “Album List” properties, replace %<artist>% with %<album artist>% in the “by artist” view.

foobar-albumlist

Thats it.

Squeezebox Server:

This one is even easier, in foobar2000, or whatever tagging tool you prefer, just add a “band” tag, which equals the “album artist” tag. It was necessary to do a full rescan (Clear library and rescan everything) to make the changes take effect.

iTunes / iPhone:

It won’t work on the iPhone, but it will in iTunes. What you need is an “itunesconpilation” tag, but you cannot add it with foobar2000. This relies in the way how iTunes stores this information. You can use iTunes with the following Settings:

itunes-compilation

Or you can read this thread, and use mp3tag: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=61967