FAQ
From Musik
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Location of the musikCube libraries / databases
The usual location of the musikCube library is in C:\Documents and Settings\%user name%\.musikproject\ where there are two database files one for the library, musik_u.db, and one for collected, musik_collected_u.db.
However, the location of the musikCube libraries for whole drives exists in the root of the drive. For example, C:\.musikproject or E:\.musikproject
I've lost my stock dynamic playlists.
Right click on the dynamic playlists menu where it says "dynamic playlists" and there is an option to create stock dynamic playlists.
Strange vertical lines?
Usually these are seen in the mC in a view that has columns. These vertical lines are a windows error that can be fixed by turning on (checking) "Show window contents while dragging" in the Performance Settings under the Advanced Tab of Window's System Properties.
Why do I have duplicate files?
Do you have synchronization setup? If so did you alter the properties of any of your music? If so you need to remember to "Write Modified Tags to File" when you have a synchronization set up because musikCube reads the tags and thinks the files are two different files and imports the old one again. (To get there click Tags>Modified Tags>Write Modified Tags to File)
Popping sound on song change?
This is due to Windows using the "System notification" sound when the song information popup is displayed. You can either remove the sound from the "Sound" control panel ("System notification" event), or uncheck musikCube's popup information (File->Preferences->Interface->General->Show balloon tips while in notification tray).
Cannot listen to net radios?
Most net radio links are provided as PLS files which are playlists. musikCube does not support playlist files yet (only HTTP streams). In order to listen to a radio, download the PLS file, open it with a text editor (notepad will do), and look for an IP address (i.e. http://192.168.1.1:90). Copy this address and put in the URL field in the File => Open Net Radio dialog.
msvcr71.dll
If you experience any problems such as msvcr71.dll is in use or something similar restart your computer and do not open any programs other than the musikCube install and the install should work fine. For some reason some other programs seem to grab the .dll. The other option is just to ignore this error and select skip/ignore during the install (it is not neccessary to replace this file because it is not unique to musikCube and should not change normally).
Why is drag and drop to playlist not working?
One cause of this problem in WinXP is that you may have musikCube open in two different user accounts at once, and there are write issues with adding the song. If your computer has multiple users, be sure to log off all but the user for whom you are adding the song.
What is the difference between wxMusik and musikCube?
wxMusik (http://musik.berlios.de/) was first (2003). Then Casey Langen, one of the developers, started to develop musikCube from scratch, building on his experiences. wxMusik is still actively developed (?) by Gunnar Roth and has some features that musikCube lacks, but we think that musikCube has the potential to be something even better.
A quote from Casey (posting from musikForums here (http://www.musikcube.com/punbb/viewtopic.php?id=115)):
- wxMusik was a first generation, throw-away prototype of the musik project. When I forked to start musikCore and musikCube, a former developer took over. This has been discussed many times all over the place. wxMusik has at least two years more development time than musikCube, but I feel it will be depcrecated as soon as Cube stabilizes.
A quote from Gunnar (posting from wxMusik Discussion Forums here (http://developer.berlios.de/forum/message.php?msg_id=15237)):
- The original name of wxMusik was simplz Musik and was made by casey langen. gunnar joined him later and musik was developed somewhat further. then casey wanted to start over and make all new resulting in musikcube which uses mfc for gui on windows and musikbox using gtkmm for gui on linux. wxmusik kept using wxwidgets. maybe wxMusik will use caseys musikcore basic non-gui library in the future.
See also:
- Forum: the REAL MUSIK (http://www.musikcube.com/punbb/viewtopic.php?id=115) -- Forum thread about the two projects
- Forum: Review for musikCube (http://www.musikcube.com/punbb/viewtopic.php?pid=63#p63) -- Forum posting with additional insight from Casey
- Forum: MusikCube & wxMusik (http://www.musikcube.com/punbb/viewtopic.php?id=295)
What is musikCore?
musikCube (Windows) and musikBox (Linux) both use musikCore which is a powerful backend written entirely in C code and is the heart of both programs. The advantages to having musikCore are rock-solid stability and portability meaning that somebody could create a gui for musikCore for any particular operating system they wanted to.
A quote from Casey (posting from musikForums here (http://www.musikcube.com/punbb/viewtopic.php?id=16)):
- Basically, I wrote wxMusik as a test. It has extremely high coupling and inter dependencies and was never really ment to be a mainstream audio player. With wxMusik the playback and library management is completely integrated as part of the user interface. This is not the case with musikCube.
- musikCore is built as a separate component, and the musikCube interface uses it. musikCore has absolutely NO GUI related code. This means ANY program can use the musikCore library to manage, playback, and retag files. musikCube is a sample interface for it.
- Basically, Gunnar didn't have the time or desire to start working on a new project, so I asked him if he'd just like to maintain wxMusik. He agreed... a year and a half later here we are, competing wink... the problem I see is that wxMusik will only be able to develop so far, but musikCore/Cube has the potential to keep expanding because of its modular design. musikCore on its own has great potential for developers to use in future players or management systems. Thanks again, and I really do appreciate the promotion you're giving us smile keep it up!
Another quote from Casey (from musikCube's changelog.txt):
- musik, up to version 0.2.1, was not ment or developed to be an extremely usable, stable product. it was a concept to test various aspects of creating an extremely easy and powerful audio library and player.
- we came to one conclusion after almost a year of development and two, maybe three of planning:
- the backend and the frontend must exist separate.
- the backend would be completely independant of any gui. why?
- - no cross platform gui toolkit offered quite the flexability we wanted.
- - becuase the core contains no gui, it could be nearly complete ANSI C++, as long as we chose the right libraries to use for helpers (threads, sql access, etc).
- - to limit overhead
- - not only could we easily use the core to make our own mp3 player, but so could others
Is Linux supported?
It is, but we need someone to do some autoconf and automake files for us. Right now the build process relies on cmake. musikCube In Linux for information about running musikCube in wine.
Are there any keyboard shortcuts that can be defined for common tasks?
The windows media keys for Play/Pause, Stop, Next, and Previous are supported. I have found this through trial, if anyone else has any to add, please do. Check out also Jooles' "Unofficial Bugfix 1.01 RC1", hosted here (http://homisite.com/musikCube/).
What is VIP Rumor Player etc.?
Because musikCube's sources are freely available, some not so nice guys in the Internet took at and make an "own" audio player with that. Probably it is always the same people:
- VIP Rumor Player (http://www.viprumor.com/download-free-media-player/)
- Kat Player (http://www.goodkatshare.com/?page_id=11)
- Donar Player (http://www.donarzone.com/?page_id=25)
