You’ve probably all noticed by now that we added a pony graphic equalizer to Songbird for the 1.2 release. The community started asking for a pony an equalizer in 2006. There were more requests in 2007. The requests really started pouring in during 2008.
In short: we heard you. We knew you wanted a pony an equalizer. We were just super-duper busy. Our product ambitions nearly drowned out your desperate pleas. Aus never forgot you guys, though. Even though there wasn’t room for it on the product schedule, and he had to do the whole thing on the weekends and during late nights, he wanted to make sure that you got your pony equalizer.
Next time you nudge those low frequency sliders up on your pony equalizer to enjoy some bangin’ booty bass, remember that it was Aus who made it possible. (Also, major shout out to awesome community member Franco, who did a lot of the groundwork for us!)
Now then. You’ve seen your pony equalizer, and you like it, but… some of you now want a glittery mane equalizer presets, jeweled hooves more bars to slide, a pink saddle with hearts stored settings on a per-track basis… and we hear that too.
But here’s the thing: the pony is in the code base now. It is YOUR pony.
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You, the community, can collaborate to improve and enhance the pony. Our Developer Center contains lots of links to help you get started. We have a Google Group where you can meet and collaborate. Let Community Manager Extraordinaire Laura help you use the wiki to plan and track your projects just like we do. |
Project Pimp My Pony. Is anyone interested? Grab your tail brush, some pretty silver streamers, and your best glitter. Let’s see some fairy princess rainbows equalizer presets happen.
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35 Comments
SubscribeIt’s funny : Bug 2097 RESOLVED WONTFIX
best. blog post. ever.
Ali,
Will you be mine!? Laura said this was gonna be a good post, and that i might leave her for you… i think it worked. wow!
Aus,
Thank you! I saw when you took the initiative that this WAS going into Isan.. You rock, and thanks for all the hard work you put in it! Thank you for giving the community their PONY!!
@Michael Sorry, dude, bros before hos. Laura’s my bro.
Excellent post. Personally, I’m perfectly content with my pony the way it is. Thanks to everyone who made this pony possible.
*rides off into the sunset*
Thank you Aus, and major thanks to Franco as well. Franco initiated the EQ, right?
I will repeat myself to say, this is the best Songbird has ever been.. but of course that should be the case, since this we are supposed to be progressing.
I would also like to thank you guys for the Folder organization implementation as well.
No turning back now.
5 stars 
i would be the ho! damn!
Shouldn’t the pony be farting?
We appreciate those late nights
Thank you!!
Great, but… why doesn’t Songbird start on my system anymore? Earlier nightlies have been working like a charm…
Look at my new Pony :
http://geekshadow.com/images/pony.png
http://i-want-a-pony.com/
@Livio
Please file a bug describing your issue in detail and we can go from there.
Pony done :
http://addons.songbirdnest.com/addons/1620
wow. that was fast on the presets…. now we can have drak scary bass for our pony. maybe like this:
http://fc01.deviantart.com/fs28/i/2008/110/d/6/My_Little_Alien_by_Spippo.jpg
Great work shadow..
Any chance of getting it added to the main codebase for 1.2? (Not sure if its code freeze yet or not)
With this latest Beta Beta 2, every time i start up songbird, it pops up a screen suggesting it is organizing my music folder.
Equalizer seems broken on my system. It takes a huge time before settings take effect. And once it does it mostly adds a whole lot of noise to the music. Any idea what is causing this?
@Andrew Luecke
We always go into feature freeze when going into beta so we won’t be taking the presets. Geekshadow is more than welcome to submit it as a patch though and we can go from there.
@Pino: The long time before settings jump in seems to be normal :-/
And I have problems to increase the sound quality with it, too. It mostly sounds more noisy and overdriven. It definitely feels pretty different from other equalizers (1by1, Winamp, etc…).
But anyway, it’s a first and important step, I hope it will gain quality over time…
wow, you really make it sound like it was just so hard to add an eq to a media player, i guess i thought your goal in making a player was that people would like it and use it? but apparently you just made it to be another crappy player nobody would use, so maybe you should remove the eq before people start expecting too much.
Here is my Walnut Pony, including the Preset extension:
http://addons.songbirdnest.com/addon-images/5921/walnut2_pony_large.png
Songbird 1.2.0b2 (the Pony release)
Theme: Walnut2.
Extension: Equalizer Presets
@atrieu
The quality of the EQ is comparable to the Winamp Constant-Q Equalizer as well as other Constant Q EQs. There are other types of equalizers out there though, also found in Winamp is a contributed EQ by 4Front. The 4Front EQ is fairly different as the width of the bands on it is actually restricted to different widths per frequency (which isn’t how IIR EQs work). It’s meant to ‘tighten’ the effects of the EQ. We’d be more than happy to integrate the 4Front EQ into GStreamer if it was kindly contributed to us like it was to the folks at Winamp.
I was pretty pumped about this Songbird release… well, I am still pumped, except… It just will NOT detect my Ipod anymore. I have tried resetting and doing all sorts of jazz. Itunes picks it up with no problem, but Songbird just cannot find it.
It would seem like I was the only one that was having the problem
. Anyway, issue is however resolved.
Apparently the ipod feature is now optional probably in the beta versions… I don’t know, but if anyone else if having the problem, you have to install the addon manually.
I tried so many things, without realizing that this was the issue.
Hudge step forward, and not only because we now have a pony *eq* to play with, but because the Songbird developers listen to what their users want. A lot companies should learn from this.
1.2 got extreeeemely slow when I opened it with Media Flow viewer enabled. It is taking about 10 minutes to check a 18,000 song library. I don’t use Media Flow much, but I think something went south in this build.
@Larry.. Funny you mention that. I sent so many serious bug reports off to Apple, and the best response anyone ever gets is none, or a completely weak response (that none of us can legally disclose, but lets say they seemed automated and were consistantly useless). Apple didn’t even bother checking the bugs obviously, and all feedback was mostly generic. Even to developers like me who paid excessive amounts per year to become one.
Whereas, with Songbird, I have plenty of bugs/features I submitted to Bugzilla. Many get fixed within a few weeks, and every single one seems to get properly reviewed. And, Songbird is free/open source
So I can honestly say that songbird has some of the best developers and staff around.
Dear Mr. Lueke,
It seems to me, after a couple of years as an Apple customer, that the real reason for all the loyal following (meaning: becoming fanboys) is to excuse ourselves for paying twice the price for products (including software, shareware or not) and having a much less-than-stellar feedback, either from the product itself or the service assciated to them. Why is it that only Apple can open, or disassemble, a product they design? After the purchase, the product is MINE, and if I want to ruin it using another brand memory chips, well, that’s MY business.
Yes, design only, because everything is made or assembled in China.
Mac OS X? A rip-off of FreeBSD with a, well, nice appearance; it is NOT virus-free as much as any of the 120+ ‘flavours’ of Linuxes out there. So, what is the REAL pieces of ORIGINAL software did Cupertino to better our miserable lives? iTunes? You got to be kidding.
All in all, I am very disappointed for having to pay such scorching prices and waiting for MONTHS for a hardware piece replaced.
And when all around the PC business (and yes Apple, you ARE a PC maker. At least a designer) prices are getting down and down, and Cupertino decides they want MORE $$$ for the 95% same hardware. Just check the price list for the ‘new’ macbooks.
Oh well, and what about all the aluminum c..p? Just another reason to spend $$$ purchasing protecting sh.. for the finicky products. And the glossy screens?? Where are we, 1995??
Yes, I am one of the victims of the well-polished merchandising machine; but when this thing I am using now to type dies, it will be for good. No more $$$ down the drain. And yes, I can assemble a PC better than you, Apple.
Wow… soooo awesome….
It ooonly took 3 years to implement an equalizer.
What do you need an equalizer for, I have one in my stereo.
Okay, that’s it! The equalizer was what held me from using Songbird full time.
Now that barrier is down… I am officially a Songbird user.
What’s iTunes?
Media Flow needs to catch up. It’s not working very well with 1.2… has issues with writing to the managed directory. Otherwise, great build!
I’ve been waiting so long for one improvement, thank you for the equalizer!
It really makes a big difference..
Thanks
Great work. Thanks to everyone who made this pony possible.