With Giocoso version 2 finally out the door, I thought I would share with you some of my plans for my digital music-related software. As you can tell from the thumbnail to this post, the news is going to be quite drastic!
In a nutshell, nearly all of my existing software will be killed off. No more CCDT, no more CAO, no more MAXV or AUAC. Instead, they will all be replaced by a single piece of software which I'm naming Semplice (because one piece of software is simpler to deal with than four!).
I'm aiming to release Semplice around the middle of September 2022, at which point the other four pieces of software will all die! Unlike those other four precursor programs, Semplice will run on Windows 10, 11 and macOS... the same platforms as its cousin Giocoso, in other words.
I am not currently sure what will become of CCDR (the CD ripping program). I still use it occasionally, and I prefer it to other, more mainstream, ripping programs when I do -but I barely buy any physical CDs these days and instead usually purchase FLAC downloads. So the need for CCDR seems somewhat in the balance these days and I'm reluctant to pay it much attention as a result. We'll see, basically.
The ultimate aim is going to be a software 'portfolio' that consists of just three elements: Giocoso to play music; Semplice to tag and manage digital music files; and Niente to make sure those digital music files remain internally and physically consistent. Once Semplice is out the door, version 2 of Niente won't be far behind, but we are probably looking at November before it's finished and properly tested. This scheme will mean just three useful packages to maintain, test and bug-fix... and only three sets of mascots to herd:
 Giocoso - the Player |
 Semplice - the Manager |
 Niente - the Integrity Checker |
Giocoso 2.01 (the first point release of the post-2.0 era) will be released around the end of September 2022. It's big ticket item will be the ability to resume playback of an interrupted recording. I've started using Giocoso to play parts of my opera collection, and it rapidly became apparent that whilst being forced to listen to a symphony in its entirety is not a bad thing, being forced to listen to a 5-Act, 3+ hour opera from start to finish is a non-starter! Thus, the need to be able to Ctrl+C at the end of Act 1, go shopping, return and tell Giocoso to 'resume from where you left off' was made manifest, and version 2.01 will see that capability in action for the first time. Provisionally pencilled in for September 30th 2022, as I say.
Watch this space...