Page Category: Semplice

1.0 Introduction

I find myself in a bit of a dilemma as far as running Semplice on Windows 11, because I lack any hardware that is capable of running it in a supported fashion... yet, I do run it on a vintage 2012 spare laptop and Semplice runs on it perfectly well. It remains, however, a problem to offer support for doing something on a platform that remains, for me, technically unsupported! Therefore, I won't: if you want to run Semplice on Windows 11, I'll give you instructions which have worked for me, but I cannot vouch for them in the long-run and I won't offer support for it. You're on your own, basically! Of course, if you are a well-off classical music enthusiast who loves using Windows and wants to donate Windows 11-supported hardware on which I can continue to develop Semplice for Windows 11 in a properly supported manner, do please get in touch!

Those preliminaries out of the way: whilst Semplice itself merely sips PC hardware resources, the Windows Subsystem for Linux version 2 (WSL2) that makes it possible to run Semplice at all is a bit of a resource hog. It works, fundamentally, by co-hosting a virtual Linux PC alongside and simultaneously with the running Windows one. That sort of virtualisation immediately demands a 64-bit operating system and reasonable quantities of memory and CPU grunt -though we are not in ludicrously-overspecc'd monster gaming PC territory! I mentioned my 2012-vintage HP Folio13 onto which I've managed to crow-bar a working version of Windows 11, despite its ancient and unsupported hardware: it manages on 8GB RAM, a 500GB solid state hard disk and a 2nd generation Intel i5, 2-core CPU running at a sedate 1.6GHz. That seems at least adequate. [...] 

1.0 Introduction

Semplice's main program display, when you finally get it running, appears as follows:

At the top of the screen, the Header Area tells you what version of Semplice you're running and in what folder you've launched the program (the 'You are in…' descriptor). [...] 

1.0 Introduction

As far as installing and running my software on assorted Linux distros is concerned, my standard practice is to support the top 20 or so distros, as listed at Distrowatch in or around May 2022. That means Semplice has been tested to install and run well on the following distros:

The differences between installing on any one of these distros, as compared to installing on any other, are trivial and come down, mostly, to what mix of software dependencies are required to get Semplice working. Each distro tends to come with a unique mix of pre-installed packages, so the ones Semplice finds to be 'missing' will vary as the distro varies. The specific instructions as to what needs to be installed will therefore change... but the overall installation process remains standard, regardless. [...] 

1.0 Introduction

Installing Semplice on any operating system (or Linux distro, come to that) is a simple and standard affair, consisting of four basic steps:

• Obtain the Absolutely Baching universal installation script
• Run the script
• Run Semplice for a first time
• Install extra software dependencies

Once the extra software dependencies are satisfied, Semplice will run without drama thereafter. Since the steps are pretty much the same in all cases, with only the specifics of the needed extra software dependencies changing per-distro, I won't document in detail how to instal Semplice on every one of the 20+ distros I've tested it on: there's just a generic 'how to install on Linux' article linked to below. [...] 

1.0 Introduction

Semplice version 1 was publicly released on August 31st 2022 and aims to be a comprehensive set of utilities with which to manage a FLAC-based digitial classical music collection. It allows you to tag your music, to merge it and split it, convert it to and from lots of different audio codecs, and to volume-boost it when necessary.

As such, Semplice replaces previous separate pieces of software, which will no longer be under active development and whose continued use is therefore deprecated. [...] 

Semplice is the FLAC manager for large digital collections of classical music. It can be used to tag your music files with meaningful metadata including album artwork; to boost the volume in audio files that have been mastered too quietly for whatever reason, without introducing distortion or affecting the relative loudness of different parts of a recording; and to convert multiple per-track FLAC files into single 'SuperFLAC' files, containing within themselves all the audio signal from multiple source files.

These links take you to the various sections of the Semplice User Manual, where you will find extensive documentation on how to install and use it. [...] 

1.0 Introduction

Semplice is (at the time of writing: August 2022) a version 1.0 product, so in one sense, everything about it is 'new'!

More fundamentally, however, it combines the CCDT, MAXV, AUAC and CAO scripts into a single product -and, in the process, each of those 'source scripts' underwent considerable revision on their various ways into becoming a part of Semplice. Those changes will be documented below, with the 'source product' they deviate from being indicated in each case. As newer versions of Semplice are produced in the future, only the differences from the immediately prior version will be listed. [...]