To power up the unit, connect the mains supply and then press the POWER key on the front panel - as one would expect. The unit will then find and connect to the tRio server running on your Host PC.
The power button behaves slightly differently depending on whether you have successfully connected to the tRio server or not.
While Connecting:
Once Connected:
tRio currently has two applications:
You can switch between these at any time using special [player] and [clock] selections at the end of the menus.
The Player is the “default application” which is shown when you first connect and when you leave Standby Mode.
The Clock is the “standby application” and is shown when you press the Power button (briefly) to enter Standy Mode.
tRio has been designed to make it fairly easy to “plug in” other
applications (obviously they’d 1st have to be written!). And so if anyone
has bright ideas then let us all know.
Each “application” has a main menu that can be accessed by pressing the MENU button:
You can use the special Settings item at the bottom of all menus to alter the Receivers Volume, Balance, Contrast, Brightness and Line Volume settings.
The Line Volume setting is new in version 0.1.3 and allows you set the line out level to either fixed or variable. Warning: first turn the volume on your amplifier down before changing this setting from variable to fixed.
Warning: There is a danger that your Receiver's display might "fade" over time if you set the brightness too high. Do so at your own risk.
This panel lets you know what’s happening during music playback. It shows the current tune being played, the playback time, tune information, playback mode, repeat and random settings. From this screen you can:
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As of version 0.1.3, tRio supports different playback modes which allow you to access your music collection in different ways. The following modes are available:
Queue 'n Play mode | Allows you create a play queue of tunes that are then played with repeat and random options. |
Jukebox mode (JReceiver only) | Allows you to browse your music collection as an expandable & collapseable tree (either by artist or by genre) and start playback at any position with flexible repeat and random options. |
Radio mode | Allows you to listen to SHOUTcast internet radio broadcasts |
Listen mode | Allows for synchronised playback between multiple players |
The current playback mode is shown at the bottom left of the screen. To change it, press the MENU button from the Playback Panel and choose the "mode" entry. Only modes that are available are shown in the Mode Selection list:
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Queue 'n Play mode allows you to build a Play Queue of the tunes you'd like to play by Artist, Album, Genre or Playlist. This list can then be played with various Repeat and Random settings. Once queued, you can remove, re-order or jump directly to a particular tune using the Play Queue Dialog.
Play Queue Dialog is shown when you press ENTER from the Playback Panel. It lists the tunes that are queued to be played in the playback order. The tune currently being played is indicated by a to the left of its title. Otherwise the position of the tune in the queue (1, 2, 3 etc.) is shown. From this screen you can:
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Note: The following text describes how to queue tunes By Artist. The procedure for doing this By Album, Genre and Playlist follows the same principles.
Select the By Artist entry from the Player Menu to bring up the Select By Artist screen. This lists all the Artists on your system in alphabetical order. From here you can:
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The Tunes By Artist screen lists all the albums (JReceiver only) and tunes for the selected artist. Tunes that are already in the Play Queue are indicated with a symbol. Albums are enclosed in [square brackets]. From here you can:
Tips:
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You can set the Player into repeat mode by pressing the REPEAT key from the Playback Panel:
Two different RANDOM modes can be selected by pressing the RANDOM key:
Jukebox mode allows you position yourself in your music collection (either By Artist or By Genre) and starts playing from there onwards. Repeat and Random settings can be used to repeat within the current tune, album, artist, genre or the entire collection.
You can choose to browse your collection either By Artist (artist->album->tune) or By Genre (genre->album->tune) from the Player Menu. This shows your collection as an expandable and collapsable tree allowing for easy navigation.
Note: this mode only works if your are using JReceiver as your music server. This is because it relies on JReceiver's XML-RPC interface.
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The REPEAT key can be used to repeat the current selection at various levels:
The RANDOM key can be pressed to randomly select the next track to be played within the current repeat mode.
Radio Mode allows you to listen to pre-configured SHOUTcast internet radio broadcasts.
First close down the tRio server and then open trio.xml in a text editor (notepad will do fine under Windows). Locate the <stations> section and add to or modify the entries contained within it.
Tip: To get the URL for a station, open http://www.shoutcast.com and use the addresses pointed to by the icons (they start with http://www.shoutcast.com/sbin/shoutcast-playlist.pls?rn= ...).
Either press the ENTER key from the Playback Panel or choose Select Station from the Player Menu. |
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Pressing PLAY or ENTER will then start listening to the selected station. If another player is listening to the same station, the icon will be displayed while the players are synchronised. |
tRio allows you to synchonise playback between several Players by choosing the Listen To entry from the Player Menu. This lists any other Players that are connected and are not marked as having private access. | |
The Access SettingYou can control whether a player can be listened to via the "access" setting which is under the Player Settings menu.
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Controlling PlaybackWhile you are listening to a protected player you can you can:
While you are listening to a public player you can you can:
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Synchronisation statusIt normally takes tRio about 5 seconds to synchronise with another player if it is already playing back music when you choose it from the Listen To list. During this time the icon is shown on the Playback panel. If the synchronisation process fails, the icon is shown. Should this happen, press PLAY to try again. |
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LimitationsVariable bit-rate MP3: tRio finds it more difficult to establish synchronisation for this type of encoding. HPNA or multi-homed hosts: if your host PC has more than one network card (e.g. both hpna and ethernet cards), tRio can only synchronise playback between Receivers attached to the same card. Receivers on other cards will not appear in the Listen To dialog. |
tRio assigns a default name to each of your Rio Receivers when they connect for the 1st time. The first is named "Receiver 1", the second "Receiver 2" and so on.
To change these names, close down tRio and then open trio.xml in a text editor (e.g. notepad on Windows). Find the <units> entry in the "tRio settings" section and change the "name=" values.
For example, change:
<unit ip="192.168.1.6" type="receiver" name="Receiver 1" volume="6" brightness="52"/>
to:
<unit ip="192.168.1.6" type="receiver" name="My Receiver" volume="6" brightness="52"/>
An effort was made in version 0.1.2 of tRio to find a default set of fonts that look good on all operating systems (Windows, Linux , Mac OS X etc.). If they're are still not to your liking, these defaults can be overridden.
To do this, first close down tRio and open trio.xml in a text editor. Find the <ui> element in the "User Interface settings" section and edit the <ui-font> entries. Each entry has a key which identifies a visual component followed by font attributes.
For example, to change the appearance of window titles (shown on most Dialogs) to a size of 10, bold and italic:
<ui-font key="Window.titleFont" font-name="lucida sans" font-size="10" font-bold="true" font-italic="true"/>
Common key values*
key | Description | Default |
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Window.titleFont | Used to show Dialog & Menu titles | lucinda sans, bold, 9pt |
Label.font | Used for non-enterable text | lucinda sans, plain, 9pt |
List.font | Used for selection list entries | lucinda sans, plain, 9pt |
Slider.labelFont | Used for the labels on the settings sliders (e.g. Volume) | lucinda sans, plain, 8pt |
*For the full list, see "src/trio/gui/TRioLookAndFeel.java".
Font Attributes
Attribute | Description | Allowable Values |
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font-name | The name of the font to be used for the field | A valid font name |
font-size | The size of the font to be used for the field | As supported by the font-name |
font-bold | Whether the font should be bold or not | true, false |
font-italic | Whether the font should be italic or not | true, false |
The layout of the Playback Panel is defined in the trio.xml configuration file and it is possible to modify the default one or set up new ones of your own. In version 0.1 this process is not very slick, but here's a rough 'n ready guide for those of you who fancy a go.
But first some words of caution:
From here on, these instructions will assume that tRio is not running, that your are editing the trio.xml file and that your have located the <layouts> element in the file.
Copy an existing layout entry from the <layout name= to the </layout> and insert this into the bottom of the <layouts> list (just before the </layouts> line).
Change the name= and title= settings to unique values, e.g. name="mylayout" title="my layout"
Modify the <field> entries in your layout
Each <field> in a layout must have a type= setting which specifies what type of field it is. The following values are supported:
Field Type | Description | Attributes |
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label | A non-scrolling text value | value, row, col, width, height, font-name, font-size, font-bold, font-italic, align |
banner | A text value that slowly scrolls across the display | value, row, col, width, height, font-name, font-size, font-bold, font-italic, align |
line | A horizontal line | row, col, width, height |
icon | An icon image. The value must be present point to the name of a <icon> entry in the <icons> list. | value, row, col, width, height |
Attribute | Description | Allowable Values |
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value | This specifies the text value for a label or banner, or the icon name for an icon. Any special [substitution] values in the text will be replaced with an appropriate value (see below) when the panel is displayed. |
Any text value including embedded [substitution] values. |
row | The row number (in pixels) where the top left of the field should be positioned | 0 thru 63 |
col | The column number (in pixels) where the top left of the field should be positioned | 0 thru 127 |
width | The width of the field in pixels | 0 thru 127 |
height | The height of the field in pixels | 0 thru 63 |
font-name | The name of the font to be used for the field | A valid font name |
font-size | The size of the font to be used for the field | As supported by the font-name |
font-bold | Whether the font should be bold or not | true, false |
font-italic | Whether the font should be italic or not | true, false |
align | The alignment of the text in the field | left, right, center |
tRio replaces any special [substitution] values that are included in the value= setting for a field with appropriate values when the Playback Panel is shown. For example, <field type="label" value="[play-string]" .../> will be substituted as <field type="label" value="stopped" .../> if Playback is stopped when the Panel is displayed or refreshed.
Substitution Value | Description | Format / Values |
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[tune-name] | The name of the tune currently being played. If a radio station is playing, this will typically contain the tune and artist name | |
[source-name] | For tunes this is the album name. For stations, this is the station name. | |
[tune-info] | A string combining all the known attributes or the current tune excluding the tune-name and bit-rate. |
album: xxxx, genre: yyyy, ... |
[tune-info-short] |
A string combining all the known attributes or the current tune excluding the tune-name and bit-rate. Each attribute is separated by a slash, e.g. xxxx / yyyy / ... |
xxxx / yyyy / .... |
this field is no longer used in v0.1.3 and will not be supported |
A string describing the current playback state. If the player is currently "Listening To" another player (synchronised playback) then the name of that player is returned. In v0.1.1, the Play Queue position and length was appended to the play string. This has been replaced by the new [queue-level] field. |
stopped / buffering / playing / paused / master-name |
[play-icon] | The name of the icon that depicts the current playback state. | stopped / buffering / playing / paused / station / sync-inprogress / sync-failed |
[play-time] | The current playback time is playback is playing or paused. If playback is stopped then either the duration of the current tune or --:-- is returned. | 00:00 or --:-- |
[queue-level] | The current playback position and length of the Play Queue or spaces if empty | nn / nn |
[repeat-icon] | The icon name depicting the current repeat setting | repeat-off / repeat-one / repeat-all |
[listening-to] | The name of the player or radio station being listened to |
If you're chuffed with your results, why don't you share them so that others can enjoy the benefit of your hard work. Posting on the Rio Forum is the preferred method for now.
You can change the icons used by tRio by editing the <icon> entries in trio.xml. The entry for the wait-cursor icon looks like this:
<icon name="wait-cursor" url="/wait-cursor.gif"/>
To change this to a new icon which, for example is stored in "c:\Program Files\tRio-0.x.x\images\wait-cursor2.gif", modify the entry to look like this:
<icon name="wait-cursor" url="c:\Program Files\tRio-0.x.x\images\wait-cursor2.gif"/>
<icons>
<icon name="tiny-stopped" url="c:\Program Files\trio-0.x.x\images\tiny-stopped.gif"/>
<icon name="tiny-playing" url="c:\Program Files\trio-0.x.x\images\tiny-playing.gif"/>
</icons>
<layouts>
<layout name="tiny" ...
<field type="icon" value="tiny-[play-icon]" ... />
</layout>
</layouts>
<layouts>
<layout name="tiny" ...
<field type="icon" value="[play-icon]" ... />
<icon name="stopped" url="c:\Program Files\trio-0.x.x\images\tiny-stopped.gif"/>
<icon name="playing" url="c:\Program Files\trio-0.x.x\images\tiny-playing.gif"/></layout>
</layouts>