As you may know, Mr QuestionMan is the EncSpot like app, that can analyze your audio files and provide you with some usefull info, like encoder used, bitrate etc. This is the first official release (previous versions were only released here at HA). Enjoy!

http://burrrn.net/mrq

Not many changes from the last version, the main point was to get the page up and running.

- new icon! (thanks to bildmischer... er, sorry, I mean picmixer )
- now quesses the Vorbis encoder version
- added optional AlphaBlend effect when moving the window (kinda useless but nice , can be enabled in the Settings)
- added simple support for auCDtect.exe (put it in the same folder as Mr QuestionMan and doubleclick a wav file in the list view)
- new treeview component, the old one was too buggy (note to developers: you need to install the TurboPower ShellShock component)

Thanks Gambit.

Nice, thanks.

Maybe its a idea to write a little something on your website what mr.questionman is, and what kind of formats it can scan. People who surf by your website will never know what it is now.

This proggy shows:

I´ve loved this program since the beginning! A lot faster than EncSpot. Thanks!

The only thing I would like is identification of AAC (mp4 and m4a) files.

The program is pretty cool, yes. Anyways, the reason why it is faster than EncSpot is that it relies on only one frame header. EncSpot scans 1000 frames headers in the default configuration.

Thank you Gambit! Even from the very beginning this has been a wonderful tool. Keep it up.

Very neat and usable program - and a nice sense of humour

'Number of channels' would be good if you get the time to code it.

UJ

There is no linux version of this, correct?

- Agent 86

Great tool, thanks

What a trekkie!

Problem for me (and for asian peoples) is any Japanese(double byte) filename and folder name can't seen in this tool.

Gambit, thanks a million for including auCDtect support in Mr Questionman. What a huge help. I've been working on writing auCDtect install/usage instructions for users with no command-line experience, but you've just made my job (and their lives) tons easier.

Say, one question/suggestion: It looks like MrQ runs auCDtect at the default speed (8). Any way you might change that to use the slowest, most accurate speed (-m0) in the next version?

Hello,
thanx for the great program. But I believe I found a bug in it (v0.5). In the settings dialog there is no OK/Cancel button, so the only chance is to close the window. In this case, the settings I changed are returned back to default values.
And now one future request. Would it be too complicated to implement a frequency analysis part to check, if a lowpass was used or if there aren't any other quality problems. Or is somewhere available a tool to do this? I just want to see a histogram with frequencies.
And the last thing - mp3pro files are not identified. The program says they are encoded using FhG.
Best regards,
Vlada

This can be done without spectrum-analasis - at least for lame-encoded files, because the lowpass is stored in the lame-tag if i remember right. Also, every mp3 (or almost any lossy codec) uses a lowpass (to improve the quality) - the question is just "at which frequency was it applied?".

- Lyx

omg gambit is that you in the pic?

No, that's the real QuestionMan

You're right. What I wanted to know, is the lowpass frequency. I believe it shouldn't be so difficult to find out the frequency, even if there is no LAME tag. A wrong lowpass frequency can do a lot of damage to an MP3 file.
Vlada

Mr QuestionMan 0.6 beta
- added TTA support
- updated WavPack support to handle version 4 files
- updated and fixed Wav reading (though still not perfect with some rare files )
- some small additions and bug fixes

http://burrrn.net/mrq/Files/MrQuestionMan06beta.rar

Great application! Very useful

I've a feature request for a future version: I'd really like to see which tagging formats (if any) are used on a particular file. For example ID3v1, ID3v2, APEv2,...

Regards,

Tikke24x

I really like Mr. QuestionMan and it has worked for every audio filetype I've tried on it, except one. The only thing I've found it doesn't work with is MPEG-4 AAC with a .mp4 extension. Any plans on it?

Otherwise very very nice app. I use it to identify downloaded mp3s and I tag the comment field with which encoder was used to make them It's also nice to be able to tell which Vorbis build I used to encode certain files, etc.

Tested yesterday MQM 0.6beta: it's fine, but indications for wavpack 4.xx lossless profile are apparently wrong. I'm using -fx5 (fast) as setting, and MQM shows wavpack 4 (high). Bitrate information is nevertheless OK (similar/identical to foobar2000 indication)

There is a problem with GOGO encoded data.

CBR encoded files get correctly identified, VBR ones are detected as "MPEG 1 Layer III Xing"

Used encoder was http://www.rarewares.org/files/mp3/gogo313.zip

It would be quite simple to port Mr. QuestionMan to Linux. Just download Kylix Open Edition from Borland and try it. I did, but I'm not interested in the GUI version, so I whipped together a MP3 only, console Linux program from it. (But no, it didn't compile straight away, so you need to do a few changes in the GUI.)

http://www.christian.daven.name/software/mp3qm.php

I noticed that Sir QuestionMan is not able to either see or work in hidden folders / files. hidden folders and files do not show up in the search tree, and if you manually want to open an mp3 in one of these folders, you get an 'invalid folder' error message.
is this intended, a 'feature', or maybe a bug?

it would be very usefull for me to be able work with the app in hidden folders also, so if it might be possible to implent that, I would be very happy.
this would in addition be a nice chance to add something to the very small part of 'settings for sane people' section

using WinXP sp1, ntsf formated disk, MrQuestionMan 0.6.

Digga, updated, please download:
http://www.burrrn.net/mrq/Files/MrQuestionMan06beta.rar

thank you Gambit works perfectly here.

Here too
Thanks

A feature suggestion for Mr.Questionman:

If all files in the scanned folder give the same results (e.g. all are LAME 3.90.3 aps), generate an empty file in the directory, with a filename describing the encoding of the files.
Using the above example the filename could be:
MP3_LAME_VBR_APS_211kbps.txt

The "x kbps" value could come from the average bitrate of the files.

Of course this should work not only for mp3-s, but all supported types. And of yourse this should be optional.

And the use of this: if you already scanned a folder with MQM, when you enter the folder you'll see the results at a glance.

Mr. Questionman is great, let's make it even better!

Thanks!
Mark

Sooooo? Anyone like my idea?

There is some sense to it.

I don't think it would need to write a file in each directory though - too messy. It would do best to maintain one file in the application folder - like a database (or simply a list) of folders scanned.

It would have to record some hash value for the folder to be able to check whether the contents had changed, which would slow down the process (checking the folder's contents against the recorded hash value). Again, this could be a preference so you chose whether it checked each time or only on user request ("Requery folder" button).

Would you check the same folder multiple times though?

I'm not sure I have any folders with so many files in that it would be necessary. If you could view folders recursively then it may come into its own.

I like the database idea. But why not simply add the result as an additional comment into the ID3 tag? Of course this feature should be optional only.
I'm using Jriver Media Center to organize my music collection and it could be extremely useful to have this information available (e.g. using this as selection criteria in smartlists).

Well, my original idea with this feature would have been that I can see at a glance in Explorer or Windows Commander with which settings the albums were encoded.

i think it's a nice idea, probably pretty easy to implement and very handy for p2p applications.

thanks for an excellent program gambit!

[add] one question though: what do all those settings do?

They improve the Tonal Purity.

well, I'm sorry to have to say that, but that's just not true Gambit.
in fact, these settings, generally refered to as genautic subtobian settings, do indeed have the potential to improve tonal purity, with most impact on crispy base and airy hights. but if the user doesn't set it up right (as stated here), it could most possible lead to... nothing.
which leads to my actual question: whyt does all this have in common with the price of potatos?

Added Speex support.
http://www.burrrn.net/mrq/Files/MrQuestionMan06beta.rar

Nice, I like this application. I've noticed that profile are now correct with wavpack. But there's still a problem: when self-extract module is embedded, MrQM can't display ANY informations about wv files.
An exemple of sfx wavpack file:
ftp://ftp2.foobar2000.net/foobar/Bloch_Formule.wv


EDIT: wavpack profile isn't guess (?) correctly. -f[ast]x5 encodings are now labeled as WavPack 4 lossless (normal) (it was (high) with previous 0.6 beta).

Thanks for the file guruboolez, I'll have a look.

And no, WavPack profile still isn't detected correctly. WavPack sources are a bit of a mess and we (jtclipper and me) didn't have the nerves to go through them to find out how to fix it...

One other thing that I have noticed with MrQuestionMan is this:

I have some tunes which I encoded with Frauhofer's FastEnc. These showed incorrect length and bitrate due to the header. So I fix the headers with Foobar2k but now MrQM displays them as Xing-encoded tunes.

I can't seem to remember reading about this problem before with MrQM. If it has been brought up earlier, please disregard this post.

Yeah, as said before, detection of non LAME mp3s is not perfect. Feltzkrone started to work on improving that part of the code, but he went MIA again.

Updated with AC3 support.
http://www.burrrn.net/mrq/Files/MrQuestionMan06beta.rar

This is really a nice little tool

I have a few of things that i would really like 2 be added
1. An option where u can set where MrQM should "view" when its start
2. Support for AAC/M4A/MP4
3. An auto update function when more files is added 2 the same folder ur checking now. (Now u have 2 go 2 another folder and the back again 4 it 2 update)


I also just noticed that if i change anything under Settings it's back to the default settings when i check Settings again. I would be gr8 to get a set of Okey/Cancel buttons under Settings also.

MrQM v0.6

Ur doin' a gr8 work with this tool Gambit


//NR

Feel free to post exactly what you want to know...

Unfortunately David has been very busy with his new job as of late. It's not at his home town, so he has to travel every week to San Francisco, and I suspect he doesn't have good internet access where he is staying there.

Gambit: If Garf can't help you, I suggest you write David a mail (david@wavpack.com). He isn't visiting the forums much as of late.

I was wondering if it was possible to add an option that scans sub folders as well

16 - March - 2005
Mr QuestionMan 0.6 released.

Changelog:
- added TTA support
- added Speex support
- added AC3 support
- added DTS support
- updated WavPack support to handle version 4 files
- updated and fixed Wav reading
- some small additions and bug fixes
- new Mr QuestionMan pic in the about window