Fix the Queue

[Plutonian]

The music queue in the WiiM Home app is barely usable.

1. I cannot add an album or playlist from Qobuz to play next. I can only add the album to the end of the queue. If I have queued Album A and B, and while listening to Album A I decide I would like to listen to Album C, I cannot queue Album C to play next, it can only be added at the end of the existing queue. I want the current song to keep playing and then play Album C and then continue with the rest of the queue.

2. I cannot delete items from the queue. [edit: one at a time is possible by swiping left in the app, but deleting multiple tracks at once is not possible.]

3. I cannot reorder items in the queue. If I want to add several tracks while a song is playing, I have to add them to "Play next" in reverse order to get them in sequence.

4. I cannot re-order albums in the queue. The queue does not respect albums. It just treats everything as an individual track, which is useless.

In the iTunes of more than a decade ago you could collapse the queue into albums and re-order them. You could delete and move individual tracks. You could add playlists or albums to play after the track you are listening to. All of this basic functionality is more than a decade old. In Roon you can at least delete and re-order tracks in the queue.

Making and adjusting the play queue is the heart of listening to music. One thing inspires another. The WiiM Home app queue is so frustrating that I barely ever use it, severely limiting how I can use the WiiM Amp.

 

[alpha_zulu]

Which queue do you mean? I don‘t see any queue at my WHA. Where can I find it?

 

[Brantome]

The music queue in the WiiM Home app is barely usable.

1. I cannot add an album or playlist from Qobuz to play next. I can only add the album to the end of the queue. If I have queued Album A and B, and while listening to Album A I decide I would like to listen to Album C, I cannot queue Album C to play next, it can only be added at the end of the existing queue. I want the current song to keep playing and then play Album C and then continue with the rest of the queue.

2. I cannot delete items from the queue.

3. I cannot reorder items in the queue. If I want to add several tracks while a song is playing, I have to add them to "Play next" in reverse order to get them in sequence.

4. I cannot re-order albums in the queue. The queue does not respect albums. It just treats everything as an individual track, which is useless.

In the iTunes of more than a decade ago you could collapse the queue into albums and re-order them. You could delete and move individual tracks. You could add playlists or albums to play after the track you are listening to. All of this basic functionality is more than a decade old. In Roon you can at least delete and re-order tracks in the queue.

Making and adjusting the play queue is the heart of listening to music. One thing inspires another. The WiiM Home app queue is so frustrating that I barely ever use it, severely limiting how I can use the WiiM Amp.

Do you have these restrictions if you use the Qobuz app and use ChromeCast to play to the WiiM Amp at up to 24/96 resolution?

 

[Plutonian]

Which queue do you mean? I don‘t see any queue at my WHA. Where can I find it?

When you are playing a track and viewing the album art, you can click the button to the right of the volume bar to show the tracks queued for playback.

 

[Plutonian]

Do you have these restrictions if you use the Qobuz app and use ChromeCast to play to the WiiM Amp at up to 24/96 resolution?

Off topic. This thread is about the WiiM Home app.

 

[alpha_zulu]

Thank you, Plutonian. Found it (never seen before). But it seems useless, like you said. I cannot change anything except deleting songs.

 

[Plutonian]

The trash can icon lets you delete all the tracks (or "clear" them).

Do you see an option to delete or remove an individual track in the queue?

I don't see it on the iOS app, but perhaps WiiM maintains a different feature set on Android.

 

[alpha_zulu]

Swiping to left will delete a track. Using iPad.

 

[Plutonian]

Cool. Thanks. It's just one at a time, but better than nothing.

I usually have a block of tracks I would like to delete.

 

[alpha_zulu]

But no chance to reorder any tracks. That‘s bad.

 

[Plutonian]

But no chance to reorder any tracks. That‘s bad.

Yes, compared to even ancient music playback clients, it's very limited and frustrating.

The big advantage to playing back music streamed from local files or the internet is the enjoyable flexibility in queueing up albums and tracks and changing the queue as you go. That should be a central and robust element of any playback software.

I listen to a wide variety of music, and many genres other than pop music top 40 are album based. If I put on a Fleetwood Mac album and decide I'd like to listen to Who's Next, I should be able to go to Who's Next, choose "play next" and that's it. When the current song on the Fleetwood Mac album finishes then Who's Next starts playing. If I get a few songs into Who's Next and want to continue with the rest of the Fleetwood Mac album I just delete the block of remaining Who's Next tracks from the queue and things flow on from there.

Same thing with managing the queue on the fly with individual tracks. While a song is playing I get inspired and want to queue a few different things then go and adjust the order. It's a lot of fun when the app has basic functionality for managing the queue.

 

[Brantome]

Off topic. This thread is about the WiiM Home app.

Thanks for pointing that out to me, but I’d disagree it’s off topic as it was related to an alternative that might not have the queuing restrictions that the WiiM Home app currently has.

Plus, as moderator, I’m well placed to determine what’s on or off topic

 

[Neuromancer]

Swiping to left will delete a track. Using iPad.

Not working on Android unfortunately.

In general: I totally support this feature request. To sum it up: the queue should basically behave like on competing platforms like Sonos or Bluesound.
An additional goody would be to be able to save the current queue as a custom playlist (Bluesound does this for example). I.e. be able to create a playlist that basically contains songs from different services. I do not miss Bluesound at all, except for this feature!

 

[Plutonian]

That's too bad. I suppose it's hard to keep every little feature aligned between Android and iOS.

Making a playlist from the current queue would be awesome as well. I've never used Sonos or Bluesound, so I've never seen that done.

 

[Neuromancer]

Another annoying thing I noticed: when I open the queue it usually displays the tracks in their norml order (i.e. the order of the selected album or whatever) with the first track on top (naturally). Only sometimes (and I really fail to see a pattern here) it behaves differently (and I think that's the desired behaviour but some bug prevents it from being stable): when I open the queue the currently playing track is on top of the list and it is also highlighted. The order of the list itself is unaltered but basically it's like an autoscroll feature that jumps to the currently playing track if you will.

I much prefer the second behaviour and - again - I think this is actually what they try to achieve all the time but there is some weird bug somewhere.

 

[donjulien]

I am what you could call a "queue junkie". Coming from a DJ background, I like to entertain guests and family members by playing the right tracks at the right time. Which means, constantly modifying the queue. As of now, the best all-around service for this is LMS, since I can

• add music from different libraries and services (as many as plugins I have enabled)
• save the queue as a playlist
• reorder/remove tracks on the fly
• access the contextual menu of a track in the queue (different per service, i.e. Tidal has "Track Radio", local library does not)
• I can enable an option for LMS to ask before replacing a queue with a new track (sometimes I tap instead of long-tapping, or tapping on the ellipsis menu; very frustrating after you have built a mighty 50+ tracks playlist).

I think Wiim has all the pieces ready for a more powerful queue implementation. It's just a matter of walking the walk. Please: go for it.
I know I can use my Wiim as a Squeezelite device (THANKS SO MUCH FOR THAT!). But it would be sad to keep those sad souls without an LMS server away from queue heaven.

 

[mlsstl]

Wiim really should take some queue building lessons from LMS. One of my frustrations is that I like to mix albums and tracks from my local collection with my streaming account (I have Qobuz and Amazon.) I can't do that with the Wiim app in the way I like.

While Wiim supports Amazon, LMS doesn't, so that means that I'm stuck with two streaming subscriptions if I want both the flexibility of building queues on LMS but also retain the voice remote capabilities that my wife likes so much.

Note that I don't use playlists much as my music listening is typically not repetitive. That would mean extra steps for each one-shot session.

I wonder if Wiim will ever get around to adding some decent, and basic, features to music selection for building queues while the music is playing?

 

[harkpabst]

I've been a typical album listener (or at least one side of an album ) for decades rather than years, so the concept of having a playing queue (let alone manage it in a convenient manner) did nothing for me.

However, in recent years when playing music at breakfast or lunch time and everyone in the family contributing stuff I came to like e.g. Spotify 's handling of the queue. Using WHA for mixing and matching music from all supported digital sources would be very welcome, indeed.

 

[VIM]

I can only totally agree with TS!!!
Please WiiM, make the queue editable.
I come from Sonos and that's the only thing I was happy about there

 

[Hazenhart]

To pile on:

Yes, please improve the queue as described above, and PLEASE more than anything make it bigger and change the way "shuffle" is implemented. Currently is just shuffles a limited number of tracks within the directory you are viewing.