Frequently Asked Questions

A few questions that have been asked many times in the past, with corresponding answers.

Top Questions

  1. Where is the search function?
  2. Is there a way to always Scan subfolders on click without ALT?
  3. Will there be (horizontal) zoom?
  4. Why no macOS version?
  5. I use a desktop and a laptop PC. Can I use Resonic Pro on both?
  6. Will my Pro license still work when I get a new PC?
  7. Does Resonic require a constant internet connection?
  8. When I buy the Pro, what's the plan for updates?
  9. Why can't I Drag & Drop to/from other applications?
  10. Can I edit or write meta tags?
  11. Why is Resonic starting up slowly?

Table of Contents

Contents

General

Which versions of Resonic exist?

Resonic Player

Resonic Player is a lightning-fast universal audio/music/folder player and sample browser with a clean, simple, but powerful user interface. It is perfectly suited for everyone who wants to listen to music and audio files in the most comfortable way and highest sound quality possible.

Free for personal and non-profit use (non-commercial).

We urge commercial entities to buy Resonic Pro and users of Resonic Player that make an actual profit to donate to the project to help finance future updates.

Resonic Pro

Resonic Pro is designed for advanced users, audio enthusiasts, and audio professionals. It is based on the fast and stable core of Resonic Player, but is destined to become a creativity and productivity tool, a workflow pusher with a hint of crazy. You'll be surprised…

A license is required to run this version.

Early Access versions are available for purchase now.

I use a desktop and a laptop PC. Can I use Resonic Pro on both?

Absolutely.

You can use it on up to three of your own systems, which will also remain true after the licensing system changes a bit in version 1.0.

We know our users and don't want to cripple their workflow, but improve it.

Will my Pro license still work when I get a new PC?

Yes.

Your Resonic Pro license won't expire and we won't change that unexpectedly through updates. Only time-limited licenses (e.g. trial versions, or previews) expire.

If for any reason your license stops working when it shouldn't get in touch with us and you will receive a fresh one.

Does Resonic require a constant internet connection?

Nope.

Again, we don't want to cripple your workflow but improve it, and we're not interested in siphoning off your personal information in the background either (see the Privacy page for more on this topic.)

Future versions of Resonic Pro will make use of online activation, but there will also be an offline activation method for systems without an internet connection.

When I buy the Pro, what's the plan for updates?

We'll be offering optional update extensions.

Granting unlimited free updates to customers is unfortunately not a viable option for small businesses like us if customers expect the product to be actively developed and not just bugfixed after buying it. Small businesses that sell life-time licenses usually have no plans of delivering significant feature updates in the future, but we do. The planned update cycle from 1.0 is one update per month, including new features, with update extensions being completely optional. We believe this is a fair compromise as we do have to deliver new features and users are not forced to pay.

Early Access user will receive an update extension for free as a little gift!

To learn more about it read this post.

Will Resonic Pro be dongled?

Hopefully not, nope.

We keep putting a lot of work into what we think is a high-quality product, and while we believe users shouldn't be paying for expensive copy protection, but for usability and functionality, software piracy is a big thing for a little team like us.

Committed to building an honest relationship with our users and customers we play fair, and we're counting on you to play fair as well.

I lost my Pro license. What can I do?

Get in touch with us with this information:

  • How you lost the license (email hacked, possibly stolen, misplaced, etc.)
  • Who you are. Identify yourself as well as possible, especially if you're on a new email account, maybe referencing old emails (name/address/date) you sent to us, or providing something else that would be helpful in verifying that you are the rightful license owner.

My Pro license stopped working. What can I do?

It shouldn't have, but don't worry.

Resonic Pro licenses do not expire, with the exception of trials and previews, but there is always human error. Please make sure that you have not made a mistake during activation. If you're suspecting there might be something wrong with the license get in touch with us and we'll make sure you receive a fresh one.

What about a Linux version?

We don't have any plans for a Linux version at this point.

For the reasons please read the next paragraph on macOS.

Why no macOS version?

So far, we don't have the financial means.

Resonic is one big endeavor, and to be honest a macOS version fully depends on the success of Resonic Pro for Windows, or other means of funding.

While we believe that Resonic for macOS would greatly improve professional workflows on that platform, especially in the film editing and sound departments, we don't see a native version happening anytime soon without a strong partner or financial help on our side. Resonic is self-financed and back-breaking work, and we simply cannot afford licensing a suitable cross-platform toolkit like (commercial) QT, and buying all the required Apple hardware needed for development. We have developed software for macOS/iOS before though, so we kind of know what to expect.

Meanwhile why don't you take a couple of minutes, fire up Bootcamp, and give Resonic a try anyway?

As far as we know Resonic seems to run on VMWare Fusion where it uses up little CPU (User screenshots: 1 2), and it also seems to run on Wine (with MSGDI+), but generally not too well and with excessive CPU load.

Will there be a 64-bit version?

Not anytime soon, because:

This one goes hand in hand with the macOS answer before: If you'd suddenly be throwing money at us we'd be happy to start with an x64 and cross-platform Resonic right away.

Of course there are a few downsides of not having a 64-bit version (e.g., 64-bit ASIO/VST support), but right now we can only do what's possible with the means we have at hand.

Here are our reasons against x64:

  • We'd have to rebuild the complete Resonic UI portion from the ground up which is not in the budget at the moment. Back then graphics acceleration was a bit different: very loud — something you really didn't want in the studio. So we made a choice in framework based on that. In retrospect it wasn't the best choice, but then again even today the options are slim.
  • Resonic is not a tool that uses as much memory as an audio, photo, or video editing application, and is as optimized as it can be at the moment
  • Building four versions instead of two takes a long time, and so does testing four versions instead of two, on all supported versions of Windows, but that wouldn't be an issue
  • Feature development slows down, and you probably want some new features

Good to know, maybe:

  • 64-bit versions don't simply make things faster unless code is properly optimized (which is a time-consuming task)
  • Cheap and readily available Windows 10 tablets run on 32-bit Windows
  • Aside from being able to hold enormously large file lists in memory there wouldn't be much of an immediate benefit in performance as Resonic is already highly optimized

Operation

Resonic has crashed. What do I do?

Send us a crash dump!

When Resonic crashes it offers you to send us a crash dump (or mini dump, a .dmp file) via email which assists us with finding and fixing the cause in the next update. However, a crash dump alone does not help, because it does not tell us what you did right before the crash happened. Provide us with as much information as possible on the steps you have taken before the crash, or on how to reproduce the crash.
To find any recorded crash dumps use Open crash dumps folder from Menu » Advanced.

Traditionally, you'll be mentioned in the version history if your report helps us smash a bug.

Can I reset my preferences?

Yes, if you really have to.

You can reset the preferences by holding down Ctrl+⇧ Shift while Resonic is startup up.

In old versions: Ctrl+Alt+⇧ Shift

More on storage locations: Installing Resonic

Will there be playlists?

Yes.

Resonic started out as a directory player without playlist support, however tabbed playlists are in development and scheduled for a 0.9.x release.

Where is the search function?

It is in development and will start appearing step-by-step between 0.9.3 and 1.0 as free updates for Pro users.

You can use the file list filter instead until then.

  • Right-Click a folder and choose Scan subfolders, or hold ALT and Left-Click it, which will find all the files in that folder and beyond. Give it some time, this can become an expensive operation.
  • Keep in mind that Resonic might at some point hit its process memory limits and crash when you try to do this on folders with an extremely large number of files and have metadata scanning enabled. The program is not intended to be used this way so far (read the explanation). You can, however, turn off metadata scanning (put Resonic into Bullet Mode via its status bar button to do so) to consume much less memory if all you need to do is browse tons of files.
  • Press Ctrl+F to toggle the filter, which also supports metadata, and start typing

Is there a way to always Scan subfolders on click without ALT?

You'll have to ALT-click for the time being, but for a reason.

Resonic still operates as a pure folder browser, i.e. it reads the physical folders on your harddrive every time you click them to reflect the latest changes. In case of Scan subfolders it has to read the whole folder tree.

Understand that there is no database caching involved in listing folders in Resonic when you click them. It might sometimes feel like it, but there is no pre-scanned library of sorts that you manually add folders to. Countless optimizations make it as fast as it is. The library features were stripped in the switch from Alpha to Beta, but we'll be bringing them back.

It is not the best idea to let the user scan any folder, even drive roots like C:, recursively every time they are clicked. Resonic is not fully laid out to cope with this behavior, which you'll notice when you accidentally switch away from a large scanned file list that came from multiple folders just to find that you cannot go back to it, for example. Internally kept special playlists will solve this issue.

For the time being you'll have to make do with ALT-click, but with full caching we might be able to come up with a more elegant and immediate solution that we can confidently unlock in a release.

Can I edit or write meta tags?

We've been following a read-only concept, so far.

The original idea behind Resonic was having a lightning-fast read-only audio browser and auditioning/management tool. Metadata would only be read, original files would never be altered, and any edits would be non-destructive.

After heavy research of what existing applications do to audio file metadata and even structural integrity (see A few words on editing files) we decided to stay away from this absolute mess and chaos, and from editing facilities, but we had a change of heart in early 2018, because there is an actual need to get this right.

Our proprietary metadata library, the Resonic meta core, is responsible for gathering and amalgamating all the information from various metadata sources inside files. It has been getting stronger by the month it only makes sense to eventually move into tag writing/cleanup/verification territory, and to allow file editing up to a certain degree, and thus to move away from the original read-only concept of Resonic.

Our library will, amongst other things, be evaluating the quality of existing metadata, detect errors, and report them alongside warnings, and notices about your files' integrity.

A few words on editing files

Editing files is a large topic to deal with, and so is the diversity of bastardized metadata standards and non-standards in everyday use. In general a lot can go wrong when your files are being altered by software. Your audio content in a file is usually on the safe side unless it is actually being altered as well — that's just a large block that sits in its place.

To a regular user the complexity of editing files or embedding content in files is a bit of a mystery. A mystery that is ironically simply expected to work, and to work correctly. Even with big-name software you're not really on the safe side (we could write articles…), because the focus is often not on what others are doing in metadata but on making it work for a single program. This is also the reason why "inventing" new proprietary formats is easier than sticking to what there is. On the other hand a program like Resonic needs to take into account everything there is and try to make sense of things that often really don't make much sense. In way too many cases something breaks, one way or another. This could for example be:

  • the permanent removal of existing metadata from a file ("I don't know what this is and I'd rather remove than ignore it!")
  • the overwriting of existing content ("I am talking, and I don't care who else is in the room!)
  • the invalidation of existing content ("They wrote it that way, but I write it this way!")
  • the invalidation of "standard" content ("It should be written that way, but I write it this way!")
  • the breaking of file integrity

The very least to expect is for a program to offer an "Apply" button, or a checkbox that says "I'm okay with you altering my files".
It's never fun to realize later on that somehow files are damaged or content is missing from them. Having to find out what did it is even less fun though.

Can I access network shares?

Resonic plays network-shared files, but the browser does not fully support display of shares yet.

You can work around this by mapping your network share to a local drive and accessing that in Resonic:

  • Using Windows Explorer (Map a network drive in Windows)
  • Using the command net use X: \\share\name (where X is a drive letter)

Is Resonic portable?

Yes, very much so.

Resonic was designed with full portability in mind.

Once installed in portable mode it can be run from all (write-enabled) portable devices like USB sticks / thumb drives without leaving data behind on the computer. In fact, you can take your settings along with you as they are saved and restored per computer and user, which can be configured to one's liking.

To get Resonic portable you either download the separate .zip version (which is recommended), or you install it and copy the installed files to any other folder from where it will automatically run in portable mode.

Does Resonic support Unicode?

Yes, fully.

Foreign language symbols, Unicode filenames, as well as Unicode tags (UTF-8/UTF-16), are supported.

Are Windows Media devices supported?

No.

Windows Media devices that use the obsolete media transfer protocol (MTP), e.g., some phones, are displayed in the browser, but are not supported right now. If you want to browse them it's best to put your device into mass storage (MSC) mode, if possible. This, for example, works with most Android phones, and many MP3 players.

Installation

Is an unattended installation possible?

Yes. Look here.

,,The specified account already exists.''

In rare cases, the setup (.msi) can fail with the error The specified account already exists..
This is not a bug within the Resonic installer but rather with Windows Installer in general, where certain registry keys can become corrupted during an install or uninstall.

Microsoft recommends running their "Fix-up!" utility and then reattempt the installation.

While this has resolved the issue in the few cases we've encountered we recommend to uninstall and reinstall Resonic first before using third-party utilities.

,,This installation package could not be opened.''

Download the file again to resolve the issue.

Your downloaded .msi file is most likely incomplete or broken if you receive the following message:

This installation package could not be opened. Contact the application vendor to verify that this is a valid Windows Installer package.

Startup

Why is Resonic starting up slowly?

It shouldn't, but read on.

Firstly make sure you have the latest version of Resonic / your antivirus software.

There are a few things that can slow down startup:

  • Antivirus software is usually the #1 culprit because it sometimes take the apps a long time to scan the main executable file. Some AV software even reports Resonic as a false positive despite being clean. The only way around this is to set an exclusion for the Resonic install folder (see below)
  • Startup resume can cause slow startup as well if started without a filename. To disable see Menu » Playback » Resume playback on startup (see below)
  • Attached network drives may slow down startup in certain cases, especially if currently not reachable
  • You can keep Resonic running in the tray on minimize/close. See Menu » Interface » Window Options » Always minimize/close to tray
  • From Resonic 0.9.4 new and custom drive listing code will be used that should help a bit too

Please let us know if any and which of these bullet points are helpful to you.

Slow startup: Startup Resume

When start-up resume feature is enabled and either your last-played file or folder is in a slow location on your computer, which could be an external or sleeping drive that needs to wake up first, or a network location.

Consider disabling the start-up resume feature if this happens a lot to you.

You can temporarily disable start-up resume by holding down the Ctrl key while starting Resonic.

Slow startup: Windows Defender

There was a bug in Mirosoft's AV scanners Security Essentials and Windows Defender with engine versions right before 1.1.12805.0 which slows down Resonic startup time and application performance (e.g. when switching files). In extreme cases startup might take between 15 and 30 seconds.

Solutions: Update your AV scanner to the latest version.
Alternatively go to your AV settings and add an exclusion for the folder that you installed Resonic in
(usually C:\Program Files (x86)\Liqube).

Instructions for Windows Defender (Windows 10 and 8)
Instructions for Security Essentials (Windows 7)

You can also do that if you want Resonic to perform better, regardless of AV bugs.

Interface

Will you support languages other than English?

Yes, absolutely.

We plan to make the translation tool available to the public.

However, because the Beta version is constantly changing we're still holding back the translation feature.

Will Resonic support skins?

Color themes, but no bitmap skins.

Skins are a very time-consuming task for developers and can have a serious impact on usability and flexibility.

We've built a powerful color theming system around our custom UI, which will allow users and designers to play with the look.

Can I Drag & Drop files?

Yes.

You can Drag & Drop files and folders from the file list and the browser into Windows Explorer and other applications, and vice versa. The current filename in the main window's header can also be dragged.

Resonic Pro allows you to Drag & Drop selections of any audio file into new files and into other applications, effectively extracting portions of audio, applying pitch shift settings, and converting sample formats on-the-fly.

Can I drag without restarting files?

Yes.

To prevent a file from playing/restarting hold down the CTRL key.

Starting with version 0.8.2 this behavior changed completely and files are no longer accidentally restarted when you want to Drag & Drop them somewhere.

Read more about file list behavior.

Why can't I Drag & Drop to/from other applications?

Run your programs either as user, or as administrator, but not as a mix of both.

Make sure you start Resonic and other applications that you want to interact with through Drag & Drop either as user, or as administrator (e.g., Right-Click on program and Run as Administrator.) Any mix of these two won't work.

The underlying problem is tied to how security permissions on Windows work:
Technically Drag & Drop commands are messages, and sending messages from a program with normal rights to a program with elevated rights (e.g., admin rights) would break the security model behind UAC (or User Access Control).

Why are popups/mouse wheel behaving strangely

In case you have special mouse driver software, or software that simulates or messes with the mouse cursor, installed, make sure you try to disable it.

Tools like StrokeIt might cause problems with Resonic popup menu or control behavior, e.g. require two clicks to open a menu, or focus loss with certain elements. This is most likely caused by the way these tools hook into Windows' mouse handling. In this case make sure you add Resonic to the tool's exception list.

Will there be (horizontal) zoom?

Possibly, in Resonic Pro.

For the time being we're committed to delivering some essential asset management features related to database, library, metadata, and search. A feature like horizontal zoom is a very difficult thing to implement into software that is optimized for fast browsing and handling of large amounts of audio files.

Clever approaches and countless micro-optimizations make Resonic Pro as fast as it is. A regular wave editor, or digital audio workstation, has the time and resources to decode whole files in advance (with exceptions, e.g., if it reads uncompressed PCM audio directly) or to generate a highly detailed waveform overview, or combinations of those, before it can actually go down to 1:1 zoom, which then also allows for features like snap to zero-crossings.
To accomplish something like this without introducing big delays, slowdowns, and keeping Resonic fast and snappy does require some proper magic. Not saying it can't be done, it absolutely can, but I guess time will show what we can come up with.

Rest assured that we'll definitely stay on it.

Why are Resonic's track durations different than in other applications?

It's complicated, for some file formats.

It's complicated to accurately determine playback durations for some file formats. The more complex or unevenly compressed a format is, e.g. mp3, m4a, mid, the more this rule applies. The simpler the format is, e.g. an uncompressed wav file, the easier it is.

Different software often uses different code to read the various file formats. Depending on how they handle the content they will often report different values.

There is also the aspect of accuracy vs. speed. You can scan every frame in a compressed file, but it would take much longer than just scanning the first few hundred or so and taking an average. When you think of variable bit rate (VBR) files the issue becomes most apparent.

Within Resonic you might even see discrepancies between the duration shown in the file list and in the header bar. This is intentional: one is a very fast version, the other is a more accurate one.

Since Resonic uses a proprietary meta core its code will of course be fundamentally different from other applications like Windows Explorer.

Sound

What's degrading sound quality in Resonic?

Nothing. You get studio-grade sound.

There is absolutely nothing between decoded audio and sound output that degrades the sound quality in any way without the user explicitly wanting it to, which is absolutely essential for clean sound and pure audio playback as well as for previewing sounds and samples, and playing back music.

Resonic does contain a few optional DSP features and will receive additional features in future releases, but at any point all of these features are fully optional and are never anywhere near the signal chain unless specifically wanted by the user.

Resonic uses a feedback system that lets core parts of the audio code control the user interface to reflect the real state of it current settings, rather than the other way around, which ensures makes that parts of undesirable code (e.g., passive DSP) is not accidentally forgotten activated. The UI would show you.

Disable any processing in Windows own sound settings for the output device you're using when you're playing through non-exclusive WASAPI or DirectSound.

Does Resonic support ASIO?

Yes, Resonic Pro.

Resonic Pro requires 32-bit ASIO drivers.

Bit-perfect and native DSD playback are also planned for the Pro version.

While most companies offer ASIO drivers for both 32 and 64-bit Windows (e.g. RME or MOTU), others (e.g. UA or Apogee) have decided to ditch 32-bit support, following Apple's move to go 64-bit only on macOS, even though this has absolutely nothing to do with the Windows reality.

WASAPI exclusive mode can be used for audio output if your soundcard does not offer a 32-bit ASIO driver.

Why won't my ASIO4ALL device work?

ASIO4ALL usually takes over audio devices, so sometimes cannot use the same device in other applications while it is already in use by ASIO4ALL.

As a Resonic Pro user you can pick its ASIO output driver instead.

What should I use? DirectSound, WASAPI, or ASIO?

Always use WASAPI or ASIO for advanced features.

Avoid DirectSound whenever possible as it has many limitations and is the lowest quality output system.
We support DirectSound for backwards-compatibility, but might stop supporting it in a future release when we consider WASAPI support to be a fully acceptable replacement in all scenarios.

Why won't my ASUS soundcard work (stuttering sound)?

Turn off the GX feature to resolve these issues.

Some ASUS soundcards, most prominently the Xonar series, come with a so-called GX feature, which is similar to Alchemy/EAX on Creative Labs sound cards.

It can cause problems with DirectSound where sound might shutter, or not play at all. It can also cause problems with WASAPI where the soundcard fails to restore properly after sleep or hibernation, and could no longer be used resulting in errors in Resonic, or Resonic falling back to DirectSound playback.

Graphics

Why do I get jittery animations in Resonic?

Your Windows power plan might be set to "Balanced".

On modern systems, this plan tends to lower the processor speed and overall system performance to save power when the system has little to nothing to do. Resonic uses very little processing power which might make your Windows throttle the system's performance, and also graphics update speed.

Go to Control Panel » Power Options and switch to the High performance power plan.
This might make a big difference, or none at all, depending on your system. Just try it.
For music playback use you should prefer the Balanced power plan, as it saves a lot of power. For processing-heavy uses you should use the High performance power plan, e.g. for graphics, video, and audio editing, or for DAWs.

Ask your questions

Join us on the official Liqube Audio discussion forums, or look here for other ways of contacting us.