sound and casting.

Formats

rpm imports and plays these files:

Lossless

FLAC, ALAC, WAV, AIFF, APE (Monkey's Audio), WavPack

Compressed

MP3, AAC and M4A, Ogg Vorbis, Opus, WMA, Musepack

Tracks follow each other with no gap, so live albums and records that run from one song into the next play the way they were made.

Output

Choose which speakers or headphones rpm plays through. The volume and the equaliser are remembered for each one, and Bluetooth headphones use their own volume control. If no sound comes out, rpm says what it found and how to fix it.

Local playback

44.1 kHz, 16-bit stereo through the output you choose. Surround files are mixed down to stereo.

Casting

MP3 320 kbps by default; FLAC 24-bit when you turn it on. See Casting.

Equaliser

Ten bands and a preamp. Presets: Flat, Rock, Pop, Jazz, Classical, Bass boost, Treble and Vocal. Each output keeps its own settings, and casting has a curve of its own.

Volume levelling

Off

Every track at the level it was mastered at.

Match albums

Albums play at the same loudness as each other; the loud and quiet songs within an album keep their difference.

Match tracks

Every track at the same loudness.

Loudness is measured in LUFS against a reference of -18 LUFS, with a ceiling of -1 dBTP so nothing clips. Classical music is left as recorded unless you include it, and any album can be set to always or never be levelled.

Analysis

rpm listens to every track once and measures its tempo, key (with Camelot notation), energy, loudness, true peak and beat grid, using models that run on your own computer. A measurement is made once per recording and shared, so a record someone else already owns does not need measuring again. You can write the tempo and key into your files' tags.

DJ mode

DJ mode plays a playlist as a continuous mix: beats matched across each change, the tempo eased from one record into the next, and transitions chosen by key. Start it with Start DJ, Start DJ here on a track, or Auto mix on a playlist. DJ mode is for supporters.

Lyrics

rpm reads the lyrics in your file first, then looks them up on LRCLIB. Timed lyrics scroll with the song. Choose Try another version if a sheet does not match, or Use your own .lrc file. A file with no timings is shown but cannot follow the song.

Queue and controls

• Now playing holds the queue: play now, play next, add, remove and reorder.
• Thumbs up and down on the player. Not for me keeps a song out of the lists rpm makes.
• Media keys, headphone buttons, Control Center on a Mac and the media controls on Windows all work.

Casting

rpm casts to Google Cast speakers, speaker groups and TVs on your network. While it casts, the equaliser and the visualisers keep working, because rpm still plays the music and sends it on.

Default

MP3 at 320 kbps.

Lossless (FLAC)

24-bit, not re-compressed. Unavailable on speakers that cannot play FLAC.

Turn off the screen

The TV goes black and the music keeps playing.

Gapless

One continuous stream, so albums stay gapless on the speaker too.

rpm's own receiver

On a TV or a speaker with a screen, rpm shows its own screen: the record half out of its sleeve, the song's details, colours from the cover, and a seek bar. When the track changes, the screen changes with it. Press next or previous on the speaker, in the Google Home app, or ask Google Assistant, and rpm moves on. With a TV remote, left and right move between previous, play, next and the heart.

From the iPhone, rpm sends uncompressed audio to the speaker, and the phone's volume buttons turn the speaker up and down.

Internet radio

rpm tunes into the Radio Browser directory: tens of thousands of stations from around the world, with logos for more than 42,000 of them.

• Turn a dial, or search the directory.
• Filter by country, genre, format and advertising.
• Sort by most played, name, votes or bitrate.
• Save stations; your radio listening syncs to the iPhone and your other computers.
• See the song on air, whether a station is answering, and when an ad break starts.