I've finally got my empeg (18gb, amber) and it is truely amazing. The user interface on the device is fantastic, it's amazing how fast you can get to what you want, especially with the remote and fuzzy matching.

Emplode on the other hand is a little disappointing. I have a few problems after a few days of use, which I've listed below.

1) Emplode doesn't pick up the correct ID3 tag when there are more than one in an MP3. Sometimes there are two tags (v1 and v2?? - not sure) in an MP3 that may contain different information. All my other MP3 software (Winamp, mp3-tag studio, mp3 manager etc.) picks up and edits one tag, but Emplode gets an older tag from somewhere else in the file, meaning that even if you've set all your mp3 tags to what you want, Emplode doesn't get it right. Very frustrating!

I eventually found a piece of software called mp3trim pro that will automatically correct/rectify the mp3 old tag to the new one (and also removes beginning and ending digital silence automatically - very cool), but this makes Emplode inconsistent with every other tag editing tool.

2)Drag and drop / copy-paste a directory structure into Emplode is a necessary feature to create playlists. However there is no way (that I've found) to subsequently sync the empeg playlist structure with that same directory structure, to add/replace/remove only files that have changed/moved/been added/deleted.

Often you get new MP3s that fit into the existing playlist structure and need to be added to the empeg. Or, you want to re-categorize files that already exist on the empeg. I want the same structure on my desktop hd as my empeg, but having to edit playlists separately in the directory structure and Emplode is time-consuming and a recipe for inconsistency. The only realistic way I have found is to delete the contents of the empeg (which takes about an hour to sync - why??? minimal data is being transferred) and resync (about 12 hours over USB, apparently the fastest)

Possibly this could be done by creating a CRC code for each file on the Empeg which can then be matched against the directory structure files to identify files that are already on the empeg and don't need to be re-uploaded, just moved? Alternatively there are probably several other ways to make maintenance much more automatic.

3) Sync is _so_ slow! I thought that USB was up to 11Mbit/s, I'm getting about 2.4 (quick estimate), with a brand new high performance Dell desktop running Win2k. Particularly frustrating is the long (10-15 minute) pause before anything happens at the start of a sync, where Emplode doesn't respond even to window redraw requests.

To be honest, though I love the visuals on the device, easy and efficient management of the files on the empeg are more my priorities, but just my 2 cents :-) Hope these things make their way into a future release.

In any case, GREAT JOB EMPEG! The wait was long and painful, but it was worth it.

Wish #1: i have the same problem and was about to write it on the wish list too.. but you were the first ;-)

Wish #3: why are you using USB when the unit has ethernet (or have you got mk.I?).. i get something around 600kb/s (kilobyte/sec) over ethernet.

re: #3 - two reasons:

- The manual says USB is faster than Ethernet (why?)

but more to the point
- My cable provider uses DHCP to assign IP addresses, but different IPs on the same cable modem are often (always it seems) assigned on different 255 number subnets. So since the empeg is not in the local subnet to the desktop, Emplode does not find it.

I can't use the static IP option as my home Ethernet hubs are connected to the cable provider, and I can't find out from the empeg display what IP address it has picked up from DHCP.

... leading to to suggestion #4: let the user find the IP address assigned from the empeg UI via DHCP, and then accept that being typed in manually into Emplode to let Emplode find the device.

manual.. what's that ? *gg*... haven't read it yet... why should i ...

what a strange ISP have you got ??.. are they unable to give you an IP in the same subnet..or can you ask them to give you a fix IP-address, so that you could set this IP on the empeg and then enter it (registry setting?) in emplode ?

other solution would be a gateway/firewall-server that you install between your home network and the internet ?

1) Emplode doesn't pick up the correct ID3 tag when there are more than one in an MP3. Sometimes there are two tags (v1 and v2?? - not sure) in an MP3 that may contain different information.

This conflicts with what Rob said he THOUGHT Empeg did. It sounds as though you've got both an ID3v1 tag and an ID3v2 tag, as you guessed. Each one is written in a different place (v1 at the beginning of the file and v2 at the end of the file). Most players, also as you said, check both and will allow a v2 tag to take precedence. Rob thought this was the case with Empeg, but I think he's going to have to verify this. ROB? The question does come up as to why you have different information in each tag, but you've already found a program to fix that, which is good. It's definitely a good idea to keep the two tags in sync for just this reason. Tony had said that

In reply to:

---

Even though you can name the songs any length in emplode, the empeg's VFD display is limited in the number of characters you can see at one time. So even though I have to abbreviate some of my song/artist/album titles for the PC, I leave them that way after I move them to the empeg since I usually wouldn't see the extra letters anyway.

---

So, that's something to keep in mind, too. However, I believe he's referring only to the list when browsing playlists/songs, not the "info scrolling" or in the visuals. I know this doesn't help much, but this seems to be a bug now, so I'm sure the guys@empeg will check this piece out now that they know about it.

George

Each one is written in a different place (v1 at the beginning of the file and v2 at the end of the file).

Actually, the V1 tag is at the end of the file. This is a nitpick, but I wanted to make sure you had all the information.

___________
Tony Fabris

Ya know, I thought I had that backwards, but I figured... hey, either no one will know or no one will care. I forgot about the type of people we have here! (Just like me... perfectionists!) Thanks for the correction, though.

George

1) Emplode doesn't pick up the correct ID3 tag when there are more than one in an MP3.

This is very interesting, and obviously a precedence thing. If it's important to you, I could look at one of the offending files in UltraEdit and figure out exactly what's going wrong.

2)Drag and drop / copy-paste a directory structure into Emplode is a necessary feature to create playlists.

Actually, it's not totally necessary- I hand-create all my playlists and drag the songs in individual groups...

However there is no way (that I've found) to subsequently sync the empeg playlist structure with that same directory structure, to add/replace/remove only files that have changed/moved/been added/deleted.

Hmm, I see your point, but I don't think it was designed for you to make minor edits by doing big folder-drops. It's really not that tough to drag and drop individual songs here and there as you make changes. You shouldn't need to do a huge folder-drop every time you change one song.

Yes, you make a good point that it would be simpler to edit the directory structure once and re-synch. But at that point, you're talking about a system where the PC is the "master" list, and the empeg is the "slave". That's contrary to the empeg's root design. The whole idea is that the empeg doesn't permanently depend on any files stored on the PC at all.

For instance, the MP3s stored on my work computer are a completely different set than the ones stored on my home computer. But I can manage all the playlists and songs on either computer because emplode is just a terminal to the database stored in the empeg itself. I can add songs from either computer, I can edit the playlist structure, I can do whatever I want. If I had to depend completely upon the directory structure on my home PC, it'd be hard to make edits from my work PC.

Now, I do keep my home PC's directories arranged in a similar way to what's on the empeg, but that's just so it'll be easier to replace it if the empeg's hard disk goes south. Not because I'm anal about keeping the two exactly the same. In fact, I don't really use the PC to listen to the music any more, it's just a backup storehouse of my MP3 files. I do all my listening on the empeg, so I concentrate primarily on maintaining its structure rather than the PC's structure.

3) Sync is _so_ slow! I thought that USB was up to 11Mbit/s, I'm getting about 2.4 (quick estimate), with a brand new high performance Dell desktop running Win2k. Particularly frustrating is the long (10-15 minute) pause before anything happens at the start of a sync, where Emplode doesn't respond even to window redraw requests.

That doesn't sound right. I think this should be in Bug Reports. The 10-minute pause at the start of a synch has been reported by one other person. That's definitely a bug- get a log file and see what it's saying at the moment of the pause.

___________
Tony Fabris

We use the id3lib stuff - I believe this checks for a v2 tag and falls back to the v1 tag if no v2 is found.

It's the same lib as used in winamp, musicmatch, etc.

Hugo

Reply to:

what a strange ISP have you got ??.. are they unable to give you an IP in the same subnet..or can you ask them to give you a fix IP-address, so that you could set this IP on the empeg and then enter it (registry setting?) in emplode ?

- Yes, they give me up to 8 IP addresses through DHCP (www.ispchannel.com through Cable Co-op in Menlo Park, CA). I know it's crazy that different computers get different subnet IPs, it means all local traffic has to go via uplink/router/downlink, so that my formerly 30Mbit/s peer-to-peer transfers on the 100Mbit/s switch have dropped to 100Kbit/s (my upload rate). Don't worry, I've complained to them, but right now their only solution is to double my monthly charge from $49 to $90 or so to get static IP addresses :-(


Reply to:

The question does come up as to why you have different information in each tag, but you've already found a program to fix that, which is good.

- The tags were initially created with Easy CD-DA extractor via CDDB. On compilations this often makes the artist 'Various', so I used mp3-tag studio to edit the tags (great tool btw). However this clearly did not change the older tag so they got out of sync.


Reply to:

But at that point, you're talking about a system where the PC is the "master" list, and the empeg is the "slave".

- Yes, that's basically what I want, or at least some way to sync them with the desktop root folder taking priority, say using CRC checking . Rationale:

1) You can't get MP3s back out of the empeg (or at least using the consumer software, not sure about developer image) so I'm loathe to make something that is effectively inaccessible to other computers the master. Keeping the master on the desktop allows me to sync/slave other devices in the future.

2) I listen to music both in the car (empeg) and at home (desktop). The desktop is already wired into a sound system and has much more disk capacity. Plus it's a backup, as you say. I want the two to be synced, but new music will always come via the desktop (either from ripping or from Napster). The empeg is likely not connected at this time, and I have to store it somewhere on the desktop. Within the folder hierarchy is the obvious place, but you don't just do this a few songs at a time. There's no way I'm going to remember all the 100 extra songs / changes / reclassifications I did since the last time I uploaded them to the empeg.

Doing all this in Emplode just doubles the work and gives potential (likely) inconsistency. At least it should be an option to work this way, I think more people would want to do this than use the empeg as primary.

Hugo said that the behaviour should be the same as in Winamp. Do you still have a file that will show the correct information in Winamp and the wrong information in Emplode? I think it might be beneficial to see why this is happening.

Someone care to take a look at one of these files? I'd offer, but I'm no expert on finding out problems with the tags. I could run it through MP3 Tag Studio and see if it finds anything, but I doubt it would since the problem may lie in the v2 tag and I don't have anything that will check the integrity of a v2 tag.

George

From what I've read in this thread so far, it sounds like the problem is technically the fault of MP3 Tag Studio. My reasoning follows...

I think this is what's happened:

He ripped the CDs (and/or downloaded them from Napster) with incorrect tags. What tags were there, were V2 tags.

Then he realized that all his tags were wrong and he'd better get them shaped up before he got the Empeg in the mail. So, on the recommendation of this BBS's users, he used MP3 Tag Studio to go in and fix all of them.

But MP3 Tag Studio only writes the V1 tag and doesn't even look at the V2 tags or know how to handle them. If its behavior were complete, it would either wipe the V2 tags or write the corrected data to both tags. But it doesn't support V2 tags at all. So all the V1 tags were right and all the V2 tags were wrong.

So along comes Emplode and gets fed one of these files. Emplode says, "Hey, here's a file with both a V1 and a V2 tag. Since the V2 tag is a newer specification and can contain more data, I'll take that one in favor of the V1 tag." Which, if you ask me, is the correct behavior.

So Emplode gets all the tags wrong unless you prune the incorrect tags out of the file with MP3Trim. IMHO, that feature should have been in MP3 Tag studio and he shouldn't have needed a third program to get that job done.

Part of the problem also results from the fact that the V2 and the V1 spec can coexist in the same file.

I don't know what Emplode could have done in this situation except ask which tag to use when it detects both. This would be nice but it would be a complete pain in the ass if you dragged a huge group of files. Sure you could add a "Yes to all" button, but what if you wanted to answer the question differently for some of the files in the middle of the group. Ick.

___________
Tony Fabris

We've been looking at md5summing files for both backup purposes and auto-syncing of file trees; this didn't make it onto the 1.1 release list, but it is on the wishlist.

Problem is, my empeg has more storage than my pc... ;)

Hugo

Ya know, I thought I had that backwards, but I figured... hey, either no one will know or no one will care. I forgot about the type of people we have here! (Just like me... perfectionists!) Thanks for the correction, though.

Even more interesting: The ID3v2 tag does not _have_ to be at the beginning of the file; it can be _anywhere_ in the file. And, there can be multiple ID3v2 tags in a file, each containing different information (one could contain Album/Artist/Year, for instance, while another contains Composer/Conductor/Producer/Original Year). I don't know of a single widely used program or library out there which actually deals with ID3v2 correctly for cases like that, though. :)

Speaking of Emplode and ID3 tags, here's an Emplode wish: Have an option for Emplode to respect track numbers when a whole bunch of tracks from the same album are dragged into a playlist. For some reason, occasionally I will drag a bunch of folders into Emplode, and Emplode will create a hierarchical playlist, but the order of the tracks will be essentially random (presumably this is due to the whims of whatever Win32 API is used to get the elements in a directory hierarchy).


-----
Daniel M. Zimmerman
Mk.2 #060000058, 36GB, Red
Mk.1 #00101, 10GB, Blue

The manual says USB is faster than Ethernet (why?)

I guess the author of the manual (who had very little time to put together the Mk.2 version) was being a little too literal. USB is faster than Ethernet as it is 11Mbit compared with 10Mbit. Synchronisation under TCP/IP is, however, a lot faster because the protocol stack is more efficient.

In theory we'll eventually get Ethernet synchronisation even faster, as we can drop a lot of our own sequencing and error control since this is already present in TCP/IP.

Rob

Hey everyone, I appreciate the feedback and suggestions. Lots to write...

The IP address aliasing to set a second IP address to the 192.168.0.* subnet looks on paper like a great solution to my problem of DHCP address on different subnets (and the associated empeg finding problem and slow peer-to-peer networking). Unfortunately, using Windows 2000, you _can't_ add a second static IP address as suggested if TCP/IP is set up to use DHCP - it's disabled :-(

Of course, if my ISP were to use static IPs, I could manually assign them to the same subent. Catch 22... any other suggestions to get Ethernet to work short of waiting for updated software to see and set the DHCP IP address manually?

I switched on logging to try to find the 10 minute pause problem on UDB sync. Here's a copy of an e-mail I've just sent to bugs@empeg.com:

--------------------

Hi, as reported at http://empeg.comms.net/ under the Wish List category:

Sync is _so_ slow! I thought that USB was up to 11Mbit/s, I'm getting about 2.4 (quick estimate), with a brand new high performance Dell desktop running Win2k. Particularly frustrating is the long (10-15 minute) pause before anything happens at the start of a sync, where Emplode doesn't respond even to window redraw requests.

Here's a zip of the log file. All I did during this sync was change the empeg settings IP address from DHCP to a static (192.168.0.55), no change to any MP3s. There are 10GBs (2200 MP3s) on the empeg. As you can see from the log file, there was a 10 minute pause where Emplode hung before the sync.

Basically, similar to:

12:46:13.102 connection_win32.cpp(830) : I [04bc] UsbConnection::FillBuffer(C) = 0xffffff92
12:46:13.102 connection_win32.cpp(770) : I [04bc] UsbConnection::FillBuffer(buffer=00C20D88, buffer_size=65536, timeout_ms=250)
12:46:13.102 connection_win32.cpp(478) : I [04bc] Resetting read event
12:46:13.102 connection_win32.cpp(782) : I [04bc] Doing ReadFile

12:46:13.102 connection_win32.cpp(816) : I [04bc] Read is pending, waiting with timeout 250
12:46:13.353 connection_win32.cpp(826) : I [04bc] Wait timed out, cancelling read
12:46:13.403 connection_win32.cpp(830) : I [04bc] UsbConnection::FillBuffer(C) = 0xffffff92
12:46:13.403 connection_win32.cpp(770) : I [04bc] UsbConnection::FillBuffer(buffer=00C20D88, buffer_size=65536, timeout_ms=250)
12:46:13.403 connection_win32.cpp(478) : I [04bc] Resetting read event
12:46:13.403 connection_win32.cpp(782) : I [04bc] Doing ReadFile

12:46:13.403 connection_win32.cpp(816) : I [04bc] Read is pending, waiting with timeout 250
12:46:13.653 connection_win32.cpp(826) : I [04bc] Wait timed out, cancelling read

.... keeps repeating for 10 mins.

Dell Dimension XPS T650r, 256MB RAM, Windows 2000 Professional Service Pack 1

2xUSB ports: two USB devices, one in each
- USB devices: Microsoft Natural Keyboard, Dell Edition (incorporates a 2 port USB hub, not used)
- Empeg

No previous USB problems. Hope you can help.

btw, great product!

Cheers,
David.

--------------------

Anyone know what all this is caused by?

Re: MP3 tags, Tony Fabris has correctly summed up what I did, but I don't think it's the fault of MP3-Tag Studio, as even using Winamp to edit the tags gives the same problem. There's still an inconsistency between Emplode and every other piece of MP3 software I've used. Are you absolutely certain you're using identical libraries in the same way?

I already fixed all my MP3s, but as a test I just re-ripped a song from a compilation to test it. Ripped using Easy CD-DA Extractor 4.2.0 (build 15) which queries CDDB, I get 'Various Artists' as the artist and 'Ray Of Light / Madonna' as the title. I used both MP3-Tag Studio 1.6.1 and Winamp 2.6.4 independently to change the tags to 'Madonna' and 'Ray of Light'. Pasting all three files (the two changed and the original) into Emplode all give the incorrect, old tag. This is definitely a problem.

If you're interested, I've uploaded these three files to www.stanford.edu/~dtrounce/empeg/ where you can download them to look at them. To preserve the artist's copyright and to make the files much smaller I ripped at 8kbit/s, 11,025 Hz, Mono, so each file is about 315KB and pretty much unlistenable compared to the 192kbits/s I normally use :-) However they do accurately demonstrate the problem.

btw, I agree with Tony, that no program should allow the tags to get out of sync. However, every other piece of software is giving priority to a different tag than Emplode is.

re: the mp3trim pro software I used to fix this problem, although it does do drag+drop batch mode with subfolders, it only does one level down of subfolders, so you have to manually drag each subfolder across - fun, huh! What an oversight :-)

Glad to hear that the empeg guys are working on avoiding the need to resync/reupload identical files that are already on the empeg. Sounds like maintenance will be much easier in a release or two.

Cheers,
David

> However, every other piece of software is giving priority to a different tag
> than Emplode is.

If these other programs are taking data from ID3V1 tags when ID3V2 tags are available, I would suggest that they are all wrong. If the reverse is true, then emplode is wrong - but I was under the impression that we used the V2 tags if they're available.

Maybe we're just a bit faster at updating our software than everyone else.

Rob

It may well be that everyone else is wrong (I'm sure we'll find out pretty soon once someone analyzes the files I did), but it'd sure be nice to have an option to switch Emplode to the 'wrong' mode :-)

[If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!]

Okay, I looked at all 3 files. I pulled up the info in MP3-Tag Studio and the ID3v1 tags are fine in all three. I pulled them up in MP3-Info Ext. and it shows nothing in the ID3v2 fields. I edited the ID3v2 tags in MP3-Info Ext. and MP3-Tag Studio pulled up the names truncated correctly when they became v2 standards. The parenthesis differentiate which of your files I'm talking about, not what I used to view them.

File #1 (via MP3-Tag Studio) came up with:

Title: Ray Of Light
Artist: Madonna
Album: 1999 Grammy Nominees
Comment: Grammy Recordings / Elektra


File #2 (via Winamp):

Title: Ray Of Light
Artist: Madonna
Album: 1999 Grammy Nominees
Grammy Recordings / Elektra <--That little thing was there in the comment box as a thick, black, vertical line in Winamp only.


File #3 (original):

Title: Ray Of Light
Artist: Madonna
Album: 1999 Grammy Nominees
Comment: Grammy Recordings / Elektra <--Same thing as #2 with the black line in Winamp only.

How are these showing up in Emplode? This is what I saw in Winamp 2.64 and MP3-Tag Studio 1.61. I also noticed that all of these files showed up as MPEG Layer 2.5, not 1. I'm not familiar with how that gets determined, so someone else will have to chime in and explain how they came out to be layer 2.5 files. Is that the problem, perhaps?

George

Edited by georgelsjr on 15/8/00 05:44 AM.

When I look at file 3 (original) in both Winamp and MP3-Tag Edit I see:

Artist: Various Artists
Title: Ray Of Light / Madonna

1 and 2 are as you describe because I edited them to be

Artist: Madonna
Title: Ray Of Light

All three files show up in Emplode as

Artist: Various Artists
Title: Ray Of Light / Madonna

In other words, files 1 and 2 are as if you never edited them. Only Emplode shows this old, unedited tag. Every other MP3 program I've tried shows the new, edited tag.

Unfortunately, using Windows 2000, you _can't_ add a second static IP address as suggested if TCP/IP is set up to use DHCP - it's disabled :-(

I noticed that, and had to stop using DHCP on my system. Nice thing is my ISP gives static IP's by default, and disabled the DHCP server the cable modem has to not conflict with the one I set up on the LAN.

The next version of NT (Codename Whistler) does allow DHCP and staticially assigned IP's to coexist. And in theory, once they have it working all the way, it will be backported to 2000 in a service pack. (Hopefully SP2).

We use the id3lib stuff, which I'm sure doesn't search the entire file to try and find ID3v2 tags (at the beginning is bad enough, lots of disk furtling to add a tag - urgh).

I added ID3v1.1/2.0 reading of track number to the low-level libraries, I seem to remember Roger was working on it in emplode (just another column, but with the new sort by... option you can arrange the tracks by track number easily).

Hugo

Your ripper is putting ID3v2 tags (and presumably ID3v1 tags for compatibility) in the MP3 file. I believe that Easy CD-DA uses the same id3lib library as Emplode. You're then editing the tags in a program that doesn't support ID3v2 tags, so it's only changing the ID3v1 tags. Thus, they get out of sync.

Generally ID3v2 tags are more complete than ID3v1 tags, so the id3lib library uses them in preference.

There's not a lot we can do about it, except recommend that you use a tag editor that reads ID3v2, or stop using a ripper that writes them. Sorry.



Roger - not necessarily speaking for empeg

IMHO, that feature should have been in MP3 Tag studio and he shouldn't have needed a third program to get that job done.

It is there, Tony - at least for the version I have (1.61) under "Clean up ID3 Tags", you can remove the tag completely.

However, what you say agrees with what I thought; if you read what the author of MP3 TS says, he is working on V2 support for a future release.

One of the few remaining Mk1 owners... #00015

What I miss in Emplode is something like Tag-it. You can mark all files in a directory and give them all the same Album and/or Artist tag.

It's easy to set many songs to "Rock" from "1982".

Emplode isn't an ID3 tag editor. It does allow you to verify (and edit) the tags for the MP3s on your empeg. It doesn't edit the ID3 tags of the files on your hard disk.

Our advice has always been to use an external tag editor to get your ID3 tags beaten into shape _before_ you import them into emplode. Considering the recent discussion, you'd be wise to use a tag editor that supported ID3v2 tags.

We are considering the ability to bulk tag the files on the player. It's not gonna happen any time soon (i.e., it's not on the ToDo list for v1.1), and it won't affect the ID3 tags on the original files in any case.



Roger - not necessarily speaking for empeg

Cool! I was wondering about that feature, but had not bothered to make a request as I figured it might make it into emplode, but probably not emptool where I would be able to use it. Now I find out it is already there. Very handy.

-Mike