Following the successful (after a while !) installation of my tuner kit, I am now using the Empeg on it's own rather than as an Aux in to my old headunit. Is there a way of setting the "on volume" to a specific value either in the Empeg software or in Hijack intitial settings? My old headunit had this feature and it was useful to avoid early morning shocks if you had the volume up high the night before !

I've had a quick look through the FAQ but couldn't see anything.

I would love to see this feature, as well.

I believe it could be done in Hijack, and in fact, requested that feature here a while back.

How about it, Mark?

Yes, this would be great. I've often remarked to my wife that I'd love this feature.

In fact, if it were a Flash setting instead of a config.ini setting, we wouldn't need to rob very many flash bits to store it. Because we wouldn't need it to be very granular. Maybe just -60, -40, -20, or 0. That's only what, two bits? Four if you do it separately for home and work.

Nah, we'd need more bits than that, because we'd also want the option to "not have it" at all (ie, default behavior)...

Nah, we'd need more bits than that, because we'd also want the option to "not have it" at all (ie, default behavior)...

Okay, so 5 bits.
First one 0 or 1, enabled or disabled. Then 2 for home, and 2 for car.


Of course, dosn't the player already STORE volumne info in the flash somewhere? I mean, If I turn mine down, turn it off, then turn it back on, it remembers where I set it.

So, just a little programming, and we just 'update' the location where the volumne is already stored, make it a setting in config.ini.. (Unless I'm WAY off base here. Which wouldn't suprise me..)

Me.

perhaps I don't understand the way the player internals work, but why not just have hijack have the option of capping the boot volume in the config.ini with something like

[hijack]
max_boot_volume=-20

and then hijack would just update the stored player volume if it exceeded this. the setting could then default to +10 (no limiting). would such a solution work better than using flash bits?

Edit: aarg, my idea's been suggested.

just though to have it work the way this thread suggested it'd need to be:

[hijack]
boot_volume=-16

and have no effect if not present.

Might the same setting be applied then to ttsclock? Since the clock runs before the player is loaded, you can't use the knob to adjust volume at that point.

There's two issues with this that would need to be addressed.

Firstly, integration with the player software. It could be made simpler if we told people that they couldn't use volume ramping with this feature. Then we'd just trap the very first volume IOCTL call in hijack and cap if neccessary. Otherwise we'd have to trap the first X calls, where X is an undefined quantity. We'd have to use the boot timer and pre-define a time during which the cap is active.

But this still might not work - I suspect that the player would complain about failed volume setting calls, unless we lied to it. We currently already lie for the volboost_ code, but the idealogy of that is opposite to what we want here, the volboost code *always* lies to the player when active, but here we wouldn't want to perpetuate the lie beyond the end of the volume ramp. I don't know how the player would react if it thought that the volume was X dB and then it finds out that it was really X-25 dB. It might deal with it fairly gracefully, with no more than a visual anomoly, or it might not.

The second issue is that of storage. I suppose that 6 bits of flash would give 7 levels + off for both AC and DC modes, but I don't know that this feature would be worth that much flash - it's not something that you'd want to modify on a frequent basis. I suspect that config.ini would be a better place for this.

The 'perfect' solution, if time allows, is intercept the powerdown flash write, and cap the volume according to config.ini as the player writes it. That way the player would read the capped volume when it next boots, and ramp accordingly.

Yes, it could be achieved in hijack fairly easily, but I suspect that it would be trivial to include in the player software itself, and ideally this is where it should live.

Has no one yet identified space on the scratch partition that could be used instead of flash ?

Has no one yet identified space on the scratch partition that could be used instead of flash ?

Reserved space? IIRC there is none. According to peter, the scratch partition as currently laid out doesn't even have enough room to store running orders of grzelakian proportions across reboots.

However, I did get the impression that post-2.0 they were going to increase the density of the FID/running order entries in hda3 beyond one FID per sector. If that were done, maybe we could ask them real nicely if they could set aside some space at the end which would be reserved for user hacks. Then we'd just have to have an Empeg Assigned Sectors Authority responsible for doling out sector numbers to application developers. And then we'd have speculators buying up all the sectors and reselling them. See the can of worms you've opened?

but hijack gets to parse the config file before the player does it volume ramping (the way i understand it), so can't you have hijack (if necessary) set the appropriate flash bits for the final volume level and just let the player deal with ramping on it's own?

Okay, it took two flash bits -- one for AC, one for DC -- I just assumed that there'd be howls of misery if this feature didn't remember AC/DC separately.

To use it, look for the "Volume Level on Boot" entry on the Hijack menu (long knob press). If you cannot figure it out, too bad!

EDIT: Hijack v317 is out now, but wait for v318 which fixes a typo on the menu display.

Cheers

It could be made simpler if we told people that they couldn't use volume ramping with this feature. Then we'd just trap the very first volume IOCTL call in hijack and cap if neccessary.

Ah, I think that's way overkill. That's not what we need.

We've already got a volume cap command in the player software. We don't need to cap every volume adjustment. We just need to cap the value that gets written to flash.

See, when the player boots, it's reading the flash and ramping *to* that. Whatever's in the flash. We wouldn't even have to intercept *reads* from the flash, just the power-down *write*. And just make sure that value is no larger than X.

Well, that was a really pointless post.

MARK, YOU ARE THE MAN!

/me presses refresh on the Hijack site...

Well, I guess I'll have to put out a v318 to fix the "wrapping-e" from v317 on the "Volume Level on Boot" screen..

So if y'all haven't grabbed v317 yet, then wait another 10 minutes or so for v318.

-ml

Well, that was a really pointless post.

In that case, it's probably pointless referring you to the paragraph that starts "The 'perfect' solution" in my previous post.

I'm intruiged as to how Mark's implemented this. Since I've now gotten my server back up, I should have time to look at the diff.

Look for "volumelock" in the patch file, specifically in empeg_state.c

Cheers

Damn - the master beat me to it. I was just working on exactly this feature. Although I was doing it the hard way and limiting the volume ramp on power on rather than simply intercepting the volume save on power off.

Does the hijack version allow lower than set value? i.e. I set the hijack version to a reasonably high -20db to prevent major heart attacks. If I actually have the player set lower than -20db it will ramp up to the lower value?

Oh well.... Thanks for adding it

Can you explain what the two options mean? I'm not sure I understand what it's supposed to be doing (it's not doing what I expected it to do).

I want it to always boot at 0db in home mode, and always boot at -40db in car mode. What sequence of actions to I perform to make that happen?

>I want it to always boot at 0db in home mode, and always
>boot at -40db in car mode. What sequence of actions to I
>perform to make that happen?

1. Go into the Hijack menu, and select the "Volume Level on Boot" screen.
2. Select "Previous" as the setting, which will restore whatever volume level was previously in use (at poweroff) on the next boot ("normal operation"). Press Menu/Knob to save the setting.
3. Exit from the Hijack menus.
4. Dial the volume you want it to restore to, be it 0db, -40db, or whatever.
5. Go back into the "Volume Level on Boot" screen, and change the setting to "Current". Press Menu/Knob to save the setting.

Repeat the above for each of AC/DC (while running on the appropriate power source, or using Force AC/DC from Hijack) if desired.

EDIT: I'll welcome suggestions for better settings labels (within screen confines)

Cheers

Or, the short version:

"Previous" means "use default Empeg behaviour" -- most recent volume level at poweroff is restored on boot.

"Current" means remember current volume level at the instant you press Menu/Knob on the "Volume Level on Boot" screen in Hijack.


BUG: If setting was already "Current", and you re-enter the menu to set "Current" again for a new volume level, nothing changes.. Ooops. You have to set it to "Previous", exit, change the volume, and then go back and set it to "Current" again.

I'll see if I can fix that in v319.

It should work better now.

v319 will be out in 10 minutes or so.

-ml

Hmm, even 319 isn't doing what I'm hoping/expecting it will do. I followed those steps, and it's not restoring it to 0db on a reboot in AC power. Hm.

Anyone else get it to work?

I just tried it out in DC mode and it works pretty well.

The only issue that I had was when set to Current mode, if you adjust the volume as it ramps up, it seems to reset the saved volume.. Doing that a couple of times can get you down all the way with no easy way to adjust the volume without setting it to Previous, etc.

if you adjust the volume as it ramps up, it seems to reset the saved volume..

If I could get the feature doing what I want, I could deactivate volume ramp, so...

Yeah, it's very badly broken..

I guess I'll spend more than 5-minutes on it this time..

gimmeasec

A sec is more than 5 minutes?

Is part of your linux contracts dealing with a time machine?

All programmers are optimists, including Murphy.

-ml

Okay, this time I actually put away my paid work for half an hour, and worked through the Volume Level feature again, simplified and rewrote most of it, and here it is.. works for me!

Hijack v320, available at quality websites near you (soon).

-ml