I've skimmed through the old bug reports and I didn't see any of these, but I may have missed them.

Anyway, I have not yet gotten my empeg installed in my car and have instead been playing around with emplode a lot and using the player to play music through my stereo whilst I do other work on my computer (hooked up to outlet via AC adapter, to stereo through RCA to CD, and to computer via Ethernet). FYI, I’m using the latest beta.

Emplode:
1. Crashes every so often when changing song tags. About once every 500 or so changes. I have not noticed any pattern, it just says it has a fatal error when I click apply. I’ll try to copy the exact message next time I see it.

2. Bug about updating flags for wendy filters. I have a tag for each track indicating its bitrate. I also want to do additional flags for songs I don’t like, certain genres, etc. Each track is going to have several flags. Here’s an example of how this bug works. I have some country songs all with a flag for high bitrate. I want to flag them as country as well, so I select them all and go to properties. The box next to High Bitrate is checked, and I check country also. Everything works fine. Next, I want to put a flag on some techno songs. They are mixed with all different bitrates. When I select them all and go to properties, all the boxes with bitrate flags are unchecked. I check techno and apply. However, it has now erased all the bitrate flags on those songs ?!?! Thus, any time you select tracks in a group with heterogeneous flags already set to add one additional flag to all of them, it erases the original flags.

3. If I try to add a large number of tracks to the empeg at once (say 100), it gives me an error after a dozen or so saying that errors occurred. When I check the errors, every song after a certain point says that it could not synchronized. This has happened to me about half the time I’ve tried to add large numbers of tracks at once (maybe 5 of the 10 times). I’ll try to get more data next time.

Player:
4. The player crashes about once an hour. It will just stop mid-song (sometimes with a very short duration chirp, sometimes not). The visual also freezes. After 3-4 seconds?, it will start to reboot. As soon as it finishes (5-10 seconds?), it will resume playing the song at a point a couple seconds before it crashed. It never happens in the same song twice, or at the same points in the songs. Sometimes it will happen at the beginning, sometimes, the middle, sometimes the end. Some songs are low CBR, some high CBR. It doesn’t seem to favor quality-encoded songs over ones that pop and crackle, or one genre over another. Sometimes it will go for 3 hours or so between crashes, sometimes only a couple minutes.

5. Reboots every time I cycle through info when I get to the graph of the loudness of the song (I think this is a known issue).

6. Can only have one wendy filter on at a time (I suppose this is a feature request). I would dearly like to be able to have several filters on at once.

-Biscuits

Congrats on your new toy!

Most of those bugs are "known bugs" in the beta and should be fixed on the next release (maybe even this week, woo!). If you wish to run a more stable version, use version 1.03 which is known to be very stable.

The thing with the Wendy flags is interesting, though, and I don't think it's been reported. Are you saying that you can't do the "Multi-apply" thing with Wendy flags the way you can do it with regular tag fields? If so, that's a very interesting thing, I never tried it. Roger, you reading this?

One major concern I've got is that you say you've done enough tag changes in Emplode to reach more than 500 tag changes. One of the long-standing caveats about this player is that it's much better to have your tags in order before dropping the files into Emplode. There's several reasons for it, which are all covered in various places in the FAQ. If you're looking for a Windows utility that does a good job of group-editing tags and file names, try MP3 Tag Studio.

In the meantime, give the FAQ a good skimming.

Well, apparently the forum ate my first reply, so I'll try typing this again (just watch and have it reappear as soon as I'm done).

Thanks for the quick reply.

I suspected most of these are known bugs, but if the empeg team has not yet been able to track down/replicate any of these bugs, I would be happy to try to dig up more info on them.

Indeed, the using "multi-apply" on Wendy flags mess up any flags you've previously applied, unlike regular tag fields.

I've made quite a few more than 500 tag changes in emplode. I currently have 1600 or so songs in my empeg. While almost all of the tracks had artist/song title correct, I really wasn't happy with the way Source was organized in Emplode. Thus, I went through and changed all my downloaded songs to reflect their bitrate. A few days later, I went back through and changed every Source to reflect where I had gotten it (my downloads, my sister's CD, etc.) I then went through and added a PIN to each song. Thus, each of my 1600 songs has seen at least two track changes, and most have seen three. I've read through the FAQ twice, but I must have missed the part about 500 changes to tags being bad.

Actually, I've found the tag editing part of the emplode software isn't bad, since I can easily find errors through the "soup" views, and multi-apply changes. The main drawback is that the changes haven't been made on my PC as well. Is there anything special I need to be aware of, especially since I've now gotten the tags almost perfect?

-Biscuits

1. Unfortunately, it does that. I've no idea why. I've made emplode a little more robust, so this should happen less often. I can never seem to reproduce it in a debug build, though.

2. Didn't know about that one. I was aware that something similar would happen to the options bitfield -- this seems to be the same problem. I'll take a look at it.

3. Need more information from the error report.

4. It's a beta release -- what can I say, it's unstable. It should be better in the next beta.

5. Known issue. FITNR

6. Don't know. Would require some UI work.

much better to have your tags in order before dropping the files into Emplode

Sometimes I wish you'd stop saying this Tony. I much prefer editing my tags in emplode -- IMNSHO it's a better tag editor than anything I've yet seen. Also, by saying things like "...500...", you're implying that emplode is designed to fall over after a large number of changes. It's not.

I much prefer editing my tags in emplode -- IMNSHO it's a better tag editor than anything I've yet seen.

It can be as good a tag editor as you like, Roger: I think Tony's point is that unless and until you implement rewriting of id3v2 tags by Emplode, a tag changed in Emplode is whistled into the wind...

Peter

6. Can only have one wendy filter on at a time (I suppose this is a feature request). I would dearly like to be able to have several filters on at once.

Hmm, I'll think about this; it is technically feasible. In the meantime, at least if you only want ANDed (intersection) filters and not ORred (union) filters, it's already possible to set up a single filter that has the same effect as any combination of existing filters. For instance, if you've got a Country flag and a High-bitrate flag, you can set up a Country-Only filter, a High-Only filter, and a Country-And-High filter.

Incidentally, Country is a bad example of a filter: that should be done by the Genre field. (Search by Genre=>Country; Wendy filters then apply to the search results as usual.)

Peter

Hmm, I'll think about this; it is technically feasible.

I'm very glad to see those words. I asked for something similar to this in my long dissertation about music classification on the player. My solution was a bit different in that it focused on metadata attached to the music files rather than filters, but the idea of being able to AND and OR things was key. If this was available with Wendy filters, I think they'd be more flexible.

Bug #3:

Well, I've been putting only large music files on recently (all 192 bitrate or high, some 320). One batch I had fail on my 3 times, though unfortunately, I didn't write down the exact place it failed or the exact error message (it was a different place each time I think).

The 159 songs (950 mB) ranged in size from less than one mB, to more than 25 mB's. I had edited every songs' track tag info before I uploaded them.

The first time, it got about 20 songs into it. I deleted them all and downloaded again. The second time, it got about 30 songs into it. I deleted them all a second time and downloaded. The third time it failed after about 15 songs, but I didn't delete them, just added the whole directory back and it worked (I ended up with a few duplicates).

I'm going to try to see if I can replicate the problem. Seeing as how I did it three times already, it should be possible.

-Biscuits

2. Bug about updating flags for wendy filters.

FITNR. And it wasn't pretty.

Woot!

Thanks Roger. It's fantabulous to have a development team that actually works with their user base, a definate rarity....

Now if only the empeg was going to be available in stores for a while longer; I might convince more people to buy one.... I suppose I'll just have to keep an eye out for your new products and keep playing with my new toy

-Biscuits

I'll just have to keep an eye out for your new products and keep playing with my new toy

You forgot the most important part! The part where you show the Empeg to your friends and they ask where they can get it and you tell them they can't. This can optionally be combined with a "Nyeh nyeh nyeh!" for the maximum effect.

much better to have your tags in order before dropping the files into Emplode

Sometimes I wish you'd stop saying this Tony. I much prefer editing my tags in emplode

I only say it because I speak from experience, having had to re-load the music onto my player from scratch twice. Once, because of a failed hard disk, and once because of an internal-alpha bug that wiped my music.

If I had done all of my tag editing in emplode, then I would have had to do it all over again each of those times. Thank God my PC's files were properly tagged.

The truth is, there were some that weren't correct on the PC each time. Somehow I still had to do some additional fixing-up on the PC (I think because of the V1 vs V2 issue) each time. The frustration I felt with having to do this just for a few files made me realize how maddening it would have been if I'd needed to do it over again for my entire collection.

IMNSHO it's a better tag editor than anything I've yet seen.

For version 2.0, I totally agree with that statement. Its editing features are excellent. If there were only a way to use Emplode to edit tags on the PC's hard disk...

"You forgot the most important part! The part where you show the Empeg to your friends and they ask where they can get it and you tell them they can't. This can optionally be combined with a "Nyeh nyeh nyeh!" for the maximum effect."

Hehe, I suppose there's always that. Of course I'd rather point people to their own. I was considering ordering a second unit for backup / selling to a friend if one pestered me enough. Of course, Sonicblue's website gave me errors every time I tried and their office was closed for MJK Jr. Who knows if there were any left anyway. Perhaps it's God's (or sonicblue's) way of telling me it was a bad idea.

Anyway, back on topic, I tried to reproduce bug #3. I took those same tracks, edited all the tags back to the way they were and uploaded them again. It took about an hour (theres a lot of traffic on my network), but worked perfectly.... I guess I could try it again tomorrow....

-Biscuits

I don't know if this is just a harmless bug or a weird, random feature, but when you hold the visual button on the remote, the player displays the current info status. For instance, if info is off, it'll say "Info Off". If info is on Now and Next, it'll say "Now and Next". It seems like it would make more sense to have it display the name of the visual. I have version 2 beta 7, by the way.

It behaves differently if you have favorite visuals enabled (it's a setting in config.ini) If you set that, then holding the visual button switches between Favo(u)rite visuals and All visuals modes.

Maybe the info mode display is just an oversight? I think if you don't have favo(u)rite visuals enabled, holding the visuals should do a "previous visual" which currently only exists for Sony stalk owners, apparently.

I'm glad somebody has noticed my intentional British spelling of Favourite.

Did it to catch you Americans out. I guess it doesn't work with your spelling HA HA.

In fact I even put the U in capitals, but it appears our config.ini reader isn't case sensitive

Yeah, previous visual would be nice, too. So how do I set my favorite visuals? What's config.ini? Can I do it in emplode?

FAQ and ye shall find...

(Normally I'd let Fabris do it but it's 7am PST and I'm sure that lucky bastard is too busy enjoying the features of beta8 to worry about the BBS right now.)

it's 7am PST and I'm sure that lucky bastard is too busy enjoying the features of beta8 to worry about the BBS right now

Actually, I was sleeping. I know you guys don't believe that I ever sleep, but it's true.

I spit on beta 8!