> Check each of your problem files for errors, and I'd be willing to bet a frozen dairy confection that you'll start seeing a pattern there.

What flavor would that be? I know the song that was playing last time it crashed was a Lame encoded, EAC ripped, Encspot guaranteed good file.

It is certainly quite possible that a lot of the other mp3s I have are not as standard though, and that could probably be part of my problem. I also have a lot of 128 files so I can't rule that out either.

Vanilla... I'm a purist

Oh, I'm not saying that is the ONLY thing that will cause it, but I can pretty much guarantee that simply playing 128K MP3's isn't a magic bullet that knocks the empeg to the ground, since about 90% of what I play are 128k encoded MP3's and I've never had a stall, skip or any sort of issue whatsoever.

Of course, I'm slowly replacing everything with 160K ogg as I encode new stuff or reencode old stuff, but I can listen to a couple of hours of 128K stuff straight without any sort of hiccup.

I just want to derail any voodoo along the lines of "oh, 128K files are what's causing V3 to crash" because I simply do not think that's an issue at all, at least it's not for me.

-- Gary F.

Not playing 128kps files would be considered a feature in my book!

VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for player...
VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for player..

I would try enabling swap first. This may be faq'd somewhere, but here is the Cliff's Notes version...

1. Use hyperterm to quit the player (type q or ctrl-c).
2. Type "swapon /swapfile" to turn on swap.
3. Type "rwm" to make the drives writeable.
4. Type "/empeg/bin/player" to restart the player and have it build the databases.
5. Quit the player again with "q" or "ctrl-c".
6. Type "swapoff -a" to disable swap.
7. Type "rom" to remount the drives read only.

-Mike

Encspot guaranteed good file.

I wasn't aware that Encspot tried to verify file integrity. I haven't looked at recent versions but I thought it only reported which encoder was used to encode the file.

I had imported the whole backup (I installed a new drive, and am trying A3 at the same time). I just dragged all my folders (artist / album / songs) into the "playlists" folder in Jemplode.

Yeah, I replaced my 10gig drive in the spare with an 80 last night so I'm now going through the same thing. Any barfing with the alpha when you drug and dropped your files?

I had to downgrade to v2.00 to drag and drop the 60gigs (6900tracks) of mp3's and all is well (so far).

Encspot reports all kinds of file problems too, cut off last frames and sync errors and a couple of other things. I honestly don't know exactly how complete its mp3 checking is but it was the only thing I had handy.

I finally got it all working. I used the v2beta version of Emplode. I found I can only drag about 5-10 (max) albums in at a time, otherwise it will go for about 5-10 albums worth of songs and barf. Keep it to smallish chunks and re-synch often and it seems fine.

BTW, Now that I have my music back on, I LOVE V3a... It is simply amazing. The cross fade alone is soooooooo, soooo worth it. I have only a few comments:

- I was thinking, gee, it would be nice if cross fade was smart enough to not happen if Im "flipping" by songs quickly. Like say I dont like the next song, and hit next. Then I realized that it already does that if you hit next quickly enough. Kudos guys.

- For the beta, or maybe an undocumented feature now, is it possible to mark tracks "no cross fade" or something? When I play pink floyd albums, and stuff like that, I dont want cross fade on. It would be best to be able to mark these tracks ahead of time.

- I have had no lockups. None. Of course, most (90%+) of my mp3's are ripped by me, so maybe I just havent hit a bad one yet.

- I've gotta say, this "Alpha" is more stable than a LOT of "Release code" I've seen in MANY products. We're a peoplesoft shop here at S.U., and this alpha code would be considered very mature by many standards...

Was just thinking again the other day, as I installed my new 60Gig of drives, how much having this "Thing" has totally and irreversably changed the way I listen to music. I still think, what, 4, 5 years after it was first concieved that this is the BEST product for car (and home for that matter) audio I have ever seen or used. Only now is the marketplace even coming close to getting it... Empeg/Riocar was simply about 3-5 years ahead of it's time...

Sorry for gushing, Im sure you all feel the same way. I'd jsut like to take time to personally thank the entire Empeg/riocar team for keeping us going with the best product and best support one could ever hope for.

it would be nice if cross fade was smart enough to not happen if Im "flipping" by songs quickly

As you've noticed, it does this. It's not being smart, though -- it just doesn't have enough of the next track preprocessed in order to do a proper fade, so it doesn't bother.

is it possible to mark tracks "no cross fade" or something?

Or (and I know how insane this request is, but I can at least ask can't I?) set the fade points on a per song basis. For songs you don't want to fade out (or in) you could set this a 0 seconds, but there are a lot of songs that already fade out, and I'd set the fade to begin before the song gets to that point. Of course there'd still have to be a default so you don't have to go through and set this for 3000+ songs. Also some songs with long beginnings could be set to fade in somewhere into the song. This would only have to actually "fade" five seconds (or whatever) of the song, it's just a matter of where it would start.

Anyway, sorry for this, I just had to mention it. Feel free to disregard this post entirely.

Actually, I think an intelligent cross-fade would be nice. I had thought about this before, but hadn't posted the idea yet.

The crossfade algorithm already has the sections-to-be-crossfaded in memory. It could analyze those sections and see if they are a fade out or a fade in, or if they stop suddenly or start suddenly.

For instance, the Rush song "Tom Sawer" opens with a bang that can be clearly seen as a sudden start in the waveform. You wouldn't want to fade that song in because you'd want to hear it start with that bang. But if the song before it was fading out (also clearly seen in the waveform), you could have the bang of Tom Sawyer start somewhere near the end of the fade out, but not completely after it.

is part of the solution to detect if an mp3 has been encoded with --nogap before applying crossfade ? Is this detectable ?

I don't know how it would be detectable. There's nothing special about the resulting frames AFAIK.

Very nice, thanks... been waiting for cross fading for a long time. I installed it on my player after backing it up and haven't had any problems so far.

By reading this thread, I assume there is no "sync" function to music on the hard disk with 3.0. Am I correct? Too bad

_T

I think you're confused.

I just tried using Emplode2.10 with V3.0 alpha to upload twenty songs. It had errors during the sync......It hosed my entire database of files.....55Gb worth. Any ideas besides sticking my head between my legs and kissing my a$$ goodbye? Really, is there anything I can do to get back all the music lost?

Did you try downgrading to v2.00?

Yeah, I just got done loading V2.00RC and did a sync in Emplode 2.00 and all was OK again. I am currently reinstalling V3.0 Alpha and I will just go back to 2.00RC when I need to load new music on the player. Thanks for the quick response though. That was the worst feeling I've had in years.

It's slower, but I have had zero problems uploading via USB with 3.00alpha3 on the player and emplode 2.1 on the PC.

(I can't modify files or create new playlists without emplode crashing.)

--Nathan

I know the feeling... I ran into a bug with an early 2.00 beta (11 I think?) where if you cut and paste anything, emplode would forget to paste it. But you didn't realize until the sync where you'd see "Now deleteing ......"

I was reorganizing my playlists and cut all the "C" artists from "Artists C-D" to put into its own playlist. They were all gone. What stunk was that I had a lot of remixes and stuff in there (like if the Chemical Brothers remixed a Prodigy song, a copy was in Artists C-D) so I never really knew what I lost and what I didn't lose.

I had to re-rip them all.... why do The Cure have so many damn CDs?

V3a don' t work in my MK2a,
after upload i try to access in dev mode with hyper term anq when i press "q" key to entrer in console it says:

q
fake_tu
r8 = 00000001 r7 = BFFFFF64 r6 = 021B0F44 r5 = 00000001g on port 80
fake_tuner:
r4 = 021B0E4400
Function entered at [<02035d0c>] from [<02024520>]ed=00
fake_tu
r8 = 0217CED4 r7 = 00000000 r6 = 020000C0 r5 = BFFFFF64ake_tuner: ignored=002035dac>]
r4 = 00000001memory violati
Function entered at [<02024510>] from
Remounting first music partition read-only
F
Remounting second music partition read-only
r7 : 021fcf14 r6 : 0000002f r5 : 0000002
No secondary hard disk
Abnormal player termination
Press Ctrl-A to enter pum
Player received signal 11
Starting playerr2 : 00008000
player.cpp : 602:empeg-car 3.00-alpha3 2003/07/02.
Prolux 4 empeg car - 2.1490
LAC construct 0x400b0008ntered at [<020d3178>] f
Using non-standard cache size 42 (adjustment 48)
Prolux 4 empeg car - 2.1490 Jun 24 2374>
pc : [<0214810c>] lr : [<00000000>]
Function entered at [<02002
sp : bffffc04 ip : bffffc24 fp : bffffc20 [<020e5914>]
r10: 021d2b80 r9 : 00000000 r8 : bffffcf4
r6 = BFFFFEB0 r5 = 00000002 r
r7 : 02210b78 r6 : 021d1fd8 r5 : 00000340 r4 : 02210838
r5 =
r3 : 022107b8 r2 : 021d1fe0 r1 : 00000080 r0 : 021d1fd8021B0F44 r5 = 00000001
Flags: nZcv IRQs on FIQs on Mode USER_32 Segment user r4 = 021B0E44 from [<02035c

Control: C0F7517D Table: C0F7517D DAC: 00000015
Function entered at [<020d2fb8>] from [<020d318c>]ayer
No seconda
Hijack: i
r8 = BFFFFF64 r7 = 00000001 r6 = 00000003 r5 = 021FCCA4
player.cpp : 602:empeg-car 3.00-alpha3 2003/07/
r4 = 00000000
Function entered at [<020d
bfake_tuner: ignored=
fake_tuner:
fake_tuner: ignored=00
r6 = BFFFFEB0 r5 = 00000002 r4 = BFFFFE608=00ered at [<02033ab0>]
Function entered at [<020e58d4>] from [<02079a48>]e size 42 (adjustment 48)e_tuner: ignored=00: igno
r4 = BFFFFE60
Function entered at [<02035aec>] from [<02035dac>]
r8 = 00000001 r7 = BFFFFF64 r6 = 021B0F44 r5 = 00000001
r4 = 021B0E44
Function entered at [<02035d0c>] from [<02024520>]
r8 = 0217CED4 r7 = 00000000 r6 = 020000C0 r5 = BFFFFF64
r4 = 00000001
Function entered at [<02024510>] from [<02133548>]
Function entered at [<0213346c>] from [<02000104>]
r10 = 00000000 r8 = 00000000 r7 = 00000000 r6 = 00000000
r5 = 00000000 r4 = 00000000
Restored terminal settings
Remounting first music partition read-only
Remounting second music partition read-only
No secondary hard disk
Abnormal player termination
Player received signal 11
Starting player
player.cpp : 602:empeg-car 3.00-alpha3 2003/07/02.
LAC construct 0x400b0008
Using non-standard cache size 42 (
Prolux 4 empeg car - 2.1490 Jun 24 2003uner: ignored=00tment 48)00000001 r7
Vcb: 0x401fc000
serial_notify_thread.cpp: 170:@@ S05 = 000

any idea?

P.S.: i'm returned with v2b13

Press Ctrl+C instead of 'q'.

Well, I reloaded V2.00, synced and all was fine. So I decided since I got everything back to normal that I would load V3.0 Alpha back onto the player and just not use it to sync at all. Once I did that it Semi-Hosed my player again. I think all my tracks are still on the player, but now my playlists and sub-playlists are all under the Emplode Playlists heading at the top level. So some of the playlists are empty and have to be matched up with their respective parent and child directories. To fix that from within emplode seems like a lot of work. So in lieu of doing all that repair work to the playlist structure, I was thinking about doing this:

I have most of the music on my PC organized in folders: Mp3files- A-D, E-H, I-K, L-O, P-S, T-W, X-Z and then from there by ARTIST\ ALBUM. I might just delete everything from the player and reload everything again since that will be as simple as dragging and dropping each A-D etc. folder into emplode and then doing a sync for each section of the alphabet.

The only thing is I might lose some of the playlists I made that were filled with various tracks for different moods. Is there any way I can back up these type of playlists on my hard drive of my PC without actually having to have copies of the actual tracks in the directory?

Any suggestions on any of the above to make this process easier would be appreciated.
Thanks.

any idea?

I had that.... I think my database must have been too big or just plain buggy. I tried everything mentioned in this thread to fix it and a few other half baked ideas. I should also note, I posted a few things I was getting here, but I was getting a lot of strange behavior I don't know what the cause was but I ended up rebuilding the disks and reloading all my music. It was a pain but in the end it was well worth it, I'm really enjoying the new player software and features. I do have an issue where about every 5 songs or so it'll hang 5 or 10 seconds into the song but continues after a couple of seconds. It's nothing major but a little annoying at times, other then that it's all good.

Once I did that it Semi-Hosed my player again.

I don't mean to make light of your troubles, and you in particular probably don't need this reminder... but for the benefit of others reading this thread, please go back and re-read the very first post, where Rob says, among other things,

Do not load this release onto your player unless you are prepared for everything to go horribly wrong. As the release notes state, this is an alpha release and may not be stable. It could spoil your day in any number of ways!
...
THERE WILL BE NO SUPPORT FOR THIS RELEASE BEYOND THE GOOD WILL OF THE BBS MEMBERS.
Warned have you been.


tanstaafl.

Funny that you reply right now. I just got finished not more than ten minutes ago running Disc Builder on my 2 drives. I loaded 2.00RC and synced a few times before trying to load any music. Currently, I am uploading about 1000 tracks to the freshly formatted drives. The fact that 3.0 Alpha hosed my player is not really an issue for me. I like yourself meant my post to warn others of what happened to me and save others from any problems that I went through. I really needed to get my playlists straightened out anyway. My folders on my PC are nice and neat so I am just gonna start copying & pasting the new file structure into Emplode. I am still tempted to load 3.0 Alpha on once I get all my music back on the player. It worked fine until I tried to load music on it. So if I need to load music I can just revert back to 2.00RC. Then again, maybe I'll just load it on my spare unit to play around with where nothing major will get messed up. By the way I don't know where you are right now, but the Yankees just tied it up in the 8th and I can hardly type at this point..........WARNING: Block your Eyes and Ears..........
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.GOOOOOO YANKEEEEES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

By the way.... The Drive Upgrade instructions on RioCar.org are fantastic. Cheers to Dan Wallach & Rod Little.

[quote]
Press Ctrl+C instead of 'q'.
-- roger
[/quote]

thanks, now is ok

Cheers to Dan Wallach & Rod Little.

They provided the photos, the upgrade guide is mostly mine. Well, I did the writing. The information contained in the guide is from the BBS and from the Cambridge folks. Perhaps it should say so somewhere on the page?