This has previously been sent to Dell, I just discovered this board last night, so I thought I would post my wishes here too.

I have a few problems with my receiver. Some I think are very serious, some less so. I believe these can all be fixed in future version of the device either through firmware or through the PC software. I am not a programmer, but from what I can see, I think most if not all really have to do with how the database is created.

Here is s simple example:
I want to listen to a classical album that has 13 movements, but I want to start at the 6th and play until the end, there is no way to do this other than going through the whole process to get back to the album, artist or genre, selecting the 7th song, playing it and then repeating this process for the all the remaining tracks. You cannot play the album from track one, forward to track 6 and begin playing because of problem number 1, you cannot cut the process short by jumping back one step because of problem number 3, and you cannot skip forward or back to find the different movements because of what I have described as problem number 4.

1. The unit completely ignores track information in the ID3 tag.

If I select an album to listen to has 10 tracks, and track numbers are correctly identified in the ID3 tag, the receiver simply plays them in alpha order, disregarding the correct album order. This is unacceptable for many types of music, especially classical and spoken audio/books. Track ordering is essential.

I am assuming that the application that runs on the workstation goes through your music files and it builds a database of tracks. This process could take a look at the ID3 track field and build the database in the correct order. It could then default to alpha ordering if track information was not available.

2. When selecting an artist, albums are ignored.

Very often when wishing to play a particular album, you can remember the artist name, but not the album title. When you select music by artist, you should have the ability to be presented with a list of albums not just a list of songs. Ideally it would be presented as follows:

Artist
________________
Play All Music
Album 1
Song 1
Song 2
Album 2
Song 1
Song 2

Alternatively another idea would be to add an additional search menu item as follows:

Select Music
________________
Artist by Song
Artist by Album
Genre
Album
Title
Playlist



3. When playing music pressing the menu button takes you right back to select music menu. It should take you one step back. I realize when you are not playing a song, it works this way, just once you play a song you can't get back a level.

I can select a song by the Rolling Stones, say Paint it Black. If I want to hear another Rolling Stones song, I have to go all through the process of scrolling through all the artists, and then scrolling through all the songs. It would be much simpler to press the menu button and be back on Paint it Black by the Stones. I could then pick my next song. If I wanted to get back to select artist I could simply press the menu button again to go back another level.

4. When selecting a single song by artist, album, title, whatever, you can’t press << or >> to get to the pervious or next song in that category selection.

When you select a single song from any of the menu options you, all you can hear in that session is that one song. You should have the ability to select a previous or next track from within the main category without having to back all the way our, or without having to select play all music/files and then skip forward to the one you want to hear.

5. I would love an incremental scan of the drive(s) at some interval. Say set the server program to rescan at midnight, regardless if it is a full scan or a incremental. Just so I know that if I add to my collection it will appear on the receiver at some point without my intervention.

6. If number 5 can be accomplished where it runs an update on its own, I would never need to see the program other than the initial time I set up the path to my files. At that point, it would also be great if it could simply be a service that runs in WinNT/2K/XP. The benefits are clear, no more shutting down when a user logs off, system reboots don't kill the server software (at least one the machine comes back up)

7. Display layout preferences should be set in the PC software.

I should have the ability to set the layout preference of the display through the software component as well as on the unit itself. Having to reset your display type every time the unit powers on is annoying.

Right now to read the display I have to get right down in front of it. Somehow if it could be more readable from a distance I think that would be wonderful. Maybe a very large font while skipping through the songs, and the normal font when going through the menu. Maybe it could scroll the song title once it has begun playing so large that a few characters fill the screen top to bottom, that would get about 6 characters or so that could then scroll across the display. Might also be more readable if the type were reversed, blue for the type, blackout for the background. I don't really know, but anything to make it more read about would be cool.

1. The unit completely ignores track information in the ID3 tag.
(...)
2. When selecting an artist, albums are ignored.

Heh, not only does it ignore the track information, it sorts everything alphabetically by song title, and ignores file names.

On my hard disk, I don't have any track numbers in the tags. I have all my file names include the track number, but the tags don't.

If the Receiver would sort the file names alphabetically instead of the track titles, I'd be able to at least listen to my albums sequentially.

The developers are aware of this as a general issue. It's possible that there may be more options for sorting in a future release, I'm not sure.

Anyway, the temporary work-around for you is to create playlists. It will play playlists sequentially, so you can create a playlist for any albums you want to listen to in sequence.


3. When playing music pressing the menu button takes you right back to select music menu. It should take you one step back.

Funny, the users of their other product (the empeg car) have been asking for this exact feature as well. The trade-off is UI simplicity versus convenience for power-users like you.

Keep asking, they hear you (they read this BBS). They might just implement it, who knows?

4. When selecting a single song by artist, album, title, whatever, you can’t press << or >> to get to the pervious or next song in that category selection.

I like this idea. Select a single song, but after the selection is done, you are within the list of X, with X being the menu you selected to get to the song. For instance, if you dug down to that song via the "artist" menu, then when you finish that song, you'll be in that artist's list. If you dug down through the album menu, you'll be in that album's list.

. I would love an incremental scan of the drive(s) at some interval.

Yeah, that would be nice. What would be even nicer is if the server software could unobtrusively detect changes in the files on your music folders as they happen. I'm pretty sure there's a way to do this in the Windows API somehow. For instance, I use a program to help reverse-engineer installs called "In Control". One of its options is to detect file changes "as they happen" on the hard drive without fully re-scanning the drive. I don't know how it does it, though.

At that point, it would also be great if it could simply be a service that runs in WinNT/2K/XP.

This is a known issue. One of the long-term plans is to make a way to run the server as a service. I haven't tried SRVANY with it yet, but since it needs to interact with the status bar, it may or may not work.

7. Display layout preferences should be set in the PC software.

I disagree. But I think that what SHOULD happen is that the display layout preferences for each Receiver on the network should be "remembered" by the server. So if you change it on the Receiver, it's always the same when you turn it on again. In fact, I assumed it DID that. Doesn't it?

Right now to read the display I have to get right down in front of it.

Yeah the display could be a little brighter, couldn't it?

___________
Tony Fabris

1. This feature is by design. Tony has been lobbying for us to change it. We'll probably put some options in for this.
2. Yep. We'll fix this in the next version.
5. Database limitation. On the list.
6. Also on our list.
7. We'll look at ways to persist this sort of stuff on the PC.

Of the problems mentioned... most of which have come up before i believe... problem number one is the most aggravating thing on earth. If i have to explain to my girlfriend why her albums are playing all out of order one more time i'm gonna go nuts!!! The software should first order by track number in the ID3 tag, failing that existing, then sort by file name, and failing that THEN sort by song title. There's no way i'm going to go back into my ludicrously large collection and insert the track number into the song title of each track, nor create playlists for every album.

The thing is that i'm not understanding why this is the way it is "by design"... could you explain the reasoning behind it? Maybe i'm missing something. =] Thanks!!

||| loren |||

Just wanted to jump in and add my frustration too.

- --
Rod, UK Mk2 64gig Red S/N.341 Empeg 2xDigital Audio Receiver - one Wireless

"By design" means the OEM client asked for it that way, despite us trying to persuade them otherwise (and no, it wasn't Rio).

Hugo

Perhaps we should think about releasing "Rio Receiver - The Director's Cut"?

Peter

- --
Rod, UK Mk2 64gig Red S/N.341 Empeg 2xDigital Audio Receiver - one Wireless

Tony, yep on number 7, I am with you. That is really what I intended, but you put it much better. I just want the PC to store the setting I make on the receiver so I don't need to reset it.

I am glad to see there is so much of a response here. I have never really gotten anywhere with dell, even after spending hours on the phone just trying to get through to someone who would listen to me. All I really wanted was to get my thoughs through to someone who might be able to do something about it someday. I looks like I finally found the place for that!

You certainly did.

If you hadn't guessed, Roger, Altman, Rob (+ others) all work for Empeg Ltd (owned by Rio) - who wrote the software.

Mostly the person to blame for software stuff is Roger. (Sorry Roger ).

They are very receptive to constuctive feedback, so I think that posts like these are valuable to everyone (us mere mortals included).

Paul.

--
RioReceiver - Still Waiting for one in the UK.

The Directors Cut would be greatly recieved, i assure you. =]

||| loren |||