Probably a very stupid question, but being a newbie I hope I'm forgiven ...
Exactly how long should it take to upload my files to the empeg? I started the synchronisation request about 2 hours ago and it's not even halfway through it. I'm uploading 250Mb only! At this rate it'll take forever to get a few Gigs on it ...
Oh, I'm using the USB, couldn't get the ethernet to work.

ta,
Frank

USB does take a while, not the fastest interconnect in the world.

Ethernet is a lot lot faster, and you should concentrate on getting that working.

The player by default tries to obtain a dynamic ethernet address from the network via DHCP. I've turned that off by setting manual override on the Player Configuration settings, and specifying an IP address on my network. Resynced the player, and then Emplode picks it up.

Remember that the player is only 10mb ethernet, so if your lan is 100mb you wont see the player.

Good luck

I'm not sure what your measure of "a lot lot faster" is, but Ethernet is only marginally faster than USB on the Empeg. I can't remember the exact numbers but I think Ethernet ends up being maybe 10-15% faster. Definitely worth switching to Ethernet, but it's not like it doubles your speed or anything.

You should expect at least 200-250kb/sec from USB - about 15 minutes for 250MB. You should get around 750kb/sec over ethernet, about 5 minutes for a 250MB upload.

YMMV, though, especially with USB. Depends a lot on controller type, etc. It's possible that 2.0 has other issues with USB, I've not done performance tests on it.

Hugo

Using ethernet seems to be more stable. With USB I get loads of errors on uploading tracks with a quite a few tracks not making it to the player. Then again I'm using 2b7. Although the faq says uploads should be done in small chunks, I've had no problems with a 10Gb upload using ethernet

I also posted this to the bugs forum cause this has turned into a big problem. After 3hrs, the upload ended with an error during stage 5 and when I try to reconnect I get:
The download process failed during stage 1:
Player error 0xffffffec

I would highly recommend putting in the work to get Ethernet working. There are some machines that USB simply doesn't work reliably on. My home machine is one such machine, there has never been a version of emplode where big uploads have been realiable. In contrast Ethernet works fine.

I did my first uploading yesterday of around 1Gb. It took 9 1/2 hours using USB which to me seemed like a pretty long time. I am using version 1.02 that came with the player. Would upgrading emplode speed it up? Or should I try ethernet next time?

9 1/2 hrs for ONE gig???

Definitely use ethernet next time! Personally when I got my first Mk2a, I'd already read on this board that USB was considerably slower than ethernet was (that's why I never bothered with it) but I didn't know the difference was THAT big.

I don't know how much time it took me to upload one gig, but the times Hugo mentions seem about right.

Upgrading will not speed USB up, get your Ethernet setup working...

Remember to check the ethernet cable and the ports at either end. I suffered many mystery errors on account of a bad CAT5 cable. Replaced cable and it's been smooth sailing ever since.

-Zeke

it took about that long to do 10 gig when I first did mine.

I haven't really cared too much about the speed you're probably only going to do the huge uploads right when you get the player after that I would think it would just be one album when you get a new one

I found USB to be a lot more stable than ethernet. I keep getting the 0x80072746 error while using ethernet, and haven't managed to complete a synch yet. That makes USB to be, approximately, infinately faster for me

It shouldn't have taken that long, Laura, even for USB (ethernet is only a tiny bit faster than USB). Sure you weren't using the serial port?

Did you get any error messages?

If you really were using USB, perhaps there's something wrong with the USB setup on your PC. Maybe a motherboard BIOS upgrade is needed, or a device driver for the USB controller needs to be installed?

Hi Frank,

I can backup what everyone else is saying! Using USB I get speeds of about 300KB/s (max).... Using ethernet I see about 900KB/s most of the time!.

If your trying to connect the empeg to your network card directly you'll need a cross-over cable.

I hope this helps

Using USB I get speeds of about 300KB/s (max).... Using ethernet I see about 900KB/s most of the time!.

There should not be that big of a difference between USB and Ethernet. If you're seeing speed differences that big, there's something wrong with the USB on your PC. Like I told Laura, probably driver or BIOS related.

I'm confused about this. Above, Hugo mentions 250 vs. 750 USB to Ethernet, but there are two references (including yours, Tony) stating that this ratio is not right. Is this a version thing?

Hmm.

I didn't think ethernet was that much faster. But you guys are all saying 3x the USB speed is normal for ethernet.

Okay, I stand corrected. It just didn't sound right to me.

I remember some talk a while about about 1.1 having faster Ethernet upload speeds... am I imagining this? I thought it was faster at communication with the empeg, but once the actual files were being transfered, I thought it made little difference... hmm

I have to admit it was the first time that I have used the USB port on my computer. And I'm sure that I wasn't using serial, I do enough of those connections on my job and know how slow it is. I didn't see any error messages the times that I checked it. I need to upgrade the bios anyway to install a large drive. So I'll see how it goes after that.

From memory...

In v1.0, USB speed is about 300Kb/s. Ethernet speed is about 450Kb/s.

Peter put a lot of effort into the protocol in v2.0 (it was called v1.1 back then). Bulk ethernet transfers to the player should now get about 700Kb/s. USB is unchanged.

Download from the player is unaffected by the extra work.

I wonder if it'd be possible to include support for USB 2.0 so that the transfer speeds could greatly increase. hmm..

The answer to that would be a very straightforward, no. The hardware in the empeg that provides the USB support was conceived long before USB 2.0 existed. Even if it did support USB the ISA bus in the empeg wouldn't be able to take advantage of USB 2.0 speeds.

I get close to 1MB/sec with ethernet, about 350 with USB. I use USB when just uploading a few songs because its easier (for me) and use ethernet when doing larger uploads.

You noted that you couldn't get ethernet to work.

In my experience, ethernet didn't work out of the box. So I tried USB with on set of MP3s.

Then I decided to figure out why Ethernet didn't work. It did get the IP from my DHCP server fine, and it was listed. Log said time out first try.

AFter using USB, it started working magically.

Try your ethrenet again if you haven't. Maybe that same gremlin was in yours as in my new one.

I haven't tried getting it on ethernet yet but I have discovered that if I upload 1 CD at a time it goes very quick over USB. For now I am happy enough with that. I took the day off of work yesterday just so I could install my new 60Gb drive in my desktop computer just for MP3's (even told my boss that but then I've earned some PTO). Spent the day ripping and uploading once I got it installed.

Spent the day ripping and uploading once I got it installed.

I know this will be hard to do... but a month from now you will be very grateful that you took a lot of extra time to get all your tag information just exactly perfectly right and complete before you loaded the songs into the player.

Trust me, there are a lot of people on the bbs (including myself) who wish they had spent more time tagging and less time ripping CDs!

tanstaafl.

Maybe I better read the FAQ's on tagging before I upload any more. Thanks for letting me know that.