Merry Christmas

Posted by: rob

Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 11:34

It was the night before Xmas,
and all through the house,
not a creature was stirring..

..except for the [censored] at empeg towers coming in the rear in standard alpha release formation!

Usual disclaimers apply!
Posted by: genixia

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 11:37

...and a Merry Christmas to everyone at Empeg Towers too!

(Somehow I guess that it will be.)
Posted by: genixia

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 11:41

Rio Car Alpha Release 24-Dec-2003
Version 3.00-alpha5

Copyright (c) Digital Networks North America, Inc. 2003

PLEASE NOTE

This is a hybrid release, containing player software v3.00-alpha5 and
Emplode/Emptool v3.00-alpha1. Don't ask why :-)

This is the Very Merry Christmas 2003 release, which would have been a
public beta except for known issues with content transfer via emplode,
and lack of Mark 1 support. For this reason the release is a another
public alpha.

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 Christmas
in any number of ways!

If you're feeling lucky, load up the release notes and follow the
instructions carefully.

Merry Christmas!

RV 2003/12/24 16:56 GMT+00:00
Posted by: robricc

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 11:44

Posted by: Mataglap

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 11:49

Now would you guys please go home for the holidays?! Thank you and Merry Christmas.

--Nathan
Posted by: Taym

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 11:50

You are super!

Merry merry christmas to you too, and a big thank you for your fantastic gift!

Posted by: Daria

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 11:56

Woohoo!

/me sticks his empeg into the dock.
Posted by: loren

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 12:08

and here i am without empeg! =]
Posted by: Taym

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 12:17

And here I am without a serial cable...
Posted by: image

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 12:25

WOOT! cant believe you make me go to my car and take my empeg out to my office. thanks rob. you guys at the towers are just awesome.
Posted by: Mataglap

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 12:31

This is probably a good place to remind many and inform some of my fellow recent empeg owners of this. Of course, first you'll need to install the Hijack kernel (look up young man).

Oh, and wget 'wget -r http://www.empeg.com/v3alpha' is in the web section of the cygwin setup, not net.)

--Nathan

Posted by: SE_Sport_Driver

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 12:31

Stop keeping your empeg in the car! Please!
Posted by: image

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 12:31

cygwin and upgrader will let you do it thru ethernet.
Posted by: Daria

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 12:34

Nope, cygwin is entirely useless on my Mac

Of course, so is upgrader due to byte swapping issues, but that I can fix, maybe
Posted by: Mataglap

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 12:41

Hasn't Mark's upgrader been tweaked for OSX in the past as well?

--Nathan
Posted by: Mataglap

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 12:43

In reply to:

cant believe you make me go to my car and take my empeg out to my office.




You know how when you're at a restaurant and the food always arrives while you're away from the table? I knew there was a reason I left the empeg in the car this morning after coming back from Starbucks.

--Nathan
Posted by: image

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 12:43

cant you just compile from source in os X? wont the byte swapping be translated by the complier?
Posted by: andym

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 12:46

Looks like thinfourth was right, another release whilst he's away....
Posted by: Daria

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 12:55

Hahahahahaha.
No.

On the other hand it may work now.
Posted by: Daria

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 12:56

Yup. By me in fact. But I didn't remember to try it, and my work wasn't done. Looks like it is now.
Posted by: Mataglap

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 12:59

Isn't it nice to have a reason to finish up these projects?

--Nathan
Posted by: Taym

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 13:23

I don't have a crossed ethernet cable either, and no hub/switch. I'm at my parents' house, and you're all very kind all the same. Great to know about upgrader, which I did not notice on the board before.

I guess I'll have to wait until tomorrow.

Merry merry Christmas empeg people!
Posted by: Daria

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 13:25

Cut open an ethernet cable and resplice the wires.
Posted by: webroach

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 13:50

Many MANY thanks for the early X-Mas present, Rob.

Question for everyone though.... anyone but me having trouble with this? I can get it to load, but it REFUSES to build databases on my deck. Even went in and removed them manually and tried a rebuild, but no go.

Also, notes say to use the new Emplode. I would, but I see no updater included in the zip...?
Posted by: Daria

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 14:04

Same problem. You have Hijack on it, out of curiousity? Have you fidsifted? I'm playing with some things now to see if I can figure out what's going on.

All the music is still there.
Posted by: mlord

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 14:05

For the databases, just sync once with emplode after doing the upgrade -- this should fix them. (worked for v3alpha3, anyways).

Cheers
Posted by: webroach

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 14:08

You have Hijack on it, out of curiousity?

Yes, V347. Tried both with and without. I had the same problem in both cases.

Have you fidsifted?

No, I haven't.

Only thing I've noticed right off is that when it reboots, it shows "Building databases" for about 1 second, then just continues on without doing anything. Happens with both Developer and Consumer images.
Posted by: webroach

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 14:11

Mark, showing my chin fuzz here...

When I connect with emplode, it shows nothing for playlists, etc. Will emplode not try to make that true during a sync? As in remove a metric [expletive removed] of music?

Sorry if that's a dumb question, but I didn't do anything with the first alpha really...
Posted by: mlord

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 14:15

Mmm... all of the music should show up in Emplode to begin with (and it cannot delete what it doesn't know about..).

Ensure you are using a very up-to-date emplode, as per the instructions in the readme and release notes.

I'm just fetching my own player + dock right now to try this release.

Cheers
Posted by: image

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 14:18

you have to sync with the older emplode or jemplode47 first (builds the database correctly), then use v2.1 from then on.
Posted by: webroach

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 14:18

it cannot delete what it doesn't know about...

You know, I actualy didn't consider that fact.

Thanks Mark! Giving it another shot now.
Posted by: Daria

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 14:22

Well, can't use emplode (no Windows) but no music shows up in jEmplode 45 or 47. Maybe I should hunt a Windows machine.

I upgraded from 3 alpha 3 to 3 alpha 5, jEmplode 45 and 47 both worked before. Shrug. I have a few more ideas.
Posted by: rob

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 15:04

Is it actually working for anyone apart from me? I haven't tried any kind of PC connection (apart from applying the upgrade) but it went from alpha3 to alpha5 without having to rebuild the database.

Rob
Posted by: webroach

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 15:07

Is it actually working for anyone apart from me?

Err...no?


I haven't tried any kind of PC connection (apart from applying the upgrade) but it went from alpha3 to alpha5 without having to rebuild the database.

Actually, I'm just trying to get the upgrade on there with playlists intact. I'm going from 2.0 to 3.0, though. Think that may be the problem?
Posted by: mlord

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 15:27

No problems going from alpha3 to alpha5, it reuses the same database.

But if the database is not already there.. it is unable to build a new one:


allocating_buffer_pool.cpp: 49:sizeof(BufferEntry) = 32
allocating_buffer_pool.cpp: 50:sizeof(BlockEntry) = 16
player.cpp : 569:empeg-car 3.00-alpha5 2003/12/24.
! tags.cpp : 61:Failed to open tags (0xc0041002).
! memory_stream.cpp : 42:MemoryStream failed to allocate memory.
! tunedb_disk.cpp : 878:Failed to build database. Bad. 0xc007000e
! fidfile_disk.cpp :1167:Why did write return zero for offset=0, size=0?
! fidfile_disk.cpp :1167:Why did write return zero for offset=0, size=0?


So, for now, use upgrader to install v3alpha3, rebuild the database, then use upgrader again to install v3alpha5. Then play with it!

-ml
Posted by: Daria

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 15:30

Using the upgrader means I have to install telnetd again when I'm done. If I can just remember where I put 3alpha3, I bet stealing just the player binary from it and swapping them in place on the disk will work.
Posted by: webroach

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 15:30

! tunedb_disk.cpp : 878:Failed to build database. Bad. 0xc007000e
! fidfile_disk.cpp :1167:Why did write return zero for offset=0, size=0?
! fidfile_disk.cpp :1167:Why did write return zero for offset=0, size=0?


EXACTLY what I was getting. Running through 2.0 -> 3.0a3 -> 3.0a5 upgrade now.

Thanks for the help, all! And thanks again Rob for the excellent X-Mas present. Where precisely do I mail the pint?
Posted by: mlord

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 15:32

would you like a v3a3 player binary?
Posted by: Daria

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 15:36

would save me from needing to figure out where my image went. shadow@dementia.org if you don't mind sending it.
Posted by: Mataglap

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 15:48

v3a3 & Hijack 342, using upgrader 0.4 to v3a5. The only problem was that the current playlist was lost, but I did a down-down-down and there everything was.

Let's see how things work for the next few days, but the upgrade was painless for this Windows/Cygwin user.

--Nathan
Posted by: mlord

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 15:52

Just remember, everyone, that once you have v3a5 working, you can only edit the database (emplode, emptool, jemplode) by first reverting back to v3a3.

The v3alpha5 player is unable to rebuild databases (at least for me). Period.

Cheers
Posted by: mlord

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 15:52

You should have the binary by now. Sorry, I forgot to gzip it first (huge file), duh..
Posted by: Daria

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 16:02

Broadband. Didn't even notice. Player's well into rebuilding. Thanks.
Posted by: webroach

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 16:02

Should we report this as a bug?
Posted by: mlord

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 16:07

>Broadband. Didn't even notice.

Yuh, I only noticed here because I'm actually at the inlaws place, and their broadband uplink is only 1/8 the speed of my usual uplink..

Cheers
Posted by: Mataglap

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 16:34

In reply to:


Just remember, everyone, that once you have v3a5 working, you can only edit the database (emplode, emptool, jemplode) by first reverting back to v3a3.

The v3alpha5 player is unable to rebuild databases (at least for me). Period.




To reinforce Mark's warning, don't even try to upload new music with v3a5. Each change will eventually fail and time out during the "initializing" task for each uploading object (playlist, tunes, &c.) with error 0x8004003e.

--Nathan
Posted by: mcomb

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 16:38

Hmm, is the old alpha still on the empeg site somewhere? I'd like to play with the new alpha, but I don't have the old one to build the DB first.

-Mike
Posted by: Mataglap

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 16:50

Here's v3a3 developer....

--Nathan
Posted by: Mataglap

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 16:54

Okay, the file must be too big.

Try this
v3a3, v3a5, and upgrader 0.6 for cygwin.

I'll leave the files up for a week or two.

--Nathan
Posted by: mlord

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 17:01

Mmmm.. hard disk spin up/down behaviour is MUCH better in alpha5. The best I've seen in a while, I think. Spins up, grabs data, spins down again. Elapsed time maybe 10 seconds or less. Very nice!

-ml
Posted by: mcomb

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 17:09

Try this

Thank you!

-Mike
Posted by: Daria

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 17:10

Wish I could get that far. If I swap in alpha 3, I have playlists (after I rebuilt them previously, with jemplode 47, and alpha 3). If I swap in alpha 5, it shows "rebuilding databases" (and fails of course) and I have nothing. If I swap alpha 3 back in, doesn't claim to rebuild, and it has playlists again.

Very special. Of course I need to run away now, so I'll just leave alpha 3 on it and figure it out later
Posted by: rob

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 17:16

Thanks for figuring out the problem, Mark.

Folks, sorry this turned out to be a bit of a crummy Christmas present! ..and I thought the socks I got for my father were bad!

Rob
Posted by: Mataglap

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 17:21

Thanks for making it available anyway, Rob. After all, "It's the thought that counts."

--Nathan
Posted by: mcomb

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 17:21

Folks, sorry this turned out to be a bit of a crummy Christmas present!

No worries, I love spending Christmas eve debugging my car stereo
Posted by: rob

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 17:23

No worries, I love spending Christmas eve debugging my car stereo

It's only fair - a number of Chrismas eve's were spent developing your car stereo

Rob
Posted by: pgrzelak

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 17:24

Hahahaha...

Before or after the eggnog was spiked ???
Posted by: mlord

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 17:31

After your v3alpha boots, do a SYNC from emplode to write the databases to disk (on boot, they are not written to disk -- read-only filesystem).

After the sync, v3alpha5 should work just fine.

Cheers
Posted by: Taym

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 18:10

After the sync, v3alpha5 should work just fine.


Sorry but I am a bit lost. Will I also be able to upload songs, as I do with v3alpha3?

Thank you Mark and all the others who helped here!


Edit:

Ok, ok, I got it. So, one has to go through a resync (=dbase rebuilt) in v3alpha3 before upgrading to v3alpha5 . Sorry, I must have drunk too much spumante...
Posted by: boxer

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 18:35

Ooh! [censored], I'me hALF AN HOUR LATE & REPREHENSIBLY Pissed, merry Christmas from Boxer, Mrs. Boxer and the boxette, hope 04 will be a great one!
Posted by: mlord

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 18:57

If one wants to upload/delete tunes, playlists, etc.. then downgrade to v3alpha3, do the fiddling, rebuild the database (SYNC), and then upgrade back to v3alpha5 afterwards.

-ml
Posted by: Daria

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 19:37

I synced from jemplode while 3alpha3 was running; I actually made updates, which took. I then started 3alpha5, which claimed to need to build, said 0%, bombed as expected, and had no playlists.

There are playlists sync'd to disk, if I had to wait for 3alpha3 to start them on every boot I'd usually be to where I was going before it finished!
Posted by: Taym

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 19:41

You mean every time? Oh oh! Too bad I don't have a cable to test it now... Not even with emplode 2.00 final? I found that with 3Alpha3 I had several crashed during dbase rebuild, while using emplode 2.00final everything would work...
Posted by: mlord

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 20:50

Ah... well, actually, since I don't normally run windows, I did the database rebuild (v3a3) the hard way: control_C, rwm, player, rom, exit

Works like a charm for me.

Cheers
Posted by: mlord

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 20:51

Ya need to get the database into sufficient shape that it will reboot (power cycle) into v3alpha3 without rebuilding every boot. Once that works, I'd expect v3alpha5 to work as well for you as it does for me/Rob.

Cheers
Posted by: Daria

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 21:07

Yeah, that was the point. It *never* rebuilt on every boot in 3alpha3 after the first time I sync'd, including now, but it still tries on every boot in 3alpha5.
Posted by: ninti

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 21:16

Bah. After installing this alpha my player went into a Database Rebuild Death Roll: rebuild database, crash player, rebuild database, crash player, lather, rinse, repeat. Backing it up into v3 alpha 3 didn't help either. I had to bring it all the way back to version 2 just to get the player software to boot up enough for me to get into developer mode so I could delete and rebuild the databases. I am tempted to try it again; step it back up to alpha 3 then alpha 5, but I have spent like three hours tonight trying to bring my Empeg back to life tonight. I think I'll wait.

Edit: Ctrl-c does work. Argh. Thanks Mark, that would have saved me a lot of trouble since it would never get to the point where 'q' would have any affect.

Edit2: Well, I am a glutton for punishment and reinstalled alpha 5 anyway, and it appears to work now. I get those allocating_buffer_pool.cpp lines too, but it doesn't appear to affect it. *crosses fingers* I learned a lot tonight, that is for sure.
Posted by: msaeger

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/12/2003 23:12

Thanks Rob and the rest of the empeg guys for taking the time to work on this. Too bad I didn't bring a serial cable
Posted by: mlord

Re: Merry Christmas - 25/12/2003 09:05

Yeah, the buffer pool messages are harmless and expected. It's the "unable to find tags file" (or whatever it says) that signals the time to revert to v3a3 to rebuild the database after uploading new tunes.

But I really do like the sound quality in v3, and the player has been pretty rock solid so far, apart from the database thing. My guess is that the rebuild code accidently got omitted because of all of the included Karma fixes -- karma doesn't do database rebuilds from scratch normally.

Cheers
Posted by: SE_Sport_Driver

Re: Merry Christmas - 25/12/2003 09:34

Very exciting, thank you Rob! Merry Christmas!
Posted by: Taym

Re: Merry Christmas - 25/12/2003 20:09

OK, tried and got all the problems you guys described. Win+Cygwin. So I am back to Alpha3, and I am planning to stay because I upload tunes too frequently to enjoy usign upgrader every time...

Well, it was interesting!
Posted by: mlord

Re: Merry Christmas - 25/12/2003 21:29

Well, in all fairness it's really just the one problem: no database rebuilds.

Cheers
Posted by: ninti

Re: Merry Christmas - 25/12/2003 22:10

> So I am back to Alpha3, and I am planning to stay because I upload tunes too frequently to enjoy usign upgrader every time

Well, I would imagine you will not have to wait too long until they fix that little bug with another release.

I have not had a good chance to seriously test it personally yet, but so far it is acting quite a bit better than Alpha3 did. A very nice Christmas present indeed, thank you very much.
Posted by: Daria

Re: Merry Christmas - 25/12/2003 22:40

You can do it without an upgrader, an expect script that used telnet and ran a few commands should be enough.
Posted by: image

Re: Merry Christmas - 26/12/2003 10:28

can't we just shell into the empeg to stop the player, and run the v3a3 version (assuming we copied the binary over), then sync from there? also, a while back, i mentioned the use of two drives to contain two different versions (hd[a.c][3,5])and allowing hijack to swap around hda and hdc around on bootup. would this be hard to implement, mark?
Posted by: Taym

Re: Merry Christmas - 26/12/2003 11:38

Well, in all fairness it's really just the one problem: no database rebuilds

Right, Mark. I never meant otherwise. As a matter of fact, Alpha5 worked quite well for me, for what I tried it - except for the dbase bug.

Well, I would imagine you will not have to wait too long until they fix that little bug with another release.

Yes ninti, I think too that is a possibility, and hope so. Also considering what it is said in the release notes:
which would have been a
public beta except for known issues with content transfer via emplode,
and lack of Mark 1 support.

So we are very close to beta release, and we can be quite happy about it

But, as you said, regardless of these other considerations, a very nice christmas present anyway!!
Posted by: Taym

Re: Merry Christmas - 26/12/2003 11:47

an expect script that used telnet and ran a few commands should be enough.

I would not really know what to do on the player and how to do it How would this work?
Posted by: mlord

Re: Merry Christmas - 26/12/2003 13:53

Yup, that'll work.
Posted by: webroach

Re: Merry Christmas - 27/12/2003 21:50

Thanks for all the info and suggestions Mark. I finally had time to take another whack at 3.0a5. Got it loaded and working fine, and I don't care about the rebuilds for the time being 'cause my deck is full as it is...

A few things I've noticed...

1) MUCH better audio. Even with my crappy system in the car, it sounds great. In fact, I had to drop everything (EQ, hijack tone boost, etc) back to flat to keep it from being TOO bass-y. Quite happy!

2) WAAAYYYYY more stable. I had 3.0a3 loaded for exactly one trip to the grocery store, during which I probably had to reboot about 4 times because of lock-ups. After all day driving around, not a single hang, even on some low bitrate audiobook stuff.

3) Seems that some of the config.ini options are being ignored. I'm back to having the "Plays: X" on the album title row. Blech. Small price to pay, though, for having a stable 3.0

So again, thanks to Rob and company across the pond for such a great X-Mas present. And thanks again to Mark up north for help getting it going.

Not to push my luck, but any hope for DBE (ie. Japanese / Chinese tags) in the future?
Posted by: Taym

Re: Merry Christmas - 27/12/2003 22:05

Mark, I don't know if it's worthed, but would it be possible to have a menu item in hijack to switch from 3a5 to 3a3 and viceversa, provided that we ftp on the empeg all that is needed?
Posted by: mlord

Re: Merry Christmas - 28/12/2003 08:14

Pretty messy. I think a better option would be for JEmplode to simply generate the new database on the PC side, and upload it after the tunes and playlists during each sync. MUCH faster that way, and already discussed previously. Then we wouldn't need (or even want, most of the time) the player software to ever rebuild the database.

Cheers
Posted by: Taym

Re: Merry Christmas - 28/12/2003 08:35

That would be very convenient too, form a user perspective!
Posted by: Taym

Re: Merry Christmas - 28/12/2003 21:45

MUCH better audio.


Definitely enhanced bass. I eventually installed alpha5 and am currently using it. The audio did change. I have a pretty good new audio system in my car, and the empeg used to sound pretty well before a5, as well. I don't know yet how much better it sounds to me, but its definitely not worse, and I did have to decrease bass in the equalizer by two points, too.

However, I am now wondering how is this possible. What was changed? For some oversimplifying reasons, I thought the audio quality would ultimately depend on the hardware, meaning that the empeg player sw was already "perfect" from the audio quality standpoint...
Posted by: SE_Sport_Driver

Re: Merry Christmas - 28/12/2003 23:58

taym, many CD player manufactuers (and radio) "enhance" the audio by bumping up the bass and treble to make it sound fuller. For a portable player like the Karma, I would suspect this would be very common. Since the 3.0alphas are from the Karma code, I would suspect this the reason. I bet the "better" audio is "less pure" from a flat frequency response stand point, but like people say "flat isn't always better to the ear". Personally, I'd probably welcome this because the empeg has sometimes seemed a little "dull" sounding to me, but that's likely because I've been conditioned to like audio that has been modified a bit.
Posted by: webroach

Re: Merry Christmas - 29/12/2003 00:11

but like people say "flat isn't always better to the ear"

I couldn't agree more. I'm not sure what kind of music everyone here listens to (beyond Tony's obvious Rush fetish ), but most of my player is filled with industrial and ambient, with a bit of J-Pop thrown in for good measure. The extra bass really helps. Skinny Puppy really doesn't sound right if you don't feel it in your gut.

Speaking of the ambient music, I was wondering about the visualizations: Since a lot of the music I listen to doesn't go "LOUD quiet LOUD quiet LOUD etc.", I tend to not get a lot of response from many of them. Is there any way to "multiply" the response? Does that make any sense? I'm not as much concerned with accurate sprectrum modeling as I am the OOO! AHHH! factor.
Posted by: SE_Sport_Driver

Re: Merry Christmas - 29/12/2003 00:25

Dave, your last name wouldn't happen to be "Ogilive" would it?

I'm a HUGE Skinny Puppy fan, glad to see there's another one of us!
Posted by: webroach

Re: Merry Christmas - 29/12/2003 00:35

Now see, everyone I know told me that knowing the lyrics to the entire "Cleanse Fold & Manipulate" album would just alienate people! What do they know?

Maybe we should all do a twist on the "What's On Your PowerBook" commercials to get a feel for what others are into...
Posted by: rob

Re: Merry Christmas - 29/12/2003 04:06

I bet the "better" audio is "less pure" from a flat frequency response stand point

No, if that's the case then it's a bug - but I don't believe it to be the case. Karma also has a flat response when the EQ is set flat.

I did notice that my "Loudness" setting was active after loading -alpha5 however I don't know if this was operator error or a bug in parsing the older settings data.

Rob
Posted by: sn00p

Re: Merry Christmas - 29/12/2003 11:01

is the karma also ARM based? If so then maybe on the V3 code (since karma & empeg now build from the same tree) they're now using a newer version of the arm mp3 decoding library which has higher quality decoding?

Adrian
Posted by: mcomb

Re: Merry Christmas - 29/12/2003 14:09

if that's the case then it's a bug

Well v3 (both alphas) definitely sound different. There is significantly more bass. I don't know if I would call the changes better as I haven't adjusted my eq/amps to compensate yet. I was actually going to ask if that added bass was going to stay before I readjust everything.

-Mike
Posted by: tfabris

Re: Merry Christmas - 29/12/2003 14:55

And you're sure the loudness setting, or the EQ parameters, or the Hijack bass/treble settings didn't change with the upgrade?
Posted by: mcomb

Re: Merry Christmas - 29/12/2003 15:07

And you're sure the loudness setting, or the EQ parameters, or the Hijack bass/treble settings didn't change with the upgrade?

Yep, I reset everything to be sure (I use the flat EQ setting and have everything else off aside from auto volume adjustment so there isn't much to get messed up).

-Mike
Posted by: DzlDubber

Re: Merry Christmas - 29/12/2003 17:27

Has anybody noticed a problem with the Oscilloscope Zoom visual with alpha5? The empeg keeps resetting whenever I select it, so I removed it from my favourates... I get no problems with it in alpha3 though. Not really a big deal, I was just wondering if anybody else was seeing it.
Posted by: mcomb

Re: Merry Christmas - 29/12/2003 17:34

Has anybody noticed a problem with the Oscilloscope Zoom visual with alpha5?

Yep, I've got that one too. I was wondering what was causing that (I have the visuals set to autochange and I hadn't figured out which one was the culprit). Also noticing that Info:Transient doesn't really work (the info line doesn't show for more than half a second).

Should we be posting these things in bugs or do the empeg guys not want to hear from us until they release a real beta?

-Mike
Posted by: Daria

Re: Merry Christmas - 29/12/2003 18:09

Ya need to get the database into sufficient shape that it will reboot (power cycle) into v3alpha3 without rebuilding every boot. Once that works, I'd expect v3alpha5 to work as well for you as it does for me/Rob.


Just for kicks, I did the following:
-stop the (alpha 3) player
-rw
-rm the database3 file
-start the alpha3 player
-let it finish building
-stop the alpha3 player
-ro
-reboot
-alpha3 rebuilds the database

I then repeated above, adding 1 step: sync with jemplode between "ro" and "reboot".
-alpha3 sees valid database

-stopped alpha3 player
-rw
-replaced alpha3 with alpha5 player
-ro
-reboot
-alpha5 "rebuilds" database, finds no music

-stop alpha5 player
-rw
-put back alpha3 player
-ro
-reboot

and all is well again (no rebuild, music's there)

So if it works for you and rob (and others), I'm unlucky, or something's different about my player. I'm fidsifted, I have hijack 347, and have ~12000 songs.
Posted by: webroach

Re: Merry Christmas - 29/12/2003 18:09

Has anybody noticed a problem with the Oscilloscope Zoom visual with alpha5?

Haven't noticed that one yet, but I did find that if you use LogDiff with info set to "Transient" then the text is screwed up. That is, it's only visible at the edges of the screen, right and left, as if there was a blank image plane in front of it that covered everthing but a 1-pixel wide row on each side.
Posted by: Taym

Re: Merry Christmas - 29/12/2003 19:11

I too confirm no change occurred in those. I had to lower the eq by two points in the first four bars on the left. Loudness set to 0 as usual, hijack set to "flat" for bass and threble.
Posted by: alex25

Re: Merry Christmas - 30/12/2003 07:24

I finally have my empeg up and running software version 3.0a5. It was running alpha3 for quite some time without problems.

After installing the new alpha version the player always crashed (seg fault) while selecting another playlist. First I thought the problem is the know problem that this version is not able to create database. But reinstalling alpha3 and rebuilding the database did not solve the problem. (alpha3 worked, alpha5 don’t)

The solution was to reduce the cache the player software uses. I originally used the setting resevercache=16, for the alpha5 I have to use the setting resevercache=8.
Seems the new alpha consumes more resources for cache and playlists. I experienced this with my MK2 Player (12MB RAM) and about 5000 songs loaded.

Also I notice the following changes since alpha3:
- Definitely better sound quality (at least with my sound system)
- Beeps does not seems to work anymore
- Pitchbend is delayed by about 3 seconds
- Player seems to consume more memory (see above)

But thanks anyway for releasing software for a long discontinued product!
Posted by: crazymelki

Re: Merry Christmas - 30/12/2003 08:28

I can confirm after my today's upgrade to alpha5 the better sound quality. Much better...

bye
Posted by: tman

Re: Merry Christmas - 30/12/2003 08:38

It's the other way around actually The reservecache setting tells the player to not grab as much memory. Higher the number = less the player gets. The difference between 8 and 16 isn't much though, it's only about 256K. Every byte counts I guess when you've only got 12MB to play with!

Could be useful for the other people that have issues with alpha5
Posted by: andym

Re: Merry Christmas - 30/12/2003 14:56

Okay then, I've had 2.final on for a bit. I'm off to Lincoln for new years with my folks. I've decided to give 3 alpha 5 a try....

Wish me luck! It'll be a long drive to lincoln if it doesn't work....
Posted by: lopan

Re: Merry Christmas - 31/12/2003 11:00

Does anyone know where I can download v3 alpha 3? I can't find it (just rebuilt my pc and I fear that I lost the upgrade file)... Anyway had alpha 3 loaded and working, tried the upgrade to Alpha 5 and my database didn't show up. Anyway I'm back at 2.0 but I'd like to at least have v3 alpha 3.
Posted by: ninti

Re: Merry Christmas - 31/12/2003 12:47

The user KoS appears to have it on his website.

http://kos.li/empeg/images/v3.00-alpha3/
Posted by: ninti

Re: Merry Christmas - 31/12/2003 13:00

So I have been using alpha 5 for a couple of days and I have to say it is much better. Alpha 3 was a train wreck on my Empeg, for whatever reason, but Alpha 5 solves most of the glaring problems (and of course creates a couple of new ones, but what can you do? ) . Responding to buttons is much faster, crossfading works better, the power-on volume ramp works again, and I have not heard any songs skipping around. Stability is the one thing I am a little unsure about. Alpha 3 was very intermittantly crash prone, forcing me to pull it out and pop it back in again a couple of times a week. Alpha 5 has crashed on me once, but at least it rebooted on its own, which is an improvement. But only one crash in the last week is pretty decent compared to Alpha3. All in all, I have been very happy with it, and will be even more so when they get the database rebuild thing worked out.
Posted by: lopan

Re: Merry Christmas - 31/12/2003 13:20

Awesome, thanks
Posted by: mlord

Hijack v348 - 01/01/2004 11:50

Hijack v348 is now available.

The only change is a small fix for the "PrevVisual" function for v3alpha5, similar to the earlier workaround for v3alpha3.

Bugs in v3alpha5:
  • No database rebuilds
  • INFO:TRANSIENT: doesn't enlarge the visual to 100% after the info line disappears.
  • Missing the "Previous Visual" keycode (originally added in v2rc1).
Posted by: Taym

Re: Merry Christmas - 03/01/2004 16:04

Also, generally speaking it seems to me visuals are more responsive to music. I have been using Alpha5 for a week now and I am quite happy with it, too.
Posted by: andym

Re: Merry Christmas - 03/01/2004 16:37

I've had alpha 5 on my main unit for a couple of days now and i think something is seriously wrong. Everything sounds hollow/out-of-phase/weird... It sounded perfectly good on v2. I did fiddle with the stereo enhancement feature, that is, I tried to enable it but it wouldn't go on. Could it be that it's actually now stuck in the 'on' mode? Other than that, a few reboots to report.
Posted by: SE_Sport_Driver

Re: Merry Christmas - 03/01/2004 16:48

"Stereo Enhancement" ? Is this like a similated surround sound?

Any plans for a Beta 3.0 for Valentine's Day?
Posted by: Taym

Re: Merry Christmas - 03/01/2004 17:16

Hey this is interesting. I actually cannot decide whether I like it better or not. As I said I had to lower the bass frequencies and while on some mp3s I like it better now, on some other I kind of prefer it as it was in Alpha3...
Posted by: Taym

Re: Merry Christmas - 03/01/2004 17:52

I think that's it, marria01. I went back to alpha3, tried to change the stereo separation (menu->sound->Stereo separation->ALl Tracks) and - guess what - I got the same sound as alpha 5. The change takes place few seconds after you actually click on the button to activate it.
In Alpha5, there's no way to switch it off, simply. That's my impression, at least, but to me it really seems that's what's happening.

Thanks for pointing this out, marria01.

So, now I think I am staying back with Alpha3. Unfortunately it locks so frequently...
Posted by: tfabris

Re: Merry Christmas - 03/01/2004 18:22

Aha. Very interesting! So that explains it.

For the record, what the stereo separation does is this:

Let's say you've got a Beatles track or some other similar track where the voice is panned hard left and the instruments are panned hard right.

If you listened to that with a pair of regular speakers, you'd get an interesting stereo sensation, because both ears would get a bit of each speaker. If you listened to it with headphones, then it would be jarring because each ear is totally discrete.

What the stereo separation feature does is to mix the left and right channels back a bit towards center, so that if you were listening with headphones it would sound more like regular speakers would.

Also, if I recall correctly, it slightly delays the leftchannel mix as it goes into the right ear, and vice-versa, so that it simulates the extra time it would have taken for the sound from the left speaker to reach your right ear.

(Please note that this feature is available on some very expensive audiophile headphone amplifiers, for the same reasons.)

So, I would guess that doing this might cause certain frequencies to be enhanced more than they would otherwise be with a regular stereo field. The bass I would think would be most noticeably different because of the lack of phase cancellation.

Very interesting.
Posted by: foxtrot_xray

Re: Merry Christmas - 03/01/2004 20:49


Well v3 (both alphas) definitely sound different. There is significantly more bass. I don't know if I would call the changes better as I haven't adjusted my eq/amps to compensate yet. I was actually going to ask if that added bass was going to stay before I readjust everything.

Agree completely, Rob -- I haven't even tried v3.00a5 yet, but *I* noticed a huge difference in my In-Car audio from 2.00 to 3.00a3. (In case it really is a bug, Once I upgraded, all my EQ's displayed flat. however, it sounded like my EQ was still actually loaded.)

Me.

[Edit: Oh, and all Hijack settings and Loudness, even HiJacks' AutoVolumne Adjust is off.]
Posted by: andym

Re: Merry Christmas - 04/01/2004 07:09

What's the easiest way to reset the various settings in player. I'm wondering if the player is parsing the settings and mistakenly enabling the separation feature.
Posted by: Taym

Re: Merry Christmas - 05/01/2004 06:10

Hopefully a new option in Hijack, unless our friends in Cambridge decide to release a beta or an alpha 7 soon? I don't know if it's worthed to do any such thing. Just an idea I am passing on to our HiJack Master
Posted by: Mataglap

new thingy with alpha5 - 05/01/2004 21:33

It seems like that alpha5 isn't updating the play count. Has anyone else noticed that?

--Nathan
Posted by: ninti

Re: Merry Christmas - 07/01/2004 01:42

Just so everybody catches this, from the Alpha 5 readme:
* What's New Since 3.00-alpha3 - Player

Now drops samples after an abrupt transition to silence in the last fraction
of a second of audio (to assist with gapless playback).

Dude! This is very cool, it works perfectly. I just tried Pink Floyd's DSOM today, and it was absolutely flawless. That was one of the first rips that I ever encoded, and I do not think I have listened to it without gaps in 5 years. It was a very nice treat, thank you very much. This feature alone makes upgrading to Alpha 5 so worth it.
Posted by: tfabris

Re: Merry Christmas - 07/01/2004 12:16

Incidentally, this feature came over from the Karma, where we've had it for a little while...
Posted by: andym

Re: Merry Christmas - 09/01/2004 09:28

Incidentally, this feature came over from the Karma, where we've had it for a little while...

Shame it doesn't work then, I just listened to my '2 many DJs' disc again under v3 and it's cutting the ends of the songs off. These --nogap'ped files worked perfectly under v2. Methinks i'll drop back to v2 soon.
Posted by: image

Re: Merry Christmas - 01/02/2004 05:22

wow, just started to experiment with ogg files right now. sound much better (albeit, its partly because that ogg and flac files don't suffer from the stereo seperation bug), i've found that the controls are laggy. when i used hijack's vitalsigns, i saw that the load was peaking at 7.5 and averaging 4.5 when playing files encoded w/ -q7.
Posted by: jerryfreak2

Re: Merry Christmas - 07/02/2004 04:36

anybody tried alpha6 yet? inquiring minds wanna know...
Posted by: genixia

Re: Merry Christmas - 07/02/2004 10:42

Good find!

http://www.empeg.com/v3alpha/
Posted by: tonyc

Re: Merry Christmas - 07/02/2004 10:51

Wow, didn't even see it up there before... I think this is the first mention of it. No release notes either...

rob??
Posted by: oliver

Re: Merry Christmas - 07/02/2004 12:06

Either way, my empeg is programming flash (kernel)... alpha 6 here we come
Posted by: ninti

Re: Merry Christmas - 07/02/2004 12:41

Well, I was able to make changes to the DB and rebuild it with no problems, so it appears that problem may be solved. It was a bit of work to install, I had to manually rebuild the database twice. But after I got all that sorted out, it appears to be working ok.
Posted by: andym

Re: Merry Christmas - 07/02/2004 13:40

Stereo separation?
Posted by: oliver

Re: Merry Christmas - 07/02/2004 13:54

Sounds fixed to my ears... but I’m not positive.

Also, i can't seem to sink over Ethernet. Syncing with USB and Emplode 2.10 worked great. Rebuilt the DB, and I’m running pretty smoothly now.
Note: I upgraded from alpha 5.
Posted by: Jerz

Re: Merry Christmas - 07/02/2004 15:53

Were you brave enough to put it on your main player? How many tracks did you have on it when you did the upgrade?
Posted by: foxtrot_xray

Re: Merry Christmas - 07/02/2004 16:07

Why was I under the impression that there was a different or something significant between EVEN and ODD numbered releases? i.e. 3.00a3, 3.00a5, 2.00b11, 2.00b13, etc etc. Is my memory that fuzzy that I'm mixing this up with some other beta thing I'm doing and just a coinkidink that all the Empeg b/a releases were odd numbered?

If the DB rebuild problem is fixed, it's going on both of my players.

Me.
Posted by: andym

Re: Merry Christmas - 07/02/2004 16:22

Stereo separation is fixed, syncing over ethernet works! Seems just as stable as a5 was. I'm really happy!
Posted by: Jerz

Re: Merry Christmas - 07/02/2004 16:41

Ahhhhh... the spare player upgraded so easily that I crossed my fingers and am in the process of upgrading the player with 70gigs of tracks.
Posted by: mlord

Re: Merry Christmas - 07/02/2004 16:47

JEmplode gives me this error on a freshly upgraded unit:

Posted by: Daria

Re: Merry Christmas - 07/02/2004 16:50

I complained about that previously, and Mike said what it was, but I can't find the post now.

Of course, alpha6 fails just like alpha5 for me: no music. It "builds" a database with nothing in it. But unlike alpha5 connecting with jEmplode and trying to build a database doesn't fail quickly. It's still "synchronizing" 2.5 hours later. Yeah, right.
Posted by: mlord

Re: Merry Christmas - 07/02/2004 16:53

Your player is weird!

After the JEmplode error message, I "touched" a playlist (to force a sync), and then told JEmplode to "sync" it. Rebooted the player after it finished, and all is well.. database has all 6000 or so tracks.

Cheers
Posted by: Daria

Re: Merry Christmas - 07/02/2004 17:03

Maybe my player is weird. Maybe I'm running out of memory.

Anyone else running with alpha5 or alpha6 with 12k songs?
Posted by: Daria

Re: Merry Christmas - 07/02/2004 17:04

Hm.
! memory_stream.cpp : 42:MemoryStream failed to allocate memory.
! memory_stream.cpp : 42:MemoryStream failed to allocate memory.
! tunedb_disk.cpp : 878:Failed to build database. Bad. 0xc007000e

"About" calls this 3.00-alpha6. I swapped in only the player binary.
Posted by: Jerz

Re: Merry Christmas - 07/02/2004 17:09

12,000 songs? No, but my player is telling me 9thousand something tracks and around 70gigs. Alpha 6 seems to have upgraded the player fine keeping all of my previous playlists and everything. But then again I have a tendancy of speaking too soon (knocking on wood).

Posted by: mcomb

Re: Merry Christmas - 07/02/2004 17:13

Maybe I'm running out of memory

Have you tried playing with the ReserveCache setting? Alpha3 wouldn't build a DB for me until I added a ReserveCache (64 I think). I think the kernel was running out of memory and killing off the player. You have more tunes than I do though, I think I am around 7000.

-Mike
Posted by: Daria

Re: Merry Christmas - 07/02/2004 17:17

I had a ReserveCache of 48. I just removed it. If it fails I will readd with 64.
Posted by: Daria

Re: Merry Christmas - 07/02/2004 17:18

Ok *removing* ReserveCache entirely made it build. So now I just need to sync.
Posted by: Jerz

Re: Merry Christmas - 07/02/2004 17:34

I'm not sure about in the car but it sounds damn good on my pc speakers.

Also... no problems syncing with ethernet upgrading from v2.00 final or alpha5.
Posted by: Daria

Re: Merry Christmas - 07/02/2004 18:14

Of course, having sync'd (and thus having databases again) I now can't actually choose any of my soups, the player hangs when I do. I wonder if making a smaller soup would fix it, e.g. is this entirely a memory issue.
Posted by: Daria

alpha6 player crash? - 07/02/2004 18:37

Ah. The player is crashing.
player(104): memory violation at pc=0x02072f70, lr=0x02073004 (bad address=0x4081c0bc, code 2)
pc : [<02072f70>] lr : [<02073004>]
sp : bf3ffbac ip : 4081c0bc fp : bf3ffbd8
r10: 00000000 r9 : 00000000 r8 : 00000000
r7 : 4077c008 r6 : 4081c0bc r5 : 4081c0bc r4 : 4077bff4
r3 : 00000000 r2 : 00000000 r1 : 4077c008 r0 : 4081c0bc
Flags: nzCv IRQs on FIQs on Mode USER_32 Segment user
Control: C0C5917D Table: C0C5917D DAC: 00000015
Function entered at [<02072f38>] from [<02073004>]
r6 = 4081C0BC r5 = 40796854 r4 = 00000000
Function entered at [<02072fc0>] from [<0203ada0>]
r7 = 00020024 r6 = 000007D2 r5 = 021FD868 r4 = 00000000
Function entered at [<0203a964>] from [<02024f88>]
r10 = FFFFFFFF r9 = 0003DE04 r8 = BF3FFCBC r7 = 4050E3E0
r6 = 021B4994 r5 = 4050E008 r4 = FFFFFFFF
Function entered at [<02024ed0>] from [<0203f238>]
r10 = BF3FFD10 r9 = BF3FFD14 r8 = 0226493C r7 = 4050E008
r6 = 021848E8 r5 = 02264918 r4 = FFFFFFFF
Function entered at [<0203f004>] from [<020e5ce8>]
r10 = 020E5C14 r9 = 022009E0 r8 = 00000C04 r7 = 00000080
r6 = 00000004 r5 = BF3FFD4C r4 = 022009E0
Function entered at [<020e5cb0>] from [<020e5ca0>]
r5 = 021D7378 r4 = 022009E0
Function entered at [<020e5c14>] from [<0211fcf4>]
r5 = 022009F8 r4 = BF3FFE40
Function entered at [<0211fc2c>] from [<021565cc>]
r4 = 00000000
Function entered at [<02154d40>] from [<0211fa70>]
r8 = 021E4FAC r7 = 021E4F98 r6 = 020E5C14 r5 = 00000005
r4 = 00000000
Function entered at [<0211f9c0>] from [<021565cc>]
r5 = 00000000 r4 = 00000000
Function entered at [<021d5a6c>] from [<021d5668>]
Function entered at [<e34ffff4>] from [<eb000025>]
Function entered at [<239ffff4>] from [<23a0ff01>]
Unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address 239ffff8
memmap = C0C58000, pgd = c0c58000
*pgd = 00000000, *pmd = 00000000
Internal error: Oops: 2
CPU: 0
pc : [<c00e2540>] lr : [<c0019710>]
sp : c061bf44 ip : c061bf00 fp : c061bf90
r10: 00000002 r9 : c0f9d260 r8 : 0000000c
r7 : 00000000 r6 : 239ffff4 r5 : 23a0ff01 r4 : e3a02000
r3 : 60000013 r2 : c01021e4 r1 : 00000001 r0 : e3a01ff0
Flags: nZCv IRQs on FIQs on Mode SVC_32 Segment user
Control: C0C5917D Table: C0C5917D DAC: 00000015
Process player (pid: 104, stackpage=c061b000)
Stack:
c061bf20: c0019710 c00e2540 60000013
c061bf40: ffffffff c0f9d278 c0f9c7e0 c061a000 c061bfb8 4081c0bc c00119c8 02073004
c061bf60: 4081c0bc 00000002 c061bfb8 00000005 4081c0bc 00000000 00000002 00000000
c061bf80: 00000000 c061bfb4 c061bf94 c0011f00 c0011778 c010097c 4081c0bc 4081c0bc
c061bfa0: 4077c008 00000000 00000000 c061bfb8 c000a0a8 c0011e28 4081c0bc 4077c008
c061bfc0: 00000000 00000000 4077bff4 4081c0bc 4081c0bc 4077c008 00000000 00000000
c061bfe0: 00000000 bf3ffbd8 4081c0bc bf3ffbac 02073004 02072f70 20000010 ffffffff
Backtrace:
Function entered at [<c001176c>] from [<c0011f00>]
r10 = 00000000 r9 = 00000000 r8 = 00000002 r7 = 00000000
r6 = 4081C0BC r5 = 00000005 r4 = C061BFB8
Function entered at [<c0011e1c>] from [<c000a0a8>]
r8 = 00000000 r7 = 4077C008 r6 = 4081C0BC r5 = 4081C0BC
r4 = C010097C
Code: ebfcdbef e2440010 (e5961004) e1a035a1 e59f20cc
Segmentation fault
Posted by: Daria

alpha6 player bug found - 07/02/2004 18:57

Aha. Tracked to when I try to enqueue where there's not already a playlist.
Posted by: mlord

Re: alpha6 player bug found - 07/02/2004 19:06

Good! I'm very happy to hear you've managed to get onto the v3 alphas!

Is your player a Mk2 (12MB), or Mk2a (16MB) ?
Posted by: mlord

Re: Merry Christmas - 07/02/2004 19:11

Mmm... INFO-Transient still has issues.
Posted by: rob

Re: Merry Christmas - 07/02/2004 19:21

I put it up for Tony to test just before I left work and I forgot to erase it. Tony reported total failure, which seems to be due to too much cache allocated. This release may be no good for anything but 16MB players. Not that it is a release.

Rob
Posted by: Daria

Re: Merry Christmas - 07/02/2004 19:37

Well, it works better than alpha5

I'm pleased so far.
Posted by: Daria

Re: alpha6 player bug found - 07/02/2004 19:39

I have 3 2a players (also a Mk1 and no Mk2).

alpha6 also now on my wife's player, looks good. Had I tried alpha5 on my wife's player it would have worked
Posted by: mlord

Hijack v363 - 07/02/2004 19:56

Mmm.. accidental or otherwise, this one is definitely a keeper! It's so nice to be able to use a well-functioning v3-alpha again!

I've just released Hijack v363, which includes a minor update to workaround the broken "prev visual" function from alpha6 (similar to prior v3 alphas).

Cheers
Posted by: Daria

Re: Hijack v363 - 07/02/2004 19:58

Mmm.. accidental or otherwise, this one is definitely a keeper!


You better keep it, it was removed from the web site.
Posted by: eliceo

Re: Merry Christmas - 07/02/2004 19:58

It seems to be working fine on my MK2. I had no problem with the install of alpha 6. If it is stable enough ill likely put it on my main player.
Posted by: Jerz

Re: Hijack v363 - 07/02/2004 20:33

Huh... I loaded 3.63 and when I flip through info to transient my player starts spontaneously rebooting.
Posted by: Jerz

Re: Hijack v363 - 07/02/2004 20:43

Well, I loaded hijack 3.56 and I still get the spontaeous reboot when I flip through info. I have to time it just right so I can get it on the track detail to end the spontaeous rebooting.

Posted by: Daria

Re: Hijack v363 - 07/02/2004 20:45

"Doctor, it hurts when I do this..."
Posted by: Daria

Re: Hijack v363 - 07/02/2004 21:11

CVS now up to date with Hijack v363 as well.
Posted by: Chuck

Re: Hijack v363 - 07/02/2004 21:57

"Well, then, don' t do that..."
Posted by: Taym

Re: Hijack v363 - 07/02/2004 22:26

Too bad it's not on line anymore! Anyone who wants to share with the unlucky ones who could not grab it?
Posted by: Shonky

Re: Hijack v363 - 07/02/2004 22:39

And then it was gone...

Damn - missed out.
Posted by: tfabris

Re: Merry Christmas - 07/02/2004 22:46

I put it up for Tony to test just before I left work and I forgot to erase it. Tony reported total failure, which seems to be due to too much cache allocated. This release may be no good for anything but 16MB players. Not that it is a release.
Yeah, but I had forgotten that I put in a pretty large ReserveCache setting in order for Emphatic and GPSapp to behave themselves together. So I'll bet it's that simple, changing the reservecache might just let it build the database without crashing.

Hm. I only run Emphatic and GPSapp in DC mode, so in theory I could put ;@DC in front of reservecache too, couldn't I? Then it would build fine on AC (the only place it ever needs to do a build) and reservecache would (in theory) still work on DC mode when it's not trying to do database builds.

Hm, worth a try anyhoo.

Of course, I'd need to grab updated versions of GPSapp and Emphatic so that they play nice with the new fonts in V3... Do such builds exist?
Posted by: peter

Re: Hijack v363 - 08/02/2004 09:58

Too bad it's not on line anymore! Anyone who wants to share with the unlucky ones who could not grab it?
My guess is that alpha 7 will be along reasonably shortly. We'll fix the insert-into-empty-playlist thing (it's already fixed on the Karma branch, I just need to do a merge), the crash with two vorbis streams in the same ogg file, the non-gaplessness of vorbis, and hopefully the transient info thing and the reported problem with --nogap MP3s.

I'll also try and make it say unambiguously when it's run out of memory building the database, rather than having it reboot only to fail again for the same reason. As tfabris and dbrashear have already implied, if it's failing for you and you've set a non-zero ReserveCache, you should try it with zero, or at least a lot less than you had for v2. It's likely that, except for the smallest databases, ReserveCache is going to have to be zero on 12Mb players (i.e. Empeg-branded Mark 2, as opposed to Rio-branded Mark 2a).Obviously this is going to impact third-party software, but at the end of the day you've only got so much RAM, and you've got to choose whose code you want in it -- ours or theirs...

Setting ReserveCache to zero on AC only is unlikely to be helpful: only the results of the database build is stored in the cache, so if your ReserveCache is too high to allow rebuilding the database, it's going to be too high to load it at all.

Having said all that, my Mark 2 doesn't currently spin down at all, with ReserveCache=0 and only about 5,000 songs on it -- though that might be a separate bug. Does anyone have it working well on a 12Mb player?

Peter
Posted by: eliceo

Re: Hijack v363 - 08/02/2004 10:33

It seemd to be working fine on my mark 2, but then I started getting the spontaneous reboots. Also sometimes the player seems to still be responding to commands, it will just stop playing music. My player seems to be spinning down, I didn't change any reservecache settings from default. Overall I really like the features of the V3 alphas, just doesnt seem stable enough for my main player.
Posted by: tonyc

Re: Merry Christmas - 08/02/2004 11:05

Of course, I'd need to grab updated versions of GPSapp and Emphatic so that they play nice with the new fonts in V3... Do such builds exist?
I can only speak for the latter, and the answer is "not yet. But soon." And I'm doing my very best to make it memory-friendly. The problem is, with larger music collections, at some point it becomes an exercise in trying to fiit 10 lbs of crap into a 5lb bag. And when music collections get big, the only recourse is to steal memory from the player's cache. The obvious downside of taking cache memory away from the player is that the disk spins up more often (or possibly stays spun up.) But it also seems that with every new release, less and less RAM is available for cache and/or 3rd party apps, which is disappointing. If this trend continues, I might have to stop upgrading, as I have every feature I need now, except for what emphatic provides.
Posted by: Daria

Re: Merry Christmas - 08/02/2004 11:15

Take music out of your database

I think I posted vfdlib v4 gpsapp when I did vfdlib v4.

If not, well, let's see what the answer is to the v361+ and gpsapp problem first.
Posted by: Daria

alpha6 more minor issue - 08/02/2004 11:16

Hit "search" 3 times to search by title. Each button press to match a character of the title causes a pause in playback. Pressing "ok" to choose a track, and navigating in the list of tracks showing, does not appear to.
Posted by: tman

Re: Hijack v363 - 08/02/2004 11:30

Does the Info Transient mode not work for anybody else? The info line appears then instead of slowly sliding out of view it'll disappear. During the time when it should be sliding out there is a 1 pixel width vertical line on the left which flickers. It's about the height of the text I'm assuming. I'm not sure if this a known problem or what...

Also, should the Aux Info screen be reverse video? The end of the track line has a flickery bit at well...
Posted by: Daria

vfdlib v4 gpsapp binary - 08/02/2004 14:23

Also has the duplicate waypoint patch which isn't currently in a gpsapp release.
Posted by: tfabris

Re: vfdlib v4 gpsapp binary - 08/02/2004 14:41

Rock, grabbing now, thanks!
Posted by: Daria

Re: vfdlib v4 gpsapp binary - 08/02/2004 15:44

you grabbed the new kernel? (or backed out to pre 361)
Posted by: Shonky

Re: Hijack v363 - 09/02/2004 01:46

While you are there if possible here's my list of alpha5/6 bugs:

Apparently fixed in alpha 6:
1) Stereo separation / mono bug
2) Database rebuild

Still in alpha 6:
3) Down, Down.L doesn't take you to last playlist - rather it simply inserts/enqueues whatever you did last time.
4) RDS info is inverted and ugly particularly with letters with the top row of pixels set (like E, T, etc) since there is no border.
5) Entering search mode and each letter after that causes brief pause in playback if drives are spun down I think. Can't tell exactly if drives are spun down because of...
6) Hard drive indicator seems permanently set to the small filled in icon.
7) All menus seem to have the text one pixel too high making them look a bit ugly. This wasn't in Alpha3 IIRC but appeared in Alpha5 or Alpha6.

Thanks for the continuing support and new software guys.
Posted by: alex25

Re: Hijack v363 - 09/02/2004 02:56

What about the other Alpha5 bugs I reported before? Are they fixed in Alpha6?

- Beeps does not seems to work anymore
- Pitchbend is delayed by about 3 seconds
Posted by: Memil

Re: Hijack v363 - 09/02/2004 04:33

I found a (hopefully unknown :-)) bug today.
When listening to radio and calling on the phone, the phone-symbol apears but the sound is not muted.
I suspect it has something to do with that I have the player to pause when it gets a call, not mute - and thats a little hard to do with the radio. :-)

/Fredrik

Posted by: peter

Re: Hijack v363 - 09/02/2004 04:44

It seemd to be working fine on my mark 2, but then I started getting the spontaneous reboots. Also sometimes the player seems to still be responding to commands, it will just stop playing music.
Now that's very interesting, especially the audio deadlock while still responding to commands. By that do you mean that menus etc. still worked? If you try to play something from the menus, does it play, or stay stuck at 0:00? Was there any specific thing you could do to provoke it?

Peter
Posted by: SE_Sport_Driver

Re: Hijack v363 - 09/02/2004 06:55

Peter, I know that none of us are officially Alpha testers, but is there any way that we can report things in a way that better helps the collection of these reports? Is there some sort of standard format? Are we just bugging you with stuff you already know?
Posted by: JBjorgen

Re: Hijack v363 - 09/02/2004 07:34

Now that's very interesting, especially the audio deadlock while still responding to commands. By that do you mean that menus etc. still worked? If you try to play something from the menus, does it play, or stay stuck at 0:00? Was there any specific thing you could do to provoke it?

I've seen this behavior before when the player could not read from the second disk due to a cable problem. The player would continue to function correctly but the music would stop playing.
Posted by: eliceo

Re: Hijack v363 - 09/02/2004 11:48

The intersting part is that if it rebooted it would continue to play only the current playlist. If you tried to switch the playlist sometimes it would give that stall of the music, where it would appear that pause was not on but would not play any music and timers stayed at the beginning of each track. Stragely enough eventually if I picked a playlist it liked, it would begin playing. It seems like when it is playing alpha 6 is pretty stable, but if you get stuck in one of the reboot modes , or this stopping of music it just gets sort of ugly.
Posted by: peter

Re: Hijack v363 - 09/02/2004 12:02

The intersting part is that if it rebooted it would continue to play only the current playlist. If you tried to switch the playlist sometimes it would give that stall of the music, where it would appear that pause was not on but would not play any music and timers stayed at the beginning of each track. Stragely enough eventually if I picked a playlist it liked, it would begin playing. It seems like when it is playing alpha 6 is pretty stable, but if you get stuck in one of the reboot modes , or this stopping of music it just gets sort of ugly.
1-drive or 2-drive player? Mark 2 or 2a? If there are playlists it likes and playlists it doesn't, perhaps the physical connection to one or other drive is flaky? Of course, if you have a 1-drive player, that couldn't be the problem.

Peter
Posted by: eliceo

Re: Hijack v363 - 09/02/2004 15:00

It is a 2 drive mk2 player, the drives are 2 30 gb fujitsus pulled out of my 60 gb mk2a and then reformatted. I have never seen the disk not found errors on this player, the cable *seems* to be ok.

IIRC one playlist would play just fine, but reselecting it would cause it to pause. It was a strange error, and I don't think I can recreate it on purpose.
Posted by: tfabris

Re: Hijack v363 - 09/02/2004 15:05

I have never seen the disk not found errors on this player
And if it were only the second drive that were failing, you wouldn't. Instead, you would get strange intermittent pauses and sometimes certain playlists wouldn't play.
Posted by: mlord

Serial notify in v3-alpha - 09/02/2004 17:50

Mmmm.. I have not noticed this before (but it may have been present in earlier v3alphas), but the player's "serial notify" information is now being output differently than in v2final. Anyone else see this?

With Hijack installed, /proc/empeg_notify is not working (no data) on v3alpha6, because the data is being tagged as "from_user" within the kernel, whereas in v2final is is tagged as "not from_user". Weird. I'll fix Hijack to cope, but I'm curious what changed this.. ?

Cheers
Posted by: Shonky

Re: Hijack v363 - 09/02/2004 19:15

- Beeps does not seems to work anymore
True - forgot about that one but it doesn't bug me that much.

- Pitchbend is delayed by about 3 seconds
That'll will be because you are using crossfade. The crossfade stuff buffers things up to mix between two tracks. Same thing happens if you turn stereo separation on and off. Not a bug IMO
Posted by: tonyc

Re: Serial notify in v3-alpha - 09/02/2004 19:27

Whew. Now I'm doubly glad I removed emphatic's dependency on /proc/empeg_notify. Of course I'm now much more dependent on the content of the savearea and the format of hda3, but those seem to be changing far less often.
Posted by: tfabris

Re: vfdlib v4 gpsapp binary - 10/02/2004 16:13

Also has the duplicate waypoint patch which isn't currently in a gpsapp release.
Derrick, when I run this version of GPSapp, it locks up when it's loading a route. If I drop back to gpsapp 0.17 from the web site, it works (although the fonts don't show up under alpha6).
Posted by: Daria

Re: vfdlib v4 gpsapp binary - 10/02/2004 17:21

I'll look tonight.
Posted by: Daria

Re: vfdlib v4 gpsapp binary - 10/02/2004 23:33

New diff:
--- route.c 25 Mar 2003 23:00:58 -0000 1.16
+++ route.c 11 Feb 2004 05:31:14 -0000
@@ -165,6 +165,11 @@
if (buf[len-1] == ' ') buf[--len] = '\0';
route.pts.x = strtol(p, &p, 10);
route.pts.y = strtol(p, &p, 10);
+ if (i && (route.pts.x == route.pts[i-1].x) &&
+ (route.pts.y == route.pts[i-1].y)) {
+ i--;
+ route.npts--;
+ }
if (p < buf + len) {
if (j == route.nwps) {
err("Too many waypoints?");
@@ -383,8 +388,10 @@
if (turn < 0.0) {
heading = "LEFT";
turn = -turn;
- } else
+ } else if (turn > 0.0) {
heading = "RIGHT";
+ } else
+ heading = "";

strong = turn > 130 ? "sharply " : "";

New binary: attached.
Posted by: tfabris

Re: vfdlib v4 gpsapp binary - 11/02/2004 01:04

Thanks! Grabbing now...
Posted by: tfabris

Re: vfdlib v4 gpsapp binary - 11/02/2004 01:26

Now it locks up on "Pre-computing values"...
Posted by: Daria

Re: vfdlib v4 gpsapp binary - 11/02/2004 01:38

Send me the route?
Posted by: wfaulk

Re: vfdlib v4 gpsapp binary - 11/02/2004 08:57

Folks need to watch out posting source code. The first use of i as an array index erases the index and throws the BBS into italics. Each subsequent one is probably deleted and ignored.
Posted by: Daria

Re: vfdlib v4 gpsapp binary - 11/02/2004 10:46

"Oops"
Posted by: andym

Re: vfdlib v4 gpsapp binary - 11/02/2004 13:40

What if you use the code block?


arse;



Obviously not then.
Posted by: peter

Re: Hijack v363 - 12/02/2004 10:29

Having said all that, my Mark 2 doesn't currently spin down at all, with ReserveCache=0 and only about 5,000 songs on it -- though that might be a separate bug.
And thus it was. Looks like v3 alphas 2 to 6 never spun the disks down (the icon disappeared, but the actual spindown command was never being issued). FITNR.

Not that we "recommend" running these terribly flaky alphas in the first place, but I think this bug is serious enough (heat issues, vibration sensitivity issues) that I now don't recommend using these alphas at all until alpha 7 which will have it fixed.

Peter
Posted by: mlord

Re: Hijack v363 - 12/02/2004 11:05

And before anyone (like me) says But my drives spin down -- I can hear the difference! -- if they do so, it is probably due to Hijack, which adds a failsafe spindown to the drives. This is needed to ensure drives don't stay spun up indefinitely after a web or ftp access to the player.

Cheers
Posted by: Roger

Re: Hijack v363 - 12/02/2004 11:30

(heat issues, vibration sensitivity issues)

Bah. I've been using the alpha in my car, with the disks spun up for hours at a time. No problems.
Posted by: andym

Re: Hijack v363 - 12/02/2004 12:46

If I start the player and then pull the power I can hear the drives spin down. If, however I give it a minute and then do it I don't hear them. This is repeatable.
Posted by: mlord

Re: Hijack v363 - 12/02/2004 13:52

As I said, this is expected behaviour with Hijack installed.

If no Hijack, then the drives may still spindown, or not, depending on the behaviour of bugs in the v3alphas.

Hijack v371 will be released shortly -- it halves the spindown timeout that Hijack imposes when a v3alpha release is detected. This will result in faster spindowns than at present, to help compensate more for the v3alpha behaviour.

Cheers
Posted by: andym

Re: Hijack v363 - 12/02/2004 15:10

Cool!
Posted by: mlord

Re: Serial notify in v3-alpha - 13/02/2004 13:45

>the player's "serial notify" information is now being output
>differently than in v2final. Anyone else see this?


From the v3alpha7 release notes:
For various reasons, the player now opens the serial port in "raw" (character-orientated) rather than "cooked" (line-orientated) mode; this may or may not be a problem in practice, but is a change from earlier versions.

Another side-effect is that Control^C no longer works to terminate the player. But happily the 'q' command DOES work.

-ml
Posted by: wfaulk

Re: Serial notify in v3-alpha - 13/02/2004 14:01

orientated
Ooh. Bad show, guys.
Posted by: tonyc

Re: Serial notify in v3-alpha - 13/02/2004 14:06

orientated
Ooh. Bad show, guys.
LOL. I'm imagining a sporting arena filled up with all of these grammarians groaning as they pour through software manuals and release notes.

Perhaps the empeg lads were a little disorientated from an afternoon at the pub? That's certainly the time when I'd prefer to do my documentation...
Posted by: tfabris

Re: Serial notify in v3-alpha - 13/02/2004 14:35

grammarians groaning as they pour through software manuals
Um, that's pore.

Penalty: Making a grammar mistake while complaining about grammar. Ten yards.
Posted by: genixia

Re: Serial notify in v3-alpha - 13/02/2004 14:36

International English favours English spelling
Posted by: tonyc

Re: Serial notify in v3-alpha - 13/02/2004 14:38

Um, that's pore.
Down..... goes.... Frazier!

EDIT: Oh my goodness, I went to Google to search to make sure I had his name spelled right and I see that my timing is impeccable.
Posted by: peter

Re: Serial notify in v3-alpha - 13/02/2004 14:57

Another side-effect is that Control^C no longer works to terminate the player.
Hmm, that's no good then, I think we'll be changing it back (at least for Linux products -- it was something that made life a lot easier for Karma on Ecos). Something else I've just thought of is that this makes it nigh-on impossible to manually enter multi-character commands (e.g. to play a FID by number).

Peter
Posted by: mcomb

Re: Serial notify in v3-alpha - 13/02/2004 15:00

Another side-effect is that Control^C no longer works to terminate the player.

Is it just me or does it also break hijack's serial notify suppression? Or maybe something else broke that, nevertheless it doesn't work for me in a7.

-Mike
Posted by: wfaulk

Re: Serial notify in v3-alpha - 13/02/2004 15:05

It's not a spelling issue. Oriented comes from orient, which means to align. Orientated comes from orientate, which means to turn to the east.
Posted by: peter

Re: Serial notify in v3-alpha - 13/02/2004 15:12

Oriented comes from orient, which means to align. Orientated comes from orientate, which means to turn to the east.
That's a compellingly neat theory, which unfortunately is completely unsupported by OED -- which would have them synonyms, in all the important meanings.

Peter
Posted by: wfaulk

Re: Serial notify in v3-alpha - 13/02/2004 15:16

Fair enough. I'm not near my OED now, but that's what US usage says.

My other argument is that there's no need to add superfluous suffixes. (Which is actually the basis for my argument and a pet peeve.)

Actually, orient means to turn to the east as well, but I can see the need to spell it out in certain circumstances.
Posted by: genixia

Re: Serial notify in v3-alpha - 13/02/2004 15:17

Hmm. I think that I'm going to go with the Oxford English Dictionary on this one.
Posted by: wfaulk

Re: Serial notify in v3-alpha - 13/02/2004 15:19

The OED, also, by definition, is exceedingly conciliatory. Its purpose is to record any significant usage of a word, educated or not, not to define the language.
Posted by: mlord

Hijack v374: Serial notify in v3-alpha - 13/02/2004 15:22

Mmm.. yes, the serial notify appears to be leaking through Hijack again in v3alpha7 -- I'll tweak something and see if it goes back to normal again..

Yup, that worked. The strange behaviour from earlier v3alpha(s) has gone away, so I'll hack Hijack to do the right thing with v3alpha7.

Look for Hijack v374 shortly.

-ml
Posted by: andym

Re: Serial notify in v3-alpha - 13/02/2004 15:24

I know this probably sounds silly, but everyone else knows that alpha 7 is downloadable from www.empeg.com/v3alpha ?

EDIT: Read the next thread Andy! <slap>
Posted by: JeffS

Re: Serial notify in v3-alpha - 13/02/2004 15:24

My other argument is that there's no need to add superfluous suffixes.
Irregardless of this, you must admit his usage of the word was not in fact grammatically incorrect.
Posted by: tonyc

Re: Serial notify in v3-alpha - 13/02/2004 15:27

Irregardless of this, you must admit his usage of the word was not in fact grammatically incorrect.
Okay, now that's just torture.
Posted by: wfaulk

Re: Serial notify in v3-alpha - 13/02/2004 15:31

Other than my argument that orientate isn't a viable word, then yeah.
Posted by: genixia

Re: Serial notify in v3-alpha - 13/02/2004 15:55

Okay, now that's just torture.

Too true. LOL.
Posted by: Daria

Re: vfdlib v4 gpsapp binary - 13/02/2004 21:39

Not for the route file you sent. At least not with the attached binary, which I don't think changed.
Posted by: Ezekiel

Re: Merry Christmas - 13/02/2004 22:49

Any plans for a Beta 3.0 for Valentine's Day?


Give the man a cigar!

-Zeke
Posted by: tfabris

Re: vfdlib v4 gpsapp binary - 14/02/2004 00:13

Not for the route file you sent. At least not with the attached binary, which I don't think changed.
That attached binary works for me. Dunno how it was different from the others I tried.

Ah well, I'm happy now anyway. So... That attached binary has both (a) 3.0 font support and (b) the routepoint double-up workaround?

Thanks for all your help!
Posted by: tfabris

Re: vfdlib v4 gpsapp binary - 14/02/2004 00:15

I take that back. It seems to lock up during the route load of random routes. Some routes it locks during load, some it doesn't. I'm not sure, but I think that the longer the route, the more likely it is to lock.
Posted by: Daria

Re: vfdlib v4 gpsapp binary - 14/02/2004 00:32

I must not have made clean before posting the last one, or something. I made no source changes to this binary.
Posted by: Daria

Re: vfdlib v4 gpsapp binary - 14/02/2004 00:33

Ok. So what you're saying is it's non-deterministic to you. Yay.
Posted by: tfabris

Re: vfdlib v4 gpsapp binary - 14/02/2004 00:37

Okay, I think it's a memory problem. I haven't done a huge amount of testing, but so far the evidence points to these behaviors:

- If I load a very long route, it is more likely to lock than if I load a very short one.

- If I load a route, and then, in the same session, load a different route, it is highly likely to lock, especially if the routes in question are long ones. It's almost as if it doesn't free up the memory for the first route upon loading the second one.

The older gpsapp 0.17 will lock too, but it is much less likely to do so, and usually will do it only with the second behavior. The new one will lock up much more easily with the first behavior, and almost invariably with the second behavior.

I've been experimenting with different amounts of reservecache because I am trying to get GPSapp and Emphatic to play nice together. The problem is that I've got a Mark2 original so I don't have extra RAM. And... Alpha3 won't build databases with large reservecache settings. Also, I had a problem where, even if the reservecahce was @DC, Alpha3 couldn't even LOAD the database when in DC mode and would go into an infinte reboot loop as it kept trying to build the databases and failing because it was out of memory.

So if these route loading failures in GPSapp are due to low reservecache settings, then I'm doomed to stick with 2.0 unless some memory-conserving miracles happen...
Posted by: Daria

Re: vfdlib v4 gpsapp binary - 14/02/2004 00:45

It may be 2 different locks. The second lock seems like it might be memory, the first like my dup suppression loop might not work. The dup suppression code shouldn't have any effect on freeing.

You could trade me your Mk2 for an Mk2a
Posted by: mlord

Re: vfdlib v4 gpsapp binary - 14/02/2004 09:04

Turn on swap, Tony.

;@EXEC_ONCE swapon -a

-ml
Posted by: tfabris

Re: vfdlib v4 gpsapp binary - 14/02/2004 09:19

I can do this for in-car mode?
Posted by: mlord

Re: vfdlib v4 gpsapp binary - 14/02/2004 09:27

Sure. It will probably spin up maybe once or twice again after program startup, but I'd expect it to stabilize rather quickly and spin down the drive (hijack -- 30 second timeout, which you may want to reduce).

Cheers
Posted by: tfabris

Re: vfdlib v4 gpsapp binary - 14/02/2004 09:58

So if memory is so scarce, how come it isn't enabled by default?
Posted by: mlord

Re: vfdlib v4 gpsapp binary - 14/02/2004 10:11

Hey, I didn't design the unit!

Just do it.

Cheers
Posted by: pgrzelak

Re: vfdlib v4 gpsapp binary - 14/02/2004 11:06

Hahahahahaha!
Posted by: Daria

Re: vfdlib v4 gpsapp binary - 14/02/2004 11:40

It's not leaking memory, and the added code does the following things:
1) be able to read in v2 fonts (from v3 software)
2) add a case to not print "RIGHT" if you mean straight ("LEFT" was already checked)
3) deduplicate route points. all it does is decrement the loop counter used to fill in the array, and decrement the total points counter to reflect that we removed a point.

Nothing that should be hanging.
Posted by: tfabris

Re: vfdlib v4 gpsapp binary - 15/02/2004 12:22

Thanks for that info, Derrick. I'll mess with it and see if I can come up with a solution that lets me run the new version along with emphatic and with Alpha 7. I'll try turning on swap and see if that works (anyone else see any reason I shouldn't do that?).

Thanks for all your help with this!
Posted by: mcomb

Re: vfdlib v4 gpsapp binary - 14/04/2004 14:23

<dredging up kind of an old thread>
Is there a current tar or whatever of the gpsapp source available somewhere that will compile and work with v3a7? I see some of your patches scattered around, but I am not sure what is where at this point.

Thanks,
-Mike
</dredging>
Posted by: Daria

Re: vfdlib v4 gpsapp binary - 14/04/2004 21:37

Um. Nag me daily until I do something about it. Probably tomorrow.
Posted by: mcomb

Re: vfdlib v4 gpsapp binary - 17/04/2004 11:10

Nag me daily until I do something about it.

Posted by: SE_Sport_Driver

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/04/2004 09:10

Anything new on the alpha front?
Posted by: tman

Re: Merry Christmas - 24/04/2004 09:58

Is thinfourth2 away on a ship yet?
Posted by: teemcbee

Re: Merry Christmas - 28/04/2004 07:01

haven't been here for a while and now found the v3alpha7 :-)
of course i installed it and now i have 2 questions:

1) my player now always rebuilds the database when starting the player. i uploaded the version with emplode 2.10, already tried to sync with emplode but still get the message after reboot. what can i do to avoid this.

2) i coulnd't find the release notes for the first v3alpha version. as i can remember there was a description about the new functions in it. where could i get these descriptions?

cheers
Posted by: JBjorgen

Re: Merry Christmas - 28/04/2004 07:16

1. Load the latest version of JEmplode and synch (which will rebuild your database correctly.)

2. Crossfading and the ability to load Ogg and Flac files are the biggest features you gain in going to the alpha. Alpha 7 notes here.
Posted by: teemcbee

Re: Merry Christmas - 28/04/2004 07:43

ok, i already made it to have a correct database - i found <A HREF="http://www.riocar.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=FAQ&file=index&myfaq=yes&id_cat=8&faqent=220#220" >this FAQ entry</a> and it worked fine.

I did find the release notes for alpha5 and alpha7 but not for earlier alpha releases. as far as i can remember there were a few things said about the new features (stereo separation, auto gain control, pitchbend, ..)
this is what i'm looking for.. can someone tell me more about the settings of those features?
thanks in advance