I just got back from a 4 mile run ~30 minutes and the Karma would skip every few minutes or so. I was wondering if there was going to be any sort of anti-skip measures put in place on the Karma so it will become runnable. I would love to have a super-buffer setting where the player will try and buffer the song over and over again maksing sure there are no errors. While I understand this will dramatically shorten the battery life, I would choose this over the current default so that I could run with the player.

I held the player in my hand running like I usually do with my Archos Recorder. The Archos would skip constantly and was COMPLETLY unusalbe as a jogging player until the rockbox software was developed for it. Now, even though it only has 2MB of RAM, it never skips. This is why I hope that this sort of problem can be solved in software.

Thanks.

I always thought a HDD player wouldn't skip. I thought if the head was bouncing around the HDD would be ruined.

Think about the wisdom of an actual company creating a "running&sports" setting on a hard drive portable...

Matthew

Greetings!

I know that the file is buffered in RAM, but I do not know of a way (via any existing UI) to release more memory for buffering. What kind of files were you using? More heavily compressed files (lower bitrate mp3s) might handle better than something more disk intensive. Also, locking the interface might help from just random button presses.

I will post this on the beta wish list - it would be nice to have a larger, or user configurable, buffer.

I just got back from a 4 mile run ~30 minutes

dang, last time i could do a 7 1/2 minute mile was in high school.

You'll probably find that firmware v1.11 resolves this. We lengthened the low tide mark on the cache (the time allowed for the drive to spin up and refill the cache).

Rob

Would that affect battery life?

any ETA on that new firmware Rob?

b

Wouldn't it make battery life longer if anything? Fewer longer spins vs several short spins?

Maybe not!

Reverse. Raising the low tide mark means that the spin up is triggered when there is more music left to play in it.
Under optimal conditions, the low tide would just cover the worst case time taken to spin up the drives and read in new data - this would allow all the cache memory to be refilled allowing the longest possible time between fills.
Raising the low-tide mark increases the amount of cache 'reserved' to cover this spin up and helps for non-optimal conditions. However, in optimal conditions this extra amount of cache never gets emptied, thus reducing the total amount of cache filled at each spin up, hence reducing the amount of time between and increasing the frequency of spin ups.

Could we sent this thhrough a menu item that would be under "buffer settings"? It would be wonderful to sacrifice battery life for snti-skip and vice versa.

-eric

Obviously I can't speak for Rob or Hugo et al, but it might not be worth it. The tweak might not affect the battery life much at all. If it were only 10-20 minutes less than the nominal 18 hours then it might be worth them spending development time on more desirable features and fixes. If, on the other hand, it affected the battery life by a couple of hours, then that idea has merit.
I wonder whether it could start with the 'active' setting when you started playing and optimise towards conservative on the fly. I suspect that the KISS principle would apply here.

The tweak might not affect the battery life much at all.

Everything on that player affects the battery life. There is a lot of software-tweaking happening that allows it to deliver the battery life it currently delivers. They've really slaved over it.

It doesn't affect battery life, at least, not in any measurable way. We're only talking a few extra seconds.

Firmware 1.11 is online now, the subsequent release is in Beta, and the release after that is in development.

Rob

Well, mine arrived from Amazon today Already upgraded firmware, and transferring tracks now.
I must say as many pics and specs i have seen on this unit, I am totally impressed by how small this thing really is in person. I have had 3 different Car MP3 players (Xeenon MP Shuttle, Neo MP3 Car JukeBox, Empeg) and 3 different portable MP3 players (Original Buy2000 MP3 CD, NEO Portable MP3, NEO Portable Jukebox 2), so i know a little about what im saying here.. These were the first of their kinds.. and I am blown away by how small this Karma is. I dont know how someone can say this thing is "Meaty". To incorporate a 20 GB drive, USB, Ethernet, and Extended Battery and still have the unit this small is amazing to me.
I love the form factor, I held a 2nd Gen IPOD in my hand the other day, and the Karma blows it away in my opinion.To me, it has the appearance of being much smaller than the ipod. And definately lighter in weight.
Despite the few negative posts i read, I love it so far.. I think you did a great job Rob!

b

Firmware 1.11 is online now, the subsequent release is in Beta, and the release after that is in development.

Oh how I wish the empeg could have grown to be this successful. At least we will get some side benefits from this code development.

Rob, any initial sales figures on the Karma thus far?

oh, and is there a chance that any of this development will spill over to the other player series? i.e. ogg on my S10 for backup, etc.

btw, thank you for including any RMM compatible device to be able to use the file taxi.

Listening today to the Karma in the car, it paused/skipped twice in the space of an hour. It was sitting on the seat during smooth highway driving. I could hear the disk spinning up when this happened. I upgraded the firmware last night. FWIW!

-Zeke

The next firmware release should help.

So, just a follow-up. Has the firmware upgrade helped the skipping?