A few notes on the current beta

Just a few things I've noticed since I've installed 2.0 b3:

1. The player now has a slight stutter when it first starts playing back on power-up in the car. Not a big deal, but this never happened in 1.x

2. While the player is playing, switch sources to the radio. While the radio is playing turn off the car. Turn the car back on again (radio starts playing, as expected). Now switch back to the player (MP3) and it is in a paused state, although there's no visual indication of that (no 'pause' marker, although the song title is up as normal). This happens every time when switching sources using the Sony wired remote (haven't tested other mechanisms).

3. It would be very, very nice to have different volume settings for each source. I find that radio playback requires a much higher volume setting than MP3 playback, so switching sources can be painful if the volume isn't adjusted beforehand.

And while I'm making requests...

4. Can we add a configurable option for volume ramp-up? I find that I have to turn the dial quite a lot longer to raise/lower the volume to a desired setting on the empeg than on any other audio device. It's nice to have such fine control over the setting, but I find the inconvenience outweighs the benefit more often than not.

-Oscar

I noticed issues 1 and 2 as well. Not major issues, of course, but a fix is always welcome. :)

Issue (1) stutter on start-up is due to some debug messages going to the serial port. Hopefully somebody on the developement team has fixed that for the next beta. If they really bug you, the kernel source can be edited to prevent printk() from functioning when in the car (or when nothing is connected to the serial port in the car, even better!).

Hmm, interesting. I put a note about this on the internal buglist. If it's really the cause, good catch.

Might also wanna note the workaround, which is setting the car_rate to 115,200.

Might also wanna note the workaround, which is setting the car_rate to 115,200.

If Mark's explanation is correct (i.e. that stutter is caused by waiting for kernel to write debug message on slow serial line, as opposed to stutter and message having common cause), I am affraid this will alleviate the problem only partially, since I am quite reliably getting a bit of stutter at home as well. (Actually, this can be a test of Mark's explanation: if writing on serial is not the cause, then changigng the rate won't help at all.)

Peter did find some code that may cause stutters during startup. It's not necessarily related to in-car or in-home use. Anyway, FITNR.

Well, the real cause is whatever is producing the messages that go to serial; it's just that in the car they're a heck of a lot more noticeable. On my machine, I sometimes get stutter on startup due do some kind of "unable to seek to offset ..." messages from the player software.

my view on teh volume rampup is that it is either buggy or has features i do not yet understand.

Let me see if i can get one thing straight.

When you power off your car, and power it back on, the volume ramp up does not work? It only works when you REMOVE the empeg? If so that isn't a great idea. Anyway, that seems to be my experience.

I think it only works when the player is powered off and on so if you turn off the car then start it again before the player shuts down it doesn't do the ramp up (thats what it seems like to me anyway)