I've got a track here which plays fine on Windows Media player, plays fine on the Rio Karma, but exhibits a skip/crackle problem on the Car Player 2.0 software.

The problem is, between my friend's car player and my car player, the problem manifests itself differently. On my player, I get only a single "crackle" sound coming out of the decoder at time index 00:41. On my friend's player, there are multiple crackles, skips, and such throughout the song.

It's not completely suprising that the problem manifests itself differently on each of our players. His is a 2a, mine is a 2, and we've got significantly different configurations. For instance, I have a reservecache setting and he does not.

What I'd like is some independent verification of the problem. Does anyone else see this problem happening on their player when they play this file?

(Note: The file is large, a 7-minute song at 192kbps. Also, the style of music is industrial/techno, so there are some sounds in the rhythm track which are supposed to sound distorted and crackly. Familiarize yourself with the way it's supposed to sound by playing it in Windows Media Player on the PC first. Then see if your car player exhibits any problems when playing it. )

For those who choose to participate in this little experiment: Thanks for your help!

Well, I downloaded it, played it in WMP on my computer, and then uploaded it to my empeg and played it there. I notice the same bit of noise you did, right around the 0:41 mark in the track. Don't know if this helps you at all.

Mark2a, 2.0 final, hijack 345.

Thanks!

Anyone else?

Yeah. I only get the blip at 0:41 as well. Mk2a, v2final and no reservecache setting.

Same as tman
Mk2a, v2final, no reservecache setting and at the :41 mark. The rest of the song played fine.

Hmmm. I'm going to mess with his player next chance I get to get my hands on it and see what's going on. I'll see if anything is coming out of the serial port for any reason...

Okay, we've looked at it and his behavior is the same as everyone else's. Other WMP9 encoded tracks have much worse examples of the problem than the one verified above. It's clearly a decoder bug in Empeg player 2.0 final. The files in question play fine on the PC, even immediately after being downloaded off the empeg player.

I'm posting a thread in General asking for encoding options when using WMP9. Thanks everyone for verifying the problem.

Okay, follow up: In the General forum, Edsmiata tells me that it's anything in WMA that's encoded over 190kbps that's the problem, and that we merely need to reduce the bit rate. We'll give that a shot.

I doubt it's a bug in the player, it's almost certainly the codec. Karma couldn't play 192K files properly either until we got an update from MS.

Since the car trunk finally builds again I can send you a much more up to date 3.0 alpha and see how that works.

Rob

Right... I meant the codec, not the player. But to us, the player and the codec are one and the same... there's no way *we* can replace the codec.

Thanks for the confirmation that it was high-bitrate WMA files that were the problem. I figured it was likely fixed in the 3.0 codebase since Karma had no trouble with the files.

I haven't given Tod any alpha builds of the 3.0 codebase yet because they weren't stable enough for him, but if the next one is stable enough, maybe that'll be his solution.