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

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!

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...

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Very exciting, thank you Rob! Merry Christmas!

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!

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

Cheers

> 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.

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

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?

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!!

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?

Yup, that'll work.

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?

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?

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

That would be very convenient too, form a user perspective!

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...

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.

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.

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!

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...

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

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

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