I bought about ten more cd's a couple of days ago, ripped them and last night noticed that I was playing them back at 1411kbps. Strange thing is that there are no gears showing and if I go to "about" it doesn't give me the message that "audio compression is in progress".

The only problem is (besides taking up more disk space then necessary) is if I want to download to my Rio 800 I can't until the compression is finished. Has anyone seen this before?

Please keep in mind that I am using a 120GB drive instead of the original 40GB and am currently using 36% of the drives capacity.

Thanks,

Jerz

Have you tried cycling the power since noticing this?

Yes, I did that yesterday evening and it didn't appear to help but I will check again tonight and recycle the power again.

Thanks...any other ideas?

OK, I got home this afternoon and the Skynard CD's I bought last week weren't compressed as well as the Hendrix, Foghat and Deep Purple CD's I bought Tuesday. Do you think maybe this thing STOPS compressing after 40GB is used?

.36x120=43.2

Coincidence?


Jerz

Hmm, I doubt that.

If you happen to own a USB keyboard, you can get a shell prompt on the thing's front panel, and perhaps one of the guys from Empeg will drop in here with a suggestion of what to look at to find out what's happened.

COOL! I'll pick up a usb keyboard tomorrow.


Jerz

I wouldn't go spending money unless the empeg guys have specific advice to give you.

... Or unless you just think it's totally cool to have a USB keyboard on the thing. Supposedly it works when doing things like changing tag data for the tracks, in case that's something you tend to do from the player's front panel.

Actually, I've been wanting to get one anyway; poking around in the box could be somewhat interesting (I think I've got an old redhat book around here somewhere). Besides, although I haven't found a cd yet that the hsx-109 couldn't find on the internet, I would like to change the genre for Foghat to something besides "Heavy Metal"; surely my "Foghat Live" CD does not belong in that genre. I mean Foghat and Metallica just don't seem to really go together.

Thanks again for the help.

Yeah, the term "Heavy Metal" certainly meant something different in Foghat's time than it does today.

OK, I've recycled the power several times and the Skynard still is not compressing.

I just so happen to have a handy usb keybord and can get the shell prompt.

I've glanced through the menu's right quick and didn't notice any way to edit existing tunes with the keyboard. How do you do that?

Dunno, I always did it through emplode. I thought there was a pretty straightforward way to do it. I seem to remember getting to a track editing screen with the remote control once, but I don't have the unit here in front of me to mess with it right now. Maybe one of the empeg guys can jump in here with some advice...

Well, I guess I should have picked up the remote. There's an "edit" key. Kind of straight forward (unless you don't use a remote). Have any idea on what key to press for "edit" on the keyboard? It doesn't seem to be "F2".

I'm sure there's a keyboard shortcut for it, I just don't know what it is.

Well, since it's been a few days I woke up this morning thinking maybe I'll upgrade the software again. In the process of trying to locate the hsx-109 cd I found a Collective Soul CD that wasn't burned so I thought and decided to try changing the recording settings from 320 to 256 and from 96 to 128. I stuck in the cd after changing the settings and we appear to be compressing again.

Pretty Strange.

Do you think I'll be able to tell the diff between 320 and 256?

It appears that for some reason the hsx got hung on either the 320 or the 96 compression any ideas as to maybe why? It has quite a few cd's to compress now; I'll keep you posted.

Jerz

After that CD was compressed the hsx quit compressing again so I deleted one of the cd's in there and reripped; changing the setting back to 320 & 96. It didn't appear to start so while it was recording I changed it to 256 & 128 and as soon as I switched to 128 it started compressing again. I then changed it again to 320 and 96 (hoping that if I could get it going it would compress the rest of the .wav files).

How does this thing tag the files to be compressed? Does the software cue up the tracks to be compressed? If I started compressing at 256 & 128 then switched it to 320 & 96 would it start from the top of the cue list compressing these tracks?

Worst case it appears I'll have to delete about 15 to 20 cd's that are not compressed and rip over again.

How does this thing tag the files to be compressed?

It tags them in the database; perhaps you should delete your database and see if that makes it start compressing. The database will be rebuilt when the player restarts -- you won't lose any information, as everything in the database is also in the metadata files on the disk (the so-called "*1" or "fid-1" files).

To delete the database, plug in a USB keyboard and press Ctrl-Alt-Del. Choose "shell" from the screen you then get.

At the Linux prompt, type rm /drive0/var/fiddb and press Return

Just to make sure compression is set up properly, type grep bitrate /drive0/var/config.ini and report back here what it says.

Then type exit to quit the shell. You should get an "Indexing files" message, or some such, as the player restarts.

If it still doesn't start compressing, report back here and we'll go to the next stage: actually examining your metadata files.

Peter

Well, I got home this evening and it is still compressing, so maybe it's fixed? Do you think I should delete the database anyway?

I typed in the grep bitrate command and get:
bitrate=mp3:bitrate=320;mp3:bitrate=96

Thanks!

Well, it suddenly stopped compressing once again so I went ahead and removed fiddb and after indexing 7,220 files it cranked right up compressing once again.

I checked "about" before I removed fiddb and had 41% of 112GB and now have 45% of 112GB <<and compressing>>.

Very Cool.

Thank You.

Well, it suddenly stopped compressing once again so I went ahead and removed fiddb and after indexing 7,220 files it cranked right up compressing once again.

OK, that's good news, that just means your database got a bit confused (rather than there being any more serious bug). We probably ought to put a menu item in (under Troubleshooting, or some such) to rebuild the database, rather than people having to faff about on console...

Peter

The menu sounds like a great idea...

Down to 38%/112 from 45% of 112 yesterday, so we are definately now past the 41% where it was before I removed fiddb.

Good news for me since I've got some of my old favorite 80's metal cd's coming today (maiden, priest, scorps, alcatrazz and such).


Thanks again!

Jerz

I *think* it's done compressing for sure this time. It finished around 7:15 this am and compressed down to 28% (only 31.36 gigs used).

Thanks for your help!

I ran emplode for the first time yesterday after compression was finished and noticed that *this* time emplode actually read the hsx database and listed all of the music on it. Before it only listed the songs that were originally transferred from my existing mp3's to the existing 40GB HD. Perhaps changing harddrives confused emplode? and then emplode messed up the database on the rio central?

Well, since the 'M' key on the USB keyboard brings up the Rio Central's Menu, I tried pressing the 'E' key and that took me to the screen for editing the song that was playing at the time....

Randy

/me wants a USB keyboard for the Jupiter.