FLAC issue

[Willem53]

No.... Broken Firmware is fixed by first loading the recovery FW then load the latest....
Your issues are not common for all A-300 on new FW.

[Frodonf]

(07-31-2012 06:59 AM)Willem53 Wrote:  

(07-30-2012 08:42 PM)joanbcn Wrote:  Almost all my FLAC files are encoded with the option -0, and yet, when you try to play in the A300... plenty of problems. Sometimes sound, but not ever. After that, when you try to do anything with the player, the A300's performance plummets and it is impossible to do anything with it.

I don't know if its a Sigma trouble.. or maybe firmware issue, but it is clear that something happens with FLAC files.

Or with your A-300

looks like broken firmware or a hardware defect to me.

I have the exact same problem with my new A-300
Firmware : 05-02-120711-23-POP-421-000
320GB WD HDD

Edit :
The problem is present with networked files or local files (HDD or thumb drive)

The Linn test files (http://www.linnrecords.com/linn-download...iles.aspx) are working without any issues.

Here's a link to a short file that I can play (~10 seconds before it starts to play) : https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=98...v9c16Zm694


But that makes my A-300 almost numb (very slow navigation, even after pressing stop; when pressing power button, the display goes out but the light remain white on the front panel). To get my A300 running again, I have to "pull the plug" and reconnect it.

Any thought?

[Willem53]

Never pull the power plug on a running device..... press the remote power for 5 seconds instead to do a full reboot.
Why? the internal hard drive can corrupt when it looses power during a write action.
Corrupted drive will lead to a very long wait at start up... or a failure to start up at all.

If the NMT gets very slow after a few failed playback attempts but is normal after a restart one might guess that each playback attempt does not release the memory resource and the system run out of memory after a few attempts.

[Frodonf]

(08-15-2012 05:46 AM)Willem53 Wrote:  Never pull the power plug on a running device..... press the remote power for 5 seconds instead to do a full reboot.
Why? the internal hard drive can corrupt when it looses power during a write action.
Corrupted drive will lead to a very long wait at start up... or a failure to start up at all.

Thanks for that, it was not clear on how to power down the A-300 (I'm new to Popcorn Hour products, I received it 3 days ago)

(08-15-2012 05:46 AM)Willem53 Wrote:  If the NMT gets very slow after a few failed playback attempts but is normal after a restart one might guess that each playback attempt does not release the memory resource and the system run out of memory after a few attempts.

Is this a known bug from Syabas?

[joanbcn]

More things about the FLAC files...
The MMJ scanner does not detect the character "&" in the tags of FLAC files, but they do it correctly if the file is an MP3. That makes the information displayed, certainly is not correct.
Moreover this player misbehavior with m3u playlists, containing FLAC files.
When you hit play button in a m3u list, the A300 is restarted, but not quite. Will not start at all. Just do until NMJukebox logo appears. It's the same if you press play, or enter.

[Willem53]

(08-15-2012 05:26 PM)Frodonf Wrote:  

(08-15-2012 05:46 AM)Willem53 Wrote:  If the NMT gets very slow after a few failed playback attempts but is normal after a restart one might guess that each playback attempt does not release the memory resource and the system run out of memory after a few attempts.

Is this a known bug from Syabas?

I said: one might guess...

It's will only be know if someone raises it as a bug and it gets confirmed by enough users..

In my experience failed playbacks on any type of content can lead to unexpected behavior on playback of content that was fine before.. and a reboot fixes that.
Remember that these type of devices have little processing power and memory... and good error handling takes up some of that.... I think it's a compromise in design.

[Frodonf]

(08-15-2012 06:38 PM)Willem53 Wrote:  

(08-15-2012 05:26 PM)Frodonf Wrote:  

(08-15-2012 05:46 AM)Willem53 Wrote:  If the NMT gets very slow after a few failed playback attempts but is normal after a restart one might guess that each playback attempt does not release the memory resource and the system run out of memory after a few attempts.

Is this a known bug from Syabas?

I said: one might guess...

It's will only be know if someone raises it as a bug and it gets confirmed by enough users..

In my experience failed playbacks on any type of content can lead to unexpected behavior on playback of content that was fine before.. and a reboot fixes that.
Remember that these type of devices have little processing power and memory... and good error handling takes up some of that.... I think it's a compromise in design.

You're right. I'll look into the bug raising thing.

Thanks for the infos.

[proximulator]

I've just found very interesting thing.. all my flac files have embedded JPG cover art. Some of these flac files cause a restart of A-300 and I was not able to play them until I removed the embedded cover art. In particular case - cover art was JPEG 500x443 43Kb. As soon as I removed the cover art from this - they do not cause any restarts no more. One might think that there is some memory limit per cover embedded or something - however - at the same time another flac file which has cover art JPEG 1775x1567 1013kb plays fine from the very beginning.

Any thoughts and ideas?

[Popcorn-A-300-549]

(08-24-2012 08:21 AM)proximulator Wrote:  I've just found very interesting thing.. all my flac files have embedded JPG cover art. Some of these flac files cause a restart of A-300 and I was not able to play them until I removed the embedded cover art. In particular case - cover art was JPEG 500x443 43Kb. As soon as I removed the cover art from this - they do not cause any restarts no more. One might think that there is some memory limit per cover embedded or something - however - at the same time another flac file which has cover art JPEG 1775x1567 1013kb plays fine from the very beginning.

Any thoughts and ideas?

Removing pictures from the FLAC tags has solved my problems with all of my FLAC files. Big thanks to proximulator.

[wolf999]

are we still expecting a fix on this PROBLEM?

[Frodonf]

I really hope so!

[Meridion]

(08-24-2012 08:21 AM)proximulator Wrote:  ... As soon as I removed the cover art from this - they do not cause any restarts no more.

Any thoughts and ideas?

Removing unneeded tags and avoiding special characters in the tags helped a lot with my FLAC problems on the A-300.

Now it seems to play even the 5.1 high bitrate FLAC files quite reliably.

[Willem53]

I'm still having a stutter/clipping on a lot of 24bit 96KHz 2 channel FLAC....

[drSeehas]

Any news on this issue?

[XXLspot]

In my experience the latest firmware (nov 2012) solved quite some FLAC issues. Also 88kHz/96kHz /24bits are playing once converted by foobar2000 to flac. Without conversion only some play. A new problem introduced in this firmware is that FLAC is no longer played gapless and also misses the first second or so of the first number. I hope the next fw update will also fix that.