Print Page - OGG Q6 playback problems

hey... it's been a while since I've posted anything in here, and that's because I've been so happy with my Neuros and NSM 1.5 (thank goodness it's not corrupting ogg files anymore!). Also, the DJ features and the artist->album sorting option have changed everything.

Lately, however, I've been encoding some vocal music that requires a quality level of 6 and I've noticed several problems with playback on the Neuros. These files skip occasionally, probably once every four or five songs, and also the progress bar/counter does not advance in a normal way. It bounces around at the beginning, (for example, going from three, to ten, to fifteen, back to three seconds).

I've seen in other posts that these problems are amplified when using MiFi, which I actually haven't experienced since I haven't been using MiFi lately.

I want to inquire if there are efforts being made to improve the decoding and playback of ogg Q6 files. I understand that the Neuros may never be able to cleanly play extremely high quality ogg files (Q8-10), but Q6 is really the lowest quality I can use without noticeable distortion on certain music. Is this issue on the short list?

[:I]Thanks, F

!! omg blog !! http://www.vocis.com/frank

Allow me to echo your woes. I encode everything at q10 both because:

1) I'm nuts
2) Copying q10 files back to .wav files and buring to CD sounds much better than even q8 files. This is especially true when I play such CDs on my nice home stereo. Once I learned to listen for the defects, its all I can hear.

Also, I'm irritated that my new Neuros II ogg player doesn't play my ogg files! I have the same problem with skipping and gaps. I also find that when some files play the gui pretty much freezes up on me.

Why did I spend $350 on this?

I too am wondering about this issue. I have been watching the forums for awhile now ever since a friend showed me his neuros. I have my pennies saved up to buy the 80G Neuros II but all my songs are Q6 ogg vorbis files. I don't really want to drop $400 to hear skipping songs. Do we have any info from the Neuros team regarding this issue? Are there other users out there with the Neuros II who play Q6+ ogg files without problems?

Thanks!

These forums and the responses i have seen from the NA team are behind my choice to stick with the Neuros. I have considered the DMC Xclef500 (and i suppose if the ogg issues continue i will have to reconsider), but I keep coming back to the Neuros.

The reason why you get skipping during playback (especially during MyFi use) is becasue OGG files are very CPU intensive and past Q5 the cpu is being strained too hard to be able to function as smoothly as an mp3 at the same bitrate.

The next version of the neuros should have more horsepower and maybe through firmware upgrades the current NeurosII will be able to handle oggs a bit easier. We'll see.

I could only imagine q10 just killing the neuros thats crazy

I can't find the thread now, but there was some buzz about some ogg encoders being easier for Neuros to decode than the stock Xiph 1.0
version even though they may have higher bit rates for the same Q value.
Try the Aotuv (some of which I think is in the "stock" v 1.1 encoder)

various versions are at www.rarewares.org/ogg.html

-Don

Hi All,

There used to be a problem with this with the Neuros I units. On the Neuros units ogg 6 should play fine. Maybe at q10 you'll have a little chirping through NeuroCast, but not much. If you are having sound problems on a NII unit, look into it as a support issue. It's no longer a widespread thing, I actually haven't heard about this in a long time.

Kathryn

Neuros Support

I think maybe you don't hear about it because people just put up with it.
I have a mix of q4.5 and q6 ogg files.

We used to have chirps (a few firmware releases ago), now there are two kinds of gaps:
1) like a skipped record, but without a pop, click, chirp, etc. Seem to be less than a second long.
2) music output just stops for a second or two, then resumes, without any apparent loss of music.
Neither of these are reproducible -- i.e. if you play the same song again or 'rewind' a bit, you won't have the gap happen again, at least at the same place.

BTW, I have the Neuros I.

All my files are encoded at Q6 and I still get an irregular periodic pause/hesitation/skip whatever you'd like to call it. I agree that I think everyone is just putting up with it in the hopes that it'll get fixed with the next firmware release. That's what I'm doing anyway...

quote:
Originally posted by kborn(at)neurosaudio.com

The problem way back was "chirping" during MyFi. How often does your music skip. When you reformat and rebuild your Neuros, does it have any effect?

The skipping seems to be when there's a lot of IO to purge/fill the cache.

I cannot and will not format and rebuild due to being limited to USB 1.1 connection... My USB 2.0 backpack died and I'm waiting for the backorder situation to be resolved.

-- 'I switched to Vorbis and saved a bunch on my hard-disk space!'

Without having done proper research of tracking this specifically, I would say that the gaps seem to occur at least once for every time I use the Neuros. The sudden stop for 1-2-3 seconds, then starting again are much less common then the fraction-of-a-second loss of music.

One of the reasons not to complain too much is that this is a LOT less annoying than the chirps, and I would hate to trade the gaps for a return to the chirps.

My initial thought was that the trade of chirps for gaps was probably the result of a kludge, designed to simply not allow a chirp to happen at any cost (and not a bad kludge at that).

Also: I never use MyFi. I just bought a Honda Element, and it has an AUX phone jack for the radio (very nice!).

Well it helped but definitely didn't fix it...specifically I:

1. Revived the bad blocks.
2. Formatted the NAND Disc.
3. Formatted the Hard Disc.
4. Formatted the Media File System.
5. Copied all my music back onto the backpack.

It happens more often while using Neurocast but it seems to have helped some while using the headphone jack. It's not totally gone but it has helped some, thanks.

quote:
Originally posted by RockGarden

Well it helped but definitely didn't fix it...specifically I:

1. Revived the bad blocks.
2. Formatted the NAND Disc.
3. Formatted the Hard Disc.
4. Formatted the Media File System.
5. Copied all my music back onto the backpack.

It happens more often while using Neurocast but it seems to have helped some while using the headphone jack. It's not totally gone but it has helped some, thanks.

DITTO. I formatted everything and reloaded, and while my Neuros in general seems happier, the OGG Q 6 is not resolved. The files still skip and the progress bar is still totally screwed up. I don't think this issue has been fixed...

!! omg blog !! http://www.vocis.com/frank

Track progress bar is controled by the songs db and the db gets its info during synchronization.

Basically, your tracks exhibiting this problem are messed up and you need to process them for (and fix any) errors.

-- 'I switched to Vorbis and saved a bunch on my hard-disk space!'

quote:
Originally posted by Chameleon

Basically, your tracks exhibiting this problem are messed up and you need to process them for (and fix any) errors.

I am just now researching this codec and I wonder... What conversion tools do you use, Chameleon?

.g.

Hey...been ages since I posted, and I only checked in because the skips were starting to really bug me today as well. Was hoping there was an upgrade that would have fixed this long before now...

I've got an N-1 unit with the upgraded backpack. I have always had the skips (chirps? no, it's not a chirp, it's a skip...it's like someone bumped the record player). All my music is encoded with the 1.0 encoder, all Q5.

Mostly I ignore it, or I've gotten used to it. I've never had any kind of explanation as to why it happens other than CPU usage, and yet some people report no problems at all with higher bitrates.

The skips are never in the same place, either. They're random. They typically happen only once during a track.

I've read the GarBage changelog forums and seen people claim it's an encoder issue, but I never used the beta encoder...just the stock 1.0 encoder.

Just to confirm I experience the same issue. It hasn't been fixed at all.

Of course it's going to be worse with the FM transmitter on, as that chews CPU. I get regular skips with Q5. I don't have anything encoded at a higher quality than 5.
I'm currently using Xiph.org libvorbis 20050304

I have a Neuros II with a custom upgraded 80 gig drive and I still get the intermittent dropouts playing q6 oggs over MyFi. I don't think that I have ever noticed it do this with q6 oggs over the headphones, but recently I have been listening to q3 ogg books-on-tape on headphones and have noticed occasional bloops during disk I/O where the playback will almost skip like a CD and replay the previous second worth of audio.

I'll try the "maintenance" and see if it gets any better. I have gotten used to the MyFi dropouts I think so I don't think I notice them as much anymore but they still do occur.

=== #1688 ===

I occasionally get skips, but not very often, and usually traceable back to the individual track.

On the other hand, I have been getting a repeatable buffer error. (Using 2.26, not 2.28) Turn on the Neuros, on NeuroCast or Headphones, and last song finishes. The VERY next song, regardless of song, will play the first 5-6 seconds, stop, then I'll feel the HD spinning up to buffer the rest, and after a 2-3 second pause it will continue playing.

dbPowerAmp CD > Flac > Ogg Q6 (I use FLAC for files on my PC, and only make Oggs of things going on my Neuros.)

quote:
Originally posted by chad(at)gambit.net

I occasionally get skips, but not very often, and usually traceable back to the individual track.

On the other hand, I have been getting a repeatable buffer error. (Using 2.26, not 2.28) Turn on the Neuros, on NeuroCast or Headphones, and last song finishes. The VERY next song, regardless of song, will play the first 5-6 seconds, stop, then I'll feel the HD spinning up to buffer the rest, and after a 2-3 second pause it will continue playing.

dbPowerAmp CD > Flac > Ogg Q6 (I use FLAC for files on my PC, and only make Oggs of things going on my Neuros.)

It has been posted that ogg files encoded with the aoTuV encoders are less resource hungry on playback. You might want to pick that up at rarewares.org. You should be able to use it with dbpoweramp, or get the standalone oggdrop.
THe last I knew, aoTuV also had the best bang/bitrate of the ogg encoders.

-Don

I have not experienced this... I generally listen to the NII twice a day for 1 1/2 hrs each time... ALL my music is OGG at quality 6. (I noticed that some of my tracks report problem when ripping them.)

I have noticed two or three very brief pauses in the past couple of weeks but not sure if it was a problem with the track I was listening to or the player... If I observe it again I will make a note of the song so I can listen to it for problems outside of the NII...

Interesting thread. I have a NII with the old backpack. I encoded my oggs at 4.5 quality (with oggenc under cygwin and linux) and would have random skips, dropouts, songs ending before they should, etc. I attributed this to the old USB1 backpack. Recently I took advantage of the 80GB Neuros special. I put my original source files (at quality 9) onto the new Neuros and I had lots of problems. Re-converted them down to 4.5 and still had problems, just far fewer. I thought my decode/re-encode script was making botched oggs, until I copied a "skipping" file off the neuros and back on the PC- and it played fine. I re-ran my script at quality 3.5 and I haven't noticed any problems. Not sure if its something to do with oggenc, but that seems to have stopped the skipping for me so far.[?]

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Neuros Digital Audio Computer => Software => Topic started by: toohot4love on December 02, 2004, 11:21:13 AM