OGG Q6 playback problems

[toohot4love]

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

[spankmeister7(at)yahoo.com]

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?

[frastley]

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.

[protoz(at)yahoo.com]

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

[Don]

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

[toohot4love]

BUMP. Unless I'm mistaken, there has been no word from DI on this issue in months. Can we please have an update from Kathryn or someone? Thanks, F

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

[mbryner]

I use only q6 encoding and notice occasional millisecond-long jumps/gaps.  OK for me especially since it can only get better...

Marcus

[doctorcilantro]

bump

[kborn(at)neurosaudio.com]

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

[gpittman(at)iglou.com]

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.

[RockGarden]

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...

[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?

K

Neuros Support

[Chameleon]

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!'

[gpittman(at)iglou.com]

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!).

[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.