Comprehensive USB Bug List

[Boatguy]

I've been a little slow to spend a lot of time on this, but I put together my collection, loaded up my stick and put it in the car. What I'm observing is a little different than what @BertL reported in his epic post.

The exec summary is that I'm not seeing sorts within the various access methods that are as reliable as was reported which suggests that the MP is much more broken than we thought. Here is what I have:

Folders: 5
Genres: 10
Artists: 476
Albums: 971
Tracks: 10,297

The stick structure is Folder / track. All tracks have their original track number and title. All track filenames are Disk#-Track# Title, e.g., "1-01 Badge". I have verified that the tracks in these screen shots have accurate tags.

What I observed is:

Songs: Track Title - OK

Artist: Artist (alphabetical) > Album (random - see screen shot) > Track (track # sort of - see screen shot)

Albums: Album Title (alphabetical) > Track # (sort of - see screen shot)

Genre: Genre (alphabetical), Track Title (alphabetical) - OK

Folder: Track Title - OK

So the big problems are random sort of Albums within artist, and scrambled track # order within Albums and Artists with no clear pattern. I've attached one example where the tracks are correct, and three others that are incorrect sequence for the first 3-5 tracks, then ok for the remainder.

 

[aesculus]

The stick structure is Folder / track. All tracks have their original track number and title. All track filenames are Disk#-Track# Title, e.g., "1-01 Badge". I have verified that the tracks in these screen shots have accurate tags.

Not sure what's driving the order. On one album I checked the tracks were in order but both the filename alpha and track tags were in the correct order. I have no idea what drove the order in the display (filename alpha or track title tag).

 

[Boatguy]

Not sure what's driving the order. On one album I checked the tracks were in order but both the filename alpha and track tags were in the correct order. I have no idea what drove the order in the display (filename alpha or track title tag).

It should still work using filenames since they are Disc#-Track# Title. It's a mystery to me how the MP came up with the order you see in the screen shots.

Tesla is making this awfully difficult. In my 2014 BMW i3 I can just plug in my iPhone, which with 128GB has my entire collection, and access by Genre, Album, Artist, Playlists, etc. I could do that in my 2011 Mercedes that the MS replaced. No trouble at all, exactly mimics my iTunes setup. We're jumping through hoops creating Tesla specific work arounds for a $100,000 car that is supposed to be a state of the art vehicle

This is just wrong. Somebody at Tesla has their head in a remote part of their anatomy.

 

[whttiger25]

It should still work using filenames since they are Disc#-Track# Title. It's a mystery to me how the MP came up with the order you see in the screen shots.

Tesla is making this awfully difficult. In my 2014 BMW i3 I can just plug in my iPhone, which with 128GB has my entire collection, and access by Genre, Album, Artist, Playlists, etc. I could do that in my 2011 Mercedes that the MS replaced. No trouble at all, exactly mimics my iTunes setup. We're jumping through hoops creating Tesla specific work arounds for a $100,000 car that is supposed to be a state of the art vehicle

This is just wrong. Somebody at Tesla has their head in a remote part of their anatomy.

I sent an email complaining about the usb folder view ordering (ID3 song title vs filename/track number) a few days after version 8.0 was released, and my email was acknowledged.

I sent another email today after the recent patch failed to fix this problem, and it was again acknowledged.

The only way Tesla makes a bug a priority is if they actually hear from tons of people. They don't read these message boards. Hopefully you all who are annoyed by this will ALL send Tesla an email and they will prioritize fixing a bug that, from a development perspective, probably can be fixed in 5 minutes by someone familiar with the code.

 

[Boatguy]

I sent an email complaining about the usb folder view ordering (ID3 song title vs filename/track number) a few days after version 8.0 was released, and my email was acknowledged.

I sent another email today after the recent patch failed to fix this problem, and it was again acknowledged.

The only way Tesla makes a bug a priority is if they actually hear from tons of people. They don't read these message boards. Hopefully you all who are annoyed by this will ALL send Tesla an email and they will prioritize fixing a bug that, from a development perspective, probably can be fixed in 5 minutes by someone familiar with the code.

Where are you sending them? ServiceNA@tesla?

 

[aesculus]

I just noticed something weird in my music collection. All the tags looked correct but my NAS, using Logitech Slim Server, was not playing them in order either. And in fact the the track number was not showing up at all when I looked at the track details in the music server. I checked the tags and there was a track number in each tag (ie 1/7). But when playing either by album or artist it was playing in alpha order, minus any leading digits. So weird.

I tested a few albums by doing a batch tag update with dbPoweramp and that fixed it after I reloaded the database in the music server. So now I am off to batch all 3300 tracks. After this is over it will be off to the USB to make sure the Tesla is seeing these correctly. So far it seems to, but I did not do an extensive test and now I have a few candidate albums that should show if it's correct or not.

 

[supratachophobia]

I sent an email complaining about the usb folder view ordering (ID3 song title vs filename/track number) a few days after version 8.0 was released, and my email was acknowledged.

I sent another email today after the recent patch failed to fix this problem, and it was again acknowledged.

The only way Tesla makes a bug a priority is if they actually hear from tons of people. They don't read these message boards. Hopefully you all who are annoyed by this will ALL send Tesla an email and they will prioritize fixing a bug that, from a development perspective, probably can be fixed in 5 minutes by someone familiar with the code.

Your comments are partly true. They do monitor the forums, but until pitchforks and torches reach a certain percentage (actual secret number metrics), they don't act. We saw this with the NEMA 14-30, some of the 7.1 improvements, and the USB patches we've seen in v8. I really do wish there was a better way to communicate AND have feedback so we know what's being worked on and what isn't. The silence creates huge frustration AND a huge amount of extra work troubleshooting; looking at you @BertL

 

[whttiger25]

Where are you sending them? ServiceNA@tesla?

I log into my Tesla and click contact at Bottom

 

[msnow]

I log into my Tesla and click contact at Bottom

Yeah, but there's several email addresses listed on that page. He's asking you which one you picked. We all use [email protected].

 

[BertL]

SORT

Folks, I've effectively stopped my investigative work, but one final thought here on this whole question of why things in Media Player sometimes look sorted, and other times they don't (at lower levels): The issue under the covers I suspect is pretty simple. To save time, or as a slip-up in Media Player design, Tesla is only sorting some tags and not also doing the secondary sorts of others that are really necessary to ensure correct sequencing as you drill down or attempt to playback.

When an application fails to do the complete sort of all potential elements, you end up with luck-of-the-draw how items are sequenced in the lower levels. There is no way for us as Owners to really predict it. From my past experience dealing with exactly those sort of application issues, the problems sometimes don't surface until larger volumes of data are involved. Meaning, shorter test samples of even the couple hundred tracks I was using for the last several weeks may not show a problem like some of you are now finding with more extensive libraries and a focused eye on the results. It's why back in my programming days, I used my own more targeted test data for most work while I was programming or debugging, but before turning a substantially new app or system over to my users, I always did at least one test run integrated with a copy of full production data, validating those results with as much of an eagle's eye that I could. That extra step took a lot of additional time, but IMHO ensured a much higher quality end result.

I'll go back to my up-thread suggestion from weeks ago that if Tesla just maintained internal track sequencing for everything other than Folder View based on ALBUM/ALBUMARTIST/DISCNUMBER/TRACKNUMBER, it may help avoid a lot of these kind of issues... but what do I know? I'm just a little 'ol MS Owner like you that simply wants to put my USB device in the slot and have my music quickly and accurately play the way I expect every time. ​

 

[supratachophobia]

SORT

Folks, I've effectively stopped my investigative work, but one final thought here on this whole question of why things in Media Player sometimes look sorted, and other times they don't (at lower levels): The issue under the covers I suspect is pretty simple. To save time, or as a slip-up in Media Player design, Tesla is only sorting some tags and not also doing the secondary sorts of others that are really necessary to ensure correct sequencing as you drill down or attempt to playback.

When an application fails to do the complete sort of all potential elements, you end up with luck-of-the-draw how items are sequenced in the lower levels. There is no way for us as Owners to really predict it. From my past experience dealing with exactly those sort of application issues, the problems sometimes don't surface until larger volumes of data are involved. Meaning, shorter test samples of even the couple hundred tracks I was using for the last several weeks may not show a problem like some of you are now finding with more extensive libraries and a focused eye on the results. It's why back in my programming days, I used my own more targeted test data for most work while I was programming or debugging, but before turning a substantially new app or system over to my users, I always did at least one test run integrated with a copy of full production data, validating those results with as much of an eagle's eye that I could. That extra step took a lot of additional time, but IMHO ensured a much higher quality end result.

I'll go back to my up-thread suggestion from weeks ago that if Tesla just maintained internal track sequencing for everything other than Folder View based on ALBUM/ALBUMARTIST/DISCNUMBER/TRACKNUMBER, it may help avoid a lot of these kind of issues... but what do I know? I'm just a little 'ol MS Owner like you that simply wants to put my USB device in the slot and have my music quickly and accurately play the way I expect every time. ​

Ridiculous expectations.....

 

[whttiger25]

Its

Yeah, but there's several email addresses listed on that page. He's asking you which one you picked. We all use [email protected].

It's not an email address it's a web form, underneath the list of various email addresses, "submit a question or comment".

Probably all goes to the same place anyway

 

[supratachophobia]

Its

It's not an email address it's a web form, underneath the list of various email addresses, "submit a question or comment".

Probably all goes to the same place anyway

You'd be surprised the black holes where your communication goes.....

 

[whttiger25]

I

You'd be surprised the black holes where your communication goes.....

I've always gotten an email response. The quality of the response has usually been pretty empty though. i.e. "thanks for your feedback it's been forwarded to the appropriate team"

 

[msnow]

I

I've always gotten an email response. The quality of the response has usually been pretty empty though. i.e. "thanks for your feedback it's been forwarded to the appropriate team"

Like you I always get a canned response but I get one every time, that's the good. Unlike you, I always get a call from my local Service Center from people who don't really know anything. That the bad. They usually say "let me look into that and I'll call you back". I've probably sent 7 or 8 emails over the past 14 months to [email protected] which initiates their ticketing system and also allows me to have a written record (the email) of my issue and only one time have they followed with someoone who knows something. That's the ugly.

 

[BertL]

Like you I always get a canned response but I get one every time, that's the good. Unlike you, I always get a call from my local Service Center from people who don't really know anything. That the bad. They usually say "let me look into that and I'll call you back". I've probably sent 7 or 8 emails over the past 14 months to [email protected] which initiates their ticketing system and also allows me to have a written record (the email) of my issue and only one time have they followed with someoone who knows something. That's the ugly.

Ah, I could bring up the possibility of a "bad guy list" again, but I'll just say that my last two emails summarizing my top priority broken to ServiceHelpNA have resulted in no reply -- even the canned ones I got back in-the-day. Customer Service is either slipping, very inconsistent, or well, some of us are on THE list that no one will admit to.

 

[supratachophobia]

Another little protip. I've been interchanging my "New" USB stick which I keep for rotating new stuff in and out to make it easy to get to. This is seperate from my SSD with the main collection on it. So for the last 2-3 times I've taken it out and tried to just play off the SSD, nothing would happen. I would select a track from the list when it was done scanning and no sound would play, nor would the timestamp move at all. Reboots, unplugs, exit/enter, all did nothing to get it to play.

The fix, every single time, was simply playing something from streaming, then going back to USB and choosing a song. Music starts playing normally.

Also, as a small side note, I've installed OSMC on a Raspberry Pi with a a Nexus 7 front end (same Nexus I taped to the touchscreen as a joke a few weeks ago). I'll be testing this out for the next few weeks, but the general consensus is that it's really nice to have a Media Player in the car that isn't junk. Yeah, that's right, junk. Interface-wise, I'm using a couple different apps based on XMBC/Kodi. They seem to all be geared more towards 1080p TV's but I'm trying out a few car-slanted themes to see if I can make it safe and usable. Feature-wise, the queuing/add-to-playlist alone is a huge help. You can just build up a new playlist in a couple clicks. The Pi plays audio A2DP over bluetooth. Haven't tested steering wheel buttons yet, but wouldn't that be nice?

They also make a Kodi app for Android, but I'm finding it very very sluggish on the Nexus 7, and the buttons are way too tiny, not for touchscreens. Very dangerous.

 

[msnow]

Another little protip. I've been interchanging my "New" USB stick which I keep for rotating new stuff in and out to make it easy to get to. This is seperate from my SSD with the main collection on it. So for the last 2-3 times I've taken it out and tried to just play off the SSD, nothing would happen. I would select a track from the list when it was done scanning and no sound would play, nor would the timestamp move at all. Reboots, unplugs, exit/enter, all did nothing to get it to play.

The fix, every single time, was simply playing something from streaming, then going back to USB and choosing a song. Music starts playing normally.

Also, as a small side note, I've installed OSMC on a Raspberry Pi with a a Nexus 7 front end (same Nexus I taped to the touchscreen as a joke a few weeks ago). I'll be testing this out for the next few weeks, but the general consensus is that it's really nice to have a Media Player in the car that isn't junk. Yeah, that's right, junk. Interface-wise, I'm using a couple different apps based on XMBC/Kodi. They seem to all be geared more towards 1080p TV's but I'm trying out a few car-slanted themes to see if I can make it safe and usable. Feature-wise, the queuing/add-to-playlist alone is a huge help. You can just build up a new playlist in a couple clicks. The Pi plays audio A2DP over bluetooth. Haven't tested steering wheel buttons yet, but wouldn't that be nice?

They also make a Kodi app for Android, but I'm finding it very very sluggish on the Nexus 7, and the buttons are way too tiny, not for touchscreens. Very dangerous.

The "junk" comment seems a bit over the top. Mine certainly isn't that. Are there still some bugs? Sure, but those can be fixed. Regarding the steering wheel buttons, I think those do work on iOS on BT.

 

[aesculus]

While I was doing my tests the car was in the garage and not moved. For a number of days I would come and go and each time the playback would resume on the track/album I left it at. I have all energy settings enabled.

Yesterday I actually drove the car. When I stopped just for 5 minutes the car wanted to resume from my cell phone Bluetooth vs the USB. I will need to do some testing to see if somehow moving out of park destroys the USB resume.

 

[supratachophobia]

The "junk" comment seems a bit over the top. Mine certainly isn't that. Are there still some bugs? Sure, but those can be fixed. Regarding the steering wheel buttons, I think those do work on iOS on BT.

As someone who uses USB media every day, that particular portion can be junk at times. And especially more so when you have a chance to compare it to something else directly. The scanning issues, I'm over. I know it's not fixed for everyone, but the media player and I have come to terms on that particular thing. Mainly because I know it's a necessary evil. And the media player would just plain not work without it doing it's scans.

But the search results only playing one song from an artist, the random being totally not random, the audiobooks/podcasts restarting back to the beginning; these are things I am spending precious time fiddling with when I should be driving. Search has made it marginally better to find songs when I get want to stay hooked on some genre or artist. But only in it's intent (the fact they are letting you search USB). In practice it's still confusing and somewhat broken.

I am extremely curious to know if flavor .140 has done anything to improve USB audio.

And if you'll let me continue on my rant, I've been using a 3rd party app for remote control. This dev @SG57 busts his bumper delivering feature after feature weekly. Things that people have been wanting the stock app to do for years, this guys is turning out in days. Don't tell me it's a lack of skill or man-power at Tesla when things like starting the car with your fingerprint, done-by-this time charging, charge reminders, legit camping mode that actually works without resorting to a hotdog on a string are available right now. Plus, exposing every single available option of the API in the app, like dual-temp zone control and full sunroof position. He even let's you log 0-60 and 1/4 mile runs by polling CANBUS info!

You just caught me on a bad day, when I'm seeing everyone but the manufacturer doing it better in this couple of areas.