-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
Comprehensive USB Bug List
- Thread starter supratachophobia
- Start date
Correction, it's not. I was happening to come upon and play a favorite in a regular playlist.
I looked back a little and couldn't find this reported.
Anyone else seeing this?
Scanning only seems to be picking up metadata for the first 10 artists on my USB drive. After that, no metadata. The song is still scanned (and you can browse by folders), but there is not Artist, album, etc. information.
FWIW, I have a 128 GB USB stick.
I'm on 8.1 (17.11.3).
Anyone else seeing this?
Scanning only seems to be picking up metadata for the first 10 artists on my USB drive. After that, no metadata. The song is still scanned (and you can browse by folders), but there is not Artist, album, etc. information.
FWIW, I have a 128 GB USB stick.
I'm on 8.1 (17.11.3).
X Fan
Active Member
Was upgraded to 17.11.10 a few days ago.
I've noticed that same song on USB has remained even when leaving and reentering vehicle several times....possibly a fix?
Also, still seeing some stuttering during play of some hi-def FLACs particularly when using Nav. and it has re-scaned the USB at least once each day.
I've noticed that same song on USB has remained even when leaving and reentering vehicle several times....possibly a fix?
Also, still seeing some stuttering during play of some hi-def FLACs particularly when using Nav. and it has re-scaned the USB at least once each day.
BertL
Active Member
I have not encountered that problem. How did you format your USB device? FAT, FAT32 or NTFS? I did have problems a few months back with what I suspect was a corrupted USB stick that I removed without properly ejecting after Ali updated it.
Also, I assume that problem happens with all non-Folder views, and even when you're playing a track via Folder view, none of the normal info or album art appears?
If you have not already done it, remove your device, and do a full reboot... foot on brake and both wheels until the Tesla T appears.
BertL
Active Member
No, I've had the same track there for a while now... It just replays from the beginning most of the time vs picking up where it was upon exit from your car.
Sorry to hear about the shuddering and rescans -- my frequency dropped significantly a couple drops ago, since I also have attempted to minimize memory usage (see my previous here for what I'm doing).
8.1 does not appear to be any different than our last 8.0 drop in most MP regards.
thecloud
As rhythm raced inside, the ship came alive
One thing to add here: if you notice that some metadata isn't being picked up, try renaming either the drive itself or the top-level directory which contains the files, in order to force a rescan of that directory. (Whenever I make any change to my USB drive's contents, I also change the name of the top-level folder, adding a number to the end which I increment by 1.)
BertL
Active Member
Yes, it did for me, so I don't use many favorites for my USB devices. As you also know all too well, we each get to choose what's more important when trying to workaround Tesla's long-standing bugs.
Just picked up on this thread so I thought I'd add a few items, and comment on your list since I think numbers 1 and 3 may possibly be related. I haven't had the "shuffle bug" as its been described here at least, but that may be explained by the way I populated by metadata, which triggers a number of other bugs or issues that I've only seen mentioned here obliquely.
Tesla's software people, at least with respect to the USB interface, don't seem very competent because they don't think through the consequences of the features they put in. I have something like 2200 songs on my USB drive with 134 artists. The car only recognizes 26 of those artists after a change they made a couple months after 8.0 was rolled out. The problem arises from the manner in which they organize the browsing structure, and I think that this browsing structure may be what is causing some of the shuffle issues. Bear with me here.
Most artists put out albums that, at most, have two or three good songs on them, so out of my music collection I only listen to maybe 25-30 albums, as albums. The rest I'll just listen to randomly by artist or randomly through my whole song collection, and while doing that I don't see sets of songs playing in the same order etc., although I do notice that certain songs keep cropping up far more frequently than you might expect if the shuffle were truly random. I think what's happening is that the songs get re-shuffled every time I get out of/back into the car and that the shuffle algorithm isn't sufficiently random so that some songs have a higher change of being higher in the order etc.
But since I only have maybe 30 albums out of my entire music collection that I want to listen to, and I don't want to wade through hundreds of albums when browsing just for those 30, I manually erased the album and album artist for all songs NOT within an album I like. This has the desired effect, since now I only see those albums when I hit the "Album" button. About five or six months ago, though, Tesla decided that it was going to reorganize the browsing hierarchy to go Artist - Album - Song instead of just Artist - Song, and THEN FORGOT to include an "All" category in the intermediate "Album" list. The effect was that if a song's metadata didn't have the album field populated, the song just gets dropped entirely from the "Artist" browsing tree. This is why I'm only seeing 26 artists under the "Artist" tree and why the vast majority of my tracks can't be reached through that tree.
The stupidity of this cannot be understated. Let's say a driver wants to listen to all of Eric Clapton's songs on the USB drive. This new system won't let the driver do it. The driver hits "Artist" then "Eric Clapton" just fine, but then is forced to pick an album and after doing so gets to a list of only those songs in the selected album, and then the shuffle kicks in and only cycles through that limited set of songs. Incidentally, the mirror image of this is also true for compilation albums; if I want to shuffle through all the songs on that album I can't because Tesla's system separates the songs by the track artist. I suspect that the shuffling behavior where a small number of songs gets repeated relates to the screwed up navigation structure.
Anyway, here's my order of fixes:
1. Fix the navigation hierarchy to correctly recognize Album Artist (and "Composer" for my classical collection) and navigate appropriately (using an "All" category if necessary). Once they do that, shuffling a selected list should just be an XML tag in the code I would think.
2. Fix the playback order of albums to default to track number. It boggles the mind that Tesla will read the track numbers from the metadata and display them, but then design a playback routine that won't actually use the information it reads. What the hell is the point of displaying the track number in an album? Some kind of convoluted trivia game?
3. Hold position in songs when you leave the car - I've heard that Tesla has limited memory but certainly they can just write data to the USB drive to record the track and time to begin replay
4. Gap-less playback. This is pretty important for classical listeners and Pink Floyd fans. Right now my workaround is recording the whole album as one track, which creates its own problems (see #3 above).
The reason shuffle doesn't work is that Tesla is using a pseudorandom number generator (PNRG):
Pseudorandom number generator - Wikipedia
Given the same seed value, the car will play the exact same sequence of tracks.
There are three problems with the Tesla implementation:
- When the algorithm chooses a seed value, it is picking from a statistically small set of values.
- There is a bug that cause the algorithm to again pick a seed value from this pool, thus restarting a known sequence. This probably happens every time the USB does a "reload." If the algorithm continued with the sequence rather than restarting, the problem wouldn't be nearly as noticeable.
- Use of a PNRG is a bad idea when there are simple alternatives that exhibit truly random distributions. For example, you can create an array of tracks and shuffle it like a deck of cards. Then, iterating through the array to play tracks guarantees that each track will play once and only once. When you hit the end of the array, you reshuffle.
This could also be related to the audio restarting. When the media player has the track reset back to the beginning, the player also resets the PNRG which ends up being the same over and over. I'm actually slightly interested in seeing if track restarts and shuffle sequence are related. Then again, I just don't care anymore to try and troubleshoot/understand something that I shouldn't have to in the first place and should just work.
Oooops, better get me a software update, I'm starting to get bitter again.... It's like I'm software hangry.
Yes, it did for me, so I don't use many favorites for my USB devices. As you also know all too well, we each get to choose what's more important when trying to workaround Tesla's long-standing bugs.
DO YOU WANT TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN FAVORITES GET DELETED??? DO YOU???
That is literally the face of someone how was just told all the media Favorites had been lost..... True Story.
BertL
Active Member
I'm sorry for the sadness, but it is a GREAT picture to go along with the story. You know, it would make a great Tweet for a certain CEO and his followers to understand how not attending to "the little things" upsets not only many owners, but future Tesla owners as well.
While that makes sense, as I have seen and numerous others have pointed out, regardless of the seed track you choose, the second and subsequent tracks are always the same - if I choose track A, I then get B,C,D etc. If I then choose track Q, I then still get B,C,D etc.
A PRNG bug like you describe should have a different sequence if the seed song is different, surely?
So its a much more complex bug than a simple, bad RNG. It seems (IMHO) to be more related to how the program stores information. In some way the new track sequence does not overwrite the old, or something like that.
It does impress me that the car has managed to remember that single, truly shuffled sequence from when I got 8.0 in October last year - despite several updates, I still get the same sequence of the same songs! I always wondered if a big part of the problem with 8.0 is to do with how the OS allows storage of data, since many complaints were related to 'forgetting' settings, like the homelink chime etc.
My forlorn hope is that the future 8.1 update to the OS improves things.
I'm a Software Engineer with 30+ years of experience. I recognize the behavior. One of my projects from years past involved random number generators.
I don't think it's that complex a bug. My car usually picks up playing the last song that it was playing prior to the reload, and then it starts a "new" sequence. That new sequence is usually one of just a few different sequences, depending on the seed.
Same seed, same sequence. That further proves that the PRNG algorithm hasn't changed.
My point was not this Tesla is using a "bad PRNG", it was that they could avoid all of these issues by using the PRNG to shuffle an array, and persisting the array index.
This is not rocket science, Elon.
Any software that uses "random" numbers actually uses a psuedo random number generator. There is no way to generate truly random numbers in software. The software starts with a seed, and then generates a sequence from there. Good software uses a complex seed and then a fairly complex algorithm to generate the sequence. If done right, the sequence won't be truly as random as rolling dice, but will be tough enough that it can't be cracked. Or at least not cracked without way more effort than it's worth.
Most computer systems have some kind of time of day clock in them. A lot of random number generators will use the number of milliseconds of the clock or something like that for a seed. Another good seed for a system with a radio is to digitize the signal strength at a certain frequency. If you want to be doubly complex with the seed, pick the frequency from the milliseconds on the clock and then use whatever the signal strength is on the chosen frequency.
It seems Tesla isn't using a complex enough seed for the random number generator, so it tends to repeat.
Most computer systems have some kind of time of day clock in them. A lot of random number generators will use the number of milliseconds of the clock or something like that for a seed. Another good seed for a system with a radio is to digitize the signal strength at a certain frequency. If you want to be doubly complex with the seed, pick the frequency from the milliseconds on the clock and then use whatever the signal strength is on the chosen frequency.
It seems Tesla isn't using a complex enough seed for the random number generator, so it tends to repeat.
But what I said was I use a different seed song every time I have to restart the MP. For what you said to be true, it would have to be completely ignoring the seed song and just using whatever 'number' Tesla defined - I suppose you could be correct, that is even more pathetic than I was thinking! - they aren't even considering the seed song I select, just always using the same numerical seed and the same PRNG.
Similar threads
