Hi, @BertL , it seems it's time to ask the expert.Tracks are now correctly restarting where they left off, every time I reenter my MS.
I've had one week of zero rescans or loading errors -- which has not happened in a very long time.
...and it's not because of a Tesla firmware change, but because of a choice I decided to make.
BACKGROUND
While I swore off doing another round of complete USB MP testing as I've reported here several times, I remain convinced that Tesla's poor management of constrained memory conditions is a primary reason some of us have more or less USB playback problems than others. It's why for more than a year, I have gone to such extremes extracting less than 7K tracks from my curated master music library of primarily ALAC (AAC Lossless) tracks into FLAC. I then let my Mac spend hours processing those tracks to remove extraneous tagging, standardize Album Art into JPG-only that is roughly the same size as the largest image displayed anywhere within the MP UI, and apply a few other transformations to resolve lack of MP functionality where I am able. Except for testing, I've used FLAC for all my MP tracks since I took delivery of my MS nearly 2 years ago: I had the space on my large USB/SSD devices, conversion time from ALAC is super-fast, and I get the best possible quality going into MP that I can provide. The result isn't perfect as I still have my Tesla Twilight Zone moments, but my problems have been minimized despite long-outstanding MP bugs and missing features.
We've discussed here before that ID3 tagging has created a number of variants over time, but those variants also multiply as different codecs are used -- e.g. MP3 tagging isn't 100% the same as what happens with FLAC for the same content. Album Art also has unlimited possibilities on sizes, image compression formats, etc. which I've discussed in posts before. I personally have not found any issue using any ID3 variation up to ID3V2.4 in my MS, but I believe we've proven in this thread more than once, that ill-structured tagging can make MP go berserk or cause more intermittent failures. The problem with that is the damage could have been done years ago inside your source tracks without you even realizing it, and the error may not be apparent in all players. To me, ID3 tags just open up a lot of possible places where any media player can fail if it's not designed assuming an owner may give it tracks with errors to begin with.
MY LATEST AH-HA MOMENT
I have not been able to get @f-stop's post a few weeks ago out of my head suggesting filetype (aka "codec") is yet another variable in the equation. Thanks @f-stop! Beyond specific testing I have documented here in the past, I have had nothing but 100% FLAC in my MS for daily use ...but what if I could improve my not-so-perfect MP environment even further?
THE NET
After a quick test to ensure MP would handle the output, I reran my dBpoweramp conversion process against my same 6,708 ALAC tracks with all the same transformation options I've been using, except instead of FLAC, I encoded all tracks as MP3 VBR -V0 (aka, Variable Bit Rate with highest quality).
After one week, the result is sound quality where I can't tell a difference from my FLAC files -- especially with road noise -- and now whenever I get into my MS, MP resumes playing the same track from the same spot it left off, every single time without any interaction on my part. No pause, no funny business. It has worked 100% of the time with short errands, deeper sleep, and through a scheduled charging cycle. I also have had no unexpected rescans or loading errors in this same week -- although given how intermittent both of these problems are, I am not ready to declare success on either of these concerns.
CONCLUSION
As some of us have thought for a long time, MP3 seems to be more of a sweet spot for how MP best operates. I am now personally convinced that is the case -- at least with firmware 2017.32 9ea02cb I am currently running. I still believe the Tesla Engineers that design and test MP are mostly using small numbers of MP3 files, with sparse ID3 tagging and probably a single piece of art for a complete album, vs what some of us "music enthusiasts" have with multi-disc albums, compilations, highly curated and extensive ID3 tagging, perhaps different art for different tracks, and a desire to use lossless codecs with a large number of tracks from our collection.
Converting to MP3 VBR has become my new standard. Some of you can debate if you believe MP3 VBR is of sufficient quality in your MS. (Note I am not suggesting use of lesser CBR or ABR targets. I admit I'm surprised Tesla's code supports MP3 VBR as it's more complex and not something every MP3 player will handle, but it works -- probably because of tag-along code in open source libraries.) While it does not require any effort on my part except to pay the energy bill, the conversion from a lossless format to MP3 VBR, with the rest of the dBpoweramp transformation I do to hopefully reduce CID memory usage is highly compute intensive. For my 6,708 ALAC tracks, once I have a copy extracted from my iTunes Library, it takes a whopping 53 hours for my 4.0GHz quad core to accomplish the task.
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BERT'S dBpoweramp MEDIA PLAYER 8.1 WORKAROUND 09-17-2017
It's been nearly a year since I posted the last version of this nearly 1,000 posts upthread. For those that didn't catch that and care about an overview of the transformations I make on my master music library files for use in my Tesla MS, and the basic steps I use with dBpoweramp -- either the Mac or Windows version -- to automate most of the effort, here you go. I have no affiliation with the products themselves.
My settings accomplish the following:
- Use a temporary directory containing copies of the source audio files I want to have converted for use in my MS
- Puts the contents of ALBUMARTIST into TRACKARTIST on every track
- Changes all dBpoweramp-supported Album Art to JPG, and reduces it’s size to a maximum 300x300
- Changes TRACKTITLE to “DISCNUMBER-TRACKNUMBER TRACKTITLE” on every track
- Performs Volume Normalize analysis against each track, physically changing the contents of the track copy so the Tesla driver does not have to fiddle as much with the volume level as soft/loud parts of a track, or across tracks of disparate albums, are played.
- This performs a methodical analysis of each track’s volume, looking across 6000ms windows of time and adjusting the volume up/down just as you would trying to keep relative playback volume closer to the same during very soft and loud parts of the track. This seems to most closely emulate what I know as ASL or Automatic Sound Leveling options that are done real-time in other vehicles I’ve owned, except here it’s physically preprocessed into a copy of every track for playback later in my Tesla. I'm a pretty critical listener, and do not find this processing takes away from my content enjoyment or introduces some unnatural annoyance. The side benefit is the relative volume level, as you switch from USB Media Source to e.g. FM, is pretty close to being the same, which in my experience isn't what happens otherwise.
- THE BIG DRAWBACK is this takes an extraordinary amount of hands-off compute time to accomplish. It increases the conversion time by 5-16X. If you don't want to use it, just delete the Volume Normalize line from the DSP Effects once you load my settings.
The process
- Converts every source audio file of varying encoding types to MP3 VBR -V 0 Quality
- Places the newly created version of the MP3 files into a 2-level directory structure: One folder off of the root for each album with related tracks inside, correctly handling track sequencing and multi-disc albums (assuming you have them tagged correctly in your master library to being with).
- Extract files you want to convert from your master library to a temporary directory on your Mac or PC. (I use "Export for iTunes" available on the Mac App Store.)
- Start dBpoweramp Music Converter
- Point it at that temporary directory you just made and filled with source tracks
- Click the Convert icon
- On the conversion menu:
- Encoding: MP3 (Lame)
- Target: Quality (VBR)
- Move the slider all the way to the right (high quality / larger file)
- Encoding: Normal
- Output To: Select "Edit Dynamic Naming" in the dropdown
- Base Location: Specify the folder you want to put the converted tracks into
- Dynamic Naming: [album] - [album artist]/[disc]-[track] [title]
- If you have a real need and think through the implications, change that directory structure as you desire for use in Folder View, noting pros and cons of too shallow and too deep folder structures discussed elsewhere in this thread, and implications that may have on Tesla's other Views if you choose to use them
- Unzip, then Load the attached DSP Effects / Actions. (Don't be concerned the filename says "FLAC". Your encoding selection above is what counts.)
- Click Convert and you’re on your way. Let your computer do it’s thing and go do something more productive.
I suggest you give the process a try with a small number of tracks from various albums to see how it works in your MS. Make changes to fit your own needs and desire, then let the Converter rip against your larger set of tracks. Oh, and if you change the settings, remember to save the DSP Effects so you don't have to go through the trial-and-error again one day.
Enjoy!
I think we discussed this long before but I have a few albums that are divided into multiple albums in the media player. I remember it might be caused by ALBUMARTIST having comma separated artist names. Could you tell me how I can put V.A. into ALBUMARTIST if there's comma there?