Comprehensive USB Bug List

[wdolson]

Agreed. I have done this already (I reported it as two bugs, one summarized as "USB playback of my relatively large (25k track) library fails with media player hang or restart" and the other as "Media player UI is unusable for non-trivial libraries because no non-sequential access is provided"). I did get a reply that included "please let us know if you do not hear from service within a few weeks on this", I have a nag set up in my calendar for two weeks from now.

There are certainly other bugs, but for me, those two were the elephants in the room. If they had a good user-accessible bug reporting system, I'd open a bunch more at lower priority, but as it is I didn't want to distract them with less-important stuff.

FWIW this is an excellent -- and brief! -- guide on how to write a helpful bug report. Obviously, we're not reporting bugs against emacs, but the principles remain the same. GNU Emacs Manual: Understanding Bug Reporting

Edited to add: I sent my report to [email protected]

As someone who has to respond to bug reports (not for Tesla), it's always most efficient when the bug report gives details on how to reproduce the problem. If a problem can be reproduced it can usually be fixed quickly. Clear, concise bug reporting is a bit of an art, but most people can learn the method.

I'm also a software developer. One of the big things with developing software, particularly if it's for a commercial market, is controlling regressions. Sure software is hard, but if you let your development get out of control, it becomes VERY hard. That's what Tesla has done repeatedly. They seem embody the classic joke of letting their software escape rather than be released.

IMHO the best way they could fix this is by opening up a sandboxed API so that competent people could fix the software. Failing that, someone in authority at Tesla needs to take a big broom to their software department.

I have a friend who is a software project manager and her specialty is turning around dysfunctional teams. She told me she's been asked to look over a lot of software over the years. She said when the interface looks perfect, her first though it "uh oh!" because it's rare to find someone who is both a good interface designer and good at the internals.

Designing good interfaces takes a different way of thinking than it does to get the internals working. Ideally they should be two different people.

And even if you're decent at designing an interface (or software), once in the hands of users somebody is guaranteed to do something you never thought of. I had a Murphy's Law poster many years ago and one of them was "Whenever you try to make something foolproof, the universe will invent a better fool." Not that end users are all fools, but if you design software to work a certain way, they will do it differently and mess everything up unless you build in that contingency or lock out that possibility. The Windows and Linux world tends to favor multiple ways to get there. The Apple world tends to lock out other possibilities and if their way doesn't make sense to you as a user: too bad.

 

[jcadman22]

I finally got the scan to complete on my 1TB portable hard drive with 70K tracks and it took HOURS. The long wait only confirmed all of the bad behavior described by others in this thread. Search "Anything" should include USB sources, right? Even with the first letter access, browsing artists was painful under previous firmware versions; it's not even an option for me under 8.0. Is type ahead browsing too much to ask for?
@supratachophobia - Thanks so much for putting together a great list; I want every feature you've included, especially making displayed fields clickable links to jump to artist or album from now playing. There's one other feature that I think would be great - the ability to shuffle tracks by a specific artist, i.e. across all albums. If this already exists I have not figured out how to engage.

 

[supratachophobia]

I finally got the scan to complete on my 1TB portable hard drive with 70K tracks and it took HOURS. The long wait only confirmed all of the bad behavior described by others in this thread. Search "Anything" should include USB sources, right? Even with the first letter access, browsing artists was painful under previous firmware versions; it's not even an option for me under 8.0. Is type ahead browsing too much to ask for?
@supratachophobia - Thanks so much for putting together a great list; I want every feature you've included, especially making displayed fields clickable links to jump to artist or album from now playing. There's one other feature that I think would be great - the ability to shuffle tracks by a specific artist, i.e. across all albums. If this already exists I have not figured out how to engage.

The great thing about compiling these lists and hopefully getting them to the right people is that it benefits everyone who is an owner and all future owners. I'd like to give this another few days, write-up a top 10, describe how to replicate issues or get clarification on what conditions cause them (it seems like greater than 10k tracks is some kind of magic threshold to get SUPER long scans), then see who will listen.

 

[supratachophobia]

Rough Draft

Things That Are Broken:
1. Letter list/alpha shortcuts for song/album/artist lists are gone / This is **very** dangerous when trying to scroll while driving, but also if there are more than 100 items, the scrolling feature just plain does not work. Any attempt at repeated scrolling gestures are interpreted as a click into a folder. If you then try backing out of that folder, it takes you to the top of the previous folder/file list.
2. Albums are being played alphabetically instead of by track number
3. Albums now intertwined alphabetically in with tracks under an artist, 7.1 had them at the beginning of the list (think Mac vs. PC on how folders and files are handled when displayed)
4. Spaces in USB volume name are represented by the ASCII value "\x20" and not as the intended <space>
5. Shuffle "on" is not persistant overnight, or when playing between USB sources
6. "Search Anything" does not search anything, it searches everything except USB media. Please allow search (text entry AND voice) to include USB media.
7. Mysterious problem with some scans taking an abnormal amount of time. Not sure if it's storage media access speed / number of tracks / total size of data
8. Equalizer settings are not saved overnight
9. Be able to resume playing a track from where it was when the car turned off / currently, track will reset to beginning
10. Multi-artist album tag is not being read, indexed, or displayed for when ID3 Artist tag is not populated / Media Player needs to perform an IF/EXIST query and display album artst if song artist is not populated

Most Poplar Suggestions After Bug List Fixed:
1. Queue next song, artist, album by making the text in now playing hot-linked, matches are moved from their existing place in the playlist to next in queue
2. Playlist support (.m3u?)
3. Remember the "playset" that the 'recent' was a part of / If you play one of these items that was part of an album or list, it should go back into playing the same album or the same list respectivly
4. "Play Down" from current folder view / Can also apply to songs and albums within an artist as well as when traversing folders
5. "Bookmark" exact place in audio track and save 3-5 different slots for resuming later

Things you nailed:
Interface is very much improved
USB volume names are recognized and displayed

--------
I think it's important to mention what they got right as well. By having the USB volume read, I save myself 12 clicks every morning trying to figure out how the media player used to randomize my USB media sources. This is a big one for me personally and I want them to know how much I appreciate it.

 

[supratachophobia]

I finally got the scan to complete on my 1TB portable hard drive with 70K tracks and it took HOURS. The long wait only confirmed all of the bad behavior described by others in this thread. Search "Anything" should include USB sources, right? Even with the first letter access, browsing artists was painful under previous firmware versions; it's not even an option for me under 8.0. Is type ahead browsing too much to ask for?
@supratachophobia - Thanks so much for putting together a great list; I want every feature you've included, especially making displayed fields clickable links to jump to artist or album from now playing. There's one other feature that I think would be great - the ability to shuffle tracks by a specific artist, i.e. across all albums. If this already exists I have not figured out how to engage.

The suggestion I made of a "play down from here" option as the option inside a folder would do this (long-press works too). I got the idea from, you guessed it, my Empeg. If you navigate to a folder, just choose "Play from here" and it will make a playlist of all the tracks and all the albums (essentially anything in that folder) that you can then shuffle.

 

[bareyb]

I'd like voice commands to let me choose the SOURCE of any song I am looking for. Right now if I ask for a song it defaults to Streaming sources.

For instance, I'd like to be able to tell it to find a specific song on USB. Such as: "Play Tough Guy by Celldweller on USB" Something like that. That would alleviate some of the pain over the loss of the Alphabetical index (until it returns) too. Hopefully we can have both.

 

[evp]

I just had the experience of having pause go away when I opened the door to get out; it started playing at that point. I've also had unpaused USB song start playing when I opened the back door in the morning, then when I opened the driver's door it forgot all about the fact that I had a song playing on USB and started cataloging the USB stick again. I have 26 thousand MP3s taking up 142GB. It's now rare that I ever get to listen to USB because the catalog doesn't finish before I'm at my destination.

 

[supratachophobia]

I just had the experience of having pause go away when I opened the door to get out; it started playing at that point. I've also had unpaused USB song start playing when I opened the back door in the morning, then when I opened the driver's door it forgot all about the fact that I had a song playing on USB and started cataloging the USB stick again. I have 26 thousand MP3s taking up 142GB. It's now rare that I ever get to listen to USB because the catalog doesn't finish before I'm at my destination.

Can you try partitioning your storage media so that less than 10k tracks on each volume? I'm seeing a pattern of more than 10k being an issue for scanning.

 

[supratachophobia]

I'd like voice commands to let me choose the SOURCE of any song I am looking for. Right now if I ask for a song it defaults to Streaming sources.

For instance, I'd like to be able to tell it to find a specific song on USB. Such as: "Play Tough Guy by Celldweller on USB" Something like that. That would alleviate some of the pain over the loss of the Alphabetical index (until it returns) too. Hopefully we can have both.

I like this detail. Not sure if you want to be able to select a bias from a settings screen or if you want to include a voice tag. The bias method may be easier (it would include that set of results at the top of the list).

 

[Merrill]

I like this detail. Not sure if you want to be able to select a bias from a settings screen or if you want to include a voice tag. The bias method may be easier (it would include that set of results at the top of the list).

Do you have the album art to be displayed both in favorites and when searching for artist or album in the main screen like it did before 8.0

 

[supratachophobia]

Do you have the album art to be displayed both in favorites and when searching for artist or album in the main screen like it did before 8.0

I think it has to be embedded in the track id3 tag. Can anyone else chime in?

 

[CuriousG]

I'm not sure what to make about USB resuming from where it left off. Initially it would always reset from the beginning of the song but other times I've noticed it remembering where it left off. I've also had issues with shuffle where it must have some kind of cached shuffle where it will reply the songs in the same order once I get out of the car. Same goes for whether it will remember if repeat or shuffle is enabled. Plenty of bugs with this rewrite of the media player. I have maybe 400 songs on my flash drive so it only takes less than 5 seconds to rescan and I normally just shuffle by songs so the other bits don't bother me. But when you hear the same music in order on a shuffle, c'mon!

 

[supratachophobia]

I'm not sure what to make about USB resuming from where it left off. Initially it would always reset from the beginning of the song but other times I've noticed it remembering where it left off. I've also had issues with shuffle where it must have some kind of cached shuffle where it will reply the songs in the same order once I get out of the car. Same goes for whether it will remember if repeat or shuffle is enabled. Plenty of bugs with this rewrite of the media player. I have maybe 400 songs on my flash drive so it only takes less than 5 seconds to rescan and I normally just shuffle by songs so the other bits don't bother me. But when you hear the same music in order on a shuffle, c'mon!

Yes, I thought I was hearing the same shuffle order! I thought I was crazy. Same behavior regarding the pause function. Sometimes it saves, but more times than not, i find myself distracted trying to figure out where my audio book left off.

 

[raghumani]

I don't know if anyone else has had this issue but my screen has crashed and restarted twice when reading my USB drive. It loads the USB drive, gets to 100 percent and then when you touch the screen, it crashes.

Loading takes something like 30 minutes if I organize my music into A-Z subfolders. Loading is quicker if it is all in one folder but that means that scrolling to the bottom of the list takes intolerably long. My library, while large, isn't nearly as big as some of the people posting here. I have around 9000 songs organized into 500+ playlists - I have seen people with much larger music collections.

I am trying to see if changing my USB drive helps. I got one with much higher read speeds. Let us see if that makes a difference.

- RM

 

[BertL]

FWIW... Just back from a 5-day, 650+ mile road trip, spending somewhere north of 14 hours in my MS. A couple more observations specific or related to USB (I'll post all in the main 8.0 thread after I have read through it):

- I reduced my USB tracks to ~1800 for this trip. Details on all that is upthread.
- Album Art display is problematic. I have 100% of my tracks with art that displays in iTunes, iOS devices and macOS Finder correctly. What I found though is that not all albums will display the art, as if nothing is imbedded. I'm suspecting there is some problem or restriction related to the size of the art -- too big, and Media Player 8.0 simply ignores it -- VS the more user-friendly thing would be to scale it down to what Media Player wants to use.

- While not USB-specific, on a related note is even Bluetooth playback of podcasts via my iPhone have Album Art problems with 8.0. Some display in Media Player 8.0, while others don't -- even though they all show up natively on the iPhone.​

- Equalizer settings have been pervasive for me. (I have UHFS if that makes any difference.) I've not had any issue with them changing as some others have reported.
- OTOH as others have said, Shuffle On/Off and Repeat are not 100% pervasive. I've not figured out the exact scenarios that make them be forgotten.
- Again, as others have have reported, there remain issues with Media Player not always remembering the location within a track when it comes time to start playing again. It does sometimes, while not at others. The exact pattern elludes me.​

In the end, I'm glad I signed-up for the $5.99 SiriusXM Basic service month-to-month before I left. I at least had some consistent music during my trip to listen to, when I got frustrated trying to access my preferred USB music. The one thing I did do is spent some quality time scrolling forever in the USB menus to find a few specific things (e.g. album or artist) while I was SpC'ing, and those became "RECENTS" in the new interface that I could then click more easily while driving. Oh, the workarounds. Sighhh.

 

[neroden]

Rough Draft

Things That Are Broken:
1. Letter list/alpha shortcuts for song/album/artist lists are gone / This is **very** dangerous when trying to scroll while driving, but also if there are more than 100 items, the scrolling feature just plain does not work. Any attempt at repeated scrolling gestures are interpreted as a click into a folder. If you then try backing out of that folder, it takes you to the top of the previous folder/file list.
2. Albums are being played alphabetically instead of by track number
3. Albums now intertwined alphabetically in with tracks under an artist, 7.1 had them at the beginning of the list (think Mac vs. PC on how folders and files are handled when displayed)
4. Spaces in USB volume name are represented by the ASCII value "\x20" and not as the intended <space>
5. Shuffle "on" is not persistant overnight, or when playing between USB sources
6. "Search Anything" does not search anything, it searches everything except USB media. Please allow search (text entry AND voice) to include USB media.
7. Mysterious problem with some scans taking an abnormal amount of time. Not sure if it's storage media access speed / number of tracks / total size of data
8. Equalizer settings are not saved overnight
9. Be able to resume playing a track from where it was when the car turned off / currently, track will reset to beginning
10. Multi-artist album tag is not being read, indexed, or displayed for when ID3 Artist tag is not populated / Media Player needs to perform an IF/EXIST query and display album artst if song artist is not populated

Most Poplar Suggestions After Bug List Fixed:
1. Queue next song, artist, album by making the text in now playing hot-linked, matches are moved from their existing place in the playlist to next in queue
2. Playlist support (.m3u?)
3. Remember the "playset" that the 'recent' was a part of / If you play one of these items that was part of an album or list, it should go back into playing the same album or the same list respectivly
4. "Play Down" from current folder view / Can also apply to songs and albums within an artist as well as when traversing folders
5. "Bookmark" exact place in audio track and save 3-5 different slots for resuming later

Things you nailed:
Interface is very much improved
USB volume names are recognized and displayed

--------
I think it's important to mention what they got right as well. By having the USB volume read, I save myself 12 clicks every morning trying to figure out how the media player used to randomize my USB media sources. This is a big one for me personally and I want them to know how much I appreciate it.

Please add "gapless playback" as most popular suggestion #6. Though really it's a thing which is broken (been broken since the car was delivered, though)

 

[supratachophobia]

Please add "gapless playback" as most popular suggestion #6. Though really it's a thing which is broken (been broken since the car was delivered, though)

Thanks, will do

 

[neroden]

I can be a little more helpful for Tesla with regard to gapless playback: they only need to make gapless playback work on the formats which actually support it, which are mostly *lossless* file formats like WAV and FLAC. There's an inherent problem with a number of the lossy codecs. So they need to test it with WAV or FLAC.

So I guess it should be written as "make gapless playback work with WAV, FLAC, and other lossless formats" just to make it very clear

 

[supratachophobia]

Ok kids, I just emailed Tesla with the specific bugs that have been found in v8 with regards to USB audio. Please, if you are someone that uses USB audio, take the time to shoot [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected] an email, letting them know there is still some fine tuning to be done with this particular feature. You can mention some or all of the items below. Tesla addressing these issues will improve the Media app for everyone, but the surest way to get nothing done, is to, of course, say nothing. My experience over 3 years is that Tesla wants to help people love their cars more. But sometimes, they don't know *exactly* how to do that until you let them know. Thanks for everyone assistance in getting these items communicated to them for resolution.

The list as follows after 1 week:
1. Letter list/alpha shortcuts for song/album/artist lists are gone / This is **very** dangerous when trying to scroll while driving, but also if there are more than 100 items, the scrolling feature just plain does not work. Any attempt at repeated scrolling gestures are interpreted as a click into a folder. If you then try backing out of that folder, it takes you to the top of the previous folder/file list. Additionally, any "Back" actions should take you to where (how far down) in the folder list you were when you entered the subfolder
2. Album Playback - Album tracks are being played alphabetically instead of by track number
3. Search - "Search Anything" does not search anything, it searches everything except USB media. Please allow search (text entry AND voice) to include USB media.
4. Playback Resume - Be able to resume playing a track from where it was when the car turned off / currently, track will reset to beginning / especially annoying when listening to an audiobook or podcast
5. Shuffle "on" is not persistent overnight, or when playing between USB sources / it is also not persistent at other random times throughout the day when entering/exiting the vehicle
6. Folder/File List - Albums now intertwined alphabetically in with tracks under an artist when 7.1 had them at the top of the list (think Mac vs. PC on how folders and files are handled when displayed) / not necessarily a problem, this is the way that Linux file systems are read with an "LS" command, but if intentional, please document in release notes
7. Source Scanning - Mysterious problem with some scans taking an abnormal amount of time. Not sure if it's storage media access speed / number of tracks / total size of data, may need log file data to diagnose
8. Equalizer - Bass/Mid/Treble settings are not saved overnight sometimes / unsure if it is triggered by changing USB audio sources, difficult to replicate / if the intended feature was to allow different equalizer settings for different USB sources, for example, a certain sound profile for audiobooks and a certain sound profile for music, then please disclose this in the release notes because that would be a really cool and welcome feature
9. Volume Naming - Spaces in USB volume name are represented by the ASCII value "\x20" and not as the intended <space> / again, not necesarily a problem if this was intentional on how to handle non-alphanumeric characters
10. Tag Display - Multi-artist album tag is not being read, indexed, or displayed for when ID3 Artist tag is not populated / Media Player needs to perform an IF/EXIST query and display album artist if song artist is not populated

 

[JeffVanEpps]

I find that when I've removed the USB overnight (to add more art) and insert it in the morning, after a brief scan it starts playing in the middle of the track it was in several days ago, rather than where it was when I removed it. Is anyone else seeing that?

I can then forward skip through the songs I've heard in the past few days, the sequence is always the same.