Comprehensive USB Bug List

[msnow]

Do you have any substantial tag data, as well as Album Art? My tests nearly a year ago were lightening fast when I excluded most of the tag data on my tracks, and I was even achieving perhaps 20 min scan times back then with 12K tracks.

The x-programmer part of me unfortunately keeps coming out, in that while there could be huge variation, no matter how Tesla maps tracks on a USB a stick, it has to maintain some of that tag data and linkage back to the owners USB directory and filename structure... meaning, a single track in the root directory on a stick, that had no tag data and that had a filename of "A", even if it was physically many GBs in size, would take the least amount of memory in the CID, opposed to a Stick with many tracks, in a deep and wide folder structure where each directory name is long character-wise, as are the filenames of each track. That then compounds based on the tag data the UI is needing to maintain and how fancy it gets trying to deal with duplicates -- ALBUM, TRACKTITLE, TRACKARTIST and in theory DISCNUMBER and TRACKNUMBER -- and maybe something for some number of tracks with Album Art because at least a handful of icons are displayed in some of the standard views. It's why I keep coming down to the reason some people are still successful with larger number of tracks being scanned quickly is because there is less processing and/or memory being consumed opposed to some of us with highly curated music libraries that have to strip out more data to get it to all fit. Really, Tesla should just set a limit across the UI for things like places history, and for Media Player USB as to number of tracks it will support (6-8K like my former Lexus, MBZ and BMW used to have documented -- I appreciate some of you will gripe and see that as a takeaway, but it's why I personally settled on around 6K because I felt one day Tesla would have to impose a limitation), and perhaps do the switch as I've suggested with ARTIST tags to probably reduce memory consumption. Oh well. The game continues for some. Tomorrow I'm off to playing with some new volume normalization techniques to improve what I've already got working at long last.

Yes on the tag data and album art. In addition to album, artist, genre, track and normal stuff. I have year, Kbps, songwriter...pretty much whatever metadata I could pull down from the Internet years ago when I was ripping them. I don't remember what app I used for that back then but I remember I used dbPowerAmp for the conversion.

Edit: I used Tag&Rename for tagging and pulling down the variable metadata.

 

[f-stop]

sorry late to stumble upon this thread, I've been just digesting the info in that other thread about the 8.0 media player
(8.0 Music Player Unusable)

not sure if this is already reported - apologies if so - but I just noticed that when listing USB contents by Artist, the v8.0 media player groups every artist with names starting with "The..." under the letter T. Meanwhile iPhone/iTunes etc ignores a leading "The" when listing by artist, a much more logical way. Combined with the removal of the quick scroll right-side alpha index, it makes it even more of a pain to locate an artist. On the plus side, if you do bother to scroll all the way to T, good chance you'll find most of your favourite bands there...

Hopefully they'll fix this (and not by putting "T" artists at the top of the list before "A" artists)

 

[BertL]

sorry late to stumble upon this thread, I've been just digesting the info in that other thread about the 8.0 media player
(8.0 Music Player Unusable)

not sure if this is already reported - apologies if so - but I just noticed that when listing USB contents by Artist, the v8.0 media player groups every artist with names starting with "The..." under the letter T. Meanwhile iPhone/iTunes etc ignores a leading "The" when listing by artist, a much more logical way. Combined with the removal of the quick scroll right-side alpha index, it makes it even more of a pain to locate an artist. On the plus side, if you do bother to scroll all the way to T, good chance you'll find most of your favourite bands there...

Hopefully they'll fix this (and not by putting "T" artists at the top of the list before "A" artists)

Thanks. I think this is a great requirement.

We could debate it forever, but unlike most other major media players today, I don't believe Tesla has ever done parsing or sorting to logically exclude, but still display, prefixes like The, A, An, etc. within Media Player, so technically it's not broken, but it is as they designed it. Now, I think we'll both agree that the Tesla designers and likely their testing/QA community are likely not heavy music owners themselves, or so many of theses sort of details would be accounted for in the interface.

 

[RichardL]

I am recoding with a directory structure:
Topfolder\artist\album

For the same set of songs - to see any difference in load time

It will be sometime tomorrow though, not quick

 

[BertL]

I am recoding with a directory structure:
Topfolder\artist\album

For the same set of songs - to see any difference in load time

It will be sometime tomorrow though, not quick

Good luck. I look forward to hearing how your next run progresses. Be sure to keep a fan blowing on that poor home computer doing Ann the number crunching!

 

[BertL]

Bert’s dBpoweramp Media Player 8.0 Workaround Instructions

OK, it appears a number of you are using dBpoweramp -- either the Mac or Windows version. I have no affiliation with the product itself, but if you care to duplicate the workarounds I came up with upthread in THIS POST & THIS POST, I offer two options to the community as starting points.

Both alternatives will accomplish the following:

• use a temporary directory containing the source audio files you want to have converted for use in your MS
• puts the contents of ALBUMARTIST into TRACKARTIST on every track
• changes all dBpoweramp-supported Album Art to JPEG 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 (see below), 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 are played
• converts every source audio file of varying encoding types to FLAC. Lossless remains lossless; Lossy does not get better or worse.
• places the processed version of the files into whatever directory you specify, or directly onto the USB device, in a folder structure you desire to use in Tesla’s Folder View

Your Two Options:

1. My original method “FLAC for Tesla V2”
   • 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 on-the-fly in other vehicles I’ve owned, except here, it’s physically preprocessed into copies of every track for playback in our Tesla.
   • Relative volume level as you switch from USB Media Source to e.g. FM is pretty close
   • THE BIG DRAWBACK is this takes an extraordinary amount of hands-off compute time to accomplish — with my quad core 4GHz iMac, it takes 16.5 hours to process 6125 tracks. Wow.

• A Faster Alternative “FLAC for Tesla V3” (and what I am using as of today)
  • I created this as an alternative for V2, providing 5-16X conversion time savings in my limited quad core tests (it's dramatic, even with the variability), at the cost of perhaps clipping some tracks and IMHO not providing as precise volume leveling in some very dynamic tracks
  • This does a 2-step Volume Leveling of each track:
    • First step uses a ReplayGain EBR U128 methodology to determine average track loudness and physically adjusts the track volume. In the process, overall audio volume is reduced in a fairly substantial way.
    • Second step then amplifies the volume of each track to both make average track playback closer to Radio sources (but not as close as the original method above), as well as providing drivers more flexibility using MS volume controls during playback that just isn’t possible with very soft audio sources, i.e. too soft of an audio source, and those that like to really blast their audio won't get the volume they may want at even 11 on Tesla's control (they can after this step is done).
    • To my ears, using a hand-selected group of 10 music tracks on different albums with different artists and genre, my ears do not distinguish a clipping problem with these settings, and its why I stopped increasing volume at this level. YMMV and your detailed analysis may provide a different POV. If that’s the case, change the settings my sample provides.

I’m not a dBpoweramp guru, so can’t answer detailed questions and I know this won’t serve everyone’s purpose, but as a starting point, here’s what I do:

• Extract files you want to convert from your master library to a temporary directory on your Mac or PC
• 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:
    • Converting To: FLAC
      • Encoding: Lossless Level 5
    • Output Location Folder: Specify the Folder you want to put the converted tracks into
    • Select Output Location Dynamic, then specify: [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
    • Load either V2 or V3 of the DSP Effects / Actions I provide as samples in the attached ZIP file
    • 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 of various albums to see how it then works in your MS. Make changes to fit your own needs and desire, then let the Converter rip against your larger set of tracks.

Enjoy!

 

[RichardL]

So, I recreated my stick - same 2840 odd songs, same tags, same art, same USB stick. The only difference was to rework it with a folder structure 3 deep (topfolder\artist\album) instead of all songs in the same topfolder. The result is a huge improvement in load speed - it took just over 4 minutes in a car sitting in the garage, versus 16 minutes in the same situation yesterday.

Also the load was noticeably more linear, very constant progression between each percentage loaded, instead of getting slower and slower.

So that is a big step forward for me, and a very obvious clue to how they are indexing, or managing memory like @BertL surmised

 

[BertL]

So, I recreated my stick - same 2840 odd songs, same tags, same art, same USB stick. The only difference was to rework it with a folder structure 3 deep (topfolder\artist\album) instead of all songs in the same topfolder. The result is a huge improvement in load speed - it took just over 4 minutes in a car sitting in the garage, versus 16 minutes in the same situation yesterday.

Also the load was noticeably more linear, very constant progression between each percentage loaded, instead of getting slower and slower.

So that is a big step forward for me, and a very obvious clue to how they are indexing, or managing memory like @BertL surmised

I'm really, really, happy to hear you found some success. I'm way beyond having fun with this guided discovery we've had to do with USB and 8.0, but it seems we're on to at least a general set of things than can help make the best of what we've got.

Just think, any minute we may get a new OTA update and get to start the exploration and workaround design all over again. Oh my.

 

[msnow]

So, I recreated my stick - same 2840 odd songs, same tags, same art, same USB stick. The only difference was to rework it with a folder structure 3 deep (topfolder\artist\album) instead of all songs in the same topfolder. The result is a huge improvement in load speed - it took just over 4 minutes in a car sitting in the garage, versus 16 minutes in the same situation yesterday.

Also the load was noticeably more linear, very constant progression between each percentage loaded, instead of getting slower and slower.

So that is a big step forward for me, and a very obvious clue to how they are indexing, or managing memory like @BertL surmised

You're welcome . I've been using my folder structure for 14 years.

 

[Boatguy]

To my ears, using a hand-selected group of 10 music tracks on different albums with different artists and genre, my ears do not distinguish a clipping problem with these settings, and its why I stopped increasing volume at this level. YMMV and your detailed analysis may provide a different POV. If that’s the case, change the settings my sample provides.

Per the attached screen shot, it appears that dbPowerAmp can anticipate clipping and will adjust accordingly.

 

[araxara]

I'm not sure if this has been reported yet, but just got V8.0 (2.42.40) for my Model S and it fixes some issues with USB media. In particular, special characters (such as space) on volume names come out correctly. And you can access things alphabetically. There may be more fixes, but this is what I saw immediately:

 

[RichardL]

I'm not sure if this has been reported yet, but just got V8.0 (2.42.40) for my Model S and it fixes some issues with USB media. In particular, special characters (such as space) on volume names come out correctly. And you can access things alphabetically. There may be more fixes, but this is what I saw immediately:
View attachment 200460

Yeh! Excellent to have the alphabetical index back. Wonder what else is changed

 

[tomas]

Look, this is good news that the 2 dot releases after 8.0 have both included USB fixes. That means have been heard and hopefully at least restoration of what we had before is on the way.

 

[iffatall]

Look, this is good news that the 2 dot releases after 8.0 have both included USB fixes. That means have been heard and hopefully at least restoration of what we had before is on the way.

I never thought they listened to any of these bug reports. But now, yes, I really believe they do.

 

[supratachophobia]

I never thought they listened to any of these bug reports. But now, yes, I really believe they do.

I always believed. Alpha-shortcuts is a huge win. But the list was long. Can someone compare .40 to the master buglist? @BertL, i'm looking at you since I don't have it yet.

 

[BertL]

I always believed. Alpha-shortcuts is a huge win. But the list was long. Can someone compare .40 to the master buglist? @BertL, i'm looking at you since I don't have it yet.

I'm on 2.36.31.

 

[jcadman22]

I always believed. Alpha-shortcuts is a huge win.

I've got a hard drive with over 50K tracks on it. Alpha-shortcuts worked under 7.x, there was still a lot of scrolling, but it was workable. I don't know why there couldn't be type-ahead search.

 

[BertL]

I've got a hard drive with over 50K tracks on it...

That's a lot of tracks -- good for you. It's sort of an amazing number IMHO, I suspect perhaps because your MS does not have AP, so your MCU/CID processor and memory are not quite as taxed and it has room to fit all your track mapping -- especially if you have an large amount of tag data.

If it's not unique to just MS/MX with AP, I assume you run with Energy Saving OFF so you don't have all the unnecessary rescans, or USB music is not something you desire to listen to most of the time as I do. I couldn't put up with the scan/rescan times I'd have in my MS with that number of tracks, but am glad it works for you! TERRIFIC! (It takes "only" 6 mins to scan my 6.1K tracks with 8.0, but when I had 15K tracks last Fall, it was taking in excess of 40 mins to scan with 7.1 and I would never even complete today -- I wouldn't even attempt it.)

 

[msnow]

That's a lot of tracks -- good for you. It's sort of an amazing number IMHO, I suspect perhaps because your MS does not have AP, so your MCU/CID processor and memory are not quite as taxed and it has room to fit all your track mapping -- especially if you have an large amount of tag data.

If it's not unique to just MS/MX with AP, I assume you run with Energy Saving OFF so you don't have all the unnecessary rescans, or USB music is not something you desire to listen to most of the time as I do. I couldn't put up with the scan/rescan times I'd have in my MS with that number of tracks, but am glad it works for you! TERRIFIC! (It takes "only" 6 mins to scan my 6.1K tracks with 8.0, but when I had 15K tracks last Fall, it was taking in excess of 40 mins to scan with 7.1 and I would never even complete today -- I wouldn't even attempt it.)

I still don't get why yours takes 6 min and mine takes 2 minutes and I have more files.

 

[BertL]

I still don't get why yours takes 6 min and mine takes 2 minutes and I have more files.

I suspect it has everything to do with how Tesla does their scanning process and then deals with dupes in the way they internally store mapping/linkage data back to the USB device, specifically with differences between both our directory structure and total bytes of each and every directory name, filename, ALBUM, TRACKNAME, TRACKARTIST, & GENRE tags. What can I say, but I suspect mine are bigger than yours.

...but it's also why I just don't even consider total size of a music library (in GB) when folks start quoting that as some point of reference in threads like this. The physical space the complete library consumes on the USB device likely has little if anything to do with MCU/CID memory consumption and time to scan, compared to the number and length-in-characters of all the "things" there are, when you think of how the programming may be done inside Media Player.