[PommesMagnum]

The Rockbox Simulator sucks!!!
After two hours it just crashed.
I will built the database on IPod itself, it’s at least 10 times faster and does not crash.
Only updating doesn’t work on my IPod mod, but initializing is fine.

 

[peioe]

Is anyone using a 7G with more than 128GB and rockbox ? Does it work well ?

 

[PommesMagnum]

Is anyone using a 7G with more than 128GB and rockbox ? Does it work well ?

I use 7.5 ( slim 160) with 1 tb .
(2*200 and 2*400 in quad micro sd board)
Works very well, only updating database and library cache do not work properly.

 

[peioe]

Which model is it exactly ? I just ordered a MC297 160GB.

 

[PommesMagnum]

Which model is it exactly ? I just ordered a MC297 160GB.

I don’t know my model number, but it is the latest classic 160.
If yours is slim, too than it is the same model

 

[ThinWalls]

Actually the simulator crashed for me as well (with about 80,000 music tracks - I don't bother to use the database for podcasts and audio books, the file browser works fine for them, in fact it's easier to not clutter up the database with non-music stuff). But I just restarted it and it resumed from where it had fallen over. It may be because I had a track with a corrupt ID3 tag (which I later discovered, which seemed to coincide with the point it failed at) or maybe that had nothing to do with it and it was some buffer being exceeded from too many tracks at once? Either way suggests a lack of robust error-checking in the simulator.

Having restarted it it just resumed from that point and finished OK. Took a while, but still better than draining the ipod battery, I reckon, and after doing it once could just use update which is much quicker. It was getting irritating having to do a full reinitialize every time I added a few tracks.


One thing that still bugs me is that the 'playcount' feature doesn't really work. At least it gets reset every time you reinitialise the database, making it kind of useless (not sure whether it can be made to work with the simulator method - probably not). Which makes it impossible to know which of the eleventy-zillion podcasts I have on there I've already listened to until I start listening and then realise I've already heard it.

 

[peioe]

Does anyone know if the 5th gen 60GB and the 5.5th 80GB run rockbox faster ? I know they can handle more tracks in the original firmware but i'm wondering if there is a benefit to those when using rockbox only.

 

[PommesMagnum]

Does anyone know if the 5th gen 60GB and the 5.5th 80GB run rockbox faster ? I know they can handle more tracks in the original firmware but i'm wondering if there is a benefit to those when using rockbox only.

I had a 5.5 80 gig and it was much much slower than my 7.5 with rockbox.
I don’t know about older models in comparison...

 

[iRock1]

Hey guys,

I have a couple of very weird issues with my iPod 5G which I was hoping you could help me to solve out (not sure if they are related):

1.

Every time I connect my iPod to my MacBook, iTunes syncs a certain group of tracks, even if there’s been zero changes from last sync. I’ve even disconnected the iPod and connected it again immediately, and iTunes will sync those same tracks again (they are around 250, so it’s a pain in the ass to watch that process finish every time).

Most of those tracks have a common album artist, but I don’t know if that has anything to do with anything. They play without any problem in iTunes and in the iPod as well. Again, the weird thing is just that they keep syncing over and over every time I connect the iPod.

2.

A lot of tracks can’t be played in their entirety on my iPod. Say, they will start playing just fine, and then around half the song the music will stop and the playing bar will move forward just around 1 or 2 seconds before the finish. Notice that it’s not that the actual music will skip forward — it’s just the bar that will move until almost the finish, however the song stops playing entirely.

Also, I have to note that while this happens the iPod becomes very slow, so if I press the Menu buttong and try to navigate the interface everything is super laggy. After a few seconds (I’d say around a minute) the song will finally skip entirely to the next one, and the iPod becomes responsive again.

Also, if I skip the track forward manually, let’s say to half of the song, the same thing will happen: the song will pause and the bar will get to around 1 or 2 seconds before the end.

Needless to say, all of these tracks play just fine on iTunes.

The really weird thing is that this happens only if the files are in .mp3. If I convert one of these files to .aac within iTunes that file will play just fine in my iPod.

I remember that there was a bug in iTunes several iterations ago, where the app would mess up the metadata of songs added in mp3 and they would behave kind of like I described. However, that bug happened a long time ago and was already patched. In fact, I restored my iPod from iTunes and synced all my library again. And yet the same problem persists, not to mention that the previous issue with those tracks syncing over and over again is still there too.

I don’t know if these issues might be related or not, but I hope you can figure something out. It almost feels like a House M.D. puzzle to me, lol.

Sorry if the grammar is kind of convoluted, but English is not my native language, lol. I can also record a short clip and upload it to Youtube or something if you need to see what’s going on.

 

[ThinWalls]

Hey guys,

I have a couple of very weird issues with my iPod 5G which I was hoping you could help me to solve out (not sure if they are related):

if it wasn't for the fact you say it depends on the music format, I would have said that meant a failing ipod hard drive. Both 1 and 2 could be caused by tracks being corrupted when copied to the ipod. Corrupt tracks would appear to iTunes to not match the ones in iTunes library, so would be resynced. And corrupted tracks would not play properly.

That it doesn't happen when the tracks are .aac is puzzling. Unless that means those tracks end up being written to a different physical part of the ipod's hard drive?

Could you diskcheck it when connected to the computer with AOMEI? I suspect AOMEI might find disk corruption.

 

[iRock1]

if it wasn't for the fact you say it depends on the music format, I would have said that meant a failing ipod hard drive. Both 1 and 2 could be caused by tracks being corrupted when copied to the ipod. Corrupt tracks would appear to iTunes to not match the ones in iTunes library, so would be resynced. And corrupted tracks would not play properly.

That it doesn't happen when the tracks are .aac is puzzling. Unless that means those tracks end up being written to a different physical part of the ipod's hard drive?

Could you diskcheck it when connected to the computer with AOMEI? I suspect AOMEI might find disk corruption.

Well, I'm not using the stock hard drive. I have Tarkan's mod and a 128 GB flash card.

I don't think it might be a problem of corrupt tracks though. If that was the case they would present issues as well on iTunes or being played on other apps, not to mention that, as you notice, if I create an AAC version of those same tracks in iTunes they work just fine.

I think this might have something to do with iTunes/iPod software to be honest. Long time ago this problem surfaced: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7249051

However that should have been solved at this point. In fact, again, iTunes play those files just fine. It's just my iPod which presents the playback issue.

Also, I'm on Mac so I can't use AOMEI. But I highly doubt it has something to do with corruption on the flash card.

EDIT: regarding the playback issue, here you can see the original problem in iTunes I was talking about. You'll see I wasn't the only one: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...nd-of-track-before-song-has-finished.2082831/

Here's the guide that I followed in order to solve it a few months ago: https://www.kirkville.com/how-to-rebuild-your-itunes-library/

 

[ThinWalls]

I did wonder if you were using a flash mod, but as you didn't say I assumed it was the original hd.

I'm not sure what you are saying here. That the tracks play on iTunes doesn't prove that the files aren't corrupt on the ipod! The corruption would occur when syncing and wouldn't affect the files still on the computer! The aac version _might_ just be getting written to a different part of the card. Maybe.

However, as it's not a hard-drive it does seem less likely to be a bad drive causing corruption, because I don't think a bad memory card would fail in the same way.

It's still possible it's because of a problem with the card though.

You could take the card out and check it in a card reader, but that would take a while,

If you were using rockbox you could use some sort of hashing check utility to compare the troublesome files on the player with the originals on the computer. That's been done before to prove that files were getting corrupted when syncing.

But this would be difficult when not rockboxing because of how iTunes obfuscates track names and uses a weird directory structure. The changes iTunes makes when syncing would presumably mess up any such hash checking.

 

[iRock1]

I did wonder if you were using a flash mod, but as you didn't say I assumed it was the original hd.

I'm not sure what you are saying here. That the tracks play on iTunes doesn't prove that the files aren't corrupt on the ipod! The corruption would occur when syncing and wouldn't affect the files still on the computer! The aac version _might_ just be getting written to a different part of the card. Maybe.

However, as it's not a hard-drive it does seem less likely to be a bad drive causing corruption, because I don't think a bad memory card would fail in the same way.

It's still possible it's because of a problem with the card though.

You could take the card out and check it in a card reader, but that would take a while,

If you were using rockbox you could use some sort of hashing check utility to compare the troublesome files on the player with the originals on the computer. That's been done before to prove that files were getting corrupted when syncing.

But this would be difficult when not rockboxing because of how iTunes obfuscates track names and uses a weird directory structure. The changes iTunes makes when syncing would presumably mess up any such hash checking.

Well, at least I've just discovered that the two issues I mentioned I was having ARE NOT RELATED. In fact, one of them is, as suspected, a problem not in the flash card nor the iPod, but in that increasing pile of bugs that is iTunes.

The tracks that are syncing over and over again are those who have the field "Work" filled with any data. As soon as I deleted that, the problem disappeared. Of course this is going to be a huge PITA for those who have huge collections of classical music and depends on this piece of metadata to keep their libraries organized. But it's either deleting that field or waiting for Apple to fix this bug.

I hope this might be useful for somebody!

EDIT: regarding the problem with the songs playback being cut off early, I'm 100% now it is due to something in the iTunes/iPod software part. See: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7249051

What I find weird is how this problem get transferred to the iPod if the iTunes library file was deleted a long time ago and everything goes well in my Mac.

 

[ThinWalls]

Well, at least I've just discovered that the two issues I mentioned I was having ARE NOT RELATED. In fact, one of them is, as suspected, a problem not in the flash card nor the iPod, but in that increasing pile of bugs that is iTunes.

The tracks that are syncing over and over again are those who have the field "Work" filled with any data. As soon as I deleted that, the problem disappeared. Of course this is going to be a huge PITA for those who have huge collections of classical music and depends on this piece of metadata to keep their libraries organized. But it's either deleting that field or waiting for Apple to fix this bug.

I hope this might be useful for somebody!

EDIT: regarding the problem with the songs playback being cut off early, I'm 100% now it is due to something in the iTunes/iPod software part. See: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7249051

What I find weird is how this problem get transferred to the iPod if the iTunes library file was deleted a long time ago and everything goes well in my Mac.

Ah! Glad you are at least half-way to solving things.

There was a reason I gave up on iTunes a long time ago! It was the 'randomly splitting albums up in to sub-albums for no clear reason' bug that was the last straw for me. The effort you had to go to to get albums to stay collated as single albums was like herding cats. Plus iTunes' insistence on using png for album art rather than jpg was annoying.

In fact it was getting fed up with iTunes that was a big part of why I started using rockbox (though now you can sync iTunes-style using other media managers, plus media-monkey, which I now use, has a good few bugs of it's own - and are there _any_ media managers with proper tools for managing large numbers of playlists? I think maybe Foobar has but I had other difficulties with that)

With pretty much all software I don't get why they constantly change things that aren't important, yet leave annoying bugs unfixed for years and years.

 

[peioe]

Does anyone use a bluetooth transmitter with their ipod ?
Is the kokkia worth its price or should I just get a cheap one for 15€ ?