[PixelSquish]

this is reallly driving me a bit crazy.

i load up a playlist or hit play on an album title, and if i want to skip through a track to the next one, it has to access the hard drive. this happens 90% of the time. here and there it will load 3 tracks into memory so skipping to the next track is fast, but most of the time it doesnt. What?

makes NO SENSE at all. if i hit play on an album or playlist - it should put some into memory, so when you want to skip here and there, you dont have to spin up the hard drive each time.

i find this to be a bad design flaw. or is my player defective?

can any vision:m owners check and see what their player does?

 

[rockin_amigo14]

i think its done so you can get to your original song faster.

my zvm will skip a few songs fast, then load a few more, take a while, and repeat.

 

[PixelSquish]

the thing is mine doesnt do that. sometimes it does, but most of the time it accesses the hard drive with each skip to merely the next track. sometimes it does it quickly - but i feel i am over-accessing the hard drive here.

btw my play mode is NORMAL.

 

[rockin_amigo14]

mine is usually on shuffle.

 

[Fatality_]

Just tested, skipped through a couple of albums. It only took some time when i loaded an album, then it skipped each track smoothly. Firmware 1.40.02e

 

[Transit]

Sometimes there is a slight pause when changing tracks... but not that big a deal for me... I suppose the larger the list you're playing (such as the entire library u have on shuffle) then you might get more delays... That said, I just upgraded the firmware to 1.6xx (Australian version).. need to spend some time to see if it improved anything...

 

[PixelSquish]

hmmm. i seem to notice a trend on my player. mp3's that i have in my collection load up in the cache and i can skip through albums quickly.

albums downloaded via rhapsody to go have to access the hard drive between each track.

i have to narrow it down to see if it is because my personal collection is non variable bitrate mp3 and i have rhapsody send it to me as 192vbr - or if it has nothing to do with that.

its not just that the delay irks me, it is because the hard drive is spinning up so much more than it should that it kills battery life.

 

[Ingo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by idiotekniQues /img/forum/go_quote.gif hmmm. i seem to notice a trend on my player. mp3's that i have in my collection load up in the cache and i can skip through albums quickly. albums downloaded via rhapsody to go have to access the hard drive between each track. i have to narrow it down to see if it is because my personal collection is non variable bitrate mp3 and i have rhapsody send it to me as 192vbr - or if it has nothing to do with that. its not just that the delay irks me, it is because the hard drive is spinning up so much more than it should that it kills battery life.

I have exclusively VBR .mp3 on my ZVM. They all cache just fine. Maybe it's the copy-protection on those rhapsody files.

 

[Fatality_]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ingo /img/forum/go_quote.gif I have exclusively VBR .mp3 on my ZVM. They all cache just fine. Maybe it's the copy-protection on those rhapsody files.

Same here, and i'd also put my money on the copy protection.

 

[PixelSquish]

yeah i decided to test out loading an album via yahoo music unlimited. again, hard drive access between every track.

this is terrible IMO.

 

[rockin_amigo14]

Quote:

Originally Posted by idiotekniQues /img/forum/go_quote.gif yeah i decided to test out loading an album via yahoo music unlimited. again, hard drive access between every track. this is terrible IMO.

agreed, but not really suprising. i recall reading somewhere that the battery life is significantly shorter for protected files.

 

[Ingo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rockin_amigo14 /img/forum/go_quote.gif agreed, but not really suprising. i recall reading somewhere that the battery life is significantly shorter for protected files.

And now we know why.

 

[PixelSquish]

if anybody that has a zen vision and uses a SUBSCRIPTION service can try skipping through album tracks and listen for hard drive access - that would be great.

thanks.

 

[GSTom1]

I think the Zen Vison: M has 16MB of buffer memory. That means that each time it plays, it should load two or three MP3s into the memory at a time. If you're playing in normal mode, the Zen will know which songs to play next and will load 16MB at a time into memory. However, if you are on shuffle mode, the Zen doesn't always know what the next song will be and will access the hard drive more often.

If your player is accessing the hard drive constantly, there might be something wrong with your player.

 

[Ingo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by GSTom1 /img/forum/go_quote.gif I think the Zen Vison: M has 16MB of buffer memory. That means that each time it plays, it should load two or three MP3s into the memory at a time. If you're playing in normal mode, the Zen will know which songs to play next and will load 16MB at a time into memory. However, if you are on shuffle mode, the Zen doesn't always know what the next song will be and will access the hard drive more often. If your player is accessing the hard drive constantly, there might be something wrong with your player.

I would think that the CPU of the ZVM could compute what songs to cache next in shuffle mode based on the algorithm it uses for "random play".

There is a known battery life issue with DRM files on the ZVM. The player not being able to cache DRM files would explain that.