Shanling M1s - Compact Portable Player (Discontinued)

[hanskey]

As I know that limit is related to sqlite3 library performance on Ingenic X1000E in HiBy OS. In latest HiBy OS (Tempotec V3 fw v1.0) that limit is 50000. The previous way to fix that limit was manual patching the binary (another one) and obviously limited by max value of 16 bit unsigned integer 65535 or 0xFFFF. Last known mod by snoopy112 set that limit to 65000 (0xFDE8) https://www.head-fi.org/threads/the...oved-sound-and-bluetooth.872288/post-15300999
There was no technical statement about lack performance same realization of sqlite3 library on X2000E yet.

So basically what I said - change one number, issue gone. Just unacceptable.

This also confirms my other, unvoiced, hypothesis that the track limitation in library comes from someone that is not the end user deciding what acceptable performance looks like and not from a true limitation.

Most certainly the Fiio M3K has a noticeable performance dip on X1000E when you throw 50,000+ tracks at it, and yet I found that to be an acceptable tradeoff to be able to load and play all my music, and easily swap between shuffle-all tracks and playing individual albums sequentially, all without draining my phone battery.

Anyway, I'm done with this topic. It's within Shanling's power to fix this and they don't have any valid excuse.

In the meantime, these devices are a hard pass for me and I regret spending the money on it. At a minimum, any artificial track # limitations of the software should be listed in the product information available where these are sold, not just in this forum, so users are not stuck with a device that can never be what they thought they were buying. As of yet, after 6 years of this limitation, it is not spelled out in any of Shanling's product documentation provided to sellers and reviewers, leaving the public to find out the hard way. That's not a good way to build brand loyalty, period.

For those of you tempted to advise me to just get a headphone DAC/AMP for my phone to make it all better - save it for a newb. I've owned several, and now own 0. All I got was much worse battery life of phone, extra device to charge, meh SQ "improvement," and extra cables and bulk in the pocket. I absolutely will "settle" for "less good" SQ from phone's headphone-out than put up with that nonsense again, and since I only use highly sensitive headphones, the amp section is irrelevant in the first place.

Edit: I've been in this forum or lurking for nearly a decade seeking price-performance sweet spot equipment so I can afford to collect an ass-ton of actual music. TotL isn't interesting to me, because that inhibits the whole reason for good sound equipment - listening to more and more good music. I collect several hundred new albums a year, so hyper-expensive and usually fragile gear is a non-starter.

Peace out

 

[Sudmanche]

@Shanling Are there any developers still actively working on fixes for the M1S? i.e. will there be any more fixes, or is this the final software version?
If they are working, can you let us know which items they are looking to fix please? for me the button issue is critical, without a fix for this I cannot justify keeping the player, and it will be going back in 5 days unless I know it will get fixed.

 

[pietro77]

I don't have any hope that they will fix this issue.
Another bug, when resume mode is set on location and for instance I listen one folder and turn off unit at some point, it remember position, but if after power up I go from that position to another folder, listen it whole and let unit off itself(when I fall asleep), after power up it back to the position from first folder, more intuitive is that after power up it will start with 1st song of second folder.

 

[Shanling]

@Shanling Are there any developers still actively working on fixes for the M1S? i.e. will there be any more fixes, or is this the final software version?
If they are working, can you let us know which items they are looking to fix please? for me the button issue is critical, without a fix for this I cannot justify keeping the player, and it will be going back in 5 days unless I know it will get fixed.

Yes, it's still on the list of our supported models. But we don't have any info on when is next firmware update planned or what it will include.

 

[Vaventus]

Hello. @Shanling , is there an answer from the engineers on the question of how to properly disassemble the player for repair?

 

[Phred68]

My goodness. Twenty THOUSAND songs isn't enough on a portable DAP? Talk about 1st world problems. That is literally MONTHS of listening. I have about 500 hi-res favourites in a mix folder, plus about 200 albums in their own folders. I can't listen to everything as it is. I just make an occasional switcheroo of tracks/albums to freshen things up. Anyway, my two cents. If anyone is offended, sorry. I just feel we should focus on feedback for performance and function. Cheers all!

 

[XTF1]

My goodness. Twenty THOUSAND songs isn't enough on a portable DAP? Talk about 1st world problems. That is literally MONTHS of listening. I have about 500 hi-res favourites in a mix folder, plus about 200 albums in their own folders. I can't listen to everything as it is. I just make an occasional switcheroo of tracks/albums to freshen things up. Anyway, my two cents. If anyone is offended, sorry. I just feel we should focus on feedback for performance and function. Cheers all!

It’s not about listening to all the tracks in a row from #1 to #20,000, it’s about not having to decide what you bring with you and what you don’t… Being able to listen whatever you want, whenever you want, wherever you are…
If I had to choose 500 “favorites”, I’m sure the next track I want to listen to is exactly the one I didn’t copy on my DAP, precisely in this place where I can’t stream it.

 

[InvisibleInk]

Our team talked about this with our software department multiple times. This limit has been in our system since 2018 and software team so far hasn't adjusted it.

Easy. Ditch MtouchOS and license HiByOS for all your devices. Downsize the intransigent software team to only those necessary for installing and supporting HiByOS.

Problem solved.

 

[hanskey]

My goodness. Twenty THOUSAND songs isn't enough on a portable DAP? Talk about 1st world problems. That is literally MONTHS of listening. I have about 500 hi-res favourites in a mix folder, plus about 200 albums in their own folders. I can't listen to everything as it is. I just make an occasional switcheroo of tracks/albums to freshen things up. Anyway, my two cents. If anyone is offended, sorry. I just feel we should focus on feedback for performance and function. Cheers all!

Not offended, but isn't the entirety of head-fi devoted to solving first-world problems?

If the limit was advertised, which it is not, I just wouldn't have bought it, because I would have known it didn't suit me - no biggie. Obviously I found out about the limit after I could return it for a refund, so I simply want a feature added that other similar DAPs have.

I don't only listen to hires, because a lot of my music isn't even available in hires and I've been collecting music for decades. I thought I was buying a DAP that could hold the whole collection without compromise, since 1 TB is available, and my cheaper M3K can handle the collection.

I didn't get what I thought I was buying.

Yeah, it can hold it, but I have to choose to either shuffle-all by removing all subfolders or live with only album/artist playthrough and keep the subfolders. Removing all the files from 6000+ subfolders is literally weeks of work, so, of course I'm not satisfied and displeased the limit wasn't disclosed except to be buried in this thread.

Cheers!

 

[Phred68]

Not offended, but isn't the entirety of head-fi devoted to solving first-world problems?

If the limit was advertised, which it is not, I just wouldn't have bought it, because I would have known it didn't suit me - no biggie. Obviously I found out about the limit after I could return it for a refund, so I simply want a feature added that other similar DAPs have.

I don't only listen to hires, because a lot of my music isn't even available in hires and I've been collecting music for decades. I thought I was buying a DAP that could hold the whole collection without compromise, since 1 TB is available, and my cheaper M3K can handle the collection.

I didn't get what I thought I was buying.

Yeah, it can hold it, but I have to choose to either shuffle-all by removing all subfolders or live with only album/artist playthrough and keep the subfolders. Removing all the files from 6000+ subfolders is literally weeks of work, so, of course I'm not satisfied and displeased the limit wasn't disclosed except to be buried in this thread.

Cheers!

Fair enough. We all have different needs, so I get that. If it really is an easy fix, then that needs to happen pronto.

 

[hanskey]

Fair enough. We all have different needs, so I get that. If it really is an easy fix, then that needs to happen pronto.

Yeah, I was really grouchy about it, but I won't waste any more energy being angry about it. I will keep pressuring Shanling to make their very good players great and not buy any more of their products and recommend that others pick a brand that cares more about user's feedback until the issue is resolved. At which point, I will be happy to buy and recommend their products to others.

There's really several easy ways this issue could be resolved:

1. Bump up the track limit in the library DB from 20,000 to a higher number relevant for 1TB of storage. This is legitimately easy with the trade-off that the DB may be noticeably slower, like with the less powerful Fiio M3K.

2. Add a command to "shuffle-all tracks" to the File Browsing interface, and enable that command to work with structured subfolders. Also pretty darn easy fix, and without slowing the DB.

Neither of those are hard to implement as they were solved in other players on similar or less powerful hardware (and once available at less than half the price) at least 4 years ago.

The issue appears to be that Shanling doesn't have the ability to get their own dev team to resolve this issue, which has been requested time and again for over 6 years, so that's a really embarrassing state of affairs. I'm not privy to any insider information and can only speculate why the dev team is allowed to screw up the brand's image in the marketplace, but this isn't actually a hard problem.

The devs just haven't listened to their *paying customers* for over 6 years and frankly the reason(s) for that are beside the point. The paying customers don't care anyway. We just want the issues resolved. Given this history of not listening to *paying customers*, the lack of action moves from mildly annoying to outright anti-customer, anti-money-making behavior which is totally bizarre and unfortunate from a for-profit company, especially when they don't advertise this limit anywhere you can purchase the device, nor anywhere the device was reviewed.

Have a great day!!

 

[kristwi]

Where are the Firmware Change Notes for 2.6? I cant find anything online. @Shanling

 

[isayfu]

Where are the Firmware Change Notes for 2.6? I cant find anything online. @Shanling

The release notes are already posted on their website.
They seem to have solved the problem with the play button not working after waking up. It still doesn't work without waking up, but it works right after.

 

[Vaventus]

Good time of day. The representative of Shanling could not tell me how to properly disassemble the player. But when I took the suction cup and looked at the case, I realized that the back cover was being removed. Be careful when removing it, as the battery is glued to it and it is very easy to damage the contacts. I want to note that none of the phone repair centers wanted to take on this job, I had to do it myself.

 

[rastikae]

The player does not connect in USB DAC mode to phones C24 and C23 - message - high load, requires an external power source, connects to A53. Sadness(