[Chank]

Quote:

Back on database problems, is anyone getting perfect scans. With the current firmware and last firmware I get a full song list but only albums and artists that precede the letter A. With firmware 1.30 I get full album and artists but the song list is empty. I'm using a stock AK100 with two 64gb cards and music on both. There are over 8000 songs but well less than 10,000.

 
Nope, I have taken to using Media Rage to ensure all my tags are V2.3 and are not dual tagged with a V1, meaning only the single tag type. and art work is re-applied and I only have about 1000 songs on mine. Even then it sometimes does stupid things. Also, the usb mounting is really kludgy, sometimes it mounts; sometimes not. And sometimes when it does there are no directory listings.
 
Software still has a long way to go. If Apple stuck a decent DAC in the iPhone, I won't even bother using this thing at all and it's slowly getting to the point where it's not worth the trouble anyways. There is dire need to release a firmware update to clean up a lot of the other problems too.
 
edit: also, I'm using 1.33
edit2: after trying to get it to recognize two particular tracks for the last 30 minutes, I totally striped all id3 tags and re-added them and that seemed to for some reason make it scan them correctly...

 

[tm.chen]

That is what I did too. iRiver should have the DAP recognize, v2.3 first instead of v1. That would make things a lot easier.
 

 

[Chank]

Quote:

That is what I did too. iRiver should have the DAP recognize, v2.3 first instead of v1. That would make things a lot easier.
 

 
You'd think that after years of making music players that this is something they should have perfected by now. It's a no brainer to have flawless id3 tag support. A checkdown implementation of some sort would be ideal though it would take longer to process and if they improved their scanner it would likely be unnoticeable. 

 

[jamato8]

So when the gapless? I was emailed by customer service months ago they were working on it. Recently again that they are working to get it out. So, when?

 

[kkcc]

Quote:

Back on database problems, is anyone getting perfect scans. With the current firmware and last firmware I get a full song list but only albums and artists that precede the letter A. With firmware 1.30 I get full album and artists but the song list is empty. I'm using a stock AK100 with two 64gb cards and music on both. There are over 8000 songs but well less than 10,000.

 
I have had the AK100 and now AK120 but haven't ran into too much problem.  I only have about 60gb of files (~2500 songs) though. 
 
A few tips on the db scan/operation I gathered from various post tho not necessarily related to your current problem but I'm hoping would be useful for anyone reading:
1. make sure you leave enough empty space on both cards - I recall someone having issue with songs not appearing when very full card.  Try to leave 500mb per card and on the internal flash and see if that helps.
2. would you have multiple character encoding in your ID3 tags?  I found that not all the encoding are supported and may cause the database to not recognize some songs.  I have had a number of chinese tags mixed with GB and BIG5 characters that I probably copied and pasted from the web (too lazy to type) causing me issue (that was my AK100 with 1.20 firmware).  I need to manually repair those tags to the same encoding characters and it worked for me.
3. files with identical ID3 tags would not be added even if they are in different phyiscal folders and of different file type.  I was trying to compare SQ of 320CBR mp3s, FLACs, and WAVs but the files I added later won't show up.
4. Album art needs to be small (less that 500x500pixels) or else sometimes they won't show up
5. I usually turn auto-scanning off.  After doing a rip and copied to the AK, I prefer to browse via Folder to make sure my tags and album art are showing properly and make sure I'm done copying things over before I do a manual scan (and I usually would only start the scan when I finally manage to stop listening to it).
6. a few of my old mp3s ripped with VLC may cause the song to end a second or so early and ruin gapless playback for me.  Re-ripping with Foobar+LAME resolved this for me.  But I would usually just rip to FLAC whenever I'm re-ripping these days.
 
cheers

 

[kkcc]

^
 
also, forgot to mentioned, if all else failed, no harm to reset the AK via the Advanced menu.  It would delete all db files and reconstruct it with the next scan.  Tho you'd lose any playlist you have created (personally I don't use it so I always do a reset after I change/copied a large amount of files to the AKs).

 

[Chank]

I think all your suggestions are part of whats wrong. We shouldn't have to "massage" our music to get the AK1** to load anything properly. Theory being is that if a standard music player (iTunes, Fubar, whatever) doesn't have problems with it, then neither should a "premium" hi-fi portable player.

 

[Currawong]

Looks like when choosing a DAP it is always going to be a case of:
 
1. Great sound quality.
2. High-res playback.
3. Good software.
Pick any two.

 

[bh2001]

Glad to know it's not just me. I hope the Iriver people reading this thread take note. It's a shame a player that sounds so good is such a pain to deal with. Hoping that some new firmware will fix some of these problems.

 

[kenman345]

Quote:

Looks like when choosing a DAP it is always going to be a case of:
 
1. Great sound quality.
2. High-res playback.
3. Good software.
Pick any two.

or the Tera, which has it's own set of compromises.
 
I've found that for me, it's gonna be about what my needs are at the time and how I see myself using a portable player. Right now, the RWAK100 made sense for me. In the future, who knows. and just because I like the RWAK100, doesn't mean I think it's perfect. 
 
I think their is a lot left wanting with this device, but as far as I can tell, it's all software based. This means that as long as they continue to work on it, which seems like something they've been committed to do based on what they've done so far and their need to be competitive against companies like iBasso who has quite impressively continued to come out with updates for their device, which I felt was quite unusable without several hours of training with it. I do not know how much better it has gotten but I hear less and less complaints about it these days. I hope and am confident that Astell & Kern (AKA iRiver) will not disappoint if we continue to give them feedback and offer solutions and not just complaints about their software. It's just gonna be a matter of time, which to some people will be too long of a wait.
 
I gotta admit I really have been enjoying my RWAK100 a lot so far and while I wish I had both my Tera Player and the RWAK100, I don't regret just owning one of them.

 

[AmberOzL]

Quote:

Looks like when choosing a DAP it is always going to be a case of:
 
1. Great sound quality.
2. High-res playback.
3. Good software.
Pick any two.

Just wanted to click on 'this is helpful' button but I noticed I can't do that with your posts. Cuz you are an admin I guess?
 
Anyway, I couldn't agree more. However the dap market is getting quite hot. I think we can a few devices that do all in one. I have my hopes on FiiO X5, iBasso DX50 and a big bad boy HM901.

 

[Achmedisdead]

Quote:

Just wanted to click on 'this is helpful' button but I noticed I can't do that with your posts. Cuz you are an admin I guess?
 
 

I think a lot of us would have if we could have.

 

[Anthony1]

Has anybody modded the AK100 with a dedicated line out?

 

[kkcc]

Has anybody modded the AK100 with a dedicated line out?

Vinnie is planning to do that AFAIK

 

[audionewbi]

Quote:

Vinnie is planning to do that AFAIK

He is planning to do it with a different DAC, which I think might be too much. I would hate to imagine how much that would cost considering how the current resistor bypass cost $250 plus shipping. I would imagine it will be very expensive.