A little help, please…

I get an inordinate number of "Data error (cyclic redundany check)" errors when uploading songs. I get at least one for every two CD's I upload. Judging by the lack of posts mentioning that particular error, I'm clearly having a lot more problems than anybody else.

All of my CD's are ripped w/ secure mode EAC and encoded with various versions of LAME. Encspot and Mp3Trim find no errors with the files that are failing and no software has any problem playing them. I'm using consumer version 2 of the empeg software, but I had the same problems with the prior beta versions.

I've tried a number of things: saving the files in mp3trim, deleting the tags, reripping the files, etc and all have worked occasionally and none have worked consistently.

I do get the occasional “Hard disk not found” error, but it hasn’t happened in a while and every time it has, rebooting the player has taken care of it. So maybe it’s related to the bad cable issue…but the same tracks will fail every time.

It’s extremely frustrating, particularly since it chokes on each offending track for at least 15 minutes, which prevents me from ever doing a quick upload to the player.

Does anybody have any suggestions? Thanks in advance…

Bill

Encspot and Mp3Trim find no errors with the files that are failing and no software has any problem playing them.

Good diagnostic step. Thanks for checking that first before posting.

I do get the occasional “Hard disk not found” error, but it hasn’t happened in a while and every time it has, rebooting the player has taken care of it.

That would tend to indicate a hardware problem that needs to be solved, and could easily be the reason you're getting the errors.

but the same tracks will fail every time.

I'm not certain I buy that. Can you elaborate and be very specific of what/how you're uploading to reliably reproduce the specific-track error on multiple separate occasions?

Some things you didn't mention:

- What version of the player software are you running, and what version of Emplode are you running?

- Are you doing it with USB or Ethernet?

- What operating system are you running?

If the answer to those last two questions are "USB" and "XP", have you looked here?

I'm using the latest version (consumer 2.00) of both the empeg software and emplode, but I had the same problems with the most recent beta. I'm not using hijack. The OS is Windows 98 and I'm connecting over USB.

As far as the same tracks failing every time, I may have overstated that. I've never tried a track more than twice without modifying it. And I've only occassionally tried one more than once. I'll do a more thorough test of that. I'll also give ethernet a try - it's been a while since I used that. I can't remember if I had the same problems with it.

Thanks for the reply. I won’t be at my machine until tonight. I’ll let you know what happens...

I tried four of the tracks again and they all stil got the crc error. I also tried the same four on my backup empeg and they failed on that player as well.

I then opened and saved each of the files in mp3trim (1.77a). After doing that, I was able to upload three of the four files. Btw, MP3trim did not report any errors on the original files.

This is the kind of results I've seen before, where changing the files works some of the time. Sometimes just deleting the tags has allowed me to upload.

Do you ever get these errors? Any suggestions on what to try next? Thanks in advance...

Hmm, interesting. Starting to look like something wrong with the files. I'd be curious to know what the files look like, both before and after the "fix" in MP3trim. I think that if you can do this consistently, that the empeg guys might like to see one of the troublesome files to see if there's something wrong in the importing engine. They are working on the future Rio product lines, and I'm sure they want their MP3 importing engine to be as robust as possible.

Do you ever get these errors?

Nope.

Any suggestions on what to try next?

Start investigating what might be wrong with the files themselves. What's your encoding and tagging procedure?

It is odd… The problem has persisted for me across different versions of EAC and LAME, as well as two different CD drives. I’m currently using the latest EAC (I forget the version number, I’m not at my home PC) and LAME 3.9.0.2 at preset standard. For tagging I usually use the tags from EAC or a tagger I wrote myself. But I have the same problems with files ripped and tagged by others (who generally also use EAC/LAME). And furthermore, it’s persisted across the different versions of emplode, the empeg software and now the USB driver. So it’s pretty hard to pin down.

Do you know if the CRC error detection does more than just ensure that the file is uploaded exactly? What could be wrong with an mp3 file that could cause a CRC error?

I’d be happy to e-mail one of the files to any empeg guys that are willing to look at it, or to anyone willing to try uploading it onto their own player. I think the smallest I have right now is about 4.5MB.

Thanks

Hmmmmmmm. Do you do anything to the files after ripping them? Perhaps running them through some kind of post-process, special tagging, that sort of thing? Or what about FTP? Do the files get transferred to or from an FTP server before touching Emplode?

Oh, and by the way. Did you ever try ethernet? Maybe it's just USB that's flaky.

Well I tried ethernet and I was able to upload all of the files that I couldn’t upload using USB (close to 50 of them). It was very slow – it had transferred 250MB in about 3 hours when I went to bed. I’m not sure if the slow transfer times are attributable to the particular files or not.

Tonight I’ll try uploading both “good” and “bad” files and see if the bad ones are slower on ethernet. I’m also going to try uploading one of the bad files using USB from my work laptop, to see if that makes a difference. I’ll let you know what happens.

It was very slow – it had transferred 250MB in about 3 hours when I went to bed.

Ethernet should be a lot faster than that. I'd suspect something wrong with the network or with the computer's TCP/IP configuration. Did you ever use a "tweak" utility to change the packet size or maxMTU setting of your ethernet configuration? What kind of cables are you using to connect?

Or something wrong with the computer itself, such as a virus or hard disk trouble...

This truely is odd...

It's happening on both of your players, but maybe both players have a bad hard drive cable (very possible if they were RioCars). I seriously doubt that the files themselves are bad because of lame (EAC only creates wavs so that's out of the equation.)

Tony brings up a good point with FTP. That can introduce all sorts of errors if the FTP was setup incorrectly.

My cousin was getting CRC errors with most of the files he downloaded. Ends up it was a bad network card that was dropping packets.

But assuming these mp3s play fine on your computer, I'm leaning towards a hardware or network problem. Do these mp3s exist on your computer or are you accessing them across a home LAN? A bad wireless connection or network traffic could cause problems too...

Maybe reinstall 2.00 on the player?

I think I've found the problem... I connected the USB cable directly from the PC to the empeg without going through the USB hub (a D-Link DSB-H7). I tried seven problem files and they all uploaded very quickly and with no errors! So I guess I've got a bad USB hub... Do you know of any diagnostic tools for such a thing? I always approached it as a file problem, or if not that, the bad cable issue...

As far as the network, I tried ethernet again and uploaded 20MB in about 10 minutes which is still very slow. So clearly there are some problems there. I'm no network expert. I installed a network hoping to share internet access, files and my printer with my work laptop (Win 2000, home pc is Win 98). The internet access worked as soon as I plugged everything in, but I never got the sharing to work. I have limited access to the network settings on my work laptop - in fact I locked myself out of it when I tried to get it to work. I would've hoped they would just see eachother. So, if you have any simple suggestions for getting that to work I would appreciate it. But, I don't expect you to try to debug my networking problems...you've been very helpful already and I think I've now got what I was looking for.

Thanks again,

Bill

So I guess I've got a bad USB hub... Do you know of any diagnostic tools for such a thing?

Yes. Buy a new USB hub of a different brand. USB hubs are a dime a dozen.

So, if you have any simple suggestions for getting that to work I would appreciate it.

Most of the suggestions are in the network troubleshooting steps in the FAQ.

Did you try plugging it directly into the computer with a crossover cable? Do you have more than one computer to try that with? i.e., narrow down whether it's the computer, the wiring, the hub, the card, the settings, etc.

The weird thing is that unless you are experiencing heavy network traffic (such as someone moving large files from one computer to another), I would expect ethernet to either not work at all or work as advertised. Working, but very slow doesn't really sound like a configuration problem.

When you mention how long it's taking, are you including the Rebuilding of that Database? The time it takes to do that depends mostly on the number of tracks you have and not on the connection.

EDIT: Tony's suggestion that possibly some software was installed on your computer to "optimize internet speed" or reduce pings for online gaming is sounding more and more like a possibility too.

I can come up with a number of reasons ethernet can be slow, though, to be honest, most of them are IP misconfigurations.

Look, you've been proven wrong, so stop talking. You've had your say already.

:)

Eh? Hostile much?

Hehe, gotta toss in a quote from The Onion whenever I can.

You might want to try a spyware detector, like Lavasoft's Ad-aware.