Elsewhere on this BBS, one of the Empeg folks said that 10a was on its way soon. They said it would be the "big one", the one they announced on the mailing list. So I thought I would start a thread with the following premise:

- Assuming that they only have, say, a week to work on 10a, and
- Assuming that Beta 10 is mostly feature-complete (for now) and all they're looking for is tweaks and fixes...

What are the drop-dead tweaks and fixes that you think absolutely must go into 10a? I'm hoping that we can all trust each other to limit this discussion to absolute must-have can't-wait but easy-to-do-at-the-last-minute fixes only. Not new features or things that would take a lot of development time to fix.

Personally, I'm pretty happy with Beta 10. There are some pie-in-the-sky things I've wished for elsewhere, but I won't bring them up in this thread. In fact, I have only one wish for 10a and I'll use it to kick off this thread:

When you shuffle-play a parent playlist, the unit should remove duplicates (identical file ID's) from the list before shuffling it. For example, when I shuffle the whole unit (press the bottom button three times), it repeats too many tunes because they are in multiple playlists.

Okay, anyone else?

Tony Fabris
Empeg #144

Mike is going to kill me now :-) We're not intending to put much new functionality into 10A, we just want to make sure that 10 is totally stable before announcing it to the world at large.

Rob

We're not intending to put much new functionality into 10A, we just want to make sure that 10 is totally stable before announcing it to the world at large.

Well, there's no reason you guys have to listen to the suggestions in this thread, of course.

IMHO, the "shuffle play repeats songs" thing is an important fix rather than a new feature, but it's up to you guys to make that kind of a call. Our job is to just throw stuff at you and see what sticks, right?

There's already been a couple of good genuine bug reports on Beta 10, and I'm sure those are at the top of your list.

Tony Fabris
Empeg #144

Beta10a will be as close to beta10 as possible. Only extremely minor, localised tweaks will be applied since stability is the goal of beta10a. In fact, I believe that most of the changes are already done.

It is very unlikely that anything mentioned in this thread will make it into beta10a.

--
Mike Crowe
I may not be speaking on behalf of empeg above :-)

OK, then... Um... 10b must-haves, then?

Tony Fabris
Empeg #144

> "shuffle play repeats songs" thing is an important fix rather than a new feature

Shuffle mode is on our list for major rework - there's no point fixing the current version as it will be replaced in the not too distant future.

Rob

How about slowing down the volume (left/right button press) control from the buttons. I find that it goes from LOUD to quiet so quickly, I'm constantly pressing the left/right keys to get the right volume.

Just my personal annoyance.

Perhaps it could be configurable?

Paul.

Paul Haigh, 6GB, Blue
Reg: 4120 - Serial 00254

How about slowing down the volume (left/right button press) control from the buttons. I find that it goes from LOUD to quiet so quickly, I'm constantly pressing the left/right keys to get the right volume

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On that note, how about SPEEDING UP the volume from left/right? it goes too slow for me:)

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Perhaps it could be configurable?

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It really should be an option...


...proud to have one of the first Mark I units

The only criticism I can think of is the new naming for the new visuals and the info menus. Why call a visual 'VISUAL'? I'd much rather have a sequence number instead of the word 'visual'. It'll save screen estate and will make it a lot easier to find back the visuals I like.

Same goes for the info-screens: the purpose of the screens is obvious that they don't need a title. Moreover, the titles obscure the content of the screens.

I suggest to eliminate the titles completely.

No need to hurry, though. I can wait to 10b . Beta-10 is great.

Henno
# 00120 (6GB+18)

What is your plan for the new shuffling?

I'd like to see something that shuffles on demand...or maybe Just In Time shuffling. Rather than pre-shuffling the playlist, have it pick the next song when the current song ends (or for the current/next view, pick the 3rd song out when the current one ends). The main benefit of this is that I could just put the empeg into shuffle mode, then if a song by "The Muffs" (totally rock!) comes on, and I want to hear another by them, I could navigate through to their albums, and append a couple of songs to the current playlist (which would be empty). Then when the current song ends, it will play my 2 picks, then continue with the random play.

As it is now, when I am listening to the empeg-wide shuffle, and I go select a couple of songs, I'll likely never hear them, since they get appended after a few hundred songs.

No plans for a "just in time" shuffle - this is a pain for not duplicating songs (especially when you remember there may be several power cycles during one playlist play).

However, we are adding functions like the original mp3mobile had, which allow you to resort the rest of the random playlist to have the next song from the same artist/album/year. Multiple presses of these buttons would each have an effect, so that (say) pressing 8 three times when listening to leftfield would make sure the next 3 tracks were from leftfield.

The new shuffle will produce an unshuffled playlist, then a shuffled play order, so you can switch in & out of shuffle as you want to.

Hugo

The most logical result of turning shuffle off would be to proceed to the next song in the current playlist -ie. if I were shuffling through, say, 5 playlists and I turned off shuffing while listening to playlist 3, I should get the next song in playlist 3 and so on until I either hit shuffle again or playlist 3 ends.

I don't understand why this is so difficult - current heads do this without difficulty. The side effect of losing the list of previously shuffled songs seems a fair loss, since you did turn shuffle off, but how hard is it to maintain two lists?

Simply, it could operate like this: Person goes to main menu, selects playlists, selects a group of playlists. Empeg begins playing according to default shuffle setting (in this case "on"). Thus it has a built list of songs to shuffle and a position marker.

I decide to turn shuffle off, at which point it should build a new list based on the current song's playlist forward, but maintain the previous list and mark off any songs I listen to in the current list as heard from the shuffled list. If I then decide to continue shuffle mode, it could go back to where it left off in the shuffled list, adjusted for any tunes already makred as heard on both lists.

All previous lists are erased if you return to the main menu and re-select a new playlist. Simple.

The idea is hardly radical or complicated.

As far as I'm concerned, the empeg should act *exactly* like any other head unit in terms of low-level operation, such as shuffle.

I don't understand why this is so difficult - current heads do this without difficulty. The side effect of losing the list of previously shuffled songs seems a fair loss, since you did turn shuffle off, but how hard is it to maintain two lists?

It's not hard. The software just needed some low-level rewrites before they could add that functionality, and they wanted to stabilize some other features of the UI before tackling it. It's precisely what they're going to do in the next big revision.

Tony Fabris
Empeg #144

...erm, that's what I just described in the last line of my post. You can switch in & out of the shuffled order at will.

Hugo