(This message being cross-posted to the BBS and to [email protected])

Consumer beta 9: It seems to intermittently forget its EQ settings now when I'm swapping it between home and car. I programmed and saved settings in my car, brought it inside, programmed and saved settings inside, took it to the car, and preset showed all flat again. But when I took it inside, it had the inside presets still in its memory. Then I rebooted it again, and it forgot the home presets (everything shows flat now).

Also, when I first go into the EQ menu after a reboot, it displays the first preset with the wrong name ("1. Custom" instead of "1. Flat") even though I think it's actually at the second preset that I created ("2. Custom"). Because when I press the DNPP button it jumps from 1 to 3. When I scroll around to the first preset again, it correctly displays "1. Flat" and works OK from then on until the next reboot.

/me ponders whether to go back to 8c or not...

(Note: This message is being cross-posted to both the BBS and to [email protected])

I've been working with the interim test build, Beta 9+, and I have a few more specific details of what's going on wiht the new EQ code.



For starters, let me say what I believe the expected behavior is intended to be. If I've got this wrong, then all of my bug reporting efforts are useless. Okay here's what I think it's SUPPOSED to do:

- There are sixteen different equalizer presets, starting with "1. Flat" followed by "2. Custom" through "16. Custom". Custom settings can be programmed into any slot from #2 on, and a custom name can be assigned to them. (Actually, I haven't tried to reprogram "1. Flat" yet, it's possible that it'd let me re-do that one, too if I wanted, I dunno.)

- When you move the unit between your home and your car, it should swap the presets with another set that's unique to the environment you're plugging it into. Each of the sixteen presets should have two "personalities", one for home and one for car. The appropriate personality should automatically come up when you move between the two locations. The unit detects the difference between the two locations by sensing which power supply is being used (car docking sleeve or AC adaptor port).

- When you program a given EQ preset in your car, for example "6. Custom", and you hit "save", it should permanently save that preset in that slot for the "car" personality. When you do the same thing while you're in the house, it should permanently save the "home" personality in slot 6.

- If a given EQ preset is selected (for example, "6. Custom"), and you move the unit from home to car, it should stay on preset number 6, and only switch the personality, not the actual preset. In this example, it would switch to the car personality of preset number 6 rather than reverting to "1. Flat" when the unit is moved.

- If the two personalities have a different number of channels, for instance if the "car" personality is 4-channel and the "home" personality is 2-channel, then the appropriate switch should be made. For example, it should not revert to 2-channel mode when I move it to the car.

- The 4-channel mode has fewer EQ bands (five per speaker) than the 2-channel mode (ten per speaker). To compensate for this, the 4-channel mode has more widely spaced frequency centers, allowing the same range of frequencies to be covered in 4-channel mode, just with less fine detail.



Okay, that's how I believe the EQs are intended to work. Now here's what I think is happening in beta 9:

- It is only remembering the last "personality" I programmed for a given preset. It is not remembering two personalities. For instance, if I save the "car" personality, it forgets the "home" personality and sets it to all flat. And vice versa.

- When in 4-channel mode, it is somehow allowing all ten frequencies to be editable, just in a very strange way. The lowest five bands are editable on the front speaker, and the highest five bands are editable on the back speakers. (This happens to work great for me, since I want to attenuate the low frequencies on the front speakers and attenuate the high-mids on the back speakers, so it sounds great on my system, but I don't think that's what you intended.)

- When cycling through the presets, if I cycle from a 2-channel preset to a 4-channel preset, the 4-channel preset reverts to 2-channel when I get to it.

- When I swap between home and car, it reverts to two-channel mode, even if the car preset is 4-channel.

- After the unit is rebooted, the numeric indicator that displays which preset number is selected, reverts to "1" even if the selected preset is not "1". For instance, if I have "6. MyPreset" selected, if I reboot the unit, it displays "1. MyPreset" when I go to the EQ menu. This looks odd, since preset number 1 is actually named "Flat", not "MyPreset". When I press the button to cycle the presets, it jumps from "1. MyPreset" to "7. MyPreset", indicating that "6" was selected all along and it was just the display number that was wrong.

- Sometimes, when using the + and - buttons on the remote to adjust a given frequency band in 4-channel mode, the frequency "glitches" and reverts to 0db. For example, I might have a given frequency bar almost all the way to the bottom of the screen, and the I press the - or + button, and -pop!- the bar goes back up to 0db. This was very intermittent and I couldn't find a pattern as to what caused it exactly.



That's all I can think of for right now. Am I right that these are bugs, or is the intended behavior of the EQs different than what I'm expecting?




-Tony Fabris
Serial number 144
Caution: Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.

- When I swap between home and car, it reverts to two-channel mode, even if the car preset is 4-channel.

Strike that. Actually, it reverts to 2-channel mode every time it's rebooted (full power loss), regardless of whether it's being swapped between home and car.


-Tony Fabris
Serial number 144
Caution: Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.

For anyone reading this thread, they've fixed every single one of the problems I posted here. They sent me some interim builds to test, and these all seem to be fixed in the last interim build. These fixes will probably be released as Beta 9a very soon (probably tomorrow morning).



-- Tony Fabris -- Empeg #144 --
Caution: Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.