Neo S - reproducible crash

Hi,

I've just picked up a Neo S which I am very impressed with. However, I'm experiencing a reproducible crash in the Music Player app. and wanted to check if others where having the same problem or had other accommodations to recommend.

I'm on firmware V6.6.92, which is a big step-up from .85 which I was on previously.

I've got a number of sources on Synology NAS, split across Films in multiple folders by formats, TV series and music.

Films and TV are pre-scraped using TMM to create posters, folders NFO files etc. and Neo S is then set to use local information during its own scraping.

This all works well - no issues and only minor file tidy-ups for unmatched files.

Music is set up in a structure along the lines of :

A-
- artists beginning with A
- albums by artist
B-
- artists beginning with B
- albums by artist
C-
- artists beginning with C
- albums by artist

etc.

All albums are scanned and tagged by MusicBrainz Picard.

This also works well, up to a point. I have 65K+ tracks scanned from LPs and CDs over many decades of music collection and listening.

At some point, typically, when the Music Player app scans to around R - S - T - U - V in the file structure, it crashes and reverts to front screen.

At this point 'all hell breaks loose'.

My normal response is - it crashed, OK - rescan, except I keep getting 'Bluetooth app' crash notifications, but only after a power cycle following the crash.

These do NOT stop. Rebooting the unit takes an exceptional length of time and once completed either presents the usual menu and app crash notifications or, on one occasion' reverted to a 'command line interface' on the OLED display allowing for factory reset option selection.

I have to do a full factory reset losing all the many days worth of file scanning to make the crash notification 'go away'.

I have been able to reproduce this 3+ times until I gave up with the Music Player app.

I initially assumed I had a dry joint on the board and that running the scan for so long to scan the music library was causing a Bluetooth issue, This error does NOT occur if I keep the unit on for 24hr+, so I ruled this out.

I have also loaded ZBMC (19.1) and scanned everything without issue, pointing to a Music Player app problem. I assume a data-base error / memory leak causing the Bluetooth app stack to crash.

As there are so few Neo S 'in the wild', I thought I'd flag the issue. Using ZBMC for music play-back isn't ideal and using the file manager to select music to play doesn't give access to the full range of file playback.

The option not to have the full folder structure accessible but 'unscanned' in Music Player app is frustrating effectively locking me out of the app.

I haven't tried not scanning Films / TV and only scanning music to see what happens, however whether this is successful or unsuccessful, it again points to a database issue.

Interested in your thoughts / suggestions.

David

 

As a quick update, posting on this forum prompted me to have another go scanning my music library.

Again, the app crashed back to the main menu and posted the Bluetooth crash notification:



I shut down the Neo S, rebooted and the Bluetooth app crash notification kept reappearing.

This time, I cleared the database inside the MusicPlayer App and rescanned.



So far so good.... and no Bluetooth app crash issues!



then:



This is progress. I'm going to try a rescan and see what happens....

D

 

I would recommend enabling DLNA on your Synology NAS just for music, and than stream music from the NAS. MP is a nightmare, you will find plenty of similar experiences that you have, here on forum.

 

Thanks Muha.

The scan crashed again before completion - so frustrating when ZBMC just seems to work 'out of the box'...

I've enable dlna on my Synology music server and, as I'm starting to appreciate, all my dlna equipment can see the files except for the Neo S.

I may have to just put up with playing music through the file manager until this gets sorted out.

I want to access my files using SMB / NFS in a searchable and extendable database. I'm now worried that if I finally am successful in creating a fully scanned music database when I come to add a new album the whole thing will collapse.

So much promise and potential with hardware that is 'held back' by the software.

At least the video side of things is generally mature and stable. Hopefully Music Player reaches the same peak in the best future.

D

 

If you have enabled DLNA than you can use MP to browse and play DLNA shares - go to Network (above Settings icon) and scan UPnP.

You should subscribe to these two threads
http://forum.zidoo.tv/index.php?thr...ther-knowhow-for-hifi-players-playback.86336/

http://forum.zidoo.tv/index.php?threads/how-to-tag-and-structure-music-collection-for-mp.91886/

 

Thanks Muha. I'm going to try duplicating my music library in a Neo S MP 'friendly' format to see what happens based off your second link. Interestingly, my file structure isn't too far away from what is proposed as 'best practice', just sitting under a few more layers of folder branching.

It's only 1.8TB in size, so no issues, right ? ...

 

If that is your original plan I say go for it, if not, wait little bit longer, MP7 is in development.
I have bit over 8000 tracks from CDs that I ripped last summer, and I still have issues when I add some new CD.
Try not to move them all at same time, but rather artist by artist so you could narrow culprit.

 

I'll keep the forum posted - so far have added just over 1000 albums (up to artists beginning with letter C) - so far so good.

I keep find old 'gems' I had forgotten about ... I'm sure most of these CDs have been out of print for a long time !!

D

 

I find myself listening more to jazz and classical these days, all those CD sets that I haven't played in years.

BTW somebody shared this nice little demo from 2L on forum
http://www.2l.no/hires/

 

Yea - I've listened to most of the free stuff there - it is a good place to start when you are auditioning your HiFi set up

 

Awesome - I quite like a bit of Bach - the Paul McCartney of his age, I reckon....

 

I didn't know that. As we all know MP6 is complete rubbish so MP7 needs to be one hell of a lot better. I'd say it needs to be on a par with or better than UAPP (USB Audio Player Pro) for me to be persuaded.

Got to admit I'm a massive fan of Macca

 

@dryan01uk meet @rozel an old school audiophile, bridging old machinery with new ones, comes with a warning, he is allergic to multichannel.

@rozel MP7 might not be what we want, I guess that Zidoo´s main target is still Chinese market.

 

Haha! Of course you are correct ("audio only" multichannel though). That said has anyone auditioned the newly released 5.1 Atmos - Tears For Fears "The Tipping Point"? Got to say it sounds amazing. I haven't read enough about exactly how it was recorded though - if it was recorded as such and not a remix, then I might have another go at audio surround sound. And lest I forget, I used to champion a DTS conversion forum some years ago - making DTS CD's from normal ones - until my great friend from over the pond died suddenly - I was really knocked back after that. Maybe now is the time to re-convert me guys? - ps. don't tell @Nice Monkey though as we have had a few ding-dongs on the subject lol!

 

I tried listening UP(scaled) DTS of Leonard Cohen´s Popular Problems CD and I really liked it - vocal was centralized, deep and clear and I had better subwoofer response. But still I prefer more listening CD in multichannel stereo mode.

 

Hmmm. MP7 is really needed. It always intrigues me that music library management can't look / feel / function the same way that other media is handled. Surely the database back-end / scraping / networking should be similar, accepting that the data structure is different - I'd 'love' a posterwall of album art to select music from, similar to how HT4/ KODI does it for Movies. Nothing seems to close that gap though - even music handling in KODI is a bit of an afterthought.

ROON integration will make a huge difference when available - maybe that's what Zidoo are waiting for with release of MP7? Of course, the Neo S does not have access to Google Apps which is also a bit restrictive (but I'm OK with that if functionality is sound).

In terms of music listening - I'm pretty much genre agnostic - as long as I enjoy it. I do prefer good stereo over all other formats - unless 5.1 is accompanied by visuals. MCH Stereo can be fun, but the imagery from good stereo is hard to beat. I was listening to 'Imagine' by John Lennon recently after a few years break, and the ability to shut your eyes and sense a visual image of him and the band in front of me was quite astounding.

I grew up on UK / Celtic Punk and New Romantics, 70's Glam Rock and listened to my parents LPs from the 50's / 60's (and my grandparents old 78's from the 30's and 40's when the size of the stylus could be mistaken for a knitting needle), and have grown into Blue Grass Country, Jazz, Opera and some of the Classics - Dwight Yoakam anyone?

My wife is Chinese so I also can 'bop along' to Anita Miu when appropriate .... As I said, as long as I enjoy it, I will listen to it.

Broadcast TV / Streamed TV shows is lost on me however, apart from Aussie Rules and Cricket.

I've also read that there has been a recent re-release of Elton John material remastered in 5.1 which is 'amazing' apparently - not heard it myself yet, but some of the discussion on how it was remixed is very interesting

D.

 

Just got an OTA update to v.6.6.96 that indicates 'Roon Ready' - time for a play....

 

WOW! Roon works ... yah!

 

As an FYI, I've continued to duplicate and rename all my files using the recommended naming conventions. I've split music by folder using the first letter of the artist's name then added each as an individual source:



then each folder holds :


as recommended in the naming convention forum topic. The only modification I've added is a year info, so : Artist - Album (year)

Each folder has 3k-5k tracks. I've mixed and matched scanning different folders to see which one may be causing a database crash. No individual folder will cause the scan to fail and then trigger the Bluetooth app crash.

When I scan a collection of individual folders - it doesn't matter which ones - as soon as I get to around 33k-35k tracks scanned, the database consistently crashes. I've tried 'creeping up' on this limit once I realised there appears to be a hard limit, but that doesn't seem to make a difference. The only other thing I haven't tried yet, is to see if there is a scan time limit and I keep hitting a 'time out' point.

Either way, I am unable to scan my music library in MP6. Roon works. ZMBC works. Neither allow easy manipulation of the internal playback DAC parameters.

I hope this info assists with bug elimination for MP7, as I'd really like to get this working. Either way, I'm happy that Roon Ready works well.

If anyone can recommend further refinement or testing to carry out, please let me know and I'll happily give it a go. I'd also be interested in knowing if anyone else has managed to get MP6 working. It would appear from reading the forums that it still a very unstable product.

D

 

Use MP6 a lot with all kinds of formats but honestly don't use the library at all yet. Just use the File Browser to select my albums or playlists instead for now.
The MP player part itself got quite stable in my experience.

Agreed still enough work to be done with MP.