Enough already

Originally Posted by sottil

so far i have not found any single malfunctioning of my m6
that would make me switch to any other player out there.
but then, this is no reason for meizu to be content with.
the few nuisances (like automatic shutdown after a few minutes)
should be easily removable by a firmware-update.
i hope meizu firmware-developers will adress these things soon.
till then i prefer to be happy with the player as it is.

Maybe you have not realized of some of the really bad bugs, or maybe only me have them. Here I describe one not too difficult to reproduce. Though there is a workaround for it, I think this is affects to basic functionality and though IT IS A CRITICAL BUG!!!!!

Please try if you can reproduce (I recomend to use an empty miniPlayer to see less files around).

1. I attach to this message a few albums correctly tagged (MP3 format, just 1 second each file to reduce the size of the zip). Extract the ZIP and move to the MUSIC/ directory (http://www.meizume.com/attachment.ph...1&d=1177080472)

2. You have 29 albums under DJ River/ directory. Go to the Music/Albums menu, you should see all of them there. You can also see a total of 397 songs in the Music/All Songs menu, they play correctly (well, just one second :-) ).

3. Here is the bug: go to Music/Artists/DJ River and.... you will not see the 29 albums, just a few of them!!!! I have seen this problem always (almost a year), with every firmware of my TP miniPlayer.


By the way this is NOT specific to the files I send, happens constantly with practically any album I have.

Files are correctly tagged, so that is not the problem. Actually results are random, depending on what you already have in the player and also the file structure you use. Sometimes I have been able to see all the albums correctly for a given artist, other not.

Most people have so many music files in the player that will not realize about this (unless you miss your favourite Music/Artists/Album :-) ).

For me, this is more important than having animated GIFs and lots of useless buggy extras. A music player that looses the music files is simply the worst bug ever :-)

Regards

PS. Workaround: Fortunately, I can play any album from the File browser menu.

As I said in my first post... there's plenty to like.

But then, there's too much to dislike.

I stuck it out for about 6 months. Like many here, I was looking at the firmware release cycle and thought "It'll come together before soon."

You know what though... it didn't, and it's not.

Using this player, you have to put up with things that one shouldn't put up with.

It's a music and video player, but it doesn't manage to do either of those things consistently well.

I guess I can understand the feeling here though. You spent money on the thing, and it hurts to have to admit any flaws in it. I'm not a psychologist, but it reeks of Stockholm Syndrome. So was I for the last 6 months. Now though, it's been enough (hence the title of this thread).

Why should I apologize for flaws and bugs and an attitude that isn't mine?

Meizu is not doing what it should do, and it doesn't help anyone to deny that.

Again, I have to disagree. I use the Meizu a lot for music and it's as good if n ot better thanany other model I've tried. They ALL have a few small glitches here and there, the Meizu's are not really very worrisome.

Video I had problems with, but not the player, just getting good conversion software. Now I use iRiverter, and it works brilliantly.

I can now pick up a Meizu for €70.00 or approx £45.00. For a 4Gb player that's peanuts. There are a number of other nice players out there at similar prices, but the Meizu is smaller and in my opinion better.

For those not happy with the firmware, just think, I remember a time when there was no such thing as firmware updates. I think we're all a little spoilt at this time and need to stop, take a deep breath, then think a little more rationally before posting such negativity.

Originally Posted by richardg

Again, I have to disagree. I use the Meizu a lot for music and it's as good if n ot better thanany other model I've tried. They ALL have a few small glitches here and there, the Meizu's are not really very worrisome.

Video I had problems with, but not the player, just getting good conversion software. Now I use iRiverter, and it works brilliantly.

I can now pick up a Meizu for €70.00 or approx £45.00. For a 4Gb player that's peanuts. There are a number of other nice players out there at similar prices, but the Meizu is smaller and in my opinion better.

For those not happy with the firmware, just think, I remember a time when there was no such thing as firmware updates. I think we're all a little spoilt at this time and need to stop, take a deep breath, then think a little more rationally before posting such negativity.

Perhaps it's blasphemy, but a long long time ago, before anybody even knew the name, I bought one of the first generation iPods (I'm talking 2002 now).

There were several firmware updates for that machine. Each one adding and improving features. Never one taking away something.

It never had any problem with doing what I bought it for: playing MP3 files. Never. The only time it had any kind of problem was when it couldn't access its hard disk anymore when I was in Tibet, crossing a pass at over 5200 meters, but its manual did mention a maximum operating altitude of 3000 meters, and it worked fine (again) at 4800, so I can't really hold that against Apple.

Originally Posted by xx-c

Sorry Ciborj, but why can't i see any bitrate or frequency in your MP3 files ?

No idea, I do see it (32kbps, 32khz) in dbPowerAmp, but can't see in Windows properties.

I generated the cuts with CoolEd. Each file lasts just 1 second, probably windows is not reporting correctly due to the sort length.

Anyway trust me that the miniPlayer bug is independent of that. I can send you the 44kHz/256kbps original files if you prefer, just 700Mb :-)

hello all,

the m6 is a fantastic player.
i think it is the best flash based player out there - the only one with all the features it has, afaik.
after LOTS of research and looking around, I bought two of them. I did not have price considerations, I would have paid twice as much for one.

the two most disappointing things for me are

1/ the menu, the way you have to browse back to the folder you are listening to once you have been to the main menu. (pressing back when seeing the ID3 info on the current playing track should ALWAYS take you back to the folder you browsed to that track from!)
2/ inability to view jpeg images in the mp3 album folder in browse mode, you have the extremely annoying options of delete or cancel!!???

other than those two very annoying things, the feature I'd want most is:
3/ easy accessability to multiple cover art displayed while listening to an album (access to all the images in the same folder as the MP3 files)

the miniplayer is fantastic, there are a few things to grumble about.

mark

BTW - it wouldn't be "Stockholm Syndrome"

It's more along the lines of "sunk-cost fallacy" (but not exactly).

[EDIT]: It's actually even more along the lines of "Confirmation bias"

The tap-up and down has been my usual means of navigation. I find it easier to get where I want using that rather than simply scrolling (for some reason I'm no good at it :P). I really hope this isn't going to be a permanent thing, if it is I might have to stick with 2.003.1

24/25fps, contrast/saturation/brightness controls and proper Audio Sync and I will personaly blow each and every meizu employee*

*subsidiaries and distributors such as Dane-Elec are not elegible, also transportation, food and loging to and from China must be paid for by Meizu with a 4day 3night stop over in Singapor, Thiland and Indonesia.

There are very few people here that regret buying their Meizu, and no one is trying to convince anyone else that you should. from reading the forums, wishlists and reviews of the firmware it appears that nobody here is 100% satified with any of the released firmwares. An OPTION of an open source firmware would only serve to increase choice and perhaps raise satifaction- telling somebody they should be satisfied with Meizu's firmware is subjective and largely irrelevant to the individuals here who are discussing this. If anybody had the knowledge and generosity to have a crack at an open source solution then I, and i'm sure a few others here would be very grateful indeed. The response here from some seems to oppose an ALTERNATIVE which could be very useful to thousands of people, which seems a little bizarre. From the examples of Rockbox and Linksys discussed on this forum could the option, or even the possibility of an open source firmware not be an ideal solution? If there were a non hissing, correct tag reading, non repeating end of songs, album art displaying(properly), ALTERNATIVE user customisable interface for the miniplayer would you turn your nose up and limit your choice just so you can say "i'm content with what Meizu offers"?

If there's a possibility and some enthusiasm lets support that, not resist it. We could all reap the benefits surely?

Originally Posted by ciborj

3. Here is the bug: go to Music/Artists/DJ River and.... you will not see the 29 albums, just a few of them!!!! I have seen this problem always (almost a year), with every firmware of my TP miniPlayer.

yes, i can reproduce this phenomenon with your files!
it shows only the first ten subfolders.
i've also found that some characters of the mp3-files
are not shown correctly but instead show chinese symbols.
for tagging mp3-files i can recommend mp3tag http://www.mp3tag.de/en/index.html.
it has resolved character problems i had with so many mp3 files before,
but of course it is very tedious with so many files.
with my own mp3-files there are no such problems.

i recommend you try to rewrite the tags and see what happens.
it the problem persists the firmware has a severe bug!
but let's hope i does not.

Originally Posted by sottil

yes, i can reproduce this phenomenon with your files!
it shows only the first ten subfolders.
i've also found that some characters of the mp3-files
are not shown correctly but instead show chinese symbols.
for tagging mp3-files i can recommend mp3tag http://www.mp3tag.de/en/index.html.
it has resolved character problems i had with so many mp3 files before,
but of course it is very tedious with so many files.
with my own mp3-files there are no such problems.

i recommend you try to rewrite the tags and see what happens.
it the problem persists the firmware has a severe bug!
but let's hope i does not.

No chinese symbols for me. Months ago, when I bought the miniPlayer I run all my library (over 120Gb) over Mp3tag and also tried eMusic Tag Editor. Now I use MP3 Tag Studio, is my favourite tagger.

Anyhow, none solves the problem. I dont think it has to do with special characters. If you "shake" the files that I sent you (ie. rename directories, move out some files from the player, update MusicLibrary, move in pending files again), the miniPlayer will report a different subset of albums each time.

I even tried just coping a single album and no other one. Each of them works perfect individually. But miniPlayer fails when all together. As I said, if you "shake" files you can even get all of them at the same time. Clearly there are inestabilities in the firmware....

Just imagine with you fill in the full 4GB, for sure the Music Library is always incomplete no matter what you do.

If I value the time that I have lost overcoming bugs and limitations with this player, this has been the most expensive gadget on earth....

i have firmware s 2.002.3 and it is true that music-album correctly
shows all albums but music-artist-album does not show
all albums of a particular artist, but for no apparent reason only with your files, not with my own!
either it's got something to do with the manifold of id3-tag-posssibilities
or it's actually a firmware-bug. it would be extremely helpful
if one of the firmware-writers would come by in order to express his/her opinion on this and other topics.

Originally Posted by Darkweb

And for some reason im sure meizu is only concerned with what their japanese customers think

Why would Meizu, a Chinese company, one of the largest populations in the world, be worried about what the Japanese think? I thought they were more interested in establishing themselves in the North American market. I can't imagine they would even try to compete in Japan.

If you don't want to read all of this, skip to the sound bugs part and read that, if anything, so you know there ARE problems that need fixed, and what they are.

First thing I'd like to say is that I like my M6 enopugh to keep it as well, and love the sound quality, which is the main reason I got the M6, so I'm happy in that respect. It plays flac files better than 2 Winamp plugins, and plays everything else just as good as Winamp (equalizer settings on both to give the right sound for the type of player, of course).

Now, I'm gonna have my say here now, too, after 3 times requesting to fix the same things I see are still there... from 6 months ago when I got my TP version for $220 at the only place I found that sold them here in the US. I'm not very happy with these "updates", either. In no way should you remove something from an update unless there have been complaints about it. It isn't like there isn't room to spare for a little extra coding to make the player work right, all features included... and I mean seriously, taking away many peoples' main way to navigate? Who has complained about having a single step selection function for the menus? Noone. And the bugs I have found are still here, from what I'm reading from others. FACT: Six months is far too long to wait for a major flaw to be fixed... and if it can't be fixed by firmware due to a component allowing it to happen, then the component should be replaced with a new type of one.

Second, for those that are telling the people who are having problems to deal with them because Meizu is such a high and mighty company because their player rocks (LOL), you're starting to sound just like the iPod people that say the same things to the people that have problems with iPods. Either you must not have had a job for long enough, or you don't know much about the buisiness world, because like others have said, when there is a problem with a company's produst, it is not only their job to fix it in a timely manner, it's their OBLIGATION to do so as a company.

Ever hear the phrase "the customer is always right"? It's not just a saying, it's a fact, and I know from where I work how true a fact it is. As others have said, again, when there's problems, the company should be doing everything they can to fix them, and do it quickly or customers aren't going to be very happy. It's not our job as customers to find work arounds for problems so the player "works fine the way it is", it's the job of the company to fix the problems so the plays works fine period.

Originally Posted by FirePower

The hardware inside has a lot of circuitry in a very small space and hence uses extremely small components built by robot pick and place machines so very reliable.

I have to point out that this has nothing to do with the player's problems. If it is, then why can I go and buy a game system (Playstation 2 mini, for example) with a lot more complex circuitry and a lot more firmware, yet it runs flawlessly for what it was designed for, without a single firmware update in sight? It's the quality of the released product and firmware that governs how well a device runs, not the complexity... well, until you get into REALLY complex things like supercomputers or something, then complexity can be a problem in itself.

SOUND BUGS

NOW... finally, I get to point out that the M6 still doesn't not play what it is designed for correctly, and as well as it should for an almost 1 year old product designed mainly to play music/sound. I have firmware version 1.010 still due to poor newer updates (my opinion) that add more problems to how I use my M6. I have already learned these same problems still exist in the newest firmware, public release, beta, or whatever... all of the above.

First, download the attachment with the sound samples recorded right off my M6 through my Audigy 2 platinum sound card (in other words, these aren't recording errors) via stereo headphone->RCA converter cable, so you can listen to the samples as you read what I say about them.

First sample, 1_"whatever".

Listen to the "1_Original" version to hear what the original sound sounds like, so you know the wrong version's error isn't part of the music. Now listen to the "1_WRONG" version of the file to hear the sound skip for a half second when you play a song after pausing. This is on a flac file, and occurs on some mp3 files, too, depending on the size and bitrate. This tells me there is no sound buffer when you play.. no time allowed for the player to process the data before playing, so it skips. More later.

Second sample, 2_"whatever".

First, listen to the 2_Correct to hear the file start playing correctly. This is a regular ordinary mp3 file, 128 Kbps, and has no silence at the beginning of the music (you hit play, the music plays immediately). You can hear the full first note play fine, and this works in any other mp3 playing anything I put it on. Now listen to the 2_WRONG version, and listen carefully to hear the first 1/4-1/2 second cutoff on the first note due to no opening silence. SILENCE at the beginning of most music is why most of you never hear this. I happen to have some music without silence, including some tracks that are meant to lead on from a previous song, gapless, so I hear it in these files. Again, no buffer to process first, then play means it reads and plays as soon as it starts processing, cutting off a bit.

Those 2 aren't big, and I can live with them fine... and probably the next one, too, 3_WRONG.

Many already know this one... start playing a song that you left off with in the middle of the song after turning your player back on to hear the file start playing the first half second of the file, then skip to the point you left off at. If you have silence at the beginning of the track, then what you would hear instead is either nothing, a pop, or a slight loud noise from less then a half second being cut off (a small silence at the beginning). It can be anoying sometimes.

Now, last but not least, the real proof that pisses the hell off some people including me, that is SO INCREDIBLY FRICKEN ANNOYING!! Here ya go, though, pure proof that almost a year after conception, the player does not do correctly what it was designed to do in the first place, and the one thing I requested to be fixed many time over the past 5 months.

You can listen to 4_Correct if you want to first (10 points to who guesses what it's from without looking at the ID3 info)... this is the actual VBR file this happens on, so stick the thing on your player and try it if you want. This file is exactly 3 seconds long, NOT 5, NOT 6 or 7 or 4, THREE. If your player shows any time other than 3, then it's WRONG, and you have the bug. Only if you don't hear the problem and the time is 3 seconds is the problem gone... maybe... This is a VBR file, 224 Kbps average with no end silence, which is what files you will hear the problem on...

ANY VBR file with no ending silence will show the error when it reaches the end of the file. When it does, it does NOT reach the end of the time on the M6, and continuously skips the last half second of the file over and over until the M6 reaches the end of the time. Listen to 4_WRONG and hear the bug as I recorded it, and imagine having about 300 songs on your player recorded as VBRs with little to no end silence, getting to hear that at the end of every single one of them. If you have a little end silence, less than a half second, you will either hear a skipping noise or skipping pop. If you have more than a second or so of end silence, you will not hear it... you will probably notive that those files take longer to end, though. CHECK YOUR REAL FILE TIMES and see for yourself.

Meizu has not fixed this yet, as far as I have read, and I've requested and explained how to get it 5-6 times in the last 5 or 6 months... it the first bug I've known to exist. That's rediculous, not fixing such an incredibly annoying bug.

Another bug I see happen that I've requested to be fixed is one that shows up randomly when I use wallpaper, then go back to the default (inside the player menu)... then suddenly, some of my playlists have Japanese characters and don't actually exist as files... some have half copied playlist filenames, and some are actually the walpaper files and other system files that should not show up in your playlist menu, let alone on the player itself, because deleting them from inside your player (and oh yeah, you CAN do that) really screws you over. You can delete the walpaper files without problems, and they are deleted when you view in Windows or something else, but you shouldn't be able to even see and delete the SYS_NAVI.DAT and other system file.

I have no idea why those turn up like that, and do so at random... no word on it being fixed in updates, and no idea if it still happens in newer firmware, or if it happens in newer firmware by doing something else to make it happen. You can also delete the weird filename files in Japanese and copied names, too, but some of those files I found actually are your plylist files... or parts of them. Deleting them deletes random playlist files.

DChronos I agree with you firmware should be better, hardware wise the players are good quality for the price. Meizu should forget about the gimmicks and concentrate on getting the music and video and photo working perfectly.

I would like to see non music features removed, Games, Calender, Calculator, etc , after checking them out after buying I have never used them.
I think they are only there to add to the specification list.

Thanks for documenting the audio problems and providing examples.

DChronos, thank you so much for your proof-laden and reasonable write-up.

All these bugs have occured on my player as well. It's wonderful to actually have real use samples of what's going on.

Reputation +1

No problem... and sorry about the long winded post, too. I wanted to do that months ago, but lost my converter cable in one of my boxes in a closet, then spent last month moving, and I'm still settling in... hence why I hadn't been around to update the skin stuff.. I hope someone else took over or something, I haven;t checked yet. ^_^;;

I like my M6 more than any other player just because it has a nice big screen and lets me take use of it with crisp colors (TP version), and has the great sound quality and 10 band EQ going for it, too... plus playing my main file types, though some of that needs fixed, of course, and has a few neat features I can take use of, that being what it originally came with, though I did want animated gif as well... but AFTER things were fixed.

I don't think anyone here can say it wouldn't be better if Meizu fixed the problems with the current stuff first, then changed current things for the better, like changing how some of the things work or look so they work and look better, and THEN, add new things that may end up being potential problems to be fixed. Even if they add something new after they fix things, and the new thing is all screwed up, I don't think peoiple would mind as long as the current things still work fine, because they can look forward to Meizu fixing the new feature so they'll have it later.

I still have faith Meizu might fix things, seeing as it's not quite a year old yet, and version 1... plus, they just came out with the 8GB version, too. They'd better just get their act together and get the problems worked out... I mean, if anyone is gonna fix the player's firmware up, it shouldn't be the open source community, it should be the people that designed the code for the player... but I'd love to see it go open source for endless customization.

I'm gonna toss those samples to Meizu tomorrow, but for now, I need to sleep... dead tired. Maybe, since Meizu is expanding overseas now, they'll have departments more capable of understanding their customers' language when someone explains a problem, too.

i've just checked the problem reported by ciborj (with firmware s 2.002.3).
all tested mp3-files had the same artist tag and were divided into
16 different album tags.
these 16 albums show up under music-album
but only the first 8 of 16 are shown under music-artist-album.
this clearly proves that there is a severe software-bug
which has to be resolved.
by the way, i've found the built-in clock to be 8 minutes slow
after only three days!

Show some appreciation guys. You should be happy that Meizu even develops firmware with good content in it.

Rather than gloating on bugs, problems with your miniPlayer, you should enjoy it as it is, knowing that they are working on solutions to the current problems with the miniPlayer.

If they could build a city in one day, I'm sure all of your requests would be acquiesced.