Firmware 2.31 Beta

[newone]

I just want to mention that the 2.31 Beta is available at cowonglobal.

http://www.cowonglobal.com/

[CrowdAds]

[dfkt]

Info.

Direct download.

[rockphantom]

Finally...

Gapless playback after months of requesting!!
I've tested this new feature with several live recordings and each track flows smoothly, just like a CD.

I am very grateful to Cowon for finally implementing gapless playback in the S9!

Milan

[Scarpad]

Is it gapless for all formats? I've heard differing reports saying MP3 and OGG were'nt gapless but the lossless formats, like flac were gapless. Now if they could only work on the ID Tag support.

[rockphantom]

Originally Posted by Scarpad

Is it gapless for all formats? I've heard differing reports saying MP3 and OGG were'nt gapless but the lossless formats, like flac were gapless. Now if they could only work on the ID Tag support.

I listen to FLAC exclusively.
I have idea if the lossy formats are gapless.

Milan

[dfkt]

Originally Posted by Scarpad

Is it gapless for all formats? I've heard differing reports saying MP3 and OGG were'nt gapless but the lossless formats, like flac were gapless. Now if they could only work on the ID Tag support.

http://anythingbutipod.com/forum/sho...6&postcount=15

[PodConvert]

From the release notes (bold is mine):
- Support gapless playback in lossless music files (WAV, FLAC, APE, and LOSSLESS WMA) and OGG files.

Now I am curious how I should parse that sentence. It seemed to at first glance to read gapless in lossless files and gapless in any OGG files. Or are they referring to lossless OGG? I.e. FLAC audio in an OGG container?

[dfkt]

Yeah, they don't know themselves what they're writing there... mixing containers and codecs.

Ogg Vorbis definitely isn't gapless, I tried several differently encoded files in the meantime, both Xiph standard Vorbis encoders and aoTuV versions. None are gapless.

I did not try Ogg FLAC, but maybe that would be gapless. Doesn't matter to me personally, lossless audio on the go is a waste of space for me, I'm only interested in gapless LAME and Vorbis. But it's a good start for Cowon, let's see what the future holds...

[Akeldama]

I didn't even know the S9 supported Lossless WMA until I read the firmware readme. All my CD collection is ripped in that format - so I've just tried it out. Works very well - listening to some favourite live albums is more of a treat now.

[PodConvert]

Originally Posted by dfkt

Ogg Vorbis definitely isn't gapless, I tried several differently encoded files in the meantime, both Xiph standard Vorbis encoders and aoTuV versions. None are gapless.

Thanks. I was considering trying this out myself, saved me some time and prevents me from getting my hopes up.

[rockphantom]

I've got a slight problem with the FLAC Gapless playback.

I was listening to a live album called Iron Maiden - BBC Archives CD1 during my lunch hour and there were split second ticks between each song. After I was done listening to CD1, I went back to check for the ticks and they were gone. Perhaps, it takes the S9 a while to warm up for gapless playback?
This is weird. I am sure this issue will be fixed in the 2.31 final firmware.

Milan

[dfkt]

I just noticed that the S9 now seems to support the MP4 container format for video.

[Olley]

I put a MP4 video on and it wouldn't play. Have you gotten any to play?

[dfkt]

I don't have any MP4 videos... I just renamed a bunch of .m4a audio files to .aac and .mp4 - checking if the old D2 AAC playback trick works on the S9 (which it doesn't). And the .mp4 file was surprisingly opened in video mode. Of course with a "not supported" popup since it was actually a .m4a file.

I assume *if* MP4 containers really work they still would need XviD/DivX/h.264 video (within the S9's supported specs) and MP3 audio to work.

Anyways, since .mp4 files do show up in the file list and get loaded into the video player, there sure is something to it.

[trikon000]

The extended M3U doesn't seem to be able to read chinese or japanese or any asian text in the mp3 with the US 2.31b firmware. missing unicode support?

The playlist below resulted in only having 3 tracks only available:

[rockphantom]

After further testing with live recordings encoded in FLAC format, there definitely are 1/10th of a second gaps between tracks when using FW 2.31b. Not a big deal, you really have to pay attention when listening to notice.
2.31b is still a major improvement over the previous firmware gap issue.

Hopefully, the next FW revision will eliminate gaps once and for all.

Milan

[NigelS]

Yeah, my flac rips dont all play back totally gapless either, some show minor giltches of up to a second in some cases, though some have almost perfect gapless playback. Strange since they were all ripped using Easy CD-DA Extractor. So I'm hoping they still have a few bugs to iron out.

[tropez29]

I have a question about gapless flac files, so please forgive my ignorance on this matter. If I have an album with all mp3 files, and I convert them to flac files with the jetaudio program, will the gapless work? Or do the flac files have to be burned from a CD for gapless to work?

[Olley]

First, don't bother converting from MP3 to FLAC. You can do it if you want to answer your own question, but the whole point of a lossless format is to start with the CD and rip directly to FLAC. MP3s are lossy, and you'll lose the main advantage.

[mrigank.pawar]

I've got v2.21. Should I upgrade to 2.30 or 2.31? My player is just 1 day old. So, I don't want to risk it by installing a beta firmware. Any suggestions?