Firmware 2.31 Beta

[Mf1232]

installing a beta wont hurt your your player. there aren't any bad bugs in this beta anyways. at least not that i have heard of or found. if anything happens you can always reset. and then if you feel the need to, downgrade to 2.30

[mrigank.pawar]

Originally Posted by Mf1232

installing a beta wont hurt your your player. there aren't any bad bugs in this beta anyways. at least not that i have heard of or found. if anything happens you can always reset. and then if you feel the need to, downgrade to 2.30

Oh ok. I will try it 2day. Thanks for the reply.

[newone]

Originally Posted by Mf1232

if anything happens you can always reset. and then if you feel the need to, downgrade to 2.30

I'd be careful with this information since I read a post about not being able to downgrade firmware, seems the S9 does not downgrade. Mf1232 did you test this by yourself if it is possible?

[dfkt]

I downgraded mine twice already, no issues at all.

[aki]

Beta strangely doesn't say alot on firmware with Cowon, so they might be as stable, or even more stable (that happens, really) than non-beta versions (how do you call that, delta?)

[mrigank.pawar]

Upgraded to firmware 2.30 from 2.21 today. M just wondering, why can't I resume audio files? Vdo is fine. Even my fone can resume music where it was left last time (even though it's not a dedicated music fone).
Does firmware 2.31 resolve this problem?

[Sirius]

Resume is included in 2.30, but not pre-activated.

Video resume doesn't work all well, it just resumes somewhere near where I was watching.

[The DarkSide]

Originally Posted by mrigank.pawar

Upgraded to firmware 2.30 from 2.21 today. M just wondering, why can't I resume audio files? Vdo is fine. Even my fone can resume music where it was left last time (even though it's not a dedicated music fone).
Does firmware 2.31 resolve this problem?

Just go to settings and make sure resume is on. I have 2.31b installed, and resume is working fine.

[mrigank.pawar]

Originally Posted by Sirius

Resume is included in 2.30, but not pre-activated.

Video resume doesn't work all well, it just resumes somewhere near where I was watching.

Video resume works fine on my s9.

[mrigank.pawar]

Originally Posted by The DarkSide

Just go to settings and make sure resume is on. I have 2.31b installed, and resume is working fine.

Oh ok. It's working now. Thanks. I was such an ignorant fool to ignore it in the setting!

[shimage]

Originally Posted by dfkt

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...

Gapless MP3 is a bit of a hack. To do it without some sort of helper application on the PC--which would write information into the database on the player--would take too long, I think. Either of those solutions would make me avoid the firmware.

Ogg Vorbis inherently supports gapless playback, so I'm not entirely sure why there aren't more commercial PMPs that support gapless (just the Karma and Vibe, to my knowledge).

[dfkt]

Gapless LAME is not a hack, but gapless FHG, Blade, Gogo, or Xing is. I sure hope nobody would use any of those encoders in 2009 anymore, since we have LAME... Anyways, the iPod, Zune, and Rockbox (among other players) play gapless MP3 perfectly fine, so I don't care about the details - I just want it to work. Especially since the aforementioned players do not differentiate between a proper LAME encode or some other MP3 encoder, they just play gapless as it's supposed to be.

You don't need to "prepare" your MP3 files in any way to get gapless on those players that support it - they just work. Well at least Rockbox, which I've been using for years and know how it works. But my friend's iPod Touch had no gap issues with any MP3 files thrown at it as well.

Just for completeness' sake, but not very relevant (since the player either is gapless or it isn't):

http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=LAME
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Gapless

Gapless playback with LAME-header compliant decoders
LAME-encoded MP3 can be gapless with players that support the LAME Mp3 info tag.

[shimage]

Originally Posted by dfkt

You don't need to "prepare" your MP3 files in any way to get gapless on those players that support it - they just work. Well at least Rockbox, which I've been using for years and know how it works. But my friend's iPod Touch had no gap issues with any MP3 files thrown at it as well.

First of all, I consider LAME's solution to "gapless" playback a hack (it's not part of the spec, ergo, it's a hack). Apple's solution is basically the same, except that you don't need to have encoded it with LAME for it to work. And yes, you need iTunes (either to encode or to prepare non-iTunes encoded files) to get gapless mp3s on an iPod--though these files won't be gapless on anything else. I had a 3rd gen Nano before, and my wife has the current Touch; Apple's implementation was what I was actually referring to when I said it was a hack.

The Cowon S9 builds it's database on the player, so this is not a realistic option (in my opinion, anyway; obviously you disagree). They could just throw in support LAME gapless tags for the people that use it, though I am fairly certain the overwhelming majority of mp3s aren't LAME encoded (I can't complain, seeing as I how I use oggs). If they did that before supporting gapless vorbis files, however, I would be extraordinarily pissed.

I insist that Ogg Vorbis files are fundamentally different in that they ALL provide for gapless playback, with no provisions for particular implementations (it's part of the spec, after all). If a player does not support gapless Vorbis files, it's because the developer didn't think it was important. Period. There are other codecs like this (in particular, WMA), but MP3 and AAC are not among them.

[AzN_devil]

Originally Posted by 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:

did you try using d:\ instead?

[SirDigger]

how long does cowon usually support their players with firmware releases?

[h1a8]

Originally Posted by shimage

First of all, I consider LAME's solution to "gapless" playback a hack (it's not part of the spec, ergo, it's a hack).

Gapless playback as a hack mostly refers to the players doing the hacking and not the actually encoding process doing the hacking (as in creating LAME files).

The Cowon S9 builds it's database on the player, so this is not a realistic option (in my opinion, anyway; obviously you disagree). They could just throw in support LAME gapless tags for the people that use it, though I am fairly certain the overwhelming majority of mp3s aren't LAME encoded (I can't complain, seeing as I how I use oggs). If they did that before supporting gapless vorbis files, however, I would be extraordinarily pissed.

Rockbox, foobar, and others do gapless perfectly (Lame or no lame) without building any such databases of any sort. They just know how it is done. I'm sure Rockbox is open source so there is no excuse for a company not to go through it and learn how they do it.

I insist that Ogg Vorbis files are fundamentally different in that they ALL provide for gapless playback, with no provisions for particular implementations (it's part of the spec, after all). If a player does not support gapless Vorbis files, it's because the developer didn't think it was important. Period. There are other codecs like this (in particular, WMA), but MP3 and AAC are not among them.

Yet there is a way of having gapless playback on any file without the file being created for gapless playback (fundamentally different) and without having to build databases to actually create the gapless playback effect.

[PodConvert]

Originally Posted by h1a8

I'm sure Rockbox is open source so there is no excuse for a company not to go through it and learn how they do it.

Well, since rockbox is GPL licensed there's the small issue of having to release your own application under the GPL if you use any of their code. They may not want to do that.

[h1a8]

Originally Posted by PodConvert

Well, since rockbox is GPL licensed there's the small issue of having to release your own application under the GPL if you use any of their code. They may not want to do that.

One is only bound by GPL for copying any of the code and not by copying the idea of the code. Companies like Cowon would just learn how it works (the code) so they can write another code of doing it. That is to say, there are limitless ways (in several languages) to write a code to do the same thing (or similar thing). So this is no problem whatsoever. I'm pretty sure that foobar uses a different code than Winamp to achieve the same gapless playback. And the PSP uses a different code than Rockbox.

[Mf1232]

Originally Posted by newone

I'd be careful with this information since I read a post about not being able to downgrade firmware, seems the S9 does not downgrade. Mf1232 did you test this by yourself if it is possible?

it's easy to downgrade... you just get say... 2.30 and then extract it into the root s9 folder like any other fw. and then it will install the lower fw when you start the player. the only problem if you want to downgrade is cowon doesn't keep the previous fw's on the site, so you'll need to find someone here or on iaudiophile that has the fw your looking for

[The DarkSide]

S9 FW 2.30: http://www.cowonglobal.com/download/...S9/S9_2.30.zip