My first weekend with the European AT

[Robert Chasmer <robert.chasmer@xxxxxxx>]

Thanks to Tony B. for organising the AT bulk buy.  As the BB started
off
here I though I'd repost my diary for anyone that is "Sort of"
interested in
the AT's pluses and minuses.


Rob (Who's got 287 messages in ukha_d to get through after 3 days)

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-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Chasmer 
Sent: 05 August 2002 14:40
To: Audio Tron List (E-mail)
Subject: My first weekend with the European AT


I've been on this list for a good eight months and now finally have my
on
AT.  I though I'd share some of my early experiences with you.

I had my European AT delivered to my Mums address, as I'm normally at
work,
who received the box last Friday.  I picked it up, admiring the nice
shinny
box, knowing I'd have to wait till Saturday to play with my new toy.

The box does quite a good job of explaining to you mates what this thing
is.
"You see you put this with your hi-fi, and it gets all your music from
the
PC in the bedroom".  Weird to see it described as an internet
tuner, but I
guess when I finally get ADSL that's what it'll be.  I read the
start-up
manual that night which seemed pretty good and described the windows
setup
apps in detail.  I decided I'd just plug the thing in the morning and
see
what happened.old PC.

Saturday... connected the AT up temporarily in the office, so I could
be
close to my computer.  This Euro AT comes with Ethernet only, the
HPNA
sockets are completely missing, the back plate doesn't appear to have
even
been drilled to receive them.  In the UK I'd never heard of HPNA until
I
joined this list so I presume its only an American thing.  My house is
fully
wired for CAT 5 anyway.

At this point I'd done nothing to any of my computers.  I didn't
really want
to run any PC setup programs on my poor.  I have two very old
computers:- a
200Mhz Acorn Risc PC running an OS called Risc OS, and an old Pentium
75Mhz
thing running Windows 95.  There both networked together with the Risc
Os
box running a SAMBA server.  All my music is sitting in the Acorns
16Gb
drive.

Powered up the AT, and all the lights sprung into life.  I quite liked
the
main display and the leds on some of the buttons, though the
power/remote
LED was a little to bright.  The AT proudly announced it at the
3.0
firmware, and that it was configured for HPNA Dynamic.  I changed this
over
to Static Ethernet, and rebooted the box.  With all the talk about
the
limited display I was pretty happy with it once I got to see it myself.
Though I guess due to the physical size of the text I won't be queueing
much
music from my armchair.

To my surprise it found both my Acorn machine and the PC, although it
didn't
index any songs.  Over to the PC and I pointed IE at the AT's IP
address, I
went through each of the main configuration screens, and set the paths
to
the MP3s explicitly one for each machine.  Changed a few other
settings,
then rebooted again.  As if by magic it started indexing all my songs,
about
5 songs a second I guess.  I've only got about 4.3GB of music but
was
surprised to see the song count go just over 2000.  The manual says
that the
AT is designed to take about 3000, hopefully I'll be able to squeeze in
more.

I played with the remote an queued a few songs up, the audio sounds
pretty
good to me.  The AMP in the office isn't that great but after all
the
comments on the list about the poor analogue output, I was more than
happy.
I queued a few songs up on the web interface as well.  Showed Michelle
how
to use the new toy, and other than my rubbish collection of music thought
it
was pretty cool.  I felt the web interface was a little confusing for
first
timers.  I wanted to queue songs up like you do on the front
panel/remote,
but on the web interface clicked the little play buttons next to the
song
names which kept resetting the queue to just that song/album.  Quickly
found
the links at the bottom for adding to the Queue.  I'd like it to be
possible
to configure these play buttons to "Add to queue" rather than
"Play Now".

Now it all worked, I decided to move the AT to its real home in the
lounge
with the rest of the AV equipment.  Moved some shelves around and sat
the AT
on top of the Mini-disk player.  That Turtle beach logo really stands
out
against the rest of my kit, minor point I know.  Waited for the AT
to
re-index my music (probably about 5 mins), but as I'm making lots of
changes
to  the MP3 files I'll stick before I start building toc files. 
I noticed
the case vibrates a bit when power, which I guess is the hum others
have
mentioned.  Though I haven't heard audible hum coming from the rack
yet, so
is probably dampened quite well.

Next up we had a thunderstorm, I was up in the office playing with the
web
interface, when we had a couple of half second power-dips.  The
Acorn
survived it, the PC rebooted, and the AT needed to rebuild all its
songs.  I
decided to unplug the AT, didn't want my new toy to be fried so soon. 
I
took the opportunity to teach my Pronto the new AT remote.

After the storm I powered it back up and had a case of the AT sitting at
the
AT warming up screen.  This panicked me a bit, but was fine on the
next
reboot.  We had the AT playing music all afternoon, with myself and
Michelle
queuing music up on the remote.  I have to reboot my poor old Acorn
machine
every now and then as the network connection seems to stiff every once in
a
while.  I think it may have problems with some of the MP3's maybe the
VBR
ones.  I've seen this in the past when copying large files across my
network
to the PC.  This is a problem with my computer not the AT.

When the PC connection dies the AT skips through the play list trying
to
open each song, after I reboot my PC the AT carries on playing the next
song, which is good.  To avoid me loosing my play list each time
this
happened I had random/repeat buttons highlighted so it just keeps
going.
I'll be getting a new PC very soon, that I'll be able to leave on 24/7,
and
should be a bit more reliable.  I guess this allows me to explore some
of
the problems the HPNA users have been having, but with a flaky SAMBA
server
instead over Ethernet :-)

On Sunday evening I came across a weird problem, I think I may have
seen
others report this.  There was one song in the play queue, and my
cousin was
queuing up some more.  Music was playing, when the display showed
"No Song
Playing", we managed I think to queue some more music but the total
play
queue size was one short.  Trying to skip to the next track didn't
seem to
respond either.  Also I little earlier I noticed that via the web
interface
the buttons "Stop" and "Add to Queue" buttons weren't
there though music was
playing, only the "Play Now" and "Add to Group" buttons
were shown.  Maybe
this was also due to the AT miss counting the items in the play list. 
I did
a hard-reset to clear the problem, and after the re-index all was fine.

Enhancements / Learning how to use the AT
-----------------------------------------
Most of these are things people have mentioned before, some are
probably
because I've not yet read the whole reference manual.

* I've not yet used the "Add to Group" feature, and at the moment
I struggle
to see how this is different to the normal play list.  I've also not
used
any of the favourites, which I might use for different genres once I
re-tag
my music.

* I'd like to make it harder for the AT to loose what is in the play
list.
At the moment it seems if I press stop the whole play list is
cleared.  I'd
like to see some sort of confirmation warning, or the use of a clear
button
on the remote instead.

* Putting the AT in standby should retain the current playing position,
play
list, and random/repeat settings.  In other words behave more like my
car
stereo and DVD player, in that they can carry on playing we you left of
like
a good old fashioned cassette player.

* Provide an option to alter the function on the web interface of the
play
button next to each album/track so that it "Adds to Queue" rather
"Play
Now".

* As a low tech solution to the bright power/remote LED I've drawn over
the
led with a black pen.  This seems to have lowered the intensity quite
well,
has anyone else any better solutions.  I don't want to open it up and
add
say a resistor to the LED until my 1 year warenty has passed.

* I hope to squeeze lot more songs on my AT, how many songs have people
managed?  I already have 2000 songs but the manual says 3000, which is
about
the same capacity as a 300 disc autochanger.

* Use a smaller, more subtle logo on the AT itself.  It certainly
stands out
>from
As I'd always hoped the AT is one cool bit of kit.  I seem to have
managed
un-intentialy to see a number of its more quirky features, but then
hopefully they'll get fixed.  I notice that seth recently announced
3.01, I
think I'll miss this one out as the fixes seem to be for the internet
radio
features, which I won't be using till I get ADSL.

Cheers (Hope this wasn't too boring, I just wanted to get it written
down).


Rob

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