Ok. No need to be psyched. I’ve not yet found any issue. I’m yet to receive my Beta testing unit - slated for later this week !!!
But, in between just want to do some prep work.
In my understanding the cover arts (and meta data) for the discs are downloaded through internet from P S Audio’s site. So the Qs are -
Is there a way one can add custom cover art/track info for CDs manually. I have lots of discs related to Indian music which I’m very sure not there in PS Audio’s data base.
Can I check the available artwork/track info etc from now itself in the P s Audio’s site and can start uploading deatils of some of my CDs ? Or I have to wait till I receive the unit ?
Is there a way to bulk upload/sync cover art/meta data from some other repository like iTunes/JRiver repos ? Otherwise uploading meta data for each CD can be a nightmare.
Is there a future plan of making DMP to get cover art/track info from any other standard repository iTunes/JRiver ? maintaining 2 meta data store one for music server and another for CD player is not a good idea.
If the DMP works the same way as the PWT, the answer to 1) is yes and 2) you have to register the DMP first (so you have to wait).
I think PSA needs to get the answers to your 3) and 4) up here ASAP since as soon as units arrive people are going to want to play with them.
A related question: we received a “welcome to the beta program” email from Kevin a few days ago, which briefly mentioned some sort of community effort to get artwork for SACDs available. We also need details about how to do that.
Finally, one last question (probably really stupid, but here goes): Is there any benefit, aside from artwork, to connecting the DMP (or PWT) to the internet? The player can read the artist and track names off the disc directly. For me, artwork is nice but not all that important to enjoying the music, particularly since my audio rack is some distance from the chair so I won’t be seeing any details.
Is there a set of instructions available for how to properly use the Playlist features on “My PS?” I’ve been playing with uploading cover art, and have successfully uploaded it to my Playlist. However, when I then insert the disc into the DMP, I get r/w error on the front display, and the art is not downloaded. The cover art I was using is in JPG format, and the sizes used are between 200x200 and 350x350.
Also, when a disc is listed as unknown, and I enter the 12 digit UPC code, the system often doesn’t often find anything, even though the CD is quite common. On one occasion, the system offered a button to take me to Discogs to find more info, but more often that button isn’t even offered. Any thoughts?
I am not aware of a playlist function in the classic sense. You can use My PS to edit the art and titles of what you play, but you cannot create or play from a list. Make sure the DMP has the SD card inserted properly and memory checks as “ok” on the front panel touch screen. The cover art feature won’t operate without it.
rjkuzma’s problem might stem from lack of SD card, but even so his general point that we need instructions is valid. I don’t own a PWT, but while waiting for my DMP (scheduled for tomorrow!!) I read the PWT manual hoping to understand how the My PS thing works. There is info about how to register the unit but nothing more.
Useful info:
minimum and maximum sizes for art
optimal size (or range of sizes) if there is one
format; JPEG (compression or other settings?); others that work?
does the My PS work the same for SACDs as for Redbook?
(Why does using the bullet point format put so much extra space above and below?)
I take it that the DMP’s screen is different from the PWD’s so different size art may be needed. Also, cover art has not been available in the past for SACDs, so people may be doing a lot of uploading. Or does the system find SACD art also?
Paul McGowan said
I am not aware of a playlist function in the classic sense. You can use My PS to edit the art and titles of what you play, but you cannot create or play from a list. Make sure the DMP has the SD card inserted properly and memory checks as "ok" on the front panel touch screen. The cover art feature won't operate without it.
Paul, I think you may have misunderstood my question. Please allow me to clarify. On your PS Audio web site, under "My PS," there is a section called "Playlist." I never had access to this area of the website before since I don't own a PWT. Since registering my DMP, I was granted access to this feature. Upon discovering this, I was surprised to see a list of all the discs I have ever played on the DMP. However, most of the discs I played were SACDs, with only a couple of CDs. The common CDs showed cover art and track listings. Most, but not all SACDs were listed as "Untitled, Unknown" and didn't include any cover art or track listings. This seemed to be related to the inconsistencies I was seeing on the way information was being provided on the front screen of the DMP. By the way, I do have the provided SD card in its slot. After spending a few hours yesterday playing with this feature and learning by trial and error, I was wondering if there exists an instruction sheet about how this web page operates. When I successfully uploaded some missing cover art for a CD, it wouldn't then download to my DMP when that disc was played. Instead, I received a red "r/w error" displayed on the front screen as it tried to download the art. So, I was wondering if I did something incorrectly. Was the jpg file type correct? Was the pixel dimension correct? I just didn't know without having a set of guidelines about how this feature is supposed to work.
I also noticed that on some “Untitled, Unknown” discs I could update this information by utilizing the “Discogs” button. But on other disc selections the “Discogs” button wasn’t available. So again, some guidelines would be helpful.
Lastly, I am aware of an email sent out by Kevin a short time back that indicated some effort to to catalog SACDs would be undertaken, presumably as a way to allow the “Playlist” to be updated properly. (Only one of about 20 SACDs provided any title information).
UPDATE: Today (Monday) the art download feature is now working correctly on both CDs where I’ve uploaded the artwork JPGs. Perhaps the server just needed to refresh itself in some manner. Still, SACDs do not list properly. Perhaps I’ll have to wait for Kevin to send out further information about the SACD catalog project.
Update 2: I previously indicated that some SACDs showed up on the Playlist. Actually no SACDs have. The one SACD I thought was there was actually a CD from a boxed SACD/CD set of the same title. So, the Playlist is consistent in that it only shows CDs, and no SACDs.
Paul, on the same topic, how do you adjust the time zone of the playlist. All my entries seem to be East Coast time and I live and listen far to the left of that.
The first few discs I tried worked well with My Playlist. Since then some issues have surfaced.
It appears that there is no way to add a missing track. I manually entered everything for a disc except the final track and then my finger landed in the wrong spot on the iPad screen (not on the spot to add another track, as intended). The display changed from the screen where you enter info to the one that displays the contents the album. The info I put in is there, but I cannot find a way to add the last track. (I can edit the tracks that exist.) Can this functionality be added? It shouldn’t be necessary to delete the album and re-create it from scratch to fix an error like this.
When the PSA database doesn’t contain the album, why does it sometimes provide the option to go to Discogs and sometimes not? It would be a lot more convenient not to enter the data by hand if the album is available in Discogs.
If I have an album titled “The First Twenty Years” and I omit “The” from the title, will it find the match, assuming the album is in the database? (I use my iPad when listening and the less tapping on the screen, the better.) I tried this, got no results, and then when I did a New Search with the full title it just hung up.
magister said
The first few discs I tried worked well with My Playlist. Since then some issues have surfaced.
It appears that there is no way to add a missing track. I manually entered everything for a disc except the final track and then my finger landed in the wrong spot on the iPad screen (not on the spot to add another track, as intended). The display changed from the screen where you enter info to the one that displays the contents the album. The info I put in is there, but I cannot find a way to add the last track. (I can edit the tracks that exist.) Can this functionality be added? It shouldn’t be necessary to delete the album and re-create it from scratch to fix an error like this.
When the PSA database doesn’t contain the album, why does it sometimes provide the option to go to Discogs and sometimes not? It would be a lot more convenient not to enter the data by hand if the album is available in Discogs.
If I have an album titled “The First Twenty Years” and I omit “The” from the title, will it find the match, assuming the album is in the database? (I use my iPad when listening and the less tapping on the screen, the better.) I tried this, got no results, and then when I did a New Search with the full title it just hung up.
On point 1, there is a work around. After the album track list is downloaded in the SD card open the file (you have to figure out the file by trial and error). Then manually edit it using notepad/word pad. DMP will pick the changes from thw SD card.
This might be true the first time one plays a disc. But if one has an SD card in the slot then the cover art should be saved there (I guess) and in one’s Playlist on the PSA site. Frank specifically said that these were discs he has previously played, as were mine. In this case the art is never retrieved from the Playlist or SD card until after one presses Play.
Yes, if the cover art is successfully downloaded (or uploaded from the SD card) it appears that the DMP never displays it until it is actually playing. In my experience when the DMP is in stand-by mode (i.e. disc inserted, not playing) there isn’t any cover art displayed.
The DMP ability to display cover art for CD’s is definitely a work in progress, SACD’s are worse, and by all accounts classical CD/SACD is worse again. The playlist option is also evolving according to Dennis/Paul.
frank7036 said
Yes, if the cover art is successfully downloaded (or uploaded from the SD card) it appears that the DMP never displays it until it is actually playing. In my experience when the DMP is in stand-by mode (i.e. disc inserted, not playing) there isn't any cover art displayed.
Yes, and I think that is by design. I took your original post to mean that you could not get the art to display at all. I apologize that I misread it.
For those discs that do not display art when they are playing, have you confirmed the cover art is stored on the SD card as a BMP file?
magister said
This might be true the first time one plays a disc. But if one has an SD card in the slot then the cover art should be saved there (I guess) and in one's Playlist on the PSA site.
The art only gets saved to the SD card (and displayed) if it successfully downloads. If you interrupt the download, it doesn't get saved. It doesn't matter if the disc has been played before or not. You can get the unit to retry the download by stopping play, pressing play, then pressing pause. When the downloading artwork message appears wait for it to disappear before pressing play. If I allow the DMP to play before the download completes, I never see the artwork and the file never gets saved to the card.
Also, clearly if the disc is in the playlist, it has been previously played. But do you mean that the art had been displayed previously, too? I have seen this happen occasionally. Usually stopping and restarting play gets the previously downloaded art to show up.
I have also managed to create one entry in my playlist for an SACD with artwork that the DMP refuses to download. I’ve even tried replacing the image file in the playlist. The DMP does pull down the metadata for that entry. Even if it delete the metadata from the card and start over, it still won’t download the image for that one disc.
Peanut Butter said
The art only gets saved to the SD card (and displayed) if it successfully downloads. If you interrupt the download, it doesn't get saved.
This is good to know, but does not explain the problem. So far I have been very diligent about letting new discs search for track and art, usually only to see the red notice that it's not found -- then I add the art and track info manually. Someday I'm sure I will get impatient and just hit Play, though, when the toy is no longer so new.
But do you mean that the art had been displayed previously, too? I have seen this happen occasionally. Usually stopping and restarting play gets the previously downloaded art to show up.