Goodness. Sorry guys, been up to my elbows in buildings and products. My apologies. Yes, for certain, there’s a bug in the new release that despite our testing we did not catch. We did most of our testing on a Junior and that was to make sure it played well and sounded right. Which it did and does.
In fact, I don’t know how many have noticed the SQ improvement in 3.6.2 but I’ll bet a few of you did.
Indeed, the artwork on DS broke when using MConnect software - which is sad because the programmers at Converse are responsible for both. We’ve been working hard to get this fixed. We know artwork is important though to be honest I rarely look at it and focus instead on SQ. My bad.
In the meantime so many people have been upset about losing artwork that we pulled the firmware version down. As soon as the bug is fixed we’ll launch new firmware.
We’re thinking now we’ll likely ask a handful of you to beta test it for us. We work really hard at testing this product and have our checklist of measurements, Bit Perfect tests, SQ parameters, decoding parameters, MQA properties, etc. that it has to pass before we release. To be honest, artwork was never on that checklist and we didn’t look for it. Our bad. It is now.
You guys are better at finding the few bugs that sometimes crop up despite our best efforts.
I’ll let you know as soon as Converse comes up with a fix and then we’ll do some testing in the field and then we’ll have another release.
My apologies on behalf of the company. And, my personal apologies for being silent. I have been tracking this thread and pushing engineering to get this fixed. I just didn’t let you all know that was the case.
Hi Paul, thanks very much. In my case, v3.6.2 adversely impacted not only artwork but also the timing sliders on the DS display as well as on the mConnect control point app, and also, it seemed, the FORWARD, BACKWARD, PLAY and STOP buttons on the app. Rolling back to v3.5.1 fixed all these issues, so I am confident my network was not the problem. Good luck with the fix and thanks, as always, for looking out for your customers.
My listening room is located between the living room and kitchen/dinning room.
My wife will pass through and glance at the DS display, often times making comments about the music. The iPad - with proper artwork displayed - is where I am seated and not conveniently located for her to see.
I thought I would mention this because I am getting the sense that the DS display is thought to be a trivial feature.
Since I’ve slogged through this latest sub-issue (wishing I hadn’t) I feel I’ve paid my dues and can put in my two cents.
As a Mac user since ‘86 and user of various sorts of pro software, my habit of the past decade or so has been to Never Upgrade Right Away. There are too many potential conflicts with software/OS/firmware that won’t shake out until a large user base gets their mitts on it. My brother is an Always Upgrade Right Away person.
This started for me mostly because most harder-core Apple users, doing large projects for a living - even with Apple software - have learned the hard way never to change anything during a project, even if it has some awesome new features you wish you had for the current work. By the time it’s been out a while, you can read all about it, as has happened here. There will always be early adopters. Thanks, guys! I appreciate your sacrifice! ; )
I waited a few days on this update, and was glad I did. No plans to join this fray, despite having been a beta tester on a number of products. The fact that the board is made by another company is the source of a lot of the issues, and part of the reason the Bridge III will be a PS product (yeah - I know, been plenty of howling about that as well - you can’t win all the time in this game, obviously).
A number of years back I bought a $300 Windows laptop to test DVDs (What’s a DVD, Grandpa??) I was creating for my clients and their customers. I got tired of the odd Windows-specific issue, that I could not see unless I had the hardware to test it. So I guess I could have rolled back this update (had I rolled forward in the first place) but I’m happy to have kept my wheels locked. I had no idea that rollback would require Windows, since you can Upgrade via the Convers Mac app.
Thanks Paul, if you didn’t have this topic on your test list, it’s clear there’s big chance it’s missed in case of a bug, that explains it.
However I think with just a test list you can never fix as many bugs as if you let people test (just by normal use) for a week or so who really live with the bridge using different media servers and not just process a test list on a work bench (if this is the case at all). I think you need live testers (company employees) for such products, independent of also asking some customers to do it.
It would be miserable if your many other great efforts are badly influenced by such avoidable bits and bobs.
I had several days between using the old and new firmware with differing music played, so unfortunately I couldn’t detect sound improvements directly. Great if it improved!
I also noticed that once the issue occurs, it also does not update the type of file the Bridge is decoding. For instance, I was sending FLAC files earlier and then the issue happened. I’ve since switched over to Spotify Connect and yet it still says FLAC on my screen.
So to recap, these issues seem to happen once the issue occurs:
Loss of cover art
Loss of control (next, back, play, stop, ect)
Track timer no longer works (stays at 0:00)
File Type does not update
Yes, you’re right. Where we can we’ll start using live testers who routinely have proven to be better testers than we are because they find so many “obvious” things that we sometimes miss as our focus is often narrowed to performance and our checklists.
What I wonder is why it took such a long time for the acknowledgement of a problem with this release.
For example, given that the artwork display was an easy problem to replicate, I am having a very hard time understanding why a specific, easily verifiable problem was not immediately identified, flagged and acknowledged by PS Audio.
My take is that this kind of stuff happens. Hard for me to complain when the company is rolling out new features at no additional cost. The alternative would be you buy the equipment, and it is fixed in its features —-not evolving, with no future firmware updates.
As long as the PS Audio team works to resolve the problem, I’m going to be supportive. I have had a couple of issues with audio gear, including the PS Audio brand. They’ve always made it right.
Paul, could you talk a little about the sound quality improvements with this latest release. Is it known in an objective manner what caused the increase in sound quality over the last software release and can we expect to preserve this increase in sound quality in the subsequent release that fixes these odd issues?
Good question this. I’m new to the PS Audio family. I recently got the DSJ and was experiencing slight issues with the software upgrade but was impressed with sound enough that I went ahead and upgraded to the big brother DSD. Yes, I am not getting the cover art on the DSD, but as it has been breaking in I’m glad I made the leap. Even at this early stage I can already tell how much better the DSD is from the DSJ. Honestly, my biggest problem at his stage is my wife telling me I should have gotten the sliver and not the black. She’s not pleased.
My question is, since art work would be nice to have but not critical for me, should I even attempt to downgrade the version or should I stay with the 3.6.version?? What would I be gaining by going one version down? I was on the previous version for maybe a day or two before the upgrade was released so don’t really have a point of reference. What is the harm staying at the current version and wait until the new update is released?
If I were you I’d just stay where you are until the next update.
As for your comment about having slight issues with DSJ software update. That is the eternal mystery. Some have no problems. Some have slight problems. Some have big problems. Paul has said they’re working on ways to make the software update process more reliable for everybody.
Here’s the thing. There is an element of black magic to all this. When they did the minor DMP update to resolve functional issues, to their surprise they found it sounded better. They weren’t aiming for sound quality improvement, but that’s what they ended up with.
I am inclined to agree with you that I should stay where I am and hope the new update comes out sooner rather than later. To be very honest, I could have lived with the slight problems I was having with the DSJ and have it fixed, but Jeremy and the PS Audio team made it possible for me to move to the DSD as I had seen enough of a benefit from where I was that I thought it was a no brainer. And I am glad I did. As long as the upgrades continue to function without effecting sound quality negatively is ok with me. Inadvertent benefits I can accept but updates should not break the status quo.
We knew within days we had a problem as soon as the reports started trickling in. But those reports could have been anomalies. The process we go through when a problem is reported may be a little tedious and that’s probably part of the problem too. The first step is for us to duplicate the problem. It turns out that in this case the artwork issue isn’t as straightforward as one might imagine. For example, if memory serves correctly, artwork when using Roon works fine. It’s only when a specific set of circumstances comes into play using Controller that the issue gets clear. This isn’t always easy to replicate. Once we do replicate it then we have to start digging to find the root cause.
It’s easy to follow a specific pattern in your own system and immediately find a problem. That problem is obvious to you as well as repeatable. For us using a different use pattern the problem isn’t quite so obvious. We have to reverse engineer what exactly you are doing and then see if we can duplicate it.
