Olive can't even fix their own players!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

woodsyi · « **Reply #20 on:** 13 Dec 2006, 02:53 pm »

Before you throw in the towel, why not contact Vinnie and see if he can do anything for you. I don't hear any complaints from his modded Olive customers.

Vinnie R. · « **Reply #21 on:** 13 Dec 2006, 03:13 pm »

Hi Guys,

ZLS has a modded Musica on its way to me with similar issues to reddmadder's stock unit. I'll be looking into this.

I own a modded Symphony and have had no issues with the unit freezing up like reddmadder has described. Has anyone with a Symphony (stock or modded) had such problems? I'm just curious if it is only unique to the Musica.

Regarding the static charge locking up the unit, I HAVE experienced this. There must be some over-voltage protection circuit on the motherboard that gets tripped when it experiences Electro-Static Discharge (ESD). ESD voltages are generally high (thousands of volts), so it is easy to trip such a circuit...especially in the winter when it is dry and when you are walking on carpet. There might be a mod to reduce the circuits sensitivity. The best way to avoid tripping this circuit is to ground yourself before touching the unit.

I'll keep you all posted on my findings,

Vinnie

Vinnie R. · « **Reply #22 on:** 13 Dec 2006, 03:17 pm »

Quote from: woodsyi on 13 Dec 2006, 02:53 pm

I don't hear any complaints from his modded Olive customers.

That's because I privately threaten them ("I'll break your knee caps!")

:The Godfather music plays in the background:

Sorry... I couldn't help myself!

PhilNYC · « **Reply #23 on:** 13 Dec 2006, 03:29 pm »

Quote from: EarWax on 13 Dec 2006, 02:57 am

Hmmm... my turntable and vinyl are still spinning very nicely....

I thought you had to flip the vinyl and reset the arm every 20 minutes or so...?

woodsyi · « **Reply #24 on:** 13 Dec 2006, 04:08 pm »

Quote from: PhilNYC on 13 Dec 2006, 03:29 pm

I thought you had to flip the vinyl and reset the arm every 20 minutes or so...?

Not if you stack 'em up and play them on one of these babies.

http://cgi.ebay.com/VINTAGE-MOTOROLA-TUBE-STEREOPHONIC-HI-FI-RECORD-PLAYER_W0QQitemZ130057698716QQihZ003QQcategoryZ48649QQcmdZViewItem

reddmadder · « **Reply #25 on:** 13 Dec 2006, 05:09 pm »

I just called Olive and asked for the person I was told to speak to last night and just by coincidence he can't be located!
My rep told me last night he wouldn't be available until later today,so I asked for him anyway and the response was that he's on a call...looks like I'm getting the brush off.

reddmadder · « **Reply #26 on:** 13 Dec 2006, 06:36 pm »

Vinnie,
Has Olive contacted you about this problem?
R.

Vinnie R. · « **Reply #27 on:** 13 Dec 2006, 06:41 pm »

Quote from: reddmadder on 13 Dec 2006, 06:36 pm

Vinnie,
Has Olive contacted you about this problem?
R.

I emailed Matt Mooney last night asking him to contact me. I haven't heard from him yet.

Folsom · « **Reply #28 on:** 13 Dec 2006, 07:15 pm »

From the ground on the IEC plug add a lead that attaches directly to the unit so hopefully if you use it you might ground yourself, or if you know that there is, then just touch the case before you mess with it?

What if the CD spinning is making the static electricity? What would you ground? man... er

Vinnie R. · « **Reply #29 on:** 13 Dec 2006, 07:27 pm »

Quote from: Destroyer of Smiles. on 13 Dec 2006, 07:15 pm

From the ground on the IEC plug add a lead that attaches directly to the unit so hopefully if you use it you might ground yourself, or if you know that there is, then just touch the case before you mess with it?

What if the CD spinning is making the static electricity? What would you ground? man... er

Putting a ground on the Olive's enclosure may cause a ground loop with other components, so I don't recommend doing this.

The CD spinning is not causing the problem... the problem is when you touch the unit when you have a high build-up of static charge.

C'mon, guys... don't you wear ESD heel-straps on your shoes at all times? They are so fashionable!

How 'bout clean-room ESD shoes:

Women dig the pimpin' styling!

reddmadder · « **Reply #30 on:** 13 Dec 2006, 09:19 pm »

Matt should be in by 5:30 est
I'm trying to reach Jonathan Lee the tech genius

Vinnie R. · « **Reply #31 on:** 13 Dec 2006, 09:31 pm »

Quote from: reddmadder on 13 Dec 2006, 09:19 pm

Matt should be in by 5:30 est
I'm trying to reach Jonathan Lee the tech genius

I will be out tonight with my wife going to her doctor, and then off to birthing class.... oh what fun!

I won't be back until 9:30pm EST, so if Olive does call I'll probably miss the call but will try to call when tonight. Otherwise, I'm sure we'll connect tomorrow.

I received ZLS's Musica today. I'll be taking a good look at that soon as well. Hopefully we'll get to the bottom of this, and quickly enough...

Jay S · « **Reply #32 on:** 19 Dec 2006, 04:36 pm »

Would be great if we can sort this out... my Musica is freezing more and more frequently now. It seems like nearly every listening session now gets interrupted, sometimes in less than 30 minutes. I have tried cleaning the library using the maintenance menu but that hasn't helped. In the past, it would completely freeze up but lately what sometimes happens is that it will allow me to hit the play button but then in less than a second it will go back to the menu without playing a sound. Weird!

Vinnie R. · « **Reply #33 on:** 19 Dec 2006, 04:55 pm »

Hi Guys,

I already repaired ZLS' Musica and shipped it back to him last week. Here is what I found:

With a CD playing, it would start skipping (totally getting stuck on the song and needing to be rebooted) within 5 minutes. When playing off of the hard drive, it would just lock up, and eventually reboot itself. Usually this happened within 5 minutes as well. The unit would also lock-up when trying to boot up sometimes. Everything would freeze and you would have to reboot and try again.

I ran the Recovery CD (without wiping out the music stored on the HD) and it installed 2.1.8. After that, I was still having the same trouble as above. However, this time I noted that the little icon of the music note with the arrow pointing towards it (which stands for "busy, encoding files") was blinking all the time. So it was clear that the Olive was hung up doing "something." I stopped playing CDs and music off of the hard drive. That "busy" icon continued to flash for over 2 hours! It finally finished and there was no more hard drive noise (the little ticking that you can hear with the cover off, which is data being written to the hard drive). I then installed SW VER 2.3PRO. The update went smoothly, and then I did one more reboot and tested her out. Well, I was able to play a complete CD (Holly Cole's "Don't Smoke in Bed") and then I ejected the disc and decided to try an album off of your hard drive (Charles Brown). I was able to play the entire album without a hick-up. Everything is running fine now.

So.... it seems that the problem was a matter of the unit trying to run other operations in the background (taking up RAM and CPU power) while we were trying to play music off of the HD and/or CD drive. Perhaps there is a point on the CD where error correction was needed (ie, more processing power) and/or more buffering to RAM, and it overloaded and this would cause the freezing-up or skipping on the CD drive? By letting the hard drive finish running its encoding operation (for over 2 hours... it must have been really "backed-up"), this freed up the unit and now allows it to play on the CD or HD without any problems. The strange thing is that this time, I didn't actually see that blinking icon that I mentioned about above until I ran the Recovery CD and then tried running again.

So the problem is SW related. It appears that Olive needs to add in some code in the Software that monitors the CPU and RAM usage and then displays to the user when things are still happening and prevents the user from overloading. Also, more SW diagnostics that tell you in detail what is going on in the background so you know what is locking the unit up. Kind of like when you open the Task Manager in Windows. You can see all the programs that are running and which ones are taking up CPU and RAM. You can also shut them down if they go wild. Otherwise, everything runs too slowly and crashing can happen. Remember, the Olive IS a computer. I *think* the operating system is Linux-based. I think the hardware is very well designed and laid-out. It is the software that needs perfecting.

Best regards,

Vinnie

PS: Jay S... if you can't get your unit running smoothly again, please send it to me and I'll take care of it ASAP for you...

ZLS... did you receive your Olive back? If it hasn't arrived, it should any day now. There have been small delays in shipping due to the holidays...

jqp · « **Reply #34 on:** 19 Dec 2006, 11:37 pm »

Yikes. Maybe the SW developer is on vacation

ZLS · « **Reply #35 on:** 20 Dec 2006, 04:35 am »

aa Hi there!

ZLS here and I did get back my Musica from Vinnie Rossi. I/It had the same problems as previously described. It is now working, and I am actually listening to Joe Weed and The Vultures (Whom I discovered here on AC) This is what i figured out about my Red Wine Audio modified Musica.
1. You can only do one process at a time.
2. The time it takes to rip and compress a CD (I use FLAC) is non linear. What I mean is there is no set amount of time. It may take 5 minutes, it may take 15 minutes. As long as the icon is flashing do not attempt to do anything else, you will pay for it. It may not be right away but it will occur.
3. If you turn on the machine and the icon is flashing wait until it stops.

I purchased one of the first RWA modified Olive's so I am part of the learning curve. I have several thousand songs ripped into the HD and even more on a outboard HD (also battery operated that I use.
The Olive Musica just sounds terrific, and I quickly became addicted to programing my own music. While my Olive was away being tenderly cared for by Mr. Vinnie Rossi the fact that I could only play one CD at a time was maddening. The fact that I had to go look for the actual CD's was even more maddening.
I deal with Vinnie Rossi, not the Olive Corporation; that makes all the difference in the world.
I hope this has been helpful to all concerned.

Gotta go " Apache" is playing

Berndt · « **Reply #36 on:** 21 Dec 2006, 08:04 pm »

Quote from: Destroyer of Smiles. on 13 Dec 2006, 07:15 pm

From the ground on the IEC plug add a lead that attaches directly to the unit so hopefully if you use it you might ground yourself, or if you know that there is, then just touch the case before you mess with it?

What if the CD spinning is making the static electricity? What would you ground? man... er

No IEC plug, a two prong figure 8 ps cable connection is utilized on the unmodded olive.

PaulFolbrecht · « **Reply #37 on:** 22 Dec 2006, 03:36 am »

I am also now having lockups on my RWA-modded Musica (3 weeks old), only AFTER upgrading the OS to 2.3 (so I could use the web interface).

I will use the restore CD, and I'm confident that will fix it, but it won't change my conclusion that Olive's OS is a POS. It's inexcusable for the unit to have issues like this. Just MAYBE this is just one slip-up, and the software will be rock-solid as of the next version, but what are the odds?

I'll certainly think twice about upgrading the OS again.

Jay S · « **Reply #38 on:** 22 Dec 2006, 03:58 am »

Ah, glad to hear that the problem is software-related since shipping my Musica back and forth to the US would be quite expensive ($200-300 round trip). I do hope that Olive is able to sort this out in their next OS update. I did not know that the Musica may be able to work through the cause of the "freeze" and reboot on its own... I guess I'll just let it sort itself out next time as there may be some pending operation that it has to get done... Surely a hassle and not a substitute for an improved OS.

What is the view on 2.3 vs 2.2.2 Pro? I need an updated CD database since I have some 2006 cds that are not in 2.2.2 but does 2.3 seems to be less stable?? The walls in my place are really thick concrete so my wireless signal doesn't reach the Musica, so accessing the library through a web browser is not a consideration at this point. (For that I am waiting for 802.11n).

I really am liking having my music on the Musica. Before the Musica I had actually been using my iPod as my source of choice -- out of convenience. My CD player (a fine sounding TRL-modded Marantz SA14) has gotten very little use since early this year!

Vinnie, I appreciate your offer to work on my Musica. I think that if the problem is software-related then I will try to sort it on on my own following the guidance on this thread and other advise.

Merry x'mas to all!

reddmadder · « **Reply #39 on:** 26 Dec 2006, 12:26 pm »

Hi,
Well Olive is shipping a new(refurbished?-hope not!) Musica to me.
I made a quicktime movie before I shipped it back, yet again, that showed the Musica freezing and not starting up since they maintain that they couldn't reproduce the problem when they had my player.
When it finally arrived they experienced a freeze up on my player.
BTW, I tried to troubleshoot my player as per the blinking icon protocol without success.
Kudos to Vinnie that he was able to recognize,fix and get his customers back on track(pun intented)!