Sluggish Responsiveness, Resume Playback Inconsistent

[Wrathernaut]

I've been running various builds of rockbox for a while and I've been a bit disappointed with the responsiveness.

My previous players were a Rio Riot and a Rio Karma, both of which could skip forward and backward without delay. My Gigabeat F40, however, seems to take it as a suggestion when I skip ahead or back, sometimes changing as you'd expect, other times updating the WPS screen and taking 3-5 seconds to actually start playing the next song. This has been pretty consistent with the various builds I've used.

This most recent daily build (23 Jan 08) has been quite bad at resuming play, sometimes skipping the current audio file, sometimes just going to a random spot in the one that was playing.  I was previously using MadCow's build, with the fast resume, and it never failed to resume properly (about 5sec faster) when resuming from power off.

Are these experiences typical?

[Phalangees]

The hard drive has to start up the new set of tracks need to be loaded up to the buffer. That is what takes the time and yes it is normal. The original firmware did pretty much the same thing except the wps updated immediately but the new track still had to load up.

When you do skip a track and it goes to it immediately, it is because the track is already in the buffer and the hard drive doesn't have to start up.

[Strife89]

But my Sansa (which has a flash drive) has been experiencing this as well. In the original firmware, this was almost nonexistent. I understand that there would be some lag, but often the delay is around 3, maybe 4 seconds.

[hoho]

I use a Sansa e260 and noticed same behaviour, its not as bad when your skipping to next track, then its pretty fast, but if you skip backwards its very slow.

[Wrathernaut]

Okay, so the sluggishness is pretty common, but what about this skipping the song that was playing and jumping to the next one on "Resume Playback" (Sometimes, but more often than not)?

Did I just get a bad daily build, or is this common?

[keuleJ]

I think part of the problem is that rockbox keeps playing the old track until "everything is ready". In other firmwares playback is stopped immediately when you hit the "next" button. IMHO this would be better as it gives you direct feedback on the button press.

[pixelma]

Okay, so the sluggishness is pretty common, but what about this skipping the song that was playing and jumping to the next one on "Resume Playback" (Sometimes, but more often than not)?

Did I just get a bad daily build, or is this common?

I get this too on my c250 and found the commit that made this behaviour a very obvious problem (at least on dual core targets - Ipods, Sansas and the H10s). Taking the chance to talk to the developer in IRC earlier today I've been told that it is actually a playback or buffering bug, and his commit is not the real cause but revealing the bug which could have hit before too, not that often though. There are a few bug reports about resume problems in the tracker and I will append the important part of the discussion to one of them and hope it'll get fixed soon.

[interframe]

Seeing a similar issue with my e200 I see a lag with the resume play or for that matter moving backwards in the menus. Some times it  is so bad that I just reboot the player. Actually its getting quite frustrating at this point. It was a whole lot more stable a while back. My personal opinion is that if it ain't broken don't fix it. Currently using version 16169-080126.  Any body know how far back I have to go to get to a version without this issue and perhaps without the remap of the buttons?

[Strife89]

I think builds from the first half of the month doesn't have this issue..

EDIT: Just tried revision 16043 (from January 10th), and I find it is much more responsive. (I even left the (now commited) Cabbie theme (version 2); no problems there.)

(I deleted my settings and database beforehand as a precaution, though. )

[Wrathernaut]

I went all the way back to EvilG's last custom firmware and the difference is night and day, perfect resume on startup and most everything else is more responsive.

[interframe]

Went back to the fist half of January and still seeing the same problem. EvilG's last custom firmware can be found where and when? Will it work for the e200 series? If that does not work perhaps I will put the e200 back to scratch and start fresh.

[MarcGuay]

If that does not work perhaps I will put the e200 back to scratch and start fresh.

I recommend you test run some of the Device Disabled builds in the Unsupported Builds forum, they've been treating me very well.  

[Wrathernaut]

Went back to the fist half of January and still seeing the same problem. EvilG's last custom firmware can be found where and when? Will it work for the e200 series? If that does not work perhaps I will put the e200 back to scratch and start fresh.

EvilG's is for the Gigabeat, (others?) and can be found in the unsupported builds.

[buckminster]

I have a sansa e260r and have noticed the same issues. I was using a build from 2.Jan.2008 (and went back to it) because the recent builds (I tried the 20th, 25th and the 30th) were slow to respond and/or seemed to lock up my sansa.

UPDATE: Just to clarify my exact problem I tried a few scenarios. It doesn't seem entirely dependent on the Theme used, but I am getting different responses with different themes.

When I am using the cabbie2 theme, the responsiveness seems bad all of the time with the current build (downloaded today). If I use one of the acotil blue themes, the responsiveness to pause, stop (pressing the menu button), forward or back only happens during the first ~15-20 seconds of initial playback. After that everything works as expected. I tried a default set up for the theme and it still seemed to have a similar issue.

Possibly useful to note: If "Fade on Pause/Stop" is disabled the song keeps on playing after pressing pause or stop for the first ~15-20 seconds of its initial play time. If "Fade on ..." is enabled, it fades appropriately, but still isn't responsive until that ~15-20 second interval.

UPDATE #2
It turns out the equalizer seems to be the culprit for me. When I turn off the equalizer, the ~15-20 second delay goes down to 5 seconds and only happens after I first start playback.

[interframe]

Went back to  a Jan 5 build r15998-080105 works fine , no delay that I can find anywhere.