question for the Karma owners - dropouts?

jaytee

2009-04-23, 19:52 #1

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Subject: question for the Karma owners - dropouts?

I've been noticing more and more of what may be described as audio "dropouts" or possibly "decoding errors" on my Karma. I'll try to describe the scenario... I'll be listening to music and suddenly there's like a skip or gap in the music stream - just for a moment, then it continues on. The dropouts are only a split second in duration. Maybe I can parallel this to a cassette tape that has a bit of dirt on the tape itself and as the dirty spot passes over the heads, you get an audio dropout. The dropouts/errors might occur once over the course of an hour or they might occur once per track. This is with no jostling or movement, no overheating and no shorts in my headphone wires or lose connections. When this happens on the karma, if I rewind a bit and play the segment back where the skip occurred, there is no error and the playback is perfect. It seems to be totally random as to when this occurs. I cannot recognize a pattern or think of a logical reason for it other than that maybe this was happening all along and I didn't notice as much or that my karma has degraded for some reason. The 30 gig C4K60 hard drive I installed some years ago does not give me lock ups or errors that I'm aware of and if there was a hard drive problem, it would likely be reproducible every time... My music is all custom encoded in mp3 format using lame and CDex to either 256kbps or 320kbps with VHQ Q=0, VBR-MTRH, VBR 0, joint stereo. The files are fine and don't contain any errors as reported by any of my software. They play back perfectly all the time on all of my pcs.

So does this kind of thing happen to anyone else? Do you think I may need a new main board or power board? Any insight, ideas or questions would be more than welcome, thanks.

C4K60 30 gig Karma + Shure SE530s = audio bliss

This post was edited on 2009-04-28, 14:12 by jaytee.

flattop100 2009-04-24, 07:19 #2

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I wouldn't panic yet. I've found that when my Karma starts doing weird stuff, reformatting it/reflashing the firmware usually clears it up. Yeah, reformatting will take a while (and then reloading...) but it's better than opening up the case, right?

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jaytee

2009-04-29, 14:15 #3

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I turned off the crossfade to see if that would have any effect and that did not. I still had the dropouts/errors. What I observed though was that whenever the dropout/error occured, the hard drive was either spinning up or parking because I felt the vibration. Could the dropouts be the result of some kind of power surge? Still it is funny that it doesn't happen every time on every song and sometimes it happens twice in the same song. This is really pissing me off though so I'm either going to have to purchase another Karma or look for a rockboxable player. Nobody else has this happen?

C4K60 30 gig Karma + Shure SE530s = audio bliss

M0tah 2009-04-29, 16:36 #4

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I've only had this happen once or twice. I think it has something to do with the Karma not spinning up the drive soon enough, so its buffer runs out before more data can be read from the drive. I dunno what could cause it to happen frequently though. Maybe the drive's going bad?

RubenNYC 2009-04-29, 16:51 #5

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My guess has more to do with memory. How many songs do you have on the Karma? And how many songs in the running playlist when this happens?

jaytee

2009-04-29, 23:42 #6

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Quote by RubenNYC:
My guess has more to do with memory. How many songs do you have on the Karma? And how many songs in the running playlist when this happens?

2,935 tracks on the Karma. I use the DJ to serve up eight hour random sets and that comes out to about 115 tracks in a playlist. I still have 7.6 gigs free. So I don't have a lot of tracks. I'm particular about what I load on and I do encode in 320kbs so the files are not tiny.

Quote by M0tah:
I've only had this happen once or twice. I think it has something to do with the Karma not spinning up the drive soon enough, so its buffer runs out before more data can be read from the drive. I dunno what could cause it to happen frequently though. Maybe the drive's going bad?

As far as the drive going bad... I don't know, I don't get boot errors or freezes. I don't add/erase tracks very often, so the disk shouldn't be overly fragmented. The 30 gig C4K60 is a much better drive than the 20 gig C4K40 that came with it. With that drive I would get random lockups and would have to reset on occasion with a paperclip. This drive has never done that to me. Hell, if this drive was the one that shipped with the Karma, Rio would likely still be in business today.

I just put a new 2200mAh battery in tonight since my original battery was not holding a charge as well as it used to.

C4K60 30 gig Karma + Shure SE530s = audio bliss

mocelet 2009-05-02, 09:10 #7

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I have been finding this since I put the CF card in to replace the HD on mine. It might be because more of the RAM is taken up by the song database (now that there are more songs on there) and so there is less space for buffering, or it might be because the CF is just slow to "spin up" or whatever the solid state equivalent is.

I know that it very rarely happens during normal playing, but if I skip forward a few tracks, then I sometimes get 5-10s of the track, a tiny pause, then it carries on as normal.

This post was edited on 2009-05-02, 09:10 by mocelet.

jaytee

2009-05-04, 13:21 #8

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It's interesting that you are using a CF card setup and it's happening to you, too. That pretty much elimimates my hard drive as the cause. I've got less than 3,000 tracks on mine so I find it hard to believe that the song database is too large. I'm thinking this is a problem is with power delivery or that one or more of the semi-conductors on the main board has had it's day. When I put the new battery in last week, I was suprised that it almost went a full half hour without happening, but then it happened twice on the same track. So much for that.

The database too large theory can be tested easily as I can reformat and add only 100 tracks and see if it happens. The other thing I'm considering doing is loading some wav & flac files to see if the issue has anything to do with decoding the mp3s.

I've started looking on eBay for replacements. And also considering a gen 5.5 80 gig iPud and rockboxing it. I'm hesitant to go that way because I really do like the Karma's form factor and ease of use and I don't think the iPud can match it. I like the Rio DJ and I like that the Karma fits in the palm of my hand with easy access to volume and a flick of the joystick to pause, skip etc (especially handy in the car). A rockboxed iPud will give me the EQ and crossfade, but not the flick of the joystick.

C4K60 30 gig Karma + Shure SE530s = audio bliss

mocelet 2009-06-12, 13:43 #9

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I run Ogg Vorbis almost exclusively (which is why I got a Karma in the first place), so it probably isn't a codec thing

I am hearing a few glitches in normal playing, but they are gone if I replay the track, so it is not bad data. I think it is just the buffer running out of data for a moment. Also they happen once every few hours of playing, or less.

jaw2ek 2009-06-15, 10:27 #10

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I get the same thing, about 4-5 times, then the player locks up. For me it seems like a drive that is dying. I've rescued it a few times with reformat, but then the problem returns a couple of days later

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John30_06 2009-06-15, 16:59 #11

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It's possible the hard drive is okay, but your mainboard is having issues. Some problems that look like hard drive acting up can actually be a componenet in the board or the power daughter-board going bad.

Although what you describe sounds like the hard drive, possibly bad sectors.

p.s. I wonder if anyone bought those used drives from that Turkish fellow that posted a few months back? They seemed very reasonably priced to me.
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jaytee

2009-06-16, 17:45 #12

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I just received a main board and a bunch of power daughterboards I purchased from "rdvm777" on eBay. As soon as I get some time, I'm going to swap things out and see if the problem persists or goes away. The C4K60 30GB hard drive has not been giving me any problems, so I really don't think it's that. So I have a new battery and some new to me parts and soon as I have some time, I'll see what happens.

By the way, I found "rdvm777" to be an exceptional seller on eBay. The first shipment of karma parts was apparently lost in the mail and he voluntarily sent me another set. He was so nice to do so. It's rare to find someone nowadays that would do something like that. I thought I would mention it here in case anyone is looking for Karma parts. In fact, I'll probably make a separate post about that.

C4K60 30 gig Karma + Shure SE530s = audio bliss

John30_06 2009-06-17, 09:18 #13

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Quote by jaytee:
I just received a main board and a bunch of power daughterboards I purchased from "rdvm777" on eBay. As soon as I get some time, I'm going to swap things out and see if the problem persists or goes away. The C4K60 30GB hard drive has not been giving me any problems, so I really don't think it's that. So I have a new battery and some new to me parts and soon as I have some time, I'll see what happens.

By the way, I found "rdvm777" to be an exceptional seller on eBay. The first shipment of karma parts was apparently lost in the mail and he voluntarily sent me another set. He was so nice to do so. It's rare to find someone nowadays that would do something like that. I thought I would mention it here in case anyone is looking for Karma parts. In fact, I'll probably make a separate post about that.

He seems to be the go-to guy, sincere & obsessive-compulsive about Karma's.
I know he overposted here a while back, advertising his hardware, but that was maybe over-eagerness. He's obviously been following the threads here to keep up on SD card conversions, etc. and usually has a few refurbs on ebay at any given time.
I'd trust him.

jaw2ek 2009-06-17, 10:47 #14

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I bought my mainboard (2nd) from him as well, but that was probably 20 months ago, at least

Thought most ebay parts had dried up. Anybody know if he has any Karma shells in good cond?

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