Bookshelf Apps

Cara 7 update released, good news for SongBook users

June 22nd, 2010 2

Linn have just released a firmware update called Cara 7. This is an important one for SongBook as it has a change that makes the network eventing much more reliable. If you look at the release notes you may think that this is not a very exciting release, but if you use SongBook it is well worth the update.

We worked with Linn on making this change as we saw a lot of problems occurring due to network latency in the wireless network and specifically with the iPhone. We wrote a test application to record the latency of network messages and recorded the results over a relatively standard but busy network. The results were very interesting and showed that a longer timeout for messages was required. This will help the reliability of all control points that use network eventing (not all of them) so will be useful to most users.

For those interested in the details, the issue is to do with how UPNP sends network events. Events are things such as a track change, or play or pause being pressed, or the volume changing. In general SongBook needs to know about these things, so it tells the DS that it wants to know about these things through a process called subscription. SongBook subscribes to certain type of event messages on the DS. This is all standard UPNP by the way, theres nothing particular to Linn or SongBook here.

Now with the subscription in place every time something interesting happens the DS sends a HTTP message to SongBook to let it know. Normally this is fine and everything updates as it should. But if the message is delayed for any reason the DS detects this and cancels the subscription. SongBook has no idea that it missed an event message, or that it’s subscription has been cancelled and just thinks nothing is happening. Before Cara 7 the timeout was set to 100 milliseconds, reasonable on a normal network, but not so good on many networks out there. We regularly saw round trip times in our testing of much more than this, on a busy network maybe 5% of messages would take longer than this time, and that would mean a lot of cancelled subscriptions.

In Cara 7 this timeout has been increased (to 1 second I am told, but I have not confirmed this). In our testing of Cara 7 this has meant a complete elimination of dropped subscriptions. I can’t speak for all networks out there, but I think if you were to still see dropped subscriptions then there is something very wrong with your network and it requires some fixing up.

We deliberately try and make our test network a bit unreliable. It’s been very useful for catching bugs like this so while it’s tempting to fix it we do plan on leaving it as it is. All the flaws in our network are related to wireless, if you have a wired network with a decent switch then there is no chance of these kinds of issues arising. It’s worth making sure your wireless network is as fast as possible too. It’s not always possible to have a 802.11n only network as many devices such as iPhones and iPod touch’s still require 802.11b or g, but the day will soon come when everything is 802.11n enabled.

This also explains why some users were finding that SongBook worked more reliably when the beaconing interval on the wireless access point was decreased. Actually I’m not sure if they decreased it or increased it. If you decrease the beaconing interval then devices will associate with the network faster, and that will make waking from sleep on an iPhone work faster. If you increase the beaconing interval you reduce the network overhead and make the actual data transmission faster, which could also help out. Either way it did seem to have some effect on decreasing the latency in the network and would have reduced the number of cancelled subscriptions. The good news is that this sort of low-level network setup should not be required any more, which is how it should be.

iOS 4 and iPhone 4

June 22nd, 2010 0

We’ve concluded our testing of SongBook with Apples new iOS 4 operating system and on iPhone 4. SongBook is fully compatible with iOS 4, so you should be able to upgrade to the new OS release without any issues with SongBook. Multitasking works quite well, there is a small delay when you switch back to SongBook as it reconnects to network devices and updates the display, but it is quicker than starting up.

However there are some issues with the new iPhone 4, the current release is not compatible with this new device due to the larger screen size. We’re working to get a release out soon as these issues should be quite easy to fix up. Sometimes it takes some time to find the root cause of a layout issue as it’s not at all obvious.

Update 1: We have completed the changes for iPhone 4, but we’re going to wait until the current release is approved before submitting to Apple. This will delay the iPhone 4 compatibility by maybe a couple of days, but it will mean that the important bug fixes in release 3.0.3 will be out as soon as possible, hopefully the next couple of days.

 

SongBook DS 3.0.3

June 18th, 2010 9

We’ve just submitted an update to SongBook DS to Apple. This version is a mix of fixes and new features. Most importantly we have fixes for crashes with Linn UpnpAV support, Linn CD players and a few obscure crashes that we found through our new crash reporter system. The new crash reporter has been a huge success in revealing bugs, relying on people to extract crash reports and send them in was not really good enough to get a full picture of what was really happening. The crash reporter makes that process almost automatic, which means we see many more reports than we normally would. I know it’s not ideal to pop up a window with all sorts of obscure debug information for users to see, but we had to balance this with the privacy aspects of only sending information to our servers with the users permission. Not all developers take that responsibility seriously, but we think it is important.

We also fixed a few smaller issues with album art display and showing the bitrate and codec information.

There’s a few new features on the iPad version too. In this case a pictures probably the easiest way to show you whats new:

 

 

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There’s some other small improvements too such as a mini album art view in the Zones view next to the ticker displaying the current track in each room. That’s on the iPhone version too.

As usual we have an indeterminate delay until Apple approves this version, but it should be ready in a few days.

SongBook DS Crashing on Startup

June 17th, 2010 0

If you’re having trouble with SongBook DS 3.0.2 crashing on startup, it’s due to the input source that is set on your DS. If you have the UpnpAV source, or possibly a CD source set, then SongBook will crash. The workaround for now is to disable the UpnpAV source in Konfig. For most users the UPNP source is of no use anyway, and it does cause confusion for quite a few users, so it’s best to disable it anyway. If you have a linked Linn CD player it should be sufficient to make sure that this is not the selected source when starting SongBook. We didn’t test with the UpnpAv source enabled as the new Linn firmware disables it by default. So that’s yet another test to add to our ever increasing list of release tests.

We’ve fixed this issue and an update is on it’s way to Apple so we should have this issue resolved in the next few days. We’ve taken the opportunity to fix a few other issues and add some more interface improvements, especially on the iPad version.

 

 

 

SongBook DS 3.0.2 Available

June 16th, 2010 3

An update to SongBook DS has been approved by Apple, the current version is now 3.0.2. This update addresses crashes with Sonos devices and Linn CD players so will be an important update if you are getting crashes at startup.

There are also a few small improvements such as adding volume up/down buttons on the iPad and showing the active zone name on the zone button.

We’re working on a further update to add some more user interface features to the iPad version (the much requested ‘Now Playing’ screen amongst other things). We wanted to make sure that this bug fix release was out before submitting any other updates as you go to the back of the queue each time you upload a new version.

For those keeping track this review cycle took quite a while. We hope that this was just due to a temporary backlog in the approval queue, but in the end the delay was not too bad. It does seem like an eternity though when you have a version out there that is not working for some users. With the release of 3.0.2 we hope we have all the issues sorted out with the new network discovery system and that everything is reliable from now on.

Software Updates

June 10th, 2010 2

We’ve released updates for SongBook DS 3 in the last few days. The iOS versions (iPhone, iPod, iPad) are waiting for approval for Apple. We got a super fast approval last time but it’s not happening this time. Maybe all the testers are busy at WWDC? Anyway the approval is taking a while this time, which is frustrating as there are some crashing bugs in the current release that we all would like to be gone. Hopefully the update will be out in the next few days and all the crashes will be sorted out. We really have made some major improvements in SongBook 3 over 2, there’s just a few issues out there that we didn’t catch, but in the long term this version will be much faster and much more reliable than earlier versions.

We’ve been testing with large playlists and large data sets and this version of SongBook handles them much better and faster than earlier releases. Some of the feedback from users has been very useful for this. For example we just found an issue with loading the playlist that seems to affect some users. We were loading the entire playlist in one network round trip, which worked fine for us, but for some users it seemed to cause a problem. We changed the code to load it in smaller steps so hopefully that works better for users that have a problem. We’ve also reduced the memory usage and sped up the loading operation.

SongBook Mac has a new version, beta 4. It’s also working much better but we are still getting some reports of missing tracks in the iTunes listings so we need to do a bit more work there.

SongBook HD, the version for DigiFi devices, has been very popular. It’s due for an update soon that should make it even better. In the next release we plan on adding volume control for devices that support it, vTuner support and playlist saving. We went a little off track here with the volume control. The Naim HDX doesn’t have an internal volume control, and we thought that was the same for other devices, but it turns out it is not the case, if you have a Hush DigiFi for example, you should be able to control the volume from SongBook. We’ll get that update out as soon as we can.

We’re also hard at work on better UPNP support. We’ve had mixed results getting manufacturer support for this. Some have been very helpful (Naim being one), and some just won’t even return our calls (I won’t mention names here). While we’re on the subject of Naim, we have heard that there will be a software update for the Uniti that will make SongBook work much better with it, so we’re holding off on getting a new release out until we’ve got more information on this update.

Needless to say we’ve been very busy the last few weeks. We’ve got a couple of other projects on the go as well, one is a joint venture with a US company, and the other is a new product for us (not entirely new, but an extension of existing software). You should see the update for SongBook DS shortly, SongBook HD soon after that, and SongBook Mac should become an official release some time soon, depending on the feedback.

SongBook DS 3.0.1 is on App Store

June 2nd, 2010 7

A number of users have reported issues with the Library not showing media servers in SongBook 3.0.0.

This bug was caused by a compiler setting that was different in the build that went to Apple from the build that was tested. They should have been identical but there was one difference. This caused some code that was not completely correct to cause an error whereas it worked 100% correctly in the development and test builds.

We’re sorry this happened and will put extra tests in place to make sure that it does not happen again?

 

I know the app store gets a lot of criticism, but look at this…

Date

User

Status

June 02, 2010 07:55

 

jason swain

 

Ready for Sale

 

June 02, 2010 06:08

 

jason swain

 

Developer Removed From Sale*

 

June 02, 2010 07:42

 

Apple

 

In Review

 

June 02, 2010 07:00

 

jason swain

 

Waiting For Review

 

…reviewed and approved in 13 minutes.?

 

Update: As of now it is on the US store but other stores have not updated, should be there soon though.

SongBook Mac 3.0

June 1st, 2010 0

We’ve just uploaded the first release of SongBook Mac 3.0. You can find the download link on this page: http://bookshelfapps.com/SongBookMacBuilds.php

This is a major update and includes many new features as well as some significant bug fixes. We really think that the stability will be improved in this version. There may be some small issues as with any new major release, but we’ll get updates out to fix any issues that you may find.

This version also includes the new MediaServer, freeing you completely from the need for Twonky. Both iTunes sharing and file sharing are included, so you can now do everything in SongBook from Ripping to playback without the need for any other software. Of course for many users a NAS makes sense, but you have the option of with or without now.

We’ve also added Linn Radio support, and included the RadioTime directory to make it easy for you to locate internet radio stations.

Naim HDX and Hush DigiFi support has also been improved. We are now fully compatible with the new version 1.5 firmware.

This version has a new set of trial limitations. Instead of the old 10 minute usage limit there is now a trial period that allows you to use the fully functional SongBook for twenty uses over any time period. Once the twenty uses are up you are free to keep using SongBook to control your devices but the MediaServer, CD Ripping, and RadioTime directories are not enabled. We pay a fee to license RadioTime so we need to disable this feature after the trial period, but you’ll still find SongBook to be fully functional and useful as a ControlPoint.

SongBook 3, not rejected, not approved

June 1st, 2010 4

Apple have contacted us about the latest review cycle. They have asked us to provide a registration number for Twonky Server so that they can test (we have always suggested that they use Twonky since SongBook version 1). It appears that their demo license has expired. I’ve no idea why this has come up as an issue now and not on previous reviews, but that’s the way it goes with the Apple review process. In hindsight we should have been suggesting that they use SongBook Mac as the server, we will adjust the documentation to do this.

They have also asked for a video of the operation of SongBook for DigiFi so that they can review it. This is also something new, I’m not sure how useful it is to review a video, it will only reveal user interface issues and not any functional issues, but at least they are trying something. It’s kind of irrelevant

We’ve provided updated information to Apple and are preparing a video right now, hopefully this will be all that is required. It is very frustrating having this delay, but that is he deal with the App Store, for better and for worse.