Track count incorrect under version 5.1 (registered & free)

[Niko]

As found during beta state the track count shows a small number of tracks less than expected. I tried this under varying conditions as per the following table:


*) on the Apple, Win 10 is running under VMware, 2CPU and RAM 4 GB are assigned for this virtual machine

Track count with Asset 5.0 (Win 10), Asset 4.5.1 beta (OS X and QNAP), Minim Server (native on all NAS's) and "dir"-command: 22.828 (22.729 WAV, 99 FLAC).

If tracks are added immediately after upgrade to version 5.1 and "Detecting Changes" is pressed, the album- and track results are correct, however after each "Refresh All" the results with NAS drives are between 2 to 4 tracks less than expected. Correct results were only achieved, if the music library was on an additional internal or locally via USB attached hard disk drive. Finally, I would appreciate if my music library is stored on 2 NAS's (one productive and one backup).

If downgraded to version 5.0 again, track count is correct as it was before upgrading.

Any recommendations ?

[Spoon]

Re: Track count incorrect under version 5.1 (registered & free)

Try a 2nd Detecting Changes, it could be those files were in use at the time and could not be opened (if for example you were playing music).

[Niko]

Re: Track count incorrect under version 5.1 (registered & free)

Tried various ways to find a solution, mainly with 2 Ghz PC and NAS2 and minimal network traffic. Details are as follows:

1st try:
- assigned NAS2 instead of 2nd internal hard disk
- "Detecting Changes" -> -2 (however, 1 better than yesterday)
- "Refresh All" -> -2
- "Detecting Changes" -> -2 (OK, no file has changed, but result still incorrect)
- once more"Refresh All" -> -2

2nd try:
- installed Asset 5.0 registered, with "delete existing Installation". Shows as free version ("29 days remaining" ?!?)
- once more "Detecting Changes" -> -2 (OK, algorithm of detecting changes seems to be OK, since there was indeed no change in library ...)
- "Refresh All" -> -2 (this is really amazing, since when going back on Apple to Asset 5.0 correct results were achieved)

3rd try:
- assigned now NAS3 instead of NAS2. After "OK" (Asset to be restarted) panel shows 0 tracks [placed on] 1407 Albums (!?!)
- started with "Detecting Changes" -> -4 (this is really 1 track worse than yesterday !)
- "Refresh All" -> -4 (no more wondering) - runs - although better CPU, more RAM and parallel network adapters - significantly slower than on NAS2 (!?!)
- "Detecting Changes" -> -4 (OK, accepted)
- "Refresh All" -> still -4 (result seems not to change anymore)

4th try:
- installed latest OS fixes on NAS3 (Synology) including reboot
- issued another manual reboot
- rebooted 2 GHz PC as well. Asset Shows now as "Premium Registered" (why at this time ?)
- tried to update Ethernet and WLAN drivers, but these are already the actual ones (WLAN was and is not connected)
- looked whether NAS3 shows up in Explorer. Amazing: All 3 mapped NAS-drives (X:, Y: and Z show up and files are accessible in Explorer, but their "Computers" do not show up under "Network"
- 3 minutes later: Explorer Shows all UPnP under "other devices" and "multimedia" (incl. Asset and Minim Server on all NAS's and Asset on same PC), NAS2 is now "Storage", NAS1 & NAS3 still invisible as "Computers" !
- mapped drives (e.g. "X:\directory" cannot no more be assigned in Asset, however "\\NAS-name\directory" works. Seems a bit strange. Is this Win10-specific ?
- after NAS3 is assigned in Asset, it's name now appears in Explorer under "Network" as "Computer" (although no login was necessary - credentials were stored)
- "Refresh All" -> -4 (unchanged. Seems to run now slightly [that is about 10%] faster than before, but still far more slower than NAS2 [= QNAP-TS-112P]).

5th try:
- re-assigned NAS2 instead of NAS3
- in Explorer, now NAS3 has disappeared as "Computer" under "Network", but now the Name of NAS2 is shown on it's place
- after "OK" (to "Restart Asset"), 22824 tracks (=previous track count) on 1407 Albums is shown (with change to NAS3 there was 0 tracks shown ...)
- again beginning with "Detecting Changes" -> -2 (say OK, as result is the same as of 1st test with NAS2)
- then "Refresh All" -> -2 (same as 2nd test with NAS2 before). Further testing under these conditions seems to become useless ...

Theory so far: Windows 10, if installed on a physical PC, seems to have some network problems. Thereagainst, virtual machines (here VMware) use still the same virtual network driver under Win10 and Win7, thus this problem does not have so much impact. Furthermore, the varying number of Computers under Network is at least irritating.

Therefore: Let's take Windows 7 as a virtual machine and install Asset 5.1 on it. If all NAS's show the correct result (as it did with 5.0 before Win10), I think the issue results from Windows 10. And here are the results:

6th try:
- Win7, Asset 5.1 registered, attached to NAS1: -3 (but Asset 4.5.1 OS X was at the same time rebuilding it's database and 10 seconds after finishing started searching for changes. -> Cancelled it with "Quit" button)
- Win7, Asset 5.1 registered, attached to NAS2: OK
- Win7, Asset 5.1 registered, attached to NAS3: OK
- Win7, Asset 5.1 registered, attached to NAS1: OK (since Asset 4.5.1 OS X is no more running ?)

Yesterday I looked which results I would get if Asset 4.5.1 OS X and Asset 5.1 Win 10 as VM ran simultaneously with "Refresh All" and both attached to NAS3. And guess what: Both results were correct !

Therefore I tried once more with the 2GHz PC against all 3 NAS's with Asset 4.5.1 OS X not running. Results:
- Win10, Asset 5.1 registered, attached to NAS2 and "Refresh All" -> -2 (same difference as before)
- Win10, Asset 5.1 registered, attached to NAS3 and "Refresh All" -> -4 (same difference as before)
- Win10, Asset 5.1 registered, attached to NAS1 and "Refresh All" -> -3 (also incorrect, but 1 track better than yesterday)

My conclusions regarding track count in Asset will follow shortly. Before that, 2 remarks which were known already earlier:
- Best results are achieved if Asset runs natively on NAS (for Synology not available).
- Results with internal drives or USB attached drives give correct track count results as well. Actual 8 TB drives may be sufficient even for large libraries.

All the following applies to Asset clients connected to music libraries on a NAS:
- Results are daywise the same with each comparable retry, but may be different from day to day, provided that fair network conditions are given.
- Windows 10, if running natively on about 3 to 5 year old PC with Asset 5.1 shows the worst results. Eventually better network drivers will improve results later.
- Better client CPU seems to enable sightly better results under Windows 10, better NAS CPU and/or more RAM seems not to have.
- 2 separate instances of Asset 5.0 running on same hardware (OS X natively and Windows 7 under VMware) still leads to correct results.
- Same incorrect figures under Windows 10 and Asset 5.1. were achieved, whether Asset 4.5.1 under OS X was running on same network or not.
- Asset 5.1. counts more reliable under Windows 7 than under Windows 10, especially if 2 instances of Asset were running on same machine.
- Windows 10, if running under VMware, with Asset 5.1 is nearly similar reliable as Windows 7.
- Windows 7 with Asset 5.0 has best reliability in track count, irrespetive of big or small, fast or slow NAS.

For me, Asset 5.1 running under Windows 7 and VMware seems to be acceptable in a "production environment", although Asset 5.0 may be even better for unknown reasons.
However, Windows 10 natively may improve with time passing, but seems not to be reliable enough actually, not even with Asset 5.0.

What is your comment to these results and my conclusions ?

[mville]

Re: Track count incorrect under version 5.1 (registered & free)

FYI, Asset 5.0/5.1 running on Windows 8.1 64-bit, audio library on local HDD. Album and track count has been consistently accurate and correct.

I would expect the same results on Windows 7 and Windows 10.

[Niko]

Re: Track count incorrect under version 5.1 (registered & free)

FYI, Asset 5.0/5.1 running on Windows 8.1 64-bit, audio library on local HDD. Album and track count has been consistently accurate and correct.

I would expect the same results on Windows 7 and Windows 10.

That's what I also though - because of the large tester basis ("Insiders") of Windows 10. As said above, I have absolutely no problems with Asset under Windows 7 (neither with local discs, nor with NAS's).

At the time when Windows 8 came out I decided to move to Apple, and now I thought to give Windows 10 a chance since actually most of Illustrate's products are made for the Windows platform. Glad that meanwhile both Asset and dMC are available on Apple as well, but there are still differences, especially re. usability, but within one year I think we won't find a difference any more. Furthermore, Perfect Tunes has become far more important - especially for me - because of the ability to harmonize tag contents. And - according to Spoon - upto now there is no decision, whether PT will be available for Apple later on as well.

Since I do have the licences, I am trying out new releases on various platforms. For my NAS from QNAP there is happily a native version of Asset available, which is still the best. For my other NAS's (by Synology - mainly as backup) I have to use Asset on a PC / Mac and assign the music library on the Synology NAS. And for this special purpose I am still comparing, whether to use Asset on the Mac or e.g. on an older Netbook running Linux - since a Windows System needed up to now to much maintenance efforts - compared to the 2 - 3 apps I use it for (Perfect Tunes, dMC and eventually Asset).

Further I thought that my findings would be interesting for some other Asset users, since there were already some questions in this forum re. Windows 10. From my experience, I would recommend to use a double boot feature on a PC. On one partition, Windows 7 or 8 should be used and copied to the other partition, where it could be easily upgraded to Windows 10. And then one could easily compare functionality, stability and performance between the two OSs, which is a good basis for comparison because of exactly the same PC hardware.

Since I have already deleted my "Windows.old" files on the two PCs, returning to Windows 7 costs me 2 days (install XP and XP Service Packs, upgrade to Windows 7 ... think of the download times needed), I recommend that upon my findings as described above anyone should - for safety reason - give a prior comparison a try, e.g. in the way of the example before with 2 partitions.

[Niko]

Re: Track count incorrect under version 5.1 (registered & free)

Happily found the reason for the different track count figures under the Windows version of Asset UPnP:

To ensure equal counting results, I decided to delete all files from a NTFS formatted disc and then copy all files again from a source disc were the track count result was correct. But 3 or 4 files could not be deleted, and Windows reported the path to be to long. The only possibility to get these files finally deleted was to reduce such file names to e.g. "X.wav" (and possibly the directory names as well).

Then I investigated these file names re. path and file name length on the source drive (NAS, formatted as Ext4) and found that - according to limitations still existing under Windows 10 - files with to long names may be copied correctly to an NTFS formatted target drive, but later on there are errors reported by Windows if you try to read or otherwise open such file.

Anyone would expect that Windows would refuse to write the file which exceeds file name limitations - but Windows writes the file and later on it claims that it is unable to handle such file and reports errors to a program which tries to read or to change it.

The same error happens, if you connect to a remote disc via SMB or AFP from a Windows PC and path together with file name exceed Windows limitations. Other operating systems like OS X or Linux do not have any problems, neither with internal nor with remote drives, irrespective of the way the are formatted (HFS, Ext4 or similar, DOS, FAT32 or NTFS).

So if anyone should have a similar problem it would be a good idea to check the lenght of trak file names together with the preceding directories and the drive letter as well (under Windows use e.g. the "dir" command like "dir *.wav /s > result.txt" meaning that a file name "result.txt" will be created, which contains all file names ending with ".wav" in all sub-directories under the actual directory. If you open this file e.g. with Notepad.exe, you may easily evaluate longer file names and try whether the may cause handling problems or not).

Typical candidates for such problems are classical opera CDs, where some sources indicate in the path the full name of the orchestra including the actual conductor, and in the track file name the composer, the opera's name, act, scene, leading roles and all contributing roles). It is a good idea to check such names before beginning to rip the CD.

[schmidj]

Re: Track count incorrect under version 5.1 (registered & free)

Not surprised, I had issues with too-long file names on my QNAP NAS, dBPa had no trouble writing them, but Windows couldn't read. That's why I modified the dynamic naming strings in dBPa etc. to include the length option to trim the file names and avoid this.

Yes, it is most commonly an issue with classical albums, but I've run into it also with medleys where each song in the medley was listed in the title.

[Niko]

Re: Track count incorrect under version 5.1 (registered & free)

Not surprised, I had issues with too-long file names on my QNAP NAS, dBPa had no trouble writing them, but Windows couldn't read. That's why I modified the dynamic naming strings in dBPa etc. to include the length option to trim the file names and avoid this.

Yes, it is most commonly an issue with classical albums, but I've run into it also with medleys where each song in the medley was listed in the title.

Many thanks for your hint to use the trim option - shall update dynamic naming as soon as possible. Always astonishing how many useful goodies dBPa contains ... ;-)