It is not just about the emergency buffer what is not working properly either. If there is a power cut or an accident/mistake we still should be able to recover those broken files as they are uncompressed and written continuously onto the flash drive. That is why I compared the method to my older dj gear (Stanton SCS.4DJ). It is an older product with less features, different os than this one, but still it worked as it should especially if I recorded my set with it. There were a few occasions when there was power outage or someone plugged off the unit, etc. and every single time I found the recorded file on my flash drive, it havenât had file format due to it was broken, I could fix it by vlc for example and it was fine then, no issue at all. If that old unit could do this, these more modern units also should record files like that.
This issue need to be addressed for the developers imo!
And who donât care about this thing because they just donât record their sets or they use the gear with UPS every time just please try to donât sabotage this topic because some of us would be to happy if this could be solved!..
Ahhh. I remember the Prime promos and trade stand demos of the capacitor powered shutdown procedure. They used to pull the power cable out and youâd have around five seconds to reconnect it (with a countdown timer and red exclamation mark?). Great if you accidentally flipped the wrong switch during a gig (been there and done that). I needed to swap a power socket while I was playing a few years ago and pulled the plug on my Prime 4. It was a two second pull and swap. Thatâs when I learned theyâd pulled the plug on this feature (ahem!).
Around V2.0 it behaved differently. It just powered the unit down regardless of power reconnection and while it safely ejected any media/database as it shut itself down, it still powered off. Not helpful if it was just a momentary glitch from a loose IEC or a flicker from a power drop.
From memory, I think they also used to demo yanking out a USB stick while it was playing because the track was cached to memory but that doesnât work (donât try it unless youâve got a stick you test on). Ejecting a USB stick with the eject button does leave it cached if I remember correctly but I could be wrong. Itâs a hazy memory of Engine OS V1.
Personally speaking Iâd like to see Engine OS safely end any unfinished recording when it does its âsafe shutdownâ during power loss. Itâs just one of those QOL additions that you donât know you need until you need it.
Personally I wouldnât say itâs a DJ âcrutchâ feature but more of a safety net. Itâs just something that Iâd have expected it to do without realising it didnât do it. Itâs a seamless background task to the end user, like many things in any operating system. It carries out these background tasks automatically and probably shouldnât be a feature but a natural part of that power loss shutdown procedure.
It is taking care of other tasks to reduce things like corruption, why canât this be a part of that same process?
When drawing up the specs for the recording feature it was either missed, deemed not important enough or it is actually there and itâs not working as intended (bug).
Thatâs what I was looking for online when the topic came up. They all seem to have disappeared , or maybe are not titled/tagged with any mention of the feature.
I scoured for them about a year or two ago when logging it as a bug but never found anything. I know I spotted it a few times before though but now⌠gone!
Yes, this was a good feature back then and still would be good if it would work at least the ânew wayâ but it not working properly any way⌠And the thing is, even the Stanton all in one unit didnât have this feature because when it lost the power it just went off instantly but you still could find the recorded file on the flash drive and you could recover it every time easily. So maybe they need to do something with the method it records the file or the developers should know what to change to make this record process work as it should safely. I still have both devices, I will retest both this week with same flash drives and everything, same way to double check this issueâŚ
What you have to bear in mind is that the system is basically a computer, and on any computer itâs very much still the case that we have to ensure we eject portable media properly, and that we shut down our computers correctly, and donât just kill power.
Surely if it were easily fixable at firmware or software level, then wouldnât all computers have implemented this already?
No - you canât cut power to a computer and have it start up cleanly next time, and you canât just pull out a drive whenever you like.
What @pasha says about computers⌠there are aspects of writing to a disk or USB media which the engine developers cant control, because they run on top an off the shelf OS ( in this case linux). There are things like disk write buffers which even the OS has limited control over, header data that cant be written until the file is finished, and many moreâŚ
This is not the only device which has this problem. My X32 mixing console will also lose the WAV recording if I cut power without stopping my recording explicitly. You can try to recover the file using VLC player, which doesnât care about file headers and just tries to read the data stream, but it isnât always successful.
Regarding the power buffer: I think the OS has to make priorities here. Are you going to use the precious seconds you have left to shut down the database file properly, or are you going to close off the recording? I know what I would choose. Imagine a power failure during a wedding due to catering: After power gets restored your database is corrupt and the party is over. Ouch!
But I understand what you are saying, why doesnât InMusic use the power buffer to close up the recording. Maybe they forget to implement it, maybe they couldnât do it due technical reasons. Make a feature request about it, who knows⌠But arenât we a little spoiled by laptops with built in batteries and hibernate functions here? I come from a time where computers were these big grey boxes: pull the plug and your work is lost. There was a big save icon in the upper left part of your screen to mitigate this problem. This was the wayâŚ
Yes you can, but it needs to be build with that in mind.
In the place where I work, is a team that builds light controllers based on a PC architecture that can have power cut off just like that, and boots up like nothing happened.
It is based on Windows IoT and handles sudden power off without a smallest issue.
As it is stripped down from any bloatware and unnecessary features (including windows updates) it is running super stable.
So if thereâs a will, thereâs a way.
Thatâs a different kettle of fish. Closer to the OS on my old Akai S900 that sits on a chip inside the unit. The OS that it came with is the OS itâs stuck with.
Akai did release updates, but they have to be loaded from floppy disk every time. The OS on the chip can only be updated by opening up the case and replacing the chip.
Same applies though, if I turned off the power while it was saving a sample to a floppy disk, Iâm not going to end up with a usable file.
To prevent this issue, the system needs to create 2 backup files.
And save backups in regular intervals across both files. Then when power fails at one backup writing, the other one is available for boot up with max 1 minute of wasted work.
These backups are very small. But in that case you always have a file, that you can relay on, even after a power shortage.
And there are a few to consider even! Colloquially, we say âThe databaseâ, but the reality is that there are multiple, depending on oneâs usage and Iâd take clean DBs any day b/c corruption is no bueno.
Colloquially, we say âThe databaseâ, but the reality is that there are multiple, depending on oneâs usage and Iâd take clean DBs any day b/c corruption is no bueno.