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I use the player
to play WMA files in the car and also on the living room hi-fi
(through its built in FM transmitter, now legal in the UK), as well as through headphones. The
ear-bud headset works fine as an aerial for
transmitting FM to a car radio (or any FM radio) or to a hi-fi stereo FM tuner/receiver
at home (the headset wires need to be underneath or very close to the
tuner/receiver in the latter case, if it is plugged into an external FM aerial). An
optional antenna is available which presumably replaces the headset for
transmission, but I don’t need one. It also has an FM receiver built in, but
using the headset as an aerial it doesn’t pick up anything much in a
reasonable reception area except static. You can also store non-music files,
using the player as a simple portable USB memory stick – these don’t affect
the playback (but their addition may possibly trigger the "deleted
files" problem, see below). And finally it is a voice recorder, a feature I have not used yet.
The big
problems are:
-
You load some WMA files,
and get an error message on the player >NO FILES< which is obviously
wrong, as you can see the files are still there using Windows Explorer. See
below for how to fix this.
-
You may also get the same
message >NO FILES< for a different reason (see below).
-
For
no apparent reason the player will suddenly start deleting all its files
every time you try to start playing music, and you will get that
exasperating message >NO FILES< yet again, only this time it means
what it says - it really has deleted your files. Actually, if you connect
the player to your computer and examine it with Windows Explorer and check
the "Properties", the deleted files are still taking up space on
the player but are now totally inaccessible. When this happens, don’t try to re-format the disk in the usual
way, or the player won’t even start up properly when you try to play
music. Instead re-load the firmware, it is actually quite easy (see below).
For what it's worth, my guess is that problem 3. may be caused if you add
or delete files after you have started playing any tracks. My workaround to
this problem is the tip described here.
The lesser problems are:
-
The shuffled play list
occasionally has a sequence of tracks that isn't shuffled. See below.
-
The manual isn't very
helpful in places, to put it mildly. A few hints on minor difficulties
caused by this are also provided below.
CURING THE FIRST “NO FILES” PROBLEM – PROTECTED WMA FILES
This is due to some or all WMA files on the player being protected. Learn about
this topic using the Help information on Windows Media Player.
On Windows XP you
can see whether a file is protected by hovering the mouse over the WMA file’s
icon:
-
If you see “Protected: No” in the pop up you are all right. You can
copy these files to your player using Windows Explorer using drag and drop etc.
in the usual way.
-
If you see
“Protected: Yes” then you may well be able to
copy these files using the Windows Media Player “Sync” operation. This
copies the protected files to a portable player and removes protection on that player
(and you can re-arrange the files once they have been copied to other
folders if you want).
The time spent researching the Windows Media Player Help
files will save you lots of time later!
Copying files using Windows Explorer sounds
simple (and is). But WMA files created using
Windows Media Player often have lots of other hidden files that go with them.
You need to see these files if you don’t want to clutter up your portable player
memory, so that you can avoid copying them. In Windows XP, you need to
uncheck the box “Hide Protected Operating System Files” in the Windows
Explorer Tools Menus (Folder Options, View…). This is a little dangerous, so check the box again later when you have finished copying, so that you don’t
inadvertently delete operating system files somewhere else where they are really
needed.
CURING THE SECOND “NO FILES” PROBLEM – TOO MANY FOLDERS
This happens because NETAC don’t tell you that there is a limit on the number
of folders on the player. In my case
I have three top level folders, FM, VOICE, and MUSIC (the last of which I
created myself). I create all the music folders in the MUSIC folder. You can
only have 47 folders there, so I guess there may be an overall limit of 50
folders on the player (see this
discussion thread). If you exceed this you get >NO FILES< again, or if the folders
are more deeply nested you may not get this message but instead you may find that the player doesn't recognize all of your tracks.
If you set
up your initial play list on the player and then find that you have more than 50
folders in total, it is easy to re-organize the files into fewer folders
using Windows Explorer. Having done this, take a copy of the result (probably
somewhere on your hard drive) so that you can easily re-load the player when you
want to.
There is also a
stated limit of 480 on the total number of music/voice tracks
(or maybe files) on the player – you will eventually find this
fact in the manual. I haven’t reached this limit yet. The manual doesn’t
currently make it clear whether the same limit applies to a 2GB player as it
does to a 1GB player… I wouldn’t bet against it! If you exceed this limit
you will probably get >NO FILES< again.
There may
be other hidden limits… I'll update this if I find any.
RE-LOADING
AND UPDATING THE FIRMWARE
You need to learn how to do this, in case your
player gets messed up, and mine
certainly has done from time to time. Go to www.netac.com and
download the tools for your player (you apparently only need to do this once, see below). This will turn out to be a file with a .RAR
extension, which you may not have met before. It’s another kind of zip file,
and WinZip won’t work with it. To unzip it when you have downloaded it get a
free evaluation copy of the WinRAR program from:
www.rarlab.com/download.htm
I chose
WinRAR version 3.62 from the large number of choices at that site.
Having
installed WinRAR and used it to unzip the .RAR file, install the tools using the
unzipped setup.exe file, and you now have a program ("NETAC MP3 Firmware
Download" - called something different in the manual) that will repair (and maybe
update) the firmware on your player, and also format the drive properly at the
same time if you want. This program is simple and works well. It tells you the
version of firmware currently on your player, and the version of the firmware
that it is about to load.
Updating
to a new version of the firmware (after you have done the above once) does NOT require you to
download the tools again. Instead (according to the manual and the advice I received from
NETAC, but both the manual and the advice are probably wrong or out of date) you
are supposed to uninstall the NETAC MP3 Firmware Download program (if previously installed) and re-install the
tools using the same setup.exe file as described above.
The installation process should go off to www.netac.com
and get any updated firmware. I have tried this and it does not seem to work -
there is no apparent Internet activity, which there should be if it is
downloading a firmware file, and I still have the same
firmware version that I started with. I have reported this problem but have had
no response so far.
What does appear to happen
(and it seems sensible) is that the NETAC MP3 Firmware Download program (as its name suggests) accesses the Internet whenever it runs,
presumably to check for a new version of the firmware, and then offers to initialize
your firmware as previously described (whether or not it found
a new version). If this is the case, then I am in fact running with the latest version of the firmware and still having problems.
Note
that there is currently no obvious way of finding out from www.netac.com
whether a new update is available; I have been told by NETAC that a new
update was made available on 15th January 2007, which I have yet to
successfully install
(and which may fix at least the big problems reported here). Watch this space!
Needless to
say, perhaps, always keep a copy of what’s on your player on some other disk
(probably your hard drive). I have had to reload the firmware on the player several times, in fact I am
currently doing it routinely (with disk re-formatting) before copying in a new set of files.
Tip: I am becoming increasingly convinced that reloading the firmware (using
the re-format option) and then re-copying your files from the hard disk is the only safe way to
change your play list.
While you are on the NETAC web site download the manual also, a PDF file. As of
24 January 2007 it is just as poor as the printed version, but at least you can
magnify it on the screen so that you can read the tiny characters.
RESOLVING OTHER DIFFICULTIES
Shuffle
Play mode sometimes starts working like Normal Play mode (I am not sure yet
as to exactly what conditions trigger this problem). The shuffled play list
effectively has occasional sequences where the numbers aren't shuffled. So far I
have had as many as 30 tracks in a row (out of a total of 320) which are in
sequential order, but it's usually less than this. If you just let it play
through these tracks, or advance the playing track repeatedly using the arrow
keys, this will eventually fix itself, or else you can safely delete the SETTINGS.DAT
file on the player (this is one of those hidden operating system files). This
will return the player to its default starting condition and settings, you can
set up Shuffle Mode and then away you go. (I am still researching this problem,
watch this space...).
The description of how to set up the
transmitter and adjust its frequency is hopelessly garbled in the manual.
There are basically two normal modes called Music and Tran, as well as some
other lesser-used modes as described in the manual. In the first mode you are
playing music normally, and the “-“ and “+” keys adjust the volume.
In the second mode you are transmitting the music on FM, and the “-“ and
“+” keys adjust the frequency in
small steps between 88 MHz and 90 MHz. You can exit the Tran mode to Music mode
by holding down the Mode key for a second or two (which the manual actually does tell you, sort of). You
can also exit Music mode to Tran mode in the same way.
Other modes include Setup mode, which among other things is where you choose
Normal (sequential) or Shuffle play. Shuffle also has problems, as
noted above.
Note that if the
screen saver is displayed, you have to press the button on the
front of the player (or any other button) once to exit the screen saver, before doing anything else. This
seems obvious, but sometimes isn’t.
You
can delete a file when it is playing (if you decide that you don’t like it any
more) using the Delete mode.
Exiting this mode is not so obvious. The problem is that when you
exit from the lowest level menu, the next level menu up doesn’t respond for
many seconds. Wait… then you can use the arrow keys (the left arrow is best)
to find the exit option at that level. Note that deleting files may possibly trigger the
big "deleted
files" problem, see above).
You recharge the internal battery either through the USB lead or through the car
lead that connects into the car's cigar lighter adapter. In the former case, you can’t
listen to music at the same time. In the latter case, you can. Do follow the
manual’s advice on initial charging / discharging of the battery.
There may be other stuff appearing here later. Bookmark this page and check back
if you like! I hope that at least some of this helps.
If you want to contact
me (I would appreciate any words of wisdom myself!), you can do so via my home page.
Have fun!
Brian Tooby
www.tooby.demon.co.uk/Log/Home.html |
