So much (if not everything) is wrong with the BluOS
Answered
I'm so utterly disappointed in version 4. The UI is so contra-productive, convoluted and totally not user-friendly. I never use stream services as I have a library of over 20000 songs ripped from my CD's, which I mainly use, besides the occasional CD I play on my NAD CD Player. The library function is now a bit neglected I find. My gripes:
- The Home screen is totally and utterly superfluous on the iPhone. Just 4 tiles are visible? I think the UI is so bad. So much space goes unused with large spreading / fonts / headers / icons. Keep it all smaller, compress it a bit, use smaller fonts and less wide fonts. I think the UI designer needs to take a course in cognitive interfaces. As it is now, I never use the Home screen,which defeats its purpose. I think the old library screen (which is still there after a few clicks (sigh)) is much better UI practise and usuable. At least for me. Use the space you have on the Home Screen to good use!!!
- On my iPhone the tracklist is often unreadable because a large and wide font is used. I always put [Extended Version], [Demo], [Live] etc after the title of tracks when applicable. It is now a complete mess with titles truncated in the middle in such a way that I do not know what track is actually displayed.
- Dutch translation is bad or missing: 'Speelt Nu Af' in the Now Playing tab? 'Wordt afgespeeld' or just 'Speelt nu' without the ugly capitals, which are not used in Dutch for titles. The 'enable server mode' section is still completely in English. The Playlist headers are 90% of the time displayed in English, 10% of the time it's in Dutch. Very unprofessional.
- A lot of the old bugs when building a library are still there. When you have same titled albums, ALL of those albums get one release year from one of those albums. They will all be released in the same year. Bollocks. When you have same titled tracks and you choose one of those from the artist tracklist, a song from another album will (mostly) be played, instead of the one I select. Since I have a lot of remasters and deluxe editions, this is very unwanted behaviour. Titles are not unique identifiers! Multiple artists (separated by the semi-colon) are still ignored, while most other streamapps support those. These bugs were there in V3 and are still there in V4. I thought you mentioned this version 4 was built up from the ground? I think not.
- Why do I have to click on the screen each time I want to see the bitrate info when playing a song? Make it like a toggle: once click to see it, leave it as visible. Click again and do not display it. How difficult and obvious can it be to implement?
- Make it more stable. I once found the app in a loop when displaying artists. It just wouldn't continu. After I used the Windows app, the iPhone reacted again. I've encountered more such bugs which should't be there. I sincerely hope you test your software better in the future.
This version should not have been released as it still is far from finished, user-friendly and usable. It is such a shame as my NAD C658/C298 combo is a killer. But due to the software BluOS (3 and 4) it is often more a frustrating experience then not to listen to some music. I do hope you will alter the process of designing/implementing/testing your software with a little bit more quality processing. Sometimes I really think that you lot are smoking something during programming without any quality control whatsoever. You are destroying the NAD/DALI brand. Such a same and a waste of my money.
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Official comment
Hi Bob
A lot to unpack here...
1) Scroll to the bottom of the Home Tab and select Customise... move your Most Used and Playlist to the top and if you don't use Presets, move them down...
2) This is a no win situation... as a result, we compromised here. The Play queue view is truncated, and the Now Playing screen scrolls. The App for Windows and macOS does take its lead from the app for iOS and Android but we have had conversations about adjustable frames on some windows on the 'fat' version of the client. As 4.x is now server-based, meaning the Players are providing a uniformed announcement to Players, we have more flexibility here in the future.
3) Sorry about that - usually our regional offices pick up on bad AI translations - I guess our team in Benelux missed it.
4) You have adjusted tags to include LIVE/DEMO/EXTENDED on some track titles, that's great. If you have a 1967 release of Sgt. Peppers and then a 50th Anniversary Release of Sgt. Peppers - why don't you do the same to the Album title...? To 'build' an album in the index, we have to take multiple factors into account which Include file location, Album Title and Album Artist...
5) This is a bug - our team is looking at it - it should behave as you suggested. Look for a resolution in a near future App update.
BluOS 4.0 has been a 2 year project to fully rewrite a 10 year old platform with over 2 million lines of code and included a 6 month beta program. We do apologise for some issues you are seeing but have also seen over the past month since release, the rapid deployment of updated fixes and service packs have shown we are listening and reacting to concerns.
Thanks for your continued patience and know your feedback is being reviewed... -
Completely agree
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I completely agree with your concerns and complaints.
In particular, the bug you mentioned where different albums with the same name often show the year from one of the other albums has been driving me crazy for over 3 years now, and despite my continued and vocal complaining about this, Bluesound don't seem to give a damn about fixing it.
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Indeed, Pete. I thought I was going bonkers as the tags in my library were correct each time. Then I found out it has to do with same titled albums ( I have 3x a 'Faith' album for instance, by different artist). BluOS uses the title as an identifier, but of course that is not unique. I too have written to BluOS about this. This has never been resolved, and even the - 'built from the ground up' (yeah, right) - version 4 still has it. Unbelievable. I would like to view my CD albums chronologically (I'm in my fifties: I have them all in my head when I bought what in the 80's and 90's. It's easy to search too and a trip through memory lane each time I see them on screen. It shouldn't be disturbed by mixing that trip up. Right? ;-) Three years you say? That's a long time for a bug to survive! I only have my NAD system for a year now. It's been frustration all the way since then. I thought playing music was for enjoyment...?
But it is concerning that they can't even seem to have the core system stable and won't fix the bugs we mention (3 years ago!). Focus on THAT, I'd say, instead of conjuring up a less than stellar, obtuse, ugly new UI, which goes against all the rules of a decent, cognitively pleasant UI.
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I completely agree too, I have no intention of using streming music, and I have about 30k 'songs' in my library. They will play ok, once I find them, but using the "Search" function will at the very best give some results from what looks like the NET. (I know I have a number of albums recorded by Lazar Berman (classic piano), but searching on Lazar or Berman or Lazar Berman gives me none of the albums, just some goofy results, see screenshot)
Otherwise on either IOS or MacOS Sonoma, there is NO functioning search option. In the previous versin it worked super speedy. This version should NEVER have been released.
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Tony W: Regarding your answer above to Bob's Item 4, you haven't answered one of his issues from that paragraph, specifically the "When you have same titled albums, ALL of those albums get one release year from one of those albums. They will all be released in the same year" part. From your response you might have misunderstood - we're talking about two completely different albums by two completely different artists released in two completely different years displaying the same year and track count if both albums share the same name, i.e. one of the albums will show the correct details, but the second will show the other album's details. This happens if you view the artist's albums via Library -> Artist, but not if you just view all albums in the system via Library -> Albums. This would suggest Bluesound is actually reading the correct data at some point, but doesn't use it correctly from the Artist screen?
This is something a few of us raised a few years back, and still occurs now. For a very in-depth explanation of what happens and how to reproduce, see this thread.
Every time I've mentioned this bug, I get completely ignored by Bluesound. The aforementioned thread is marked as "Answered", which it most certainly isn't. Multiple users are seeing this issue, and it isn't related to our tags. Are we ever going to get some sort of response to this, let alone an actual fix?!
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Thanks Tony W for your answer.
I have to disagree on point 4, like Pete mentioned already. It really is a bug. I name my album titles also with a tag after the title [Reastered Edition] etc.. But to give you an example: I have three albums 'Faith' by three different artists: George Michael, The Cure and Hurts. They are not special editions, nor will I add a tag to them to avoid the bug, as they are the plain, first editions. All different years of release. They all get the same year in BluOS app, namely in my case that of Hurts' album. It certainly is a bug and it certainly needs addressing. The information in my library is correct.I get the feeling you are using only the title album as a unique identifier to fetch the year of realease in your SQL query or something in that direction. Since so many people here already know of, experience and have reported this 'phenomenon' (Í'd say it's a bug), I think it is time to address it accordingly.
Same goes for track titles in the tracklist. If you have same titled tracks on spread across different albums, it will be a lottery from what album that song will be played from (in the Library/Artist section), but usually the wrong one.
On points 1 & 2, the UI: I bought an iPad yesterday especially for using BluOS as I thought: bigger screen, more info. And I was right. At last I can read my tracklists in full again, see more tiles and albums. To my astonishment it also has a LANDSCAPE mode, which my iPhone does not have anymore since v4, but needs it more than the iPad! It still doesn't solve the issue of underused space/too little info on the iPhone. When I look at the header on the Home screen alone: Why not move the Home title to the upper left corner, leave the cog on right and you have at least 10-15% of your screen back to be put to good use?. It is just so baffeling to see so much unused spave on the iPhone. The iPad UI is more useable, but not everyone can afford to have both nor is it convenience to have to use the iPad alongside an iPhone. It'll do for now, but it certainly is beyond normal to have to buy new equipment, just in order to use my music system again properly. The iPhone app needs a lot of work still.
Why is it that BluOS decides when a thread is answered? I see a lot of discussions ending up with an answered flag, while most of them are just answered by: it will be passed to the IT department (and never to be heard of again?). It certainly should be the poster to decide wheather a post is answered and, most importantly, SOLVED. Since both are two complete different things, of course. You've answered my post, and thanks for your time for that, but it certainly has solved my issues and gripes with the new app. Certainly not on iPhone, as it is practically unusable there due to the little information that can be gleened from the screen now. I hope one day to see the app scaled to both devices, in proper Dutch, with all my albums on the correct release year, with all artists viewable who participated on a track, played from the right (remastered) album. That'll be the day! (But should have been the case from the moment I bought the music system, now one and a half year ago). Perhaps one day I'll actually enjoy the library I so painstakingly built from 1500+ CD albums, more than double the CD's and about 20000 songs.Thanks for your time!
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Why is it that BluOS decides when a thread is answered? I see a lot of discussions ending up with an answered flag, while most of them are just answered by: it will be passed to the IT department (and never to be heard of again?). It certainly should be the poster to decide wheather a post is answered and, most importantly, SOLVED. Since both are two complete different things, of course. You've answered my post, and thanks for your time for that, but it certainly has solved my issues and gripes with the new app.
Absolutely correct - this is a Community Discussion Forum intended for feedback. This is not and never intended to be Technical Support. Our Support Crew is Support...
If you cannot find answers from this on-line knowledge base by searching at the top form our over 300 FAQs already answered, our Support Crew is available by;
- Help, Send Support Request in the App (this also sends a player event log)
- support@bluesound.com
- In North America M-F 8:30-4:30 at 1-855-531-4666
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One solution to the problem of truncated tracklists might be to have an option in Settings to allow two or more lines for titles. As it is, you can hit the three dots on the right side to see the full title, but this seems a bit cumbersome.
I would like to see more flexibility in customizing the Home Screen, including being able to delete/hide unused services (such as TuneIn, in my case) or features (Presets). And/or being about to choose another screen (e.g., Library) as the Home Screen.
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Regarding the carrying over of bugs from V3 to V4, my guess is that Bluesound needed some sort of baseline to work with, and I've yet to see any application that's truly bug-free.
It therefore follows that any new release of software is likely to carry over some bugs from the previous version. Keeping the carry-over to a minimum is therefore, the name of the game.
As far as I can tell, for instance, Bluesound have at least fixed the extremely annoying bug wherein the volume slider would change position without actually altering the volume.
The shame is that we now have some brand new V4 bugs.
It'll always be the case that the quality of a software release will never truly be known until it's deployed and starts being used by end users. It's also always been the case, however, that one must define what the maximum acceptable level of bugs of various severity levels is in the release so that one can determine whether to go forward with workarounds and a winning smile, or roll back and try again once the bugs have been ironed out.
I'm not convinced that Bluesound got the latter determination right, however. There are loads of bugs in V4 and I only get around some of them because I'm a relatively technically-minded problem solver. A less IT-orientated user might struggle and end up frustrated, however, which is not a good user experience.
If I get some time then I'll try to document the bugs that I've found, but finding time to be a Bluesound testing resource can be challenging for most of us.
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A few bugs on my iPad, all found while using the library on my Vault 2: -
1) In the V4 UI, sometimes the search box's right hand edge disappears and takes the little 'x' with it, meaning that I can't easily delete the string in the search box.
2) In the V4 UI, the "Clear" button that enables the clearing of the list of Recent Searches doesn't always respond to tapping, meaning that the list remains in place.
3) The Play Queue isn't populated in the V3 UI. All that one sees on the RH side are the Home and Play Queue symbols at the top, and the play/pause / volume panel at the bottom.
4) In V4 UI, bug or feature, the running time for tracks in Search results after tapping "View All" is missing.
More later.
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Honestly, this thing is the worst product I've ever bought. I can't believe I listened to the guy in the HiFi shop... thankfully the speakers and turntable were good.
Only consider buying this product, if you are under 40 and consider yourself an IT genius.If you're Over 50 and want to play music or records... RUN.
Everything is much more complex than it needs to be.
And sitting down to listen to relaxing music in the evening isn't.
I'm throwing mine out, if anyone in Sydney wants it.-1 -
Well Brian
I'm 80 and it works, mostly, fine for me, on Mac, on iPad and iPhone... it has taken some energy to find out the hows, but that keeps the grey ones alive ;-)
so consider yourself lucky since any new product you get from now on will be "better" :-)
GreyT
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To be honest, in my experience, most of the complications arise from the technology involved, i.e. ripped CDs, digital music in general, and streaming.
If you are planning to rip CDs then you will probably need to learn about things such as metadata, MP3s, FLACs etc. etc.
This isn't the fault of Bluesound. Instead, it's because of the technical nature of the music files and data streams that the Vault and Node are designed to manage and play back for you, in combination with the complexities that this brings.
I'd therefore say the this is not for everyone, but it isn't Bluesound's fault. You'll encounter similar challenges with any other equipment that you use for similar purposes.
Also, there's plenty of support out there if you need it, some from Bluesound and some on a variety of forums (fora to be accurate :) ).
If you just want to play music using records and CDs, or if you aren't a very technical person and, quite probably, a large number of people aren't, then maybe give it a miss.
If, however, you do want to listen to music via ripped files, MP3s, and streaming services, then you'll eventually probably need to learn some stuff to be able to do so.
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Wasn't a fan of BluOS 4, but like everything in life you get used to it.
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I have had the node for about 2 years now.. the android app and windows app have been nothing but a pain in the butt. Everytime they update to a new version, something is fixed and something else is horribly wrong. It's so annoying. I would not buy another one.
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It appears Bluesound is not the only one struggling with the app:
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%s/sonos/bluesound/gAt least Sonos officially admits they made a mess AND they provide a roadmap for the fixes, albeit forced. It is, of course, the necessary damage control for now.
The big question is: when will companies like this start listening to their customers and engineers instead of begin led by Marketing and investors wanting to give the app those "much-needed" "redesigns" and whatever. You see what you get. Everybody is unhappy, lol.
The software market is definitely in a sad state.
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