A Tale for Your Bemusement


This is a tale for your bemusement; no other point to it, really. I’m posting because no one I know would have the kind of emphatic understanding that some of you may have.

For 13 years or so, I’ve owned and enjoyed a Sony HAP S-1 music server, the little sibling to Sony’s more featured HAPZ-1ES. The machine analyzes the files for each disk transferred to it and puts them into general categories, e.g., Genre, Artist, Album. It also has a feature called “SenseMe Channels.” Each file (or track) is analyzed and put into one of fourteen “channels” (playlists) which broadly correspond to the emotional content of the track, e.g., Morning, Evening, Midnight, Energetic, Mellow, etc. Although I usually selected Albums for my listening, I enjoyed using the SenseMe feature; I liked the unexpected juxtapositions encountered on the playlists, and I liked listening to tracks that I might not have listened to in a while.

A couple of years ago, the HAP S1 misfunctioned after a power outage. When I tried to play an album, only the first track would play. Finding no answer in Sony’s online support, I contacted ES support by phone. The service rep said the only thing I could do was a factory reboot, which meant erasing all 14,000 tracks of music from the internal hard drive. I did that and then reloaded the tracks. The machine’s Album selection feature worked again, but it wouldn’t analyze the 14,000 tracks for the SenseMe feature. I contacted Sony ES support again and was told that they didn’t have an answer and wouldn’t find one because the machine and its software aren’t supported any longer. Since then, every time I see an announcement for a new music server, I look to see whether any has a “SenseMe” feature. So far, none of them has.

About ten days ago, I saw that the machine was analyzing the tracks for SenseMe purposes. I can’t tie that to any particular event. We had bad weather here in Portland in January that resulted in a prolonged power outage at our home,, but that preceded the SenseMe revival by six or seven weeks.

In its support literature, Sony advises that the analysis for each track can take 5 minutes or more. So far, the machine has slowly but surely churned its way through analyzing about 2500 of the 14,000 tracks, so it’s going to be a while yet.

Thanks for reading.

Jim

 

jimcrane

It’s unfortunate but I could have predicted that Sony wasn’t going to give adequate support to a machine of that vintage.  Too bad you wasted your time reloading the music.  Time to buy a server to load the discs that you can back up and then use with streamers of your choice, or else just switch to a streaming service without playing the discs from a hard drive.  All software offers a service similar to what you describe, be it from a streaming service or by organizing your own files.

I unplugged all my equipment from the walls when the bad weather hit this winter in Portland. PGE has a real penchant though for power surges and outages ("maintenance") so I invested in a high-quality surge protector a long time ago and I'm glad i did.

Slapping a tube TV might have helped reset a loose tube, but otherwise isn't a very good idea give the fragility of tube filaments.

The modern equivalent of multiple reboots is often required before any upgraded software has reloaded, and in correct order, e.g. a before b, but upgraded c requires d before e functions correctly, and all need to be loaded and communicating before f works at all. 

Thanks to all for reading and taking the time to comment.

@carlsbad2, over the time I’ve had the HAP S1 there’ve been two firmware updates, the last one of which was some time ago, at least 5-6 years ago or more.. Until I learned that Sony had stopped support, I hoped that a firmware update would add to the machine’s streaming capability, which now and forever is only Spotify and TuneIn.

@Jond, I need to correct something. The machine doesn’t sort uploaded disks into Genre (“Genre” is a way to select music to play, along with Artist, Album, etc.). In fact, when I ripped the disks using dbpoweramp, I assigned the Genre. Unfortunately, I was often inconsistent, which has diminished the utility of “Genre” has a classification. So I am often amused by my long-ago decisions about that.

@bondmanp, your comment about a ghost in the machine reminded me of tube televisions. When they malfunctioned, sometimes a shaking or a slap to one side would make them work again. I’ve unseriously considered doing that to the Sony when it’s not worked, but I’ll remember your suggestion about multiple rebooting.

FWIW, there have been many times that software updates to a few of my audio components have seemed to cause problems.  The natural thing to do is reboot.  What's funny is that very often, 2 or 3 reboots are necessary before the problems correct themselves.  Ghost in the machine?

I can't shine any light on your particular problem, but Sony's HAP-Z1ES has been the bedrock of my system for many trouble free years now. Like you, I really enjoy the Sense Me function. I did upgrade the on board HDD to a Samsung 870 EVO SSD two years ago which of course required the excruciatingly long download process. Other than the annoying habit of randomly putting doubles of all the cuts on an album, it has always performed flawlessly. FYI, since retiring, moving, and building a new house, my system has always been on a dedicated line which includes an isolation transformer and a Furman SPR-20i conditioner/surge protector/voltage regulator. We have regular storms in my area and the power has a nasty habit of blinking off and on during the more severe ones. That's probably the worst kind of power problem modern processor controlled audio gear can experience because of the accompanying surge that follows it. The Furman has done it's job and tripped it's protection circuitry several times, saving my system in the process. If you are not already doing so, you may want to look into adding some AC line protection to your system to help mitigate future events.

Well, in just under two months you'll be right as rain and none the worse for it. I like it when things work out for someone in unexpected ways. Thanks for sharing.

All the best,
Nonoise

Hey Jim glad you got a feature you liked back. My Auralic Aries can sort files into genres which can be interesting to see what ends up in what genre.

Often times unplugging a component for a few minutes can work wonders.  Perhaps that’s what happened in your situation, but in any case glad the old girl seems to be up n running again even if she’s limping a bit. 

Does the machine do auto firemware updates?   

Even though it is not supported any longer, perhaps a sony programmer or engineer still uses it, still has rights to modify, and went in a fixed something.

Jerry