1.1.3 Firmware Released

I sell many more Pianophonics in the US than Europe so the number of people having issues will be greater in the states, but 50/60hz aside we are ourselves looking for any clues as why the issue persists for some and not for others. My suspicion is on the SD cards corrupting the settings.dat file as it’s the only thing that’s changed between batches but because the issue isn’t repeatable it’s been really difficult for us to track it down.

I take it from your post that you are using the latest firmware and still getting freezes, occasionally or all the time? Is it only when you load a sound in? Let me know, the feedback really helps to diagnose it.

Hi Jason,

I wonder if I found a lead for you to follow up on on why the Pianophonics seem to misbehave so much for some people. I saw a video from someone in the UK who apparently does not have the issue with the unit freezing. However people that I have encountered in the United States seem to have it all the time and based on forums and website reviews, it seems like there is a difference in the modules performance in the US and UK in terms of the module freezing.

What I am going to ask may sound strange because this doesn't seem to affect other modules (I have 79 other modules installed and those others do not seem to be affected), but is it possible that the difference is related to differences in the electric power between the US and UK? Specifically the differences in voltage (US: 120V, UK: 230V) and frequency (US: 60Hz, UK: 50Hz? You build and test the module in the UK and you have said before that you don't encounter the issue. At the same time, I have had multiple Pianophonic modules and they all behave the same way (and the same way that others have reported theirs acting in reviews of the product in the U.S.).

I am fully aware that i sound like a crazy conspiracy theorist that might be connecting dots that shouldn't be connected, but is this possible? I really want to be able to use the module.

Firstly thank you for sharing this information about your thorough testing routine. In each case I would recommend deleting the settings.dat file rather than carrying the same settings across different firmwares. From the results your seeing it looks like something else is at play so it’s good to rule out the settings.dat which if corrupted from an earlier session will mess with your results. The settings.dat is a binary file that cannot be edited but it is created fresh if one is not present on the card, so deleting it is a nice way of rebooting the whole session.

Hi Jason. The 1.1.3 firmware was not an improvement in my case. In fact it seemed to make it worse. it failed to load more often and froze more often. However, I spent hours testing every combination of SD card file with each firmware update. I was most concerned about whether or not the voices would load and whether or not the module would freeze. When I refer to reliability below, thats what I mean - "less likely to freeze or fail to load". I was less concerned with sound quality because that is more subjective and also it doesn't really matter what the sound quality is if you can't use the module.

For all testing i used Lexar E-Series 32 GB microSDHC cards with a transfer speed of 100MB/s. Although all combinations of SD cards failed or froze occasionally, I found a couple things that seemed to be clear winners for me.

First, the Piano_XL Sd card is considerably more reliable across the board than either PFON_SD1 or the PFON_SD1_smooth. Second, I found that the most reliable firmware for PIANO_XL was the 1.1.1 firmware with the .719 and 1.1.2 tied for second place and 1.1.3 in last place. For both of the 2 PFON sd cards, all of the firmwares were so equally frustrating and equally unreliable that they became impossible to rank.

The PIANO_XL card combined with the 1.1.1 firmware failed load so rarely that i would consider it usable. I did have one freeze with it too. However, compared to everything else that is a clear gold medal. it's reliable enough that I could use it in a live set as long as I had a reliable backup plan. However, it is a bit disapointing that it will exclude me from a large number of the great sounds on the PFON SD cards.

I would like to make a request though. Is it in anyway possible for you to give us a way to edit the settings.dat file? It occurs to me that that is highly likely to be something causing users like me problems. A major problem with the settings is that it's a complete black box - we have absolutely no idea what the settings are on that file when we use this product. I feel like if i was having this many problems on any other module, I would just go in and tinker with the settings until i found a combination that wasn't causing problems. Even if the settings.dat file is not the problem, I think your users would really benefit from being able to see and change their settings.