1.1.3 is a tech fix that addresses SD card loading errors that some people have reported. The SD loading time is speed limited to 50% for more reliable sound loading. Expect slower load times but please let us know if this is more reliable than 1.1.2 which is unrestricted. We would also recomend using a fast SD card on 1.1.2 before tring this version.
top of page
bottom of page
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.