General Forum

Re: MOTS experience

PhilLondon — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 16:11:13 GMT

Yes, that's right, I see what you mean. However, I feel the album art on the BS5 is far too small, I can't recognise it when I turn the wheel, and I find the eyes are not used to follow a rotating/translating movement.

Re: MOTS experience

TripEnglish — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 12:45:22 GMT

It only seems to render about a dozen album covers in either direction. When you hold down the scroll it eventually shows blank covers until you let go and let it catch up. Better on the iMac than the Air, or course, but problems in both cases. Could be the software. Whatever the case is, the interface on the BS5 is much smoother. Doesn't feel as though there's a computer running underneath it the way most software does. Very direct and mechanical. Very nice.

Re: MOTS experience

PhilLondon — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 10:44:25 GMT

TripEnglish:
but whether it's on my MacBook Air (1.8ghz) or my iMac (2.8ghz), neither one is particularly adept at rendering album artwork seamlessly in iTunes.

????? What problem have you got ???

Re: MOTS experience

tournedos — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 10:38:24 GMT

TripEnglish:

but whether it's on my MacBook Air (1.8ghz) or my iMac (2.8ghz), neither one is particularly adept at rendering album artwork seamlessly in iTunes. So I don't know what's under the hood yet (though I may pop open one at the store now that my curiosity has been piqued), but it's clearly a good match for the tasks it's built for.

IMHO that only goes to show that B&O programmers did better than the ones at Apple. Flipping static images on the screen is nothing complicated and I'm sure the display hardware in both your Macs and the BM5 are more than adequate to do that blindingly fast. It certainly does not need a lot of CPU. Having seen neither in action, I believe the differences here are due to the fact that the fast response is a key part of the BS5 user experience and some effort was put into it, while in iTunes they just implemented something to show the artwork, not show off.

Re: MOTS experience

TripEnglish — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 09:52:25 GMT

Puncher:

I'm not sure I could I could stand up in court and defend the DAC as "bespoke" or a "masterwork", nor driving a 10" LCD via DVI as "intensive" either.

Having said that - you're in sales, I'm in engineering - it was ever thus

Well, you're right about the sales part! But the DAC is a B&O design, so bespoke is accurate, but "masterwork" will remain my opinion! And I think you'd agree that the screen size is less the issue than what's on it. Now I'm a Mac guy, so the vast majority of screens I sit in front of are Intel based, but whether it's on my MacBook Air (1.8ghz) or my iMac (2.8ghz), neither one is particularly adept at rendering album artwork seamlessly in iTunes. So I don't know what's under the hood yet (though I may pop open one at the store now that my curiosity has been piqued), but it's clearly a good match for the tasks it's built for.

Re: MOTS experience

kimhav — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 04:40:27 GMT

Puncher:
If it's the Via C7 processor then it has some particular features such as hardware decoding of MPEG 2 & MPEG4 stream for video playback and very low power requirements. However it has the processing horsepower of a midrange Pentium M processor i.e. 3-4 year old technology. Any recent offering from Intel or AMD would wipe the floor with it.

Well, it's the VIA EPIA EX board that B&O is using; but not so that we hijack this thread about MOTS Experience; I've started a new thread for the hardware discussion.

Re: MOTS experience

Puncher — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 04:24:06 GMT

TripEnglish:

.............. The hardware is much more impressive, especially considering the BeoMedia as the precursor. The processor must be powerful as no average PC I've ever seen has operated as smoothly with such intensive display and processing tasks. It's more on par with a gaming PC. The bespoke DAC is also a masterwork. .....................

If it's the Via C7 processor then it has some particular features such as hardware decoding of MPEG 2 & MPEG4 stream for video playback and very low power requirements. However it has the processing horsepower of a midrange Pentium M processor i.e. 3-4 year old technology. Any recent offering from Intel or AMD would wipe the floor with it.

I'm not sure I could I could stand up in court and defend the DAC as "bespoke" or a "masterwork", nor driving a 10" LCD via DVI as "intensive" either.

I'm pleased you like it - I'm sure it does it's job admirably and gives a very good performance. The BS5 is impressive to look at and many will be fascinated by the interface, amazed by MOTS and staggered by the integration.

It obviously gives a very good impression however I suspect the hardware doesn't really live up to your expectations - I thinks it's good to be clear on these things.

Having said that - you're in sales, I'm in engineering - it was ever thus

Re: MOTS experience

Mr10Percent — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 23:41:27 GMT

TripEnglish:
Of course it bears repeating that MOTS does not actually read tags like iTunes, Amazon, etc., but actually examines the characteristics of each file. That's why it can take about 1 day per 10GB to process through the content.

That explains a lot. After initially setting up the BS5 - with 250Gb of data, 600 albums and 10,000 tracks, I was very unimpressed with MOTs 1 hour after switching on. This morning I gave it a go....and wow! I played about 15 tracks of the 50/70 in the list and it punched out a couple of ones I thought were not too close.

By the end of the month then it should have got it's act together!

10%

Re: MOTS experience

TripEnglish — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 19:10:54 GMT

I've had mine loaded up for a few days now and MOTS is just starting to take effect. If the first signs are any indication, it's brilliant!

A little psychological observation, however: When using the unit in the store, the MOTS feature does not particularly stand out. I'm not familiar with the preloaded material and since the albums are mostly partials, it all sounds like a well organized playlist. Accurate based on what MOTS is supposed to deliver, but it just doesn't "hit me."

Now that I have the unit at home with my personal music on it I'm finding that, though I've neglected much of my 80GB of music, I'm still familiar enough with most content to "disagree" with MOTS... initially. I guess that MOTS is bound to build playlists that I would never personally build using material that I've long since forgotten, so my immediate reaction is, "Why's it playing that!?" But if I let it go, I find that it is very satisfying. I have to retrain my mind to tamp down some prejudices I may have as to my own music collection and let MOTS work. The result is stunningly accurate!

Of course it bears repeating that MOTS does not actually read tags like iTunes, Amazon, etc., but actually examines the characteristics of each file. That's why it can take about 1 day per 10GB to process through the content. The hardware is much more impressive, especially considering the BeoMedia as the precursor. The processor must be powerful as no average PC I've ever seen has operated as smoothly with such intensive display and processing tasks. It's more on par with a gaming PC. The bespoke DAC is also a masterwork. I'm not a "lossless" guy personally, and I've found that 320kbps encodings sound brilliant on 3s, 9s, & 5s. I haven't tried it on the older generations, but I assume the results will be fabulous.

Overall I loved the look and feel initially, but had some significant reservations about the hardware. Those have pretty much melted away with personal use. It's a keeper.

Re: MOTS experience

stefan — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 16:55:39 GMT

I don`t know how they do it, but it works great. For me MOTS wasn`t the key feature to buy the BS5, but now I `m using it every day.

Having also tried Genius on my mac, I deactivated it after 2 days.

Stefan

Re: MOTS experience

Puncher — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 16:46:56 GMT

Alex:

I see your point, but I've never actually found the BeoSound 5 to show any signs of 'slowness'. In fact I've found it to be absolutely seamless.

I was initially referring more to the idea of MOTS running on an ordinary desktop PC, which I don't think is going to become a reality any time soon!

Re: MOTS experience

Teletom — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 16:46:15 GMT

Puncher:

They definitely do some sort of audio analysis.........

... Yes, I am pretty sure they do... The (dutch) sales brochure specifies that the BS5/BM system is able to analyse the musical DNA structure of the music tracks you are playing. So obviously they are able to define a certain 'DNA structure' in the first place and analyse the very basic elements and differences in any piece of music. I wonder what exactly they are doing. Must be certainly much more in to it than tag sorting.

That's why I am so curious to know if BS5 owners find the music selections made by MOTS very clever or unexpected if you like.

Re: MOTS experience

Alex — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 16:17:08 GMT

I see your point, but I've never actually found the BeoSound 5 to show any signs of 'slowness'. In fact I've found it to be absolutely seamless.

I was initially referring more to the idea of MOTS running on an ordinary desktop PC, which I don't think is going to become a reality any time soon!

Re: MOTS experience

Puncher — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 15:47:42 GMT

Alex:

Yes, but it's not the actual processor speed itself which counts - it's how well matched the software is to the hardware. Similar to the way in which games which are designed to run on all different computer hardware configs are generally much slower than those which only run on a few hardware configurations.

Also, from an interface point of view, the BeoSound 5 is doing a lot more under the hood than you may thing, for example, organising files on the hard drive so they can be accessed at the speed needed for cover mode etc (not quite the same as Disk Defrag, but along the same lines).

I agree the software is designed from the ground up to do what it does and all credit to B&O for attempting something new but in a Win environment I find it a stretch to claim it won't run better with a better processor!

Re: MOTS experience

Puncher — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 15:45:29 GMT

They definitely do some sort of audio analysis, certainly more than tag sorting but I agree, ordinary hardware.