Alarm is awful.

[Straille]

I am absolutely sick and tired of trying to get the alarm to work.

For something that looks like it should be possible to use it as a clock radio this is the worst feature of the Radio.

Every time updates come out I install in the hope that THIS time it will fix the awfulness of the alarm but no.

I have the alarm set to play a radio station favourite. The radio is connected to the internet and playing the same station in the evening when it sleeps. I also use a ReadyNAS which doesn't turn on or off during the night (and shouldn't make any difference anyway).

What happens? Sometimes I get the default noise straight away, this morning I got about 30 seconds of my chosen radio station and then the default noise again - I hadn't snoozed or tried to turn off, it just started playing. And the radio which played was live, it wasn't a 'left over' bit from last night's buffer.

And COME ON - if you must have a default noise does it have to be so HORRIBLE?

I also have a serious gripe about the way the volume of the alarm messes up the volume of play for everything else. I usually have my radio playing through powered speakers on either side of the bed attached through the headphone socket. For this I have the radio volume set to about 50 and then I get an appropriate range of volume with the speaker control. The alarm plays only through the radio speaker and doesn't use the attached speakers. (How annoying is that.) Thankfully(hahahaa!) there is a volume control (in the alarm set up options) for the alarm which perports to be separate from that for normal play. So obviously when playing through the radio speaker I don't want it at 50 so I set it much lower. Then I find that once the alarm has done its total FAIL (as above) the volume for normal play when I manually start the radio up and it plays through the speakers has also been turned right down.

I'm not going to use the alarm again but I'm so annoyed by it I felt the need to rant about it (again). Sorry about that - I'll go have a cup of tea now, calm down and go to argos and buy a clock radio that might actually work.

[erland]

I am absolutely sick and tired of trying to get the alarm to work.

...

I'm not going to use the alarm again but I'm so annoyed by it I felt the need to rant about it (again). Sorry about that - I'll go have a cup of tea now, calm down and go to argos and buy a clock radio that might actually work.

If you like someone from Logitech to see your rant, please post it in the official Logitech forum where Logitech support staff reads:

http://forums.logitech.com/t5/Squeezebox-Players/bd-p/squeezeboxplayers

[bluegaspode]

The alarm plays only through the radio speaker and doesn't use the attached speakers. (How annoying is that.)

At least this is by intention. On the first firmware people who used headphones on the headphone socket complained that they wouldn't hear the alarm when it didn't switch to the speakers.

All other issues you are seeing are not intended of course.
Having the default alarm 30 seconds after the right one started sound like one of those very tiny network glitches which are hard to track.

[JJZolx]

Having the default alarm 30 seconds after the right one started sound like one of those very tiny network glitches which are hard to track.

Actually, it's a well known bug. Could be caused by a network glitch, but the Radio apparently isn't very good at figuring out when not to sound the backup alarm.

http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=16446

http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=16190

http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=81121

[bluegaspode]

The second bug report is my own :-) but as said - even very tiny network glitches (which aren't recognized with normal -buffered- streaming) make the radio go into fallback mode.
Good thing about the first bug report is the many logitech employees in there ;-). Though the one responsible for the code as well can prove a network glitch in those logs.

For the radio it's very hard to decide what it does when the network drops the main connection.
It doesn't know how long it will be - and worse - it doesn't know whether to trust the server when it reconnects (the server could have been rebooted and maybe doesn't know anymore that an alarm should still play).
So as long as the alarms are triggered and handled by the server it is very hard to solve this problem.

[toby10]

IMO: Just get a simple $5 alarm clock (no radio) with a battery backup.
After turning off alarm on the $5 unit simply press PLAY or a PRESET on the Radio for your morning radio amusement.

Yes, the Radio's alarm should function as advertised, but with such a simple and cheap fix to the problem why invest the time and aggravation on an unreliable workaround?

[wonder boy]

I have registered my unhappiness on the Logitech forum and can't decide whether to send the radio back which does look nice and plays perfectly other than the alarm farce or whether I should hang in and wait for a fix.

Do we think Logitech will try and address it soonish?


Will it ever work as intended?

My Boom works perfectly and I never get a failed alarm or backup alarm, I do hope they sort it soon.

[erland]

Do we think Logitech will try and address it soonish?

They are continuously trying, it's just that they haven't succeeded yet. It might sound easy but getting this to work correctly with online internet radio stations and various server/router setups can be pretty complex.

Earlier (7.4) the problem was that the alarm wasn't triggered at all, now it at least mostly outputs the default alarm so people wake up.

IMHO, I don't think we will get a real solution unless enough people complains to Logitech support or possibly through their official forum. The real solution requires changes in the architecture and they won't do this as long as they only think a few people is a bit frustrated. Complains in this community forum is not enough as they aren't seen by the correct people.

Will it ever work as intended?

Yes I think so, it will just take some time.

It's a software problem and most of the software is open sourced, so in the worst case, it should be possible for some third party developer to implement a local alarm solution where you at least can control the volume, timeout and sound of the fallback alarm.

[adamslim]

IMO: Just get a simple $5 alarm clock (no radio) with a battery backup.
After turning off alarm on the $5 unit simply press PLAY or a PRESET on the Radio for your morning radio amusement.

Yes, the Radio's alarm should function as advertised, but with such a simple and cheap fix to the problem why invest the time and aggravation on an unreliable workaround?

I find a three year-old child is an excellent alarm clock, to such an extent that the Radio's failings don't bother me that much. Can't recommend this as a cost-saving approach though.

[wonder boy]

They are continuously trying, it's just that they haven't succeeded yet. It might sound easy but getting this to work correctly with online internet radio stations and various server/router setups can be pretty complex.

Earlier (7.4) the problem was that the alarm wasn't triggered at all, now it at least mostly outputs the default alarm so people wake up.

IMHO, I don't think we will get a real solution unless enough people complains to Logitech support or possibly through their official forum. The real solution requires changes in the architecture and they won't do this as long as they only think a few people is a bit frustrated. Complains in this community forum is not enough as they aren't seen by the correct people.


Yes I think so, it will just take some time.

It's a software problem and most of the software is open sourced, so in the worst case, it should be possible for some third party developer to implement a local alarm solution where you at least can control the volume, timeout and sound of the fallback alarm.

Your comments give me hope, thank you. Although it amazes me that this product has been on the market for around a year and it sounds like it's never worked as it should do especially in terms of an alarm. In my opinion Logitech should pull it from their range until they can guarantee full functionality in the vast majority of cases. They are clearly selling a product they know is not fit for purpose and will not do what many people want it to!!

[erland]

In my opinion Logitech should pull it from their range until they can guarantee full functionality in the vast majority of cases. They are clearly selling a product they know is not fit for purpose and will not do what many people want it to!!

The strange thing is that it do seems to work for some people, mostly people with a 24/7 SBS server on a computer. Similar issues can also be caused by error or non optimal configuration in your local network or your ISP.

However, due to the fact that people tends to complain here instead of telling Logitech support about their problems, I'm not sure Logitech are aware of how many people that are still affected. So even if Logitech support staff isn't able to solve the problem immediately it's extremely important that people tell them about their problems.

[JJZolx]

The strange thing is that it do seems to work for some people, mostly people with a 24/7 SBS server on a computer. Similar issues can also be caused by error or non optimal configuration in your local thnetwork or your ISP.

That's always been the case. Fairly reliable with a local server, not at all reliable with mysb.com. Part of the problem lies in the lack of reliability of mysb.com, but that should be dealt with in the software running on the Radio/Touch.

However, due to the fact that people tends to complain here instead of telling Logitech support about their problems, I'm not sure Logitech are aware of how many people that are still affected.

Oh, come on. How could they not be aware of it?

The biggest problem is that Squeezebox has been deprecated, with few resources remaining in software development. There's no such thing as a critical problem for a product that represents 1/1000th of 1% of a company's revenues.

[garym]

There's no such thing as a critical problem for a product that represents 1/1000th of 1% of a company's revenues.

Good point. In their 2010 Financial Statements, they report sales revenue of $1,966,748,000 (almost $2 billion dollars). I gotta believe that squeezebox products are a very small part of that amount.

[erland]

The biggest problem is that Squeezebox has been deprecated, with few resources remaining in software development.

The reason would be one or a combination of:
1. They no longer see any potential in the Squeezebox products
2. They think the software is cheaper to maintain than it is
3. They have put a maximum limit on what the maintenance is allowed to cost
4. They aren't aware of any major problem because they refuse to read community forums and instead relies on people telling them directly by calling the official support channel, which is the same way as many other companies handle support.
5. They temporary needed the resources for some other project which have higher priority.

If they really don't see any potential in the Squeezebox products, I can't understand why the developers are doing the stuff they are doing. Considering the amount of development resources there are a lot of new development going on in 7.6 and I really can't see the point of this if the products are considered deprecated. If you are correct, it would have been a lot better to only focus this development time on bug fixing.

If something costs a lot and you aren't sure about its potential, it's not that strange if you like to restrict the costs during a period until you have investigated/analyzed the potential.

There's no such thing as a critical problem for a product that represents 1/1000th of 1% of a company's revenues.

Agreed, especially if barely none of the customers is even willing to call the support or post in their official support forum and ask them to fix it.

[mbonsack]

Agreed, especially if barely none of the customers is even willing to call the support or post in their official support forum and ask them to fix it.

I had a gander over at the support site. People *are* mentioning issues with the software, and the tone is similar to that here. Posts with titles such as

Squeezebox Radio - Disastrous software for months ...

and

Squeezebox 7.5.1 Update--Same Old Problems

would certainly give them a clue that there might be a problem. And, given these posts (and the moderator over there stating "Please be assured that your voice is being heard") would lead any decent product manager to have a gander over *here*, where he/she should *know* (or would certainly find out in short order) that there is a fairly active community largely dissatisfied with the Radio software design.

It's time for Logitech to either properly fund/staff this product line or sell it back to a specialty audio manufacturer. The Radio could have infinitely more potential, and the developers could focus on things like music and programming features, if the fundamental client/server design were sound and silly things like an alarm clock simply "just worked".

-mark