Esh,

When you say buggy, can you give me examples, I'm getting my first shipment of Version 4 in the next couple of days, is there are problems I will make sure I find out what they are doing about it.

I will not sell a product that doesn't do what it's supposed to do.,

My paper music never locked-up or failed.

Thanks

Bill:

That's not a master reset on the back - it only brings up the screen calibration page so you can get your mouse to work again. And BTW: v4 does not include the MP3 player... you have to upgrade to v4 AND pay an extra $50 for the "Premium Tools" unlock code (a rip). I've never had v3 so I don't know if it's more stable or not but it seems like a better deal price-wise to get basic functionality instead of paying extra to get higher-res and lots of frustration.

Here's a link to my v4.0.6 bug documentation on Freehand's forums.

A few highlights:

* When using the annotation tool in the MP Manager, if you place the text entry box too high on the score, the program crashes.

* If you use the erase tool with a different background color other than white, the "erases" remain white resulting in a messy display. The erased score area is supposed to change with the background color.

* The EQ function in XMMS media player does not work. Actually most functions other than the play button in XMMS do not work.

* When you load the saved playlists into XMMS it causes the XMMS player to crash.

* XMMS starts playback of some MP3 files several seconds into the file rather than at the beginning. No explanation or solution.

* The volume control on XMMS, which defaults to 64%, reverts back to 64% no matter what volume you set it to.

* Sometimes when you try to playback an MP3 file using XMMS, the player gets "stuck" in some kind of loop temporarily and makes a soft popping sound that sounds very much like a record stuck in a groove. The pad freezes when this happens and there's nothing you can do but wait it out.

* Sometimes a loud audio pop occurs when you start playback of MP3 files in XMMS.

These are all faults I submitted to Freehand last spring and nothing has been done to date.




[This message has been edited by Esh (edited 01-30-2007).]

Update: it's been a long time since I bothered Freehand tech support with a phone call asking when a fix would be coming for OS v4.0.6 and the XMMS media player in particular so I did yesterday. I got a reply last night that they have no intention of fixing the problems, which are apparently related more to the hardware rather than the OS. They said they knew that wasn't what I or anyone else wanted to hear but that was that.

I can't say anything worse about Freehand that they haven't already said for themselves. They sell faulty products, period. This must be why some retailers were dumping MPP's so cheap recently.

Jim-

That is pretty piss-poor customer service. Did they even offer to send you a new replacement unit? (Unless the problems you cited are existing in all the newest version.)

Not sure if you're motivated in this way, but I have to think if you started climbing the customer service ladder, more towards the management level, you might hear a different response.

On the other hand, Music 123 has version 3.1 on sale for $399 that work beautifully...

Ouch...

Hang in there...

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Bill in Dayton

Esh sorry to hear of the problems you've had with the MPP and dealing with Free Hand.

Being a part time musician puts a different spin on things for me. My needs aren't as demanding as a full time pro. The MPP does everything I need it to do. My intention of the MPP was the elimination of fake books. It's done exactly that no more no less. It's durable built more solidly than a laptop. Music on breaks is supplied via a 30g iPod

The technology is advanced enough so that another player could get into the market place. I don't think others want to enter that market because the potential for high volume of sales/profit is limited.




[This message has been edited by Stephenm52 (edited 01-31-2007).]

Thanks for the support guys. I will pursue this further and keep up some of the heat but Freehand is a small company and I doubt there is much of a corporate "ladder" to bother with. They have been avoiding further discussions about the problems with OS 4 and XMMS on their own forums (even though they claimed some problems had "simple fixes") and I had long suspected they had hit a wall. Obviously if they could fix the problems then they would. They could at least refund the $50 I paid for the Premium Tools but even the request I sent for that has gone unanswered. In short, they suck. Maybe frankieve as a dealer can get better answers than I can as a lowly customer.

My concept was to use the MPP both for music display and for MP3 accompaniment with a digital piano (Kawai ES4), thus making an ultra-compact rig for small gigs. I fed the MP3 output through the piano so the sound would come out of the piano's internal speakers. And it works more or less, mostly because I have developed a few work-arounds to the faults (like inserting 1.5 seconds of silence in front of all my MP3's). When using my arranger rig I use the MPP as a music display like anyone else so operationally I'm getting about 90% of the usage I expected out of the MPP... but what a difference a few bug fixes would have made. Guess we'll never know. The rig looks nice though:

I'm sorry Esh is not going to get his problems solved too. In my case,I got mine upgraded to v4, but opted not to buy the mp3 and midi playback capability, so this doesn't bother me .

Other than what Esh mentioned,I believe all I gained from my upgrade was a better playlist function.

I still wouldn't part with mine for the $1100 I paid.

Jim-

What are you using for a digital piano? What do you use for an arranger?

Just curious...

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Bill in Dayton

[This message has been edited by Bill in Dayton (edited 01-31-2007).]

Tomorrow the MSRP will be lowered to $899

Esh, I am getting a unit with the Premium tools installed,.

Once I get it in, I'll try out those issues and see if they can give me the non-coporate answers we are looking for.

BTW the other upgrade from V3 to V4 was also a better display, and a couple of other features.

I have looked at HankBs musicpad, and it works really well.
My question is, couldn't a person, for comparable money, maybe a little more, get one of those computers that are flat and have touch screens? I forget what they are called, maybe tablets.
It would seem you would have ALL the capacity of a full-fledged laptop, and still the small footprint of the MPP.
Just a thought. And they may be considerably more expense--not sure. Anybody checked it out?
DonM