New Level firmware withdrawn

[LeMirage]

Anyone installed the new Level firmware (released 15 june) before it was withdrawn again?
v1.8.10015

 

 

[LeMirage]

Although I switched off the automatic software updating feature, both my Levels have been given firmware V1.8.10017 now. According release notes bug fixes and stereo pairing performance improvement but actually I am encountering dropouts now from the left channel?! I will monitor stability upcoming days.

 

no more other Level users here??

 

 

 

[trackbeo]

LeMirage wrote:

Although I switched off the automatic software updating feature, both my Levels have been given firmware V1.8.10017 now.

Nevermind that firmware might be buggy, that happens.  Rather, pole up the developers’ @&$# for **forcing** any update.  Forced updates definitely occur whenever you add a device using the new iOS app!  I turned off updates in an older device to avoid a bug that B&O added and do not acknowledge (or “cannot reproduce” .hah.) — but now I can never delete said device from one location and re-add it to another without “accepting” the forced updatexxxxxxdowngrade.  For those of you not paying attention, that means that even if you know about a buggy update version, you cannot avoid it when purchasing a new device.  Even Apple managed to avoid such abject lossage with their famous HomePod firmware errors.

[trackbeo]

Sure enough: Level was left yesterday at v. 1.8.10012, with updates turned OFF.  Today it shows it is at version 1.8.10017 (and updates are still turned off).  But even that version has a red dot beside it, and on-offer is 1.8.10017.12375.  I accepted that update, because who knows what the forced one broke such that they are offering an *even newer* version just hours later?!?  After the manual update, the red dot is turned off, but it still only says v. 1.8.10017 as the current version, hiding the minor version number.

So either the current version display was intentionally lying (i.e. it was really still at 10012 but claimed 10017), or else an update was pushed to my Level overnight without my consent.  Either way, it’s yet another case of… Bang & Olufsen software developers are inept and/or dishonest.

[Steve at Sounds Heavenly]

Hi Trackbeo,

Sorry to hear that you are having problems. My stereo paired Emerges updated to 1.8.10015.12366 a few weeks ago (in the middle of the night, causing much cursing) and that update gave me the option to turn off automatic updates (previously not possible when two speakers were stereo paired).

Since then, no further updates have occurred and on checking today I see that both speakers are still at the same software version, but it is showing as an update being available. I will leave them at the current version until we know exactly what has happened.

I will forward this thread to a friend in B&O’s software team to ask him to take a look…

Kind regards, Steve.

[Steve at Sounds Heavenly]

By the way, please let me know if you find any useful new features in the latest software updates, as I am keeping my speakers at version 1.8.10015.12366 for the time being 😉

Kind regards Steve

[LeMirage]

I did not find any new features Steve. But the good news is my stereo pairing has been super stable the last 48 hours so the dropouts were just a temporary thing.

What I did discover was the “automatic standby” bug still has not been fixed. In the initial Level firmwares the speaker was programmed by default to switch off automatic after 90 minutes of silence when operating on battery power. In the later firmwares there came the introduction of a toggle switch in the settings menu to set this function on or off. However with stereo paired Levels this never worked! The master Level does indeed follow instructions of the toggle switch but the slave speaker always shuts off after 90 minutes making this feature useless for stereo paired Levels . I will report the bug and hopefully it gets fixed then, but I just really wonder why they don’t catch these things by themselves ?!

[Mbee]

I just updated on 1.8.10017. Can’t see anything changed.

i still have an annoying bug where a specific playlist on deezer (« chill tape » by deezer editors, selected from the B&O app) makes the Level freezes, I have to reboot it to make it work again!

[LeMirage]

Anyone using a Halo with the Level? Every 2-3 days my Halo will lose connection with the Level. Only solution is switching the Level off and on again. Then it works again for a few days until the same problem repeats. Other device connected to my Halo is a BV11 and that still works fine when the connection with Level is lost. From support (and also mentioned here by another member) I got the advice to assign static IP’s to Level and Halo. Did that but no improvement. Any ideas???

 

 

[Steve at Sounds Heavenly]

Hi,

I’m not sure about the Halo issue, but I have received the following response from B&O regarding the software updates:-

“We halted the rollout of 10015, because we found an error. This luckily didn’t affect any customers (no registered cases), but “polluted” logfiles. Now we have successfully rolled out 10017, which solves the error and also contains improvements for Bluetooth.”

I hope this helps to explain the situation so that these speakers should now be stable on the latest software update.

Kind regards, Steve.

[trackbeo]

Thanks, that explains the “I have .10012, but the app *says* I got .10017, yet it offers me 10017.xxx” mistake. Great relief to know they didn’t creep in during the night and update-bandit us!-)

Alas, it does not ameliorate forcing an update on a product when it is aded to an account, rather than asking.  I think they should ask for any products added — but one might argue that new products come pre-set to “updates=YES” and therefore such autobadhavior is appropriate, provided adding old “updates=NO” products leaves them untouched.  (@Steve, you were going to accept your GVA speakers’ update at some point, so why not try creating a new account and add them, settings status quo?  That would test if the App blindly updates them or if it accepts that “‘Off’ means ‘Off'”.  I cannot afford the risk on my remaining old unit to test this.)

[trackbeo]

Regarding the Halo-Level disconnect issue, this happens alot with Sonos systems too, and the standard support response sequence is:

(i) assign static IPs, (ii) look to make sure no other devices got assigned the same IPs, (iii) don’t reboot the Level, reboot the Halo, (iv) don’t reboot the Level or Halo but reboot the Wi-Fi access point, (v) create a divided network (software or hardware) to see if it still happens with *just* the Halo and the Level on their own net, (vi) hardwire the Ethernet ports on both products, then (xx) all the other Wi-FI & networking boogiemen including network exenders and meshes (Sky Q known lossage, Eero (fails) vs. Orbi (works), and a whole rabbit-hole of stuff).

If you can do (v) easily, either yourself or by borrowing some spare old networking equipment, that might cut a whole bunch of the yes/no tree from your dealings with B&O “support”.  While it is theoretically possible that the Level’s wake-on-LAN design is flawed, it seems very unlikely because there would be *many* many many complaints.  The Sonos gear I tend loses a zone or two once or twice a year, and even Apple Homepods disappear off the network occasionally, usually due to a catastrophic wireless interference issue — plus some edge-case recovery bugs in the products of course.  But every 2 or 3 days?  You can probably find and fix it yourself.  Don’t give up, and maybe start a fresh thread here once you have your nope-that-wasn’t-it-either’s all in a row?

[Steve at Sounds Heavenly]

Hi trackbeo,

Yes, I accepted the new update manually, I had to update each Emerge separately as they were set to have auto updates turned off.  All is working fine at 10017 software level, with the auto updates still disabled after this manual update.

Kind regards, Steve.

[Steve at Sounds Heavenly]

Hi all,

Update: After manually updating the Emerges to the new 10017 software, none of my iOS devices would log into the B&O app, except the one that I used to carry out the updates.

I fixed that my taking the phones to another wi-fi network and opening the app, then bringing them back home and they were then able to log in.

I guess this may be an issue with the corrupted log files from the 10015 software, as mentioned above by B&O.  Hope this may be helpful.

Kind regards, Steve.

[LeMirage]

Thanks Steve and Trackbeo for all in the info.

What makes the Halo issue extra weird is the fact that when my Halo can’t find the Level the Level itself still is able to stream music without any issues. So the Level seems only partially offline in the B&O network. Because once the Halo is unable to find the Level, the Level also does not appear online in the B&O app. There is a red dot and “offline” status symbol. But the Level is playing music?! (In stereo pair) .

Level off and on again and app closing from the backround and restarting and all is normal again. No need to reboot/reset the Level, just off and on.

restarting the wifi router without touching the Level does not help, the Level needs to switched off and on.

[Carolpa]

trackbeo wrote:

Thanks, that explains the “I have .10012, but the app *says* I got .10017, yet it offers me 10017.xxx” mistake. Great relief to know they didn’t creep in during the night and update-bandit us!-) Alas, it does not ameliorate forcing an update on a product when it is aded to an account, rather than asking. I think they should ask for any products added — but one might argue that new products come pre-set to “updates=YES” and therefore such autobadhavior is appropriate, provided adding old “updates=NO” products leaves them untouched. (@Steve, you were going to accept your GVA speakers’ update at some point, so why not try creating a new account and add them, settings status quo? That would test if the App blindly updates them or if it accepts that “‘Off’ means ‘Off’”. I cannot afford the risk on my remaining old unit to test this.)

To my knowledge this is the version for speakers set to the beta program.

Are you sure you didn’t set your Level to the beta program?

 

My BL28 and Balance both are set to follow the beta program and both have been updated.

addition: automatically updated to the sw version 1.8.10017.12375

[Carolpa]

LeMirage wrote:

There is a red dot and “offline” status symbol.

Where do you see the red dot?

Whenever I spotted the red dot in the app, it was an indication for an update for one of the devices

 

[LeMirage]

Lol, no it’s a different red dot, bigger and clearly stating the device is “offline” and the app can’t find the device….
(but the Level still is able to stream and being controlled from the buttons on the Level, not via the Halo nor the app)

[trackbeo]

Correct, and it will continue to work even if you use the app to delete the Level from your B&O User account!  (Well, maybe not B&Oradio.  But Spotify Connect, or streaming from your in-house DLNA server, or AirPlay will continue to work OK.  The device has smarts internally and doesn’t go checking to see if it’s “authorized” to play.  Oops, mustn’t give B&O any ideas…)

More importantly, a clean, unbroken playback stream tells you (usually) that there are no devices on your network with a duplicate IP address as your Level.  (Depends on the network hardware of course, but typically a duplicate IP will see packets suddenly being mis-delivered and then coming back again.)

The other thing you learned from your experiment is that the Halo is not at fault, and probably the network hardware is not at fault.  The Halo and the app are not running the same code, yet *both* fail to find the Level.  Despite being different code, probably both follow a similar procedure for “discovery” of available playback devices.  Unlikely that the discovery ruleset has a flaw, so we conclude that likely the Level isn’t identifying itself, “answering” the discovery broadcast packets on the network.  But you can’t 100% rule out the network hardware, so the next step would be to use itself to check on its connections.  This is beyond the scope of a short answer and beyond the ken of “support” but basically you use the tools provided by the router to see if its connection (typically a list of MAC addresses and their corresponding IPs) is “active” versus “offline”, which has different meaning/words among vendors, but the basic idea is that the device has requested an IP address and responds to broadcast packets, and “offline” is maintained so the device gets the same IP address even without a reservation — but the router thinks it isn’t responding right now.  If you can get a window into what the router thinks about your device when the Halo and the app think it’s missing, knowing that might help.

[trackbeo]

Steve at Sounds Heavenly wrote:

Hi trackbeo, Yes, I accepted the new update manually, I had to update each Emerge separately as they were set to have auto updates turned off. All is working fine at 10017 software level, with the auto updates still disabled after this manual update. Kind regards, Steve.

Thanks, @Steve, I understand that you were not willing to go through the hassle of creating another account and adding your products to it. So I sacrificed a BeoSound 1(2.gen) to test. Result: The iOS app (4.0.3.xxxxx) updates the firmware of a product added fresh to a new account, regardless of internal settings it may have had from a previous account. The iOS app does not ask if it can update the newly addded product, it just does so. Caveat Usor.

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