The download mangler strikes again

jackedUPjazz

It is with great sadness in my heart that I must report that because I am breaking in a new machine I will be forced to install the dreaded download mangler over at Mordac

I have been using the 3.0 version since forever and it is working just fine. No crap, no spaceface, no twitter apps just my downloads and nothing else. I like 3.0

But since I have this shiny new machine I am feeling a bit adventurous so I thought I would take nominations from the floor as to which version to install (and why).

Thoughts anyone?

thomnottom

I may be in the minority, but I never had any problems with the eMu DLM. Well, except when they were switching from emp to emx and the site kept sending me the one that didn't work. But outside of that, I'm using 4.1.3.1 (the latest says 4.1.4, but they haven't bugged me to upgrade) and don't have any problems. And it really doesn't have anything bloated about it, like that time they made it a huge browser or something.

BigD-Bluez

I have stuck with DLM 4.1.2 because when I attempted to upgrade beyond that on my venerable laptop it totally went belly up and no matter how many times I installed, deleted and re-installed and all the other BS they told me to do it would not work. Since I hadn't upgraded beyond that on the desktop, I never have - it ain't broke and I ain't fixing it (Iam still on iTunes 8 for similar reasoning). It downloads to iTunes automatically, and only hiccups on large numbers of single tracks DL'd in succession - just have to check the desktop for strays. I used a Firewire transfer of 4.1.2 from the desktop back to the laptop and it works just fine, and it seems to me that the number of DLM horror stories increased as the upgrades went beyond 4.1.2. I notice they don't offer a lot of choices at Mordac, and the one thing they didn't do was send me some kind of link to restore 4.1.2 - the vermin.

elwoodicious

Have you tried eMusic/J?

Doofy

What thom said. I have it on 3 computers (one Win7; version is 4.1.4), 2 without ever any problems. One of the xp machines used to get slow/wonky, but no further probs since I upgraded the RAM. Knock wood.

Germanprof

I have Win 7 and the most recent downloader. It works most of the time, and so far always works eventually (i.e. after it crashes/freezes I can close it and reopen it and it does pick up again and complete the downloads). It actually worked fine for me for years, but has got worse recently, but I have not tracked that by version numbers. The odds are improved by 1. opening it manually before triggering the download, rather than letting the download call it; 2. not starting more than 2 tracks simultaneously; 3. avoiding the download album button. This last point is of course kind of a shame (read: bloody nuisance) since album pricing conquered the world. When I use the download album button it starts on the first track, freezes, crashes, then I reopen it, then it downloads the whole album. When I'm in a good mood it almost has the charm of an old car that has to be started with certain things in the right position.

amclark2

I'm on 4 something and it generally works fine. It bugs me that they're constantly asking me to upgrade. I waited forever before making the last upgrade, and then they started bugging me again like 2 days later. I also have this bug that if any message pops up in itunes (examples: I try to play a song that's not there, or itunes own annoying upgrade message (I know I can tell itunes not to bug me to upgrade anymore but (1) i'm convinced that once when I did that itunes hugely screwed up my whole computer - something like the keyboard stopped working, or half of it and (2) since it's only like 10 minutes between the new version and the new new version, there's not much point anyway) the whole thing hangs up - itunes included - and I have to shut down the Mordac mangler just to get going again. After hearing about the new problems people were having since cash pricing I'm very nervous. I now press "download album" and just walk away. Or I did that the one time so far I downloaded since cash pricing.

jackedUPjazz

OK based on your glowing recommendations I went with the current version with the toolbar included.

I downloaded the freebie download and so far so good

But it is Mordac and it is still early, I will let you know if it craps out

edit

I have heard nothing but good things about the emusic/j downloader so I may install that as a backup when I get a little more free time

Thanks all

Katrina

I have WIn 7 and the most recent downloader. It works for me to get the daily free songs, and I am not even a Mordac subscriber anymore, and never was since I got this Win 7 machine.

Doofy

1. opening it manually before triggering the download,

This helped for me on the old/slow computer, before the RAM upgrade. Even with that, I had few problems related to whole albums...as long as the DLM woke up and got started, the DL completed without problems.

choiceweb0pen0

I've never had any trouble with the DLM on my various Macs. I did have some trouble with Remote application.

Lately though, I do though lately when downloading the free daily download have it browse the EMX file and then launch the DLM, instead of the page just sitting there while the DLM does its thing.

mommio

I'm using 4.1.2 -- no problems.

greg

I do all the upgrades on itunes and use the most recent DLM - the only time I have had any problems was when I moved to Win 7 64bit when putting too many individual tracks into DLM at once. On emusic advice I did this more slowly until the next upgrade, which then solved it. I had my first red button yesterday - the first track only on an album download - it worked fine when I clicked it again.

Bad Thoughts

As I am downloading a new album, the purchase album bar changed to say, "Re-try downloading this album", but then changed back to "Re-purchase album"? It seems odd that it would give such a narrow window by which to correct any errors in the download process.

choiceweb0pen0

That's the powurrr of the new eMu, BT.

Germanprof

I have concluded that the DLM error system was designed by someone who likes downloading ringtones. If you start 2 tracks downloading, about 30 seconds into the first one downloading, the second, queued one will show a red error button on the emu page, which then turns back to blue when that track starts downloading. I guess this might have something to do with the concurrent download settings on the DLM (I have it set to 1); the error tracking does not seem to account for queued tracks.

jackedUPjazz

I downloaded the current version without a hitch. I have downloaded the daily freebie for today and yesterday and everything seems OK.

It seems I could have been using the updated mangler all along but Mordac had zero credibility with me so I avoided it like the plague.

So let's recap. What have we learned boys and girls.

1. Credibility matters. When we do dumb stuff that pisses off our customers its like a fart on a calm day and just hangs in the air. Some people will always remember that fart.

2. Just because superman is able to leap tall buildings in a single bound doesn't mean we should tie mama's good kitchen towel around neck and go up to the roof and jump off to see if we can fly too. You can't do everything you see on TV. Stick to your knitting and do what you do well.

3. Ahhh screw it, I got better shit to do

jackedUPjazz

%#$$@%^^ Stupid download mangler

I set the thing up to download in my preferred folder yesterday

Now today it has decided that it wants to deposit them in the stupid Mordac (which I cannot get rid of) folder on my desktop.

I can't redownload them so now I have to go and do battle with Windows 7 and WMP 12 which is bordering on POS status in my book

jonahpwll

Just found an old track (first track on E.S.T'.'s "Seven Days of Falling") that drops off with over ten seconds to go. This was an early album, probably before I noticed the first-track problem trend. Now I get to go buy the track again, this time from Amazon. It's this kind of thing that makes me glad I'm not with emu anymore.

jackedUPjazz

Mordac is generously offering download mangler version 4.1.4

And this is where it gets rich, the popup box that heralds the arrival of this jewel humbly implores me to "trust us"

Thoughts?

Germanprof

Well, after reading your post I hit "check for updates" in 4.1.3.1 (whatever kind of a number that is supposed to be) and received the message "no updates are available". But you are right, the site has 4.1.4. So clearly 4.1.3.1 is not trustworthy. Perhaps the new one knows whether it is current or not.
(IF this is an upgrade and IF it fixes some of the bugs folk have been reporting, I so wish emu would have had the gumption to go on the boards a few weeks ago and just say they had a new release nearly ready...)

jonahpwll

And now I found another cut-off track. Off Jeremy Udden's "Plainville". It wasn't the first track on the album, so I didn't watch the counter tick down on this particular song, and the way it ends (on my cut-off version) sounds plausibly like the end of the song. It wasn't until I heard the song played on the artist's site that I realized something was wrong with my version. That now makes at least two songs that I didn't catch the mistakes on. I mean, why the fuck can't emusic just properly download a song to my system? I NEVER have this problem with Amazon or iTunes. NEVER. What a drag.

Germanprof

A cautionary emusic tale - for those without the time to read it, the moral is: turn off automatic syncing in the emusic download manager 4.1 options.
Was downloading an album Thursday, and the emu DLM (4.1.4) froze while syncing a track with Windows Media Player. When I restarted the DLM, it said "download error" for that track, and started with the next one. The error track disappeared from the download folder (i.e. no file present) - but showed on the album page on the emu site as having downloaded successfully, so no redownload option. What I am pretty sure happened (CS seemed to eventually think the same) is that the download completed but the DLM crashed while syncing with WMP and in the process corrupted the file header, making it unreadable by the PC, resulting in a successful download "according to our records" (customer service) and no file at my end. After a three-turn email exchange CS gave me a refund, so all I am out is the time and aggravation invested in talking to CS. (To their credit, the third message I got back eventually both sounded like a human being and included an apology. But I do hate having to go through the compulsory initial rounds of talking to largely irrelevant script segments. I also hate listening to an album for two days knowing one track is missing.)
So I suggest keeping the syncing turned off - apparently it can screw up the new redownload mechanism.

Doofy

Is that why I have never had this problem? I've always managed manually, and have only rarely had freeze-ups, even when DLing big/multiple albums.

elwoodicious

fwiw, I haven't had problems and I have sync enabled but I set the DLM to only dl one track at a time, 2 at a time may invoke a crash when syncing. (I'm on OS X and iTunes)

greg

I harly dare say that I also have had no problems recently. I download one track at a time using Windows 7 64 bit automatically going into itunes. But I am always concerned everytime I download!

jackedUPjazz

You jinxed it for me. Haven't had any problems until I tried to download the daily freebie today.
I got an error that said something about failed to sync with WMP but clicked the play button in the download mangler and it started right up in WMP.

So exactly why do I need WMP syncing anyway???

mommio

Automatic synching is for the dweebs who can't figure out how to find their mp3 files or how to move them into their audio player.

Germanprof

Well, for me, DLM is now in terminal meltdown. After eventually securing my 49 cent refund from CS, I disabled syncing (@mommio, I actually thought I had it disabled in the first place, but I think the recent DLM upgrade defaulted it back to "on", so I was only a dweeb unawares, honest), opened the DLM manually (that used to reduce the crash rate), used Firefox instead of Opera (the latter not being an emu approved browser), and tried again. Meltdown. The DLM is now stuck in an eternal loop trying to redownload track 2. Every time I open it it starts redownloading another copy of track 2 - even though that track shows as successfully completed on the emu album page (and it is actually completed - some of the versions of track 2 it deposited were corrupted - more evidence that successful completion their end does not equal successful receipt my end - but I did manage to get a clean copy one time), then on the transition to track 3 it crashes. Then when I open it...back to start of loop. Entering any command (pause, cancel, etc) crashes it and resets the loop. Closing it and clicking a different track on the emu page opens the DLM - and it starts track 2 again instead of the track selected. The only way out I could find was to disable the DLM in prefs and download the remaining tracks one by one (they all work fine, so it's not corrupt files at point of origin). I think that's the end of the DLM for me for now - I could uninstall/reinstall it and troubleshoot, but having already invested more than an hour and a frustrating conversation with CS trying to buy two albums, where would I find the desire to do so?

Does emusic/J really work reliably? The new redownload policy has really upped the stakes on all this.

elwoodicious

Having used eMusic/J for all my time with Linux I loved it. No errors. No glitches. And very fast tech support. ;-)

mommio

Oh, Germanprof, that was my attempt at humor. I have hated all recent revisions of the download manager. I loved the old one, the one that told me what percent had downloaded and would pick back up at that point if paused for any reason. All revisions since that time start again at the beginning if there are problems.

I did use eMusic/J for a time and had no problems at all with it. Robin's tech support is far superior to eMu CS.