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SSP 800 questions thread 20/10
Here's Dave's answers, formatted by me, but otherwise not altered:
Dave:
I would like to add some general comments to supplement the answers below. First, thank you for taking the time to organize the list for me and post the answers. Club Classé is a great way for current and potential Classé fans and AV enthusiasts to share ideas, opinions and solutions. The active participants are passionate and it can get contentious, which is normal, but no one should doubt that the people at Classé are also passionate and we care that our customers are satisfied. I am not a participant in the forum but I do read many of the posts. I am sometimes surprised by posts where a “bug” is reported that simply is not a bug but rather a disagreement or misunderstanding about how something should work, or some question is raised and debated when if anyone had asked us they could have gotten an answer. I know that most consumer electronics companies are pretty inaccessible, but Club Classé participants should know that we will do our best to answer their questions. I hope that doesn’t take the fun out of it!
The initial purpose of this thread was to list out all of the known bugs and get a status report on them. The truth is that the list is indeed very short—three verified bugs, none of which have existed or been known about for more than a few months and none of which result in an inability to use the system. These will all be addressed in the next software release. We will also address some feature requests, such as dimming the standby LED brightness which is needed for some of the SSP-800s (described in my answers below). Are there still some even more obscure bugs lurking and not yet reported or verified? Probably. Will there be new problems to solve once the HDMI 1.4 board is out? Almost certainly. That is the nature of the beast. The SSP does not operate in a vacuum or in its own closed or Classé-controlled system. It has to interact with hundreds of other brands and thousands of models of sources, cables and display devices sold around the world, as well as numerous audio and video signal formats. HDMI in particular is challenging for everyone in the industry. We have taken on that challenge and introduced the first truly high-end SSP with HDMI 1.3 and it looks like we will again be the first with HDMI 1.4. I am proud of the good work the Classé Design Team has done and am confident in their ability to keep us out in front of the competition.
Please let me know if you have follow up questions.
Questions
1.1. What will the upgrade price for the 1.4 board be for european customers., and when will it be available?
Dave: Export pricing will vary by market and I don’t know the retail pricing arrangements everywhere so check with your local distributor. It typically takes 4-8 weeks for products to work their way through the supply chain for overseas customers, so that is about what I would expect for a lag in availability between North America and Europe.
1.2. The new board is supposed to improve hdmi switching speed. Will there also be a improvements for the old boards?
Dave: I believe I may have covered this in an earlier Q&A and I know I have answered exhaustively for one or two members on the board, but the short answer is no. On the current video board, we are switching as fast as we can without introducing other problems. When you get a picture and sound you get it cleanly without pops and clicks and it works rock solid. For some of us, the switching speed is quite good enough as it is. In my system, it never takes more than six seconds to lock onto a new source or different resolution and it is typically much faster than that. For others, there are delays that range from slight annoyance to unacceptable. We all have the same SSP so the difference is the associated equipment and the setup. For example, choosing a fixed output resolution on a cable box may move the annoyance meter back to an acceptable level. I think that for most, the handshake when changing to TV channels of different resolutions is the real issue, not the time it takes to lock when changing inputs. In these cases the performance varies widely between set top boxes so if you were to point fingers, the source is usually the source of the problem.
It is important to understand that the switching speeds are related to the hardware and software we use, and to the hardware and software all of your associated equipment uses, plus the configurations employed by each component in the system. It is a highly complex and interactive situation which we have endeavored to optimize. To say that one combination of source, repeater, display which takes longer to switch than another is evidence of a software bug shows a complete misunderstanding of how this all works. What we will not do is chase our tail by optimizing one source/display combination only to compromise everyone else. “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” I hope everyone can understand and accept this.
1.3. Will the current or future boards support standby passthrough?
Dave: It is on our list as a desired new feature. In principle, we should be able to offer it on both boards but we haven’t implemented or tested it yet. The application is where someone wants to send audio to TV speakers and keep the main audio system off. In order to do this, we would need to fix an input, like HDMI 1, as the standby pass-though input. You would connect your set top box to this input and regardless which input had been selected when the unit was put into standby, you could turn your TV on and watch it with audio coming from the TV speakers. Keep in mind that HDMI audio sent from the source is determined based on what types of audio the SSP can accept, which will not be the same as what the TV can accept, so for the feature to work we need to re-establish the HDMI link between source and display. It looks like we can do it, but until it is done I don’t want to promise it.
1.4. Suppose new video standards emerge within a couple of years,say 4k2k pictures, what would you need to change in the SSP 800?
Dave: In theory, only the video board would need to change, but when speculating about future technology it’s best to not get too far ahead of yourself. HDMI parts will undergo another upgrade in bandwidth in the coming months, which means that later in 2011 manufacturers will begin introducing newer 300 MHz parts. The higher bandwidth will take the current state-of-the-art 3D capability from 1080p @ 24fps, where it will be in our new HDMI 1.4 video board, to 1080p @ 50/60fps. Will we ever see 3D at those frame rates? It is possible, but as a practical matter due to storage space, probably not from a Blu-ray Disc. Our new video board uses 225 MHz parts which are the highest bandwidth HDMI parts you can buy at the moment. In theory, the next generation of 300 MHz HDMI 1.4 parts could handle 4K2K, which requires 297 MHz. A lot of this is speculative because we don’t actually have any of this hardware to work with yet. So to put it in perspective, an entirely new generation of sources and displays along with media will need to exist in order to require more bandwidth from the signal path than our new video board will support. Even in the consumer electronics market where things seem to move so quickly, we know that any practical application for this is a long way off. The further into the future it is, the harder it is for me to speculate about what we will or won’t be able to do. The safe thing is to assume no further hardware upgrades and if they are offered, you can decide at that point whether you want or need them.
Wishes, in no particular order
1.5. An option to dim the LED lights on the front ("Global System Brightness", works on everything but the SSP-800: the screen dims, but not the LED). Alternatively the Display button on the remote could have a 4th step in the sequence: Bright, Medium, Dim, and Off.
Dave: There are two separate and distinct issues having to do with the standby LED and display options discussed.
Most SSP-800s shipped in 2010 use the same front panel board as the CT-SSP. The CT-SSP uses multiple LEDs where the SSP-800 uses only one. Also, the part was changed for manufacturing reasons to a part which appears brighter than the original. The result is some people have complained that when in standby, the LED is too bright (it is off when in the operate mode). We are adding a button to the MENU/display setup/brightness page that will allow users to select a dim standby LED setting. For customers who have found the LED too bright, this should bring the brightness of the LED closer into line with the amps and disc players. The dim setting we are implementing is the lowest we can offer for this LED, so there will not be a future “even dimmer” setting for us to offer.
There have been various forms of “display off requests.” I will repeat that it is not desirable or even legal (numerous global safety compliance certifications are involved in offering the SSP for sale) to make the front panel completely dark. We are investigating the options to accommodate a display off setting, but there are UI complications. If the display has been set to off and the standby LED is on (the unit can’t be entirely dark), it looks like it’s in standby. You walk up and press the standby button to wake it up, only to find that you have inadvertently put it into standby. This is just a simple example of how a seemingly simple feature request might have undesirable implications for lots of users or might take a lot more time (cost) to implement than you would think. Many customization options can be enabled for SSPs installed in systems with RS-232 automation and we offer many special control features, but our goal with the SSP user interface is not to make it do everything everyone might want but to do what most people want it to do in a way that most people can easily use. It is quite customizable as it is and can be extremely easy to operate without requiring an external control system. The more we ask it to do the more confusion we create and the more difficult it becomes to use so we are always reluctant to expand the feature set. We try to strike a balance and we use feedback from the field and the forums to see how we are doing. I do expect to be able to offer some solution for people who want the display to stay off during changes that currently cause it to wake. I just don’t know exactly how it will work yet.
1.6. Possibiliy to set a default startup preselected input.
Dave: This can be done by assigning a discrete input to an F key and pressing that F key will turn the unit on to that selected input. For the person that always wants the unit to come on a certain way this gets the job done without adding more complexity to the setup or confusing anyone. If you have a learning remote for the system you can teach this command as your operate/ON command for the SSP and it will always come on to the pre-selected input.
1.7. Possibility to have a "kids mode" where the volume control on the unit is disabled to prevent small kids from being small kids.
Dave: This is another example of an idea which is good for some people but could result in others somehow finding that their volume control doesn’t work. People in the audio business know that millions (no exagerration) of phone calls were generated by the tape monitor buttons of older preamps and receivers. Caller: “There’s no output from my stereo.” Dealer: “Try pressing the tape monitor button.” Caller: “$#$*!” (inaudible as the sound comes blasting through the phone because the volume knob was turned all the way up and music was playing when the tape monitor button got switched off). I know people should RTFM, but a child that is too old to carelessly spin the knob is likely to be just old enough to poke around in the menu and turn the volume control off. We have several child-proofing features available in the SSP.
There is a speed limit on the volume knob, so if you spin it too fast it simply stops changing volume and locks up for a few seconds. There is a max volume setting so if you have a child or house guest who wants to test the limits of the system, you can be certain that it never gets played loud enough to do any damage.
If you press menu, then the F keys in reverse order (F4, F3, F2, F1), the setup menu pages lock and only the status button is active. That’s a secret way for an adult who has a child who is old enough to be poking around in the menu settings to deny access. Repeat the procedure (Menu, F4, F3, F2, F1) to unlock.
Dealers also have access to archiving and restoring settings in case they get changed accidentally and they can lower the speed limit on the volume control, but if you get too low it gets awkward to use. If you always use the remote, then lowering the speed limit on the knob combined with a max volume setting should do the trick.
1.8. Dolby Volume, Airplay, Dolby IIz.
Dave: Working on Dolby Volume but not in the next code release, Airplay is not possible in the SSP-800 and PLIIz is a longer term maybe, but it’s of interest to a very small subset of current users since the AUX channels are often otherwise employed for subs, bi-amping or feeding another zone.
1.9. Enhancements to the CANBus. Its possible to use the CANBus to turn specific devices on and off in the CANBus menu, but not in the Configuration menu. Instead one has to use Triggers and more cables. Can the CANBus device "operate" function be linked into the configuration menu so I don't have to use Triggers?
Dave: This was on our original list of possible CAN Bus features and I still think it would be a nice thing, but it requires adding considerable complexity to the setup and changing the code in all Delta and CT series models. It could be done, but the added complexity makes its value debatable and the time required to update everything puts it on the unlikely side of the ledger. There is an opportunity cost to everything, so adding features to existing products takes away development time from new products or updates like the CP-800 and HDMI 1.4 update. Adding one feature may also be far more costly than adding another and we have to make these value decisions all the time. Keep in mind that this feature only applies to a Classé theater system owner whose system 1) is not automated and 2) has multiple amps with L&R separate from Surrounds, Center and Rears. In other words, less than a third of Classé owners could possibly benefit from this, so in all likelihood, it would only actually be used by a few percent of our customers.
1.10. Could the display stays off during CD playback via a digital connection.
Dave: I assume this refers to the fact that stream changes cause the display to wake and notify you that there’s been a change, even though that may not be wanted. This falls into the “display off” feature category, so if we can determine a reasonable way to handle the display off request, it should apply to this case as well.
1.11. A summary of "everything" on the status screen.
Dave: I’m not sure what this means. I think we have all of the relevant things available but if there is something useful missing and we have access to show it, we will consider it. Please be specific
1.12. An updated list of "modes", not in the manual. Perhaps an online up to date manual in pdf would do the trick?
Dave: Could you give me an example of a mode that is missing? The manual will be updated at the time the HDMI 1.4 version is released, so now is a good time for us to make changes to it
Dave:
I would like to add some general comments to supplement the answers below. First, thank you for taking the time to organize the list for me and post the answers. Club Classé is a great way for current and potential Classé fans and AV enthusiasts to share ideas, opinions and solutions. The active participants are passionate and it can get contentious, which is normal, but no one should doubt that the people at Classé are also passionate and we care that our customers are satisfied. I am not a participant in the forum but I do read many of the posts. I am sometimes surprised by posts where a “bug” is reported that simply is not a bug but rather a disagreement or misunderstanding about how something should work, or some question is raised and debated when if anyone had asked us they could have gotten an answer. I know that most consumer electronics companies are pretty inaccessible, but Club Classé participants should know that we will do our best to answer their questions. I hope that doesn’t take the fun out of it!
The initial purpose of this thread was to list out all of the known bugs and get a status report on them. The truth is that the list is indeed very short—three verified bugs, none of which have existed or been known about for more than a few months and none of which result in an inability to use the system. These will all be addressed in the next software release. We will also address some feature requests, such as dimming the standby LED brightness which is needed for some of the SSP-800s (described in my answers below). Are there still some even more obscure bugs lurking and not yet reported or verified? Probably. Will there be new problems to solve once the HDMI 1.4 board is out? Almost certainly. That is the nature of the beast. The SSP does not operate in a vacuum or in its own closed or Classé-controlled system. It has to interact with hundreds of other brands and thousands of models of sources, cables and display devices sold around the world, as well as numerous audio and video signal formats. HDMI in particular is challenging for everyone in the industry. We have taken on that challenge and introduced the first truly high-end SSP with HDMI 1.3 and it looks like we will again be the first with HDMI 1.4. I am proud of the good work the Classé Design Team has done and am confident in their ability to keep us out in front of the competition.
Please let me know if you have follow up questions.
Questions
1.1. What will the upgrade price for the 1.4 board be for european customers., and when will it be available?
Dave: Export pricing will vary by market and I don’t know the retail pricing arrangements everywhere so check with your local distributor. It typically takes 4-8 weeks for products to work their way through the supply chain for overseas customers, so that is about what I would expect for a lag in availability between North America and Europe.
1.2. The new board is supposed to improve hdmi switching speed. Will there also be a improvements for the old boards?
Dave: I believe I may have covered this in an earlier Q&A and I know I have answered exhaustively for one or two members on the board, but the short answer is no. On the current video board, we are switching as fast as we can without introducing other problems. When you get a picture and sound you get it cleanly without pops and clicks and it works rock solid. For some of us, the switching speed is quite good enough as it is. In my system, it never takes more than six seconds to lock onto a new source or different resolution and it is typically much faster than that. For others, there are delays that range from slight annoyance to unacceptable. We all have the same SSP so the difference is the associated equipment and the setup. For example, choosing a fixed output resolution on a cable box may move the annoyance meter back to an acceptable level. I think that for most, the handshake when changing to TV channels of different resolutions is the real issue, not the time it takes to lock when changing inputs. In these cases the performance varies widely between set top boxes so if you were to point fingers, the source is usually the source of the problem.
It is important to understand that the switching speeds are related to the hardware and software we use, and to the hardware and software all of your associated equipment uses, plus the configurations employed by each component in the system. It is a highly complex and interactive situation which we have endeavored to optimize. To say that one combination of source, repeater, display which takes longer to switch than another is evidence of a software bug shows a complete misunderstanding of how this all works. What we will not do is chase our tail by optimizing one source/display combination only to compromise everyone else. “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” I hope everyone can understand and accept this.
1.3. Will the current or future boards support standby passthrough?
Dave: It is on our list as a desired new feature. In principle, we should be able to offer it on both boards but we haven’t implemented or tested it yet. The application is where someone wants to send audio to TV speakers and keep the main audio system off. In order to do this, we would need to fix an input, like HDMI 1, as the standby pass-though input. You would connect your set top box to this input and regardless which input had been selected when the unit was put into standby, you could turn your TV on and watch it with audio coming from the TV speakers. Keep in mind that HDMI audio sent from the source is determined based on what types of audio the SSP can accept, which will not be the same as what the TV can accept, so for the feature to work we need to re-establish the HDMI link between source and display. It looks like we can do it, but until it is done I don’t want to promise it.
1.4. Suppose new video standards emerge within a couple of years,say 4k2k pictures, what would you need to change in the SSP 800?
Dave: In theory, only the video board would need to change, but when speculating about future technology it’s best to not get too far ahead of yourself. HDMI parts will undergo another upgrade in bandwidth in the coming months, which means that later in 2011 manufacturers will begin introducing newer 300 MHz parts. The higher bandwidth will take the current state-of-the-art 3D capability from 1080p @ 24fps, where it will be in our new HDMI 1.4 video board, to 1080p @ 50/60fps. Will we ever see 3D at those frame rates? It is possible, but as a practical matter due to storage space, probably not from a Blu-ray Disc. Our new video board uses 225 MHz parts which are the highest bandwidth HDMI parts you can buy at the moment. In theory, the next generation of 300 MHz HDMI 1.4 parts could handle 4K2K, which requires 297 MHz. A lot of this is speculative because we don’t actually have any of this hardware to work with yet. So to put it in perspective, an entirely new generation of sources and displays along with media will need to exist in order to require more bandwidth from the signal path than our new video board will support. Even in the consumer electronics market where things seem to move so quickly, we know that any practical application for this is a long way off. The further into the future it is, the harder it is for me to speculate about what we will or won’t be able to do. The safe thing is to assume no further hardware upgrades and if they are offered, you can decide at that point whether you want or need them.
Wishes, in no particular order
1.5. An option to dim the LED lights on the front ("Global System Brightness", works on everything but the SSP-800: the screen dims, but not the LED). Alternatively the Display button on the remote could have a 4th step in the sequence: Bright, Medium, Dim, and Off.
Dave: There are two separate and distinct issues having to do with the standby LED and display options discussed.
Most SSP-800s shipped in 2010 use the same front panel board as the CT-SSP. The CT-SSP uses multiple LEDs where the SSP-800 uses only one. Also, the part was changed for manufacturing reasons to a part which appears brighter than the original. The result is some people have complained that when in standby, the LED is too bright (it is off when in the operate mode). We are adding a button to the MENU/display setup/brightness page that will allow users to select a dim standby LED setting. For customers who have found the LED too bright, this should bring the brightness of the LED closer into line with the amps and disc players. The dim setting we are implementing is the lowest we can offer for this LED, so there will not be a future “even dimmer” setting for us to offer.
There have been various forms of “display off requests.” I will repeat that it is not desirable or even legal (numerous global safety compliance certifications are involved in offering the SSP for sale) to make the front panel completely dark. We are investigating the options to accommodate a display off setting, but there are UI complications. If the display has been set to off and the standby LED is on (the unit can’t be entirely dark), it looks like it’s in standby. You walk up and press the standby button to wake it up, only to find that you have inadvertently put it into standby. This is just a simple example of how a seemingly simple feature request might have undesirable implications for lots of users or might take a lot more time (cost) to implement than you would think. Many customization options can be enabled for SSPs installed in systems with RS-232 automation and we offer many special control features, but our goal with the SSP user interface is not to make it do everything everyone might want but to do what most people want it to do in a way that most people can easily use. It is quite customizable as it is and can be extremely easy to operate without requiring an external control system. The more we ask it to do the more confusion we create and the more difficult it becomes to use so we are always reluctant to expand the feature set. We try to strike a balance and we use feedback from the field and the forums to see how we are doing. I do expect to be able to offer some solution for people who want the display to stay off during changes that currently cause it to wake. I just don’t know exactly how it will work yet.
1.6. Possibiliy to set a default startup preselected input.
Dave: This can be done by assigning a discrete input to an F key and pressing that F key will turn the unit on to that selected input. For the person that always wants the unit to come on a certain way this gets the job done without adding more complexity to the setup or confusing anyone. If you have a learning remote for the system you can teach this command as your operate/ON command for the SSP and it will always come on to the pre-selected input.
1.7. Possibility to have a "kids mode" where the volume control on the unit is disabled to prevent small kids from being small kids.
Dave: This is another example of an idea which is good for some people but could result in others somehow finding that their volume control doesn’t work. People in the audio business know that millions (no exagerration) of phone calls were generated by the tape monitor buttons of older preamps and receivers. Caller: “There’s no output from my stereo.” Dealer: “Try pressing the tape monitor button.” Caller: “$#$*!” (inaudible as the sound comes blasting through the phone because the volume knob was turned all the way up and music was playing when the tape monitor button got switched off). I know people should RTFM, but a child that is too old to carelessly spin the knob is likely to be just old enough to poke around in the menu and turn the volume control off. We have several child-proofing features available in the SSP.
There is a speed limit on the volume knob, so if you spin it too fast it simply stops changing volume and locks up for a few seconds. There is a max volume setting so if you have a child or house guest who wants to test the limits of the system, you can be certain that it never gets played loud enough to do any damage.
If you press menu, then the F keys in reverse order (F4, F3, F2, F1), the setup menu pages lock and only the status button is active. That’s a secret way for an adult who has a child who is old enough to be poking around in the menu settings to deny access. Repeat the procedure (Menu, F4, F3, F2, F1) to unlock.
Dealers also have access to archiving and restoring settings in case they get changed accidentally and they can lower the speed limit on the volume control, but if you get too low it gets awkward to use. If you always use the remote, then lowering the speed limit on the knob combined with a max volume setting should do the trick.
1.8. Dolby Volume, Airplay, Dolby IIz.
Dave: Working on Dolby Volume but not in the next code release, Airplay is not possible in the SSP-800 and PLIIz is a longer term maybe, but it’s of interest to a very small subset of current users since the AUX channels are often otherwise employed for subs, bi-amping or feeding another zone.
1.9. Enhancements to the CANBus. Its possible to use the CANBus to turn specific devices on and off in the CANBus menu, but not in the Configuration menu. Instead one has to use Triggers and more cables. Can the CANBus device "operate" function be linked into the configuration menu so I don't have to use Triggers?
Dave: This was on our original list of possible CAN Bus features and I still think it would be a nice thing, but it requires adding considerable complexity to the setup and changing the code in all Delta and CT series models. It could be done, but the added complexity makes its value debatable and the time required to update everything puts it on the unlikely side of the ledger. There is an opportunity cost to everything, so adding features to existing products takes away development time from new products or updates like the CP-800 and HDMI 1.4 update. Adding one feature may also be far more costly than adding another and we have to make these value decisions all the time. Keep in mind that this feature only applies to a Classé theater system owner whose system 1) is not automated and 2) has multiple amps with L&R separate from Surrounds, Center and Rears. In other words, less than a third of Classé owners could possibly benefit from this, so in all likelihood, it would only actually be used by a few percent of our customers.
1.10. Could the display stays off during CD playback via a digital connection.
Dave: I assume this refers to the fact that stream changes cause the display to wake and notify you that there’s been a change, even though that may not be wanted. This falls into the “display off” feature category, so if we can determine a reasonable way to handle the display off request, it should apply to this case as well.
1.11. A summary of "everything" on the status screen.
Dave: I’m not sure what this means. I think we have all of the relevant things available but if there is something useful missing and we have access to show it, we will consider it. Please be specific
1.12. An updated list of "modes", not in the manual. Perhaps an online up to date manual in pdf would do the trick?
Dave: Could you give me an example of a mode that is missing? The manual will be updated at the time the HDMI 1.4 version is released, so now is a good time for us to make changes to it
Originally posted by old text
So, I have had the luck of receiving a polite answer from Dave Nauber of Classé. He stated that he would be happy to answer any questions regarding the SSP800, so this thread is for gathering said questions.
So, if people would like to objectively state questions or other relevant info, this is the place. Please refrain from personal attacks, just the nature of the problem, when does it arise, and why does is it important to you?
Also, feedback can be positive as well
Edit: I promised to have a list of questions in a weeks time, so don't sit on them
So, if people would like to objectively state questions or other relevant info, this is the place. Please refrain from personal attacks, just the nature of the problem, when does it arise, and why does is it important to you?
Also, feedback can be positive as well
Edit: I promised to have a list of questions in a weeks time, so don't sit on them
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