B50 /BP50 Firmware Version Update 0057-5be7aedf

Alex · May 4, 2024, 9:45am

I think that if it does not appear in the application you cannot update the firmware. Your B50 is not brick blocked?

cmjr86 · May 4, 2024, 9:57am

No. Working normally, ARC without issues and so on.

viktor · May 5, 2024, 6:55am

I understand that you are not going to correct your shortcomings regarding playback from USB BP50? Instead of making playlists or playback by folders or solving the problem with playlist brakes in the application, you removed it altogether in the latest firmware! And now it’s impossible to choose a song at all! Instead of solving the problem, you decided to simply ignore it and cut down the functionality! What a hack and disregard for consumers. The BP50 can now only be used as a DAC! Only DAC can be bought at half the price. I already regret that I contacted your products and wasted my money! Rest assured, I will leave appropriate reviews everywhere!

Sanath · May 6, 2024, 5:46am

@liuw29759 @zpl1025
Hi Jason,
After the latest update there is no play list for USB play back. We expected more features like folder wise navigation etc. But even the play list does not appear now. So USB playback option is of no use now. Can anything be done about this.

Best Regards,
Sanath

zpl1025 · May 7, 2024, 12:03pm

sorry for this, I think it’s a mistake. And we’ll fix it asap.

Jkpt_Update · May 11, 2024, 2:50am

Hi after update how to factory reset it brick led stby and bt flashing butween

liuw29759 · May 11, 2024, 8:21am

We’ll fix it next week and release a new version

Alex · May 11, 2024, 3:44pm

@zpl1025 and @liuw29759

My TV 43C635X2 stopped working CEC-ARC since the last automatic firmware update of my TV. Spdif/Optical only. Do you know any way to factory reset my Arylic B50 so I can recover sound via HDMI-ARC?

Sanath · May 12, 2024, 5:47am

Ok Mr. Jason . We will wait.

Alex · May 22, 2024, 11:28am

@joia @Joy @zpl @liuw29759 since HDMI-ARC doesn’t sound, I use a TOSLINK S/PDIF connection to my TV. The B50 amplifier has the problem that it turns off and remains in STANBY (red LED). I start up again and after a few seconds, sometimes minutes it turns off again. What can I do? Is this a problem that has a solution? Thanks in advance.

Padraic_Doyle · May 24, 2024, 3:36pm

Sorry if I am posting out of sequence here - not very familiar with the structure of these forums.

I received my B50 a few days ago and have just set it up. I have a problem with intermittent sound drop on HDMI ARC at periodic intervals - like a buffer overflow. The firmware version is 50-0ce1e3ac-8. I have followed all the steps I could find for a firmware upgrade, including formatting a USB down to 4GB on FAT16. I am trying to upgrade to 0057-5be7aedf-20240220. When I insert the USB into the B50 I get absolutely no response. I have tried with the source set to BT and also set to USB. Have also tried powering the device off and on (unplugging) with Firmware USB plugged in. No response whatsoever and no indication in the Go Control App of anything having been detected.

Anything else I can try before I send it back?

Padraic_Doyle · May 24, 2024, 10:50pm

Tried a lower firmware version (B50-0052-452f344c-20230703) in case the gap was too big. Also found an old USB 2 small capacity stick. Same result - no change. When I plug in the USB, the B50 does detect it and switches Source from BT to USB. Source light remains solid red. I do not have these issues if using Source BT or Optical.

Eliot · May 25, 2024, 2:25am

I’m on a slightly newer firmware than @Padraic_Doyle but having the same experience with my B50. I’ve tried a number of different flash drives, and I’m confident that they were formatted fat16 (tried fat32 as well) but I never see a prompt in the app. I’m able to connect to the B50 and control it from the app, but I’m not able to update the firmware. I’m seeing similar issues with ARC audio dropping out after a period of time, so will likely return it if I’m not able to update. Any tips or tricks would be greatly appreciated!

Padraic_Doyle · May 25, 2024, 4:20pm

I swapped out a good quality 2mtr HDMI cable for what looked like an inferior 1mtr HDMI and it seems to have fixed the audio dropouts. I still cannot upgrade the firmware.

@Eliot - I finally got the firmware upgrade to work by formatting the USB down to a partition size of 64MB on FAT 16 (aka FAT). Instead of 4000 set the size to 160 below.

zvonov4 · May 27, 2024, 1:24am

I bought it when the firmware was 56, installed it at 57, did not notice any changes. A very crude device. Main problems:
USB flash drives, prelists sometimes appear in the application, sometimes they don’t, I couldn’t find any file or system dependencies.
HDMI ARC works, but CEC works poorly, the TV turns on and off every other time, the sound disappears for a second when switching from the TV remote control, when you turn off and then turn on the amplifier from the TV, all sound settings are reset via HDMI (this is the biggest problem, you have to keep the amplifier on at all times included).
Frequent disconnections with the application, you have to reconnect every time you open it.
When you turn it off, there is a clicking sound in the sambuffer (I checked it on several, the sound is always quieter or louder), when you turn it on it is almost inaudible.

Kjohnson · May 28, 2024, 3:31am

@joia @zpl1025 Hello, two things:

Will there be a firmware update to wake the B50 from standby when it receives input from line in? (Just like with ARC standby)
Will there be an update to auto-detect the newest audio source and automatically switch to that source. (Exampe: B50 Detects line in audio while watching TV. B50 switches from ARC to Line in)

I believe the Wiim Amp offers these features, but I like the B50 and would like to stick with it.

zpl1025 · May 29, 2024, 2:08am

@Kjohnson Regarding your suggestions:

When device go in standby, it will only monitor the IO changes to wake up. So, the ARC could wake it, because it’s monitoring the CEC line and wake up to handle CEC messages. For Line-In, I’m not sure we could do this. Maybe could wake up periodically to read the ADC and determine whether audio input is available. I’m not sure if this is a good idea, maybe others just want it to stay in standby.
This is actually having the same issue. Maybe user just want to keep the input, and he want to switch with his intention. If I’m watching TV, I for sure don’t want to be disturbed by such auto switch feature.

Kjohnson · May 29, 2024, 10:10pm

@zpl1025 Thank you so much for the quick reply! I thought it would be an easy update for the B50 since Wiim amp already does this with its auto sense feature. I see now it’s a little more complicated than that. I would just like to be able to play music from line-in, connect to Bluetooth, or switch audio inputs without having to manually wake the B50 with the remote. Sometimes I’m in another room without the remote and want to play music from there.

Here’s wiim’s auto sense for their amp, if interested:

trinitronx · May 30, 2024, 12:15am

After a few months of testing this, I can confirm that when CEC messages are working properly, the BP50 will wake up and sleep correctly. I’m sure there are a few edge cases where CEC messages stop working for some reason, but I’ve been unable to track down exactly why or when this happens. Usually a reboot of the PC will solve the issue when the CEC adapter software says it is not responding.

For my test setup:

I have an HTPC running Linux with a Pulse-Eight USB to CEC Adapter (device ID 2548:1002). I’ve modified the source code for a software called cec-dpms to always send the power off command to the TV, even when the “Playbackdevice1” is not currently “active source”. Previously, the software was coded to only send if the “Playback Device 1” (in CEC logical address parlance ), is still seen as “active source”, but I found that for my TV and HTPC, the original boolean if statement was always false. So, before that change the device would never go into standby properly when HTPC was idle unless the TV itself was powered off manually. I think my TV sends a power off CEC command to the BP50, but somehow fails to send the power on command when the TV is turned back on. So, I needed to set up my HTPC to turn on the BP50 with some software and that CEC adapter.

I set up a SystemD unit to automatically run via udev which automatically attaches an instance of the cec-dpms service to /dev/ttyACM0 (or any other Pulse-Eight CEC adapter device) when it first shows up to the Linux kernel. So, in my case when /dev/ttyACM0 is identified by udev, it starts cec-dpms@dev-ttyACM0.service. Then, I hooked the USR1 and USR2 cec-dpms process signals up into my desktop’s idle handler. In my case, that was swayidle. If you’re curious, the config I used is below.

Sway Lock/Idle config

# Set long options in config file: ~/.config/swaylock/config
# Otherwise, we get segfault from swayidle PID
set $locking swaylock --daemonize

### Idle configuration
# This will lock your screen after 300 seconds of inactivity, then turn off
# your displays after another 300 seconds, and turn your screens back on when
# resumed. It will also lock your screen before your computer goes to sleep.
#
set $idle_timeout 240
set $locking_timeout 300
set $screen_timeout 600
set $sleep_timeout 900
set $sleep_delay 2

# Shell no-op to turn off suspend
set $systemctl_suspend :

set $swayidle swayidle -w -S seat0 \
    idlehint $idle_timeout \
    timeout $idle_timeout 'light -G > /tmp/brightness && light -S 10' resume 'light -S $([ -f /tmp/brightness ] && cat /tmp/brightness || echo 100%)' \
    timeout $locking_timeout 'exec $locking' \
    timeout $screen_timeout 'swaymsg "output * power off"' \
      resume 'swaymsg "output * power on"' \
    timeout $screen_timeout 'sudo pkill -USR2 cec-dpms' \
      resume 'sudo pkill -USR1 cec-dpms' \
    before-sleep 'playerctl pause' \
    before-sleep 'exec $locking & sleep $sleep_delay'

It might be good for some users to have the option to turn on some kind of HDMI ARC audio wake-up polling. This might have avoided the need for me to use the separate cec-dpms software.

As far as being disturbed by the auto-switch behavior, I’ve noticed that with my cec-dpms and swayidle setup, there are a few issues like this. It’s really my fault, in this case because I always send the set_active_source() CEC command when the HTPC wakes up from idle. Maybe I will find a way to determine if my particular TV is watching another source, and simply don’t send that CEC command.

When watching content on the TV itself (e.g. TV’s built-in Netflix “app”), if the HTPC mouse or keyboard is bumped or pressed then the PC will wake up from idle state and tell cec-dpms to send the power on and set_active_source(). So, in this case the TV will exit out of the Netflix app and display the HTPC’s video output instead. Oops!
Sometimes, the CEC adapter gets into a broken state where it fails to communicate with the TV. When this happens, I usually try restarting the cec-dpms service first, and when that usually fails to work, I have to reboot the HTPC. After a reboot, the CEC commands will succeed again.
Sometimes the BP50 will stop playing audio. I think this issue has been described by a few other people (e.g. this post, and also this post ) too. It may have something to do with the BP50 losing digital audio clock sync (maybe PLL “flywheel” has failed to keep sync and did not recover?). I’m not 100% sure about this, and don’t have equipment to capture and debug the HDMI ARC digital signal, so it’s just a guess. When the BP50 has entered this state, it will fail to play HDMI ARC audio until I switch back and forth from another input (e.g. Set input to Line In, then back to HDMI ARC ). I sometimes also have to switch the Vizio TV’s audio output from PCM to Bitstream and back, and/or turn the built-in TV speakers On and back Off again, which seems to somehow “reset” the digital audio signal sent over the HDMI ARC output port.

Mannyo1221 · May 31, 2024, 8:05am

First post here,

I also have this issue, cannot update from this same firmware version on both the BP50s I have.

As IT specialist, I have tried dozens of USB sticks of various sizes and ages, formatted as FAT16 on Windows, MacOS and Linux, even the 32MB one from more the distant past not working.

I format the drive, copy the extracted file from the ZIP file to USB and plug in the back and nothing, tried factory resets, nothing.

I have never had this issue with other devices updating firmware, and seriously thinking of returning these as not fit for purpose since both mine have issues which are resolved in the latest firmware.