[Aeolun]

How could a problem in the filetransfer of the update successfully update the system, and then reduce the output volume as a side effect?

I also seems like that wouldn’t make sense considering multiple people appear to have the same issue.

[gaius_baltar]

This just sounds as a bad excuse ... a corrupted fw update apply with no checks? Not even a MD5? And magically reduces output power with no other side effects? Should sounds funny but this seems just another case of IoS (internet of sh*t) devices being retroactively crippled by the vendor.

Also, no way to skip the update? Shady as usual.

Also also: why the hell connect a speaker to the internet? Extra shady.

Also also also: Coincidentally, forcing this update and dropping the problem to the users seems cheaper than fixing the reported problems in the battery and charger. Shady as a black-hole now.

[dereg]

This is an extremely bad faith response to a statement that Jesper did not have to make. It is clear that the firmware may have caused unintended behavior and it's clear that the team is looking to remedy it. I have no idea how the construction of your entire comment is at all part of one in this discussion rather than an ideological rant at an industry as a whole but, whatever it is, it's a rotten piece to an otherwise civil conversation.

[gaius_baltar]

> This is an extremely bad faith response to a statement that Jesper did not have to make.

I take Jesper's comment as an official response from the company, it's the CEO speaking after all. The comment also says that input from engineering was received, and this implies in some coordination and a thought-out response. This rules out commercial staff or other non-technical folks just saying what "looks like" to be the cause.

> It is clear that the firmware may have caused unintended behavior and it's clear that the team is looking to remedy it.

But, then why hide the problem? A ethically correct response will be "as an emergency measure, this update will reduces output to prevent the batteries from <marketing lingo for bursting into flames>. Please contact us to schedule a free HW fix or a replacement for non-faulty unit."

> I have no idea how the construction of your entire comment is at all part of one in this discussion rather than an ideological rant at an industry as a whole but whatever it is, it's a rotten piece to an otherwise civil conversation.

Perhaps I was too rant-y, but I am very used to see these "a software update removed features from my appliance" stories, from what I think that this industry itself is already rotting. Well, we are even becoming used to say to non-technical folks "never apply the updates, specially if the vendor seems to be pushing it too hard", with the expected drawbacks for security updates.

[rasz]

Did you perhaps miss the second CEO post where he doesnt admit to lying

>In the newest firmware update, there is no audio updates to the SOUNDBOKS Gen 3

and instead just skips past it stating that the update does indeed

>change in the signal processing for the tweeter

CEOs are politicians, they lie all the time.

[Mo3]

I agree the response sounds like a bad excuse, but what could possibly be a reason for doing this on purpose in the first place?

[gaius_baltar]

That's a pretty nice question. If that response was intended for a non-technical audience, I could said that the company was expecting it to be believed. But it was posted directly on HN, so I have no idea.

[vertis]

Agreed, this explanation doesn't make any sense. It seems very unlikely that it's a (successful) bad update unless there are deeper problems with their update process that allow it to be a problem for multiple people.

The authors broader points are valid as well. Firmware updates should come with changelogs.

[jespertt]

We have integrity verification, so this is extremely unlikely, but as it is an easy check, we recommend trying this out. If you try to re-upgrade, and it skips the “transferring” step and goes directly to “Ready to patch”, it means that the previous upgrade had been successful with no corrupted data and that you have had the correct firmware on your speaker. (In this case it will be a very fast process) If however, it started to transfer files, it is worth to wait until the transfer step is completed to make sure you have the right firmware.

In the meantime, we will continue to investigate internally in SOUNDBOKS, and try to figure out why some users are experiencing this, when we are not experiencing it ourselves, and it has not occurred in any of our testing.

[mgsouth]

Sorry, no. From a technical standpoint it's ridiculous. If there's even a minimal amount of error checking, a failed update would be akin to a shotgun blast, not a laser beam. Is it theoretically possible for it to cause just one highly specific problem? Yeah, but extremely unlikely. And its only "an easy check" _for the supporting engineer_. For the customer it's very inconvenient, and is very transparently just busywork to make the customer go away for a while.

Speaking from my own management experience, it's OK for me not to understand a technical issue as well as the person I've made responsible for a task. But you have to have complete trust in their judgement and "communication accuracy." Free advice--take a good hard look at what else you've been told. I'm not saying someone is deliberately lying, but pressure and skill shortcomings can lead to untrue statements.

You might also take a good hard look at what you've said and done. You get lots of points for directly speaking with customers in this forum. But it doesn't sound as if the technical side is your wheelhouse (which is OK, that's not what your job is), and you may be having "hair on fire" issues. That can very easily lead to making decisions and demands which are impossible for your team to fulfill, or lead them to making risky technical choices. A startup "failure is not an option" or "go big or go home" or "YOLO" mentality can easily go overboard can make it impossible for them communicate the true situtation to you _or even to themselves_.

[jespertt]

Will liaise with the engineering team and revert!

[iasay]

Crazy shit like this happens all the time. However assigning a cause is a little early.

Years ago I wrote a firmware loader for an industrial Z80 system. All it did was read a file over the serial port into RAM, jump into it and then overwrite the EEPROM. I got a page quantity calculation completely wrong. It didn't update all the memory pages. Because the changes were fairly small and the code was assembled rather than compiled and the test cases were fairly light, it was released to clients. It still worked absolutely fine but the status LED didn't work on the device in a specific situation because the update CALL never got executed because it was neatly in a previous page that didn't exist any more.

Of course this was reported as (1) hardware had completely failed (2) the LED had broken and (3) it only works sometimes. All of which weren't true. No one had even mentioned that they had recently updated it. So I can see how it happens.

Thus the tyranny of unexpected behaviour is a deep and dark passage lined with monsters, misinformation and bad assumptions. You have to tread very carefully and not say things too soon because it makes you look even more of an idiot when you have to backtrack later.

[granos]

Crazy issues like that definitely do happen. But, this speaker output power issue being due to a file transfer error doesn't feel right. Do the perform any kind of integrity checking on the fw before installing it? Even an md5sum on the package seems like it would almost certainly have caught this. Either this wasn't caused by a file transfer problem, or their fw update process has some serious design issues.

[HelloNurse]

Even easier than file integrity checks: testing the loudspeakers with various combinations of output level, musical material and battery states. They would have noticed.

[jespertt]

A few notes regarding the latest firmware:

The sound profiles have not been changed at all. The playback time is exactly the same as before, i.e. 5 hours on max volume in Power mode. (confirming the SPL is the same) The settings for the woofers have not been changed at all. The contribution of tweeter sound pressure level is only a minor fraction of the total SPL for the speaker and since the woofers’ SPL has not been changed, the total SPL should stay the same as well.

As a result of the above, we have not seen any SPL change in our measurements post-upgrade, and are not sure as to why some users are experiencing this.

Previously, i mentioned the notion of it being a data corruption issue. We have integrity verification, so this is extremely unlikely, but as it is an easy check, we recommend trying this out. If you try to re-upgrade, and it skips the “transferring” step and goes directly to “Ready to patch”, it means that the previous upgrade had been successful with no corrupted data and that you have had the correct firmware on your speaker. (In this case it will be a very fast process) If however, it started to transfer files, it is worth to wait until the transfer step is completed to make sure you have the right firmware.

In the meantime, we will continue to investigate internally in SOUNDBOKS, and try to figure out why some users are experiencing this, when we are not experiencing it ourselves, and it has not occurred in any of our testing.

Again, thanks for your engagement!

[HelloNurse]

Not the kind of excuses that a technical audience receives well.

[duxup]

If they knew that they probably would have more to say ;)

[stefan_]

While we are here, why is the firmware update said to take 1-2 hours? How many moon landers worth of data is that firmware?

[striking]

Bluetooth is slow. Even my Sony LinkBuds take like 15 minutes to update.