Melco Audiophile NAS

[BB1]

(06-06-2019 16:22)Peter@57m Wrote:  06. June 2019
Firmware Ver 3.91 for N1, Ver 1.03 for N10/N100

Fix "PC incompatible characters"
There are some cases the music files, imported by CD, USB memory, USB HDD into Music Library, has name that PC cannot show by SMB sharing.
Newly added feature fixes this kind of incompatible characters from front display menu. This feature is just to fix name, but not effect to the music data.

Background information:
Depending on the file system in use, certain characters are illegal for file names. Eg. a question mark is illegal in NTFS, but perfectly legal in macOS extended. SMB sharing is the only way to browse the files present on the Melco.

If importing a track containing an illegal character (eg. "08 - Where Are You Tonight?.flac") by USB with v3.80 or v3.81, it was shown as eg. "0OAD6V~W" if browsing the Melco’s files on a Mac via SMB. Not very convenient, if you are searching for the track on the Melco for correcting tags ore any other file oriented action. Hence I’d reported this issue to Melco.

With v.3.90 things became worse. If importing the very same file via USB in this version, it was invisible, i.e. it couldn’t be edited, moved or deleted at all. In order to get access to the file I had to downgrade the firmware.

In v3.91 a workaround has been implemented (I wouldn’t call it a fix). By manually selecting "Support -> PC-incompatible characters" the question mark gets replaced by an underscore. I've suggested to Melco, that this replacement should happen automatically on import.

It also worth to note that there is no issue if you copy a file with a question mark in its file name via SMB to the Melco (from a Mac, of cause). What worries me are the different results for different ways of importing. Depending on the firmware and source it might result in "working as it should", annoying behavior or total failure.