MTP vs. UMS - The Great Debate

[Dalmane98]

I found this thread on Anythingbutipod, found it interesting and thought I would share it:

http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum/showthread.php?t=495

Very interesting...Maybe I will try MTP, if for nothing else playlist support.

[RichA]

Interesting, a co-worker and I (he is also a DAP enthusiast) have gone back and forth on this. He owns a old Zen Xtra and a Meizu (MTP/MSC), and myself, I own a Zen Sleek Photo (MTP) and a Rio Carbon (MSC/MTP) and a D2. I just purchased the D2, and one of the big reasons was it's ability to swap between MSC/MTP. Like my Rio Carbon, it is always in MSC mode.
I have always preferred MSC mode to MTP. I read the post by the MS tech., and although interesting, I find some of the reasonings invalid. You also have to remember that he works for MS, do he is not going to be anti-MTP.
I, personally, have no real use for MTP. I don't subscribe to any music service, as I am very much against DRM, nor will I support it by throwing these services money.
MSC is universal, Windows, Linux, Mac, etc., while MTP is XP/Vista w/WMP 10/11. Although I run XP and Vista, so this isn't really an issue for me, but MTP is still more narrow than MSC. His album art not really working in MSC, but only MTP is highly inaccurate, never an issue for me in MSC mode.
Creative DAPs are MTP, when I was running XP/WMP 10, I had a hard time with Windows finding a driver for it. If you were to go to dapreview or the Creative boards, this was a big issue. Windows was unable to find a driver for whatever MTP Zen you had.
Once WMP11 shipped, this seemed to have been cleared up. He is correct on the Vista issue, once I plugged my Zen into a new PC I bought to replace my ancient XP box, it installed it within seconds, tested my D2 in MTP mode, no issues, a Vision:M that I had but returned (MTP) no issue.
MSC regardless of what version of Windows or what version of WMP who have, just runs. Windows uses a removable disk driver, and it installs without an issue, never had (like MTP mode) an issue with Windows trying to find a driver.
MSC FTW, at least IMO.

[Michalaq]

UMS wins

I like being in control of what I put on my player, how I put it on and how I can open it. MTP seems to take that away to a certain extent.

I would be absolutely furious if I needed to copy an excel spreadsheet off of a friend's Mac and my 12gb storage device couldn't do it because of the silly MTP format.

[Natedog]

MSC aka UMS mode is the one feature that I absolutely had to have on my player, and the reason the battle for my money came down to the Sansa e200 series and the D2. As you can tell from my sig, I went with the e200 first, then learned my lesson (two players later) to go with a company that puts its portables FIRST (or only, in the case of Cowon) over its other products. Anyway, I like being in control of what goes on and comes off of my player, and file disorganization is a pet peeve of mine. I have yet to find a program that does MTP mode exactly the way I want it, and I tend to use multiple programs for file conversion/transcoding, and it's much easier to drag-and-drop. I store all my files on my computer in the exact same directory structure that the D2 uses, and I drag and drop manually to keep everything together.

[LuvMusic]

I use MTP, because I use subscription music. If I didn't, I would probably use MSC.

I find Cowon's implementation of MTP to be very buggy. However, I love my "All you can eat" music.

[torrentseed]

Don't you guys have slow transfer speeds in MTP mode? Using MediaMonkey, it takes me 8 seconds per song (about 6 MB), whereas in MSC, the same song would take less than 2 seconds.

Also, how do you put text files and videos on to the D2 using MTP mode?

[spidermoon]

What is the problems between MSC and MTP ? I can put music by drag and drop from explorer, and synchronize drm music inside window media player, D2 appears in the mobile device list, and synchrozine works flawlessly. And of course, the song plays ok. I use 3.46 firmware, XP, and wmp 10.

[Dalmane98]

Well I tried MTP and Bricked my D2.

I have WMP 11 on my XP Pro box.

I rip all my music; no DRM music.

Configured Sync for manual, because I put Audio Books on the internal flash memory.

I deleted all the music and video off my SDHC.

Dragged all my music folders (3.5GB) over to the right hand panel and clicked on sync.

WMP started syncing the music and about half-way through I got a message that my D2 had stopped responding. One song was at 1% converting. I waited for about 45 minutes with no change and then shut the whole system down. Used the reset on the D2.

Turned the D2 on and it took almost 5 minutes for the data base to rebuild.

Tried playing some songs and they played OK. Tried creating a DPL and that worked too. So far so good.

Turned off the D2 and turned it back on. Started in about 8 sec. Selected Music and got an Unknown song on the main page. Went over to the DPL and all the songs were blank...There was a blank icon at the beginning of were the titles should be.

Tried deleting the DPL and it would not delete. Tried navigating over to the Music Library and the D2 would lock-up. Removed the SDHC and turned on the D2 without the SDHC and my AB's worked fine.

Inserted the SDHC and the D2 went back to the main screen and I got the spinning Loading icon. My music was back and would play.

Shut off the D2 and turned it back on and no music and the D2 locked up again when I tried to navigate to the Music Library.

Downgraded the FW to 2.21; same thing happened. Upgraded the FW to 2.46 an still had the problem.

Tried loading a 2GB SD using MSC with Explorer and the same thing happened. Reformatted my 8GB SDHC and transfered the music using Jetshell. Same problem.

Tried about 50 other things...Different computer, diskeeper. Sandra etc. Nothing worked.

Got he D2RF (recovery) and used them. They reformatted the HIDDEN system partition and then reloaded FW 2.46 on the D2.

[thumbsup] My D2 works again.[thumbsup]

Maybe I did something wrong setting up WMP 11, but IMHO MTP sucks and is not for me.

I prefer using the MSC method. At least I know what I am doing and I like being able to control my folder structure and contents.

Sorry for the long post, but it took me over 5 hours to do all the above and get my D2 working again.

[StanRex]

I honestly have difficulties understanding how one can prefer MTP over UMS.

And the MS guy lied quite a bit by saying that a UMS device will always look like a hd :

It would be very easy for Cowon to put an autoexec file with an icon on their players that would make them appear like a D2 in "my computer".

[Dalmane98]

Never tried them, but check this thread:

http://iaudiophile.net/forums/showthread.php?t=14402&highlight=Icon

[RichA]

I honestly have difficulties understanding how one can prefer MTP over UMS.

And the MS guy lied quite a bit by saying that a UMS device will always look like a hd :

It would be very easy for Cowon to put an autoexec file with an icon on their players that would make them appear like a D2 in "my computer".

I agree. The Creative and Rio players I have owned have done this, and it is not hard to implement. The thread by Dalmane98 linking to the other thread with the icons gives you are general idea this probably isn't the hardest to implement, and the MS spokesman was incorrect on this subject, but you have to remember, he works for Microsoft, so he is going to defend MTP.

[HueMann]

I've been using the icons for my sdhc and D2 well ... all along it seems. After every fw upgrade the first thing I do is re-up the icon and autoexe.

[BassHead]

MSC is universal, Windows, Linux, Mac, etc., while MTP is XP/Vista w/WMP 10/11.

MTP works on OS X & Linux & even Symbian now. Check XNJB for OS X, libmtp for Linux, and I think Symbian support is native now.

[TedJ]

While there are MTP libraries for other platforms, they are not 100% functional... at least they weren't the last time I checked. That aside, MTP is a closed protocol which Microsoft can change pretty much at will, which is a nightmare for those writing ports for other platforms and hardware vendors.

The whole system is a kludge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kludge) anyway... it's essentially PTP (Picture Transfer Protocol) with some extra code and go-faster stripes bolted on. [toungue]