I-Sonic ES2 Alarm and Dock Issue

ltn123

Hi,

I recently bought the ISonic ES2 system.

I am having 2 issues with this product. One is that the alarm fails to wake me up in the morning on any source setting.
The Alarm seems to be working as the unit turns on and the bell is blinking but there is no volume. If I go up turn the volume up the unit is audible at the level i had set the unit to wake me at. Sometimes the alarm works one day but the next day there is no sound.

The 2nd issue is when I plug in my iPod unit. When i first place the iPod on the unit the ipod begins to play but then it suddenly stops. Pressing play on the ipod or the remote does not work. I have hit the iPOD button on the remote and then play for it to start playing. I'll have to do this at least three times because the unit just stops playing the ipod.


Is my unit defective?

dubradio

ltn123,

It sounds like the IES2 you have is just going haywire, when and from what retailer was this purchased?

I would recommend a simple firmware re-flash may be in order, send me and email @ Kshufelt@polkaudio.com, include your mailing address and I can have a thumb drive with the firmware sent to you on monday.

seajseven

Similar issues here:

-Alarm never plays iPod. Either the system plays the tone instead or does nothing. Tried with both a 4G (black/white) and an iPod Touch 3G.

-iPod playback is sketchy. I can initiate playback on the iPod manually, but the remote will only stop playback and will not play/pause or advance tracks. The controls on the top of the unit don't work either.

-With my iPod touch, I never see track information pushed to the unit display. After docking the iPod, I see "please wait" momentarily and then the display is blank.

I checked the FW version and it's reporting 1.35. Do I also need to reflash the firmware? as it is now, iPod playback is unreliable and the alarm is completely unusable.

ltn123

bump..

Does anyone have any clue has to what is going on with the unit? The unit came with the latest firmware.

woodhead 2

here I've been bidding on one of these, maybe I better wait..:eek:

fullstrength

seajseven wrote: »

Similar issues here:

-Alarm never plays iPod. Either the system plays the tone instead or does nothing. Tried with both a 4G (black/white) and an iPod Touch 3G.

-iPod playback is sketchy. I can initiate playback on the iPod manually, but the remote will only stop playback and will not play/pause or advance tracks. The controls on the top of the unit don't work either.

-With my iPod touch, I never see track information pushed to the unit display. After docking the iPod, I see "please wait" momentarily and then the display is blank.

I checked the FW version and it's reporting 1.35. Do I also need to reflash the firmware? as it is now, iPod playback is unreliable and the alarm is completely unusable.

I have the same problem with ipod touch 3g, not displaying track information.

seajseven

So update...

Called Polk. Told them the problem, and they sent me a thumbdrive with the 1.35 FW. This is the same firmware already on the unit, but I thought it might be worth a shot.

Flashed the unit, the issues weren't fixed.

Called Polk again, explained the problems up to that point, they sent me a UPS label to return the unit for replacement. Received the new unit today. Firmware is 1.35. Same problems as the last one. I went thru the diag menu on the Polk with both iPods docked and was able to verify the iPods are recognized. Overall there is more functionality with the iPod touch than the 4g, but I still don't see any track info on the Polk display with the touch, so I don't think it's working properly. So, both the first and second unit seem to have the same problematic behavior.

The tech on the phone claimed that both iPods are compatible and that the behavior I am seeing is incorrect.

This unit was replacing (upgrading??) a Teac HD-1, which has absolutely no problems with my ipods whatsoever (I just hate how it sounds, and the Polk sounds so much better.) I'm still testing out whether I can depend on the Polk to be my alarm. At the moment, I'm not convinced the iSonic is going to wake me up everyday with my iPod docked.

dubradio

seajseven,

Hmm. That is very interesting, Im going to have to have a meeting with one of our engineers on Monday to discuss this as we in CS have been informed this should not be happening. Unfortunately we are closed sat and sundays. (but i poke around on the forums 24/7. So Im goin to find a resolution and get back to you monday afternoon.

-Kyle

seajseven

Took me a while to get back to this. I had a chance to try 2 more iPods this weekend.

First off I will say, miraculously, my iPod touch started showing track info on Saturday. I had taken my iPod to work and had synched it with my PC at work. After bringing it home, it was working OK on the Polk. Originally, what I would see was nothing in the top part of the display, and 0:00 in the track elapsed time area. But since Saturday, it's been working solid. The only thing that happened between not working and working was that I had sync'ed my iPod with my PC at work.
I normally sync with a mac. I though maybe itunes on my mac was writing some garbage data to my iPod, but subsequent syncing with my Mac does resurrect the problem. I have not seen the problem since.

My 4G black&white ipod is still really unusable. So prior to this weekend, i had only used:

-4th gen (20GB B/W)
-3rd gen Touch ( 32GB ).

I got a hold of two more:

-4th gen ( 40GB B/W )
-6th gen ( 80GB Classic )

…and looked at how they behaved. In short, the 2 black and white models (from the same generation) showed the same behavior:

1. iPod will play when initiated from the iPod itself.
2. iPod will typically NEXT and PREV track from the remote.
3. If user presses PLAY/PAUSE on remote, iPod will pause when playing ( essentially it stops)
4. If user presses PLAY/PAUSE from a non-playing state on remote, the ipod screen will go blank and turn off.
5. If a user follows step 4 by pressing IPOD on remote, iPod will turn on momentarily, then power off immediately.
6. From a non-playing state, the iPod may or may not respond to FWD and PREV.

Putting these observations in layman's terms, the Polk can never initiate playback on the iPod. This includes the alarm. The only functions I can perform, are 'next track', 'previous track' and 'stop.' If you make the unfortunate mistake of pressing PLAY/PAUSE during playback, you're going to have to make a trip across the room to start playback from the iPod menus. If you set up the alarm to play back iPod, you're going to get buzzer, because that seems to be the device's fallback.

Just as a sanity check, i used iTunes to factory restore both black/white iPods and updated to the latest firmware. This didn't fix the problems I was seeing.

The 6th gen classic worked exactly as expected. I had full playback functionality and track/artist display on the Polk unit. Same goes for my 32GB Touch (now). I don't know why, out of the box, the Polk did not display track information, but that seems to have fixed itself over the course of a few days using the Polk.


I'm going to make the assumption that the iSonic ES2 is not compatible with black and white ipods, based on what I saw happening with 2 Polk units and 2 iPods I tested.

If you have any suggestions to getting older iPods working, please let me know.

ltn123

Hi,

Looking to reopen this thread. After over a year I have still not resolved this issue. I have been using my phone as an alarm for quite sometime but thought this morning DAMN IT I really like to wake up to the radio. Problem is, the damn radio has no volume when you program it as an alarm. The unit turns on but there is no volume.

I noticed the only other time the unit has no volume is while i am scanning through my presets and land on an HD station. I need to hit the volume button in order you to hear anything. Even though the volume was working on any other station. I think this issue is the same when a set the alarm to wake. Anyone else experience this?