Topic: Load entire album (Read 12030 times)

gio_b · « **on:** October 29, 2015, 06:43:41 am »

Ith there a way to laod the entire album vs only one song ?
This is because i have power saving on my external hda and is set to power off every 3 min.of inactivity to save power and hda.but during each track ,of course ,it start then stop ,to restart on new trak...so ,hda is start and stop continuosly.
Tks giovanni.

blgentry · « **Reply #1 on:** October 29, 2015, 08:25:58 am »

In my opinion, your attempt to save power is just going to cause you trouble. First, power cycling drives is the one of the leading causes of drive failure. Second, having the drive "not available" when you want to use it, causes long delays, which slow down anything you want to do on that drive. Just let it run when the computer is on and be done with it. In my opinion.

Brian.

Mr ChriZ · « **Reply #2 on:** October 29, 2015, 08:43:04 am »

Depending on the size of your music collection you might consider moving it onto an SD Card.
I did this - more for convenience than anything and not having a USB drive hanging off my laptop..
128GB cards are getting pretty cheap now. 256GB cards are still a little pricey but also now available and falling in price daily.

dtc · « **Reply #3 on:** October 29, 2015, 10:09:19 am »

Playing from memory loads one track at a time. It plays a track and at the end of that track it loads the next track. It does not matter how much memory you have, it only does one track at a time. I doubt that will get changed any time soon, or ever.

3 minutes is too short a timeout for practical work and the power savings is pretty negligible. If you want it powered down, set it so that will happen when you are not using it at all -that is where you might save some power. So power it off at 30 minutes or an hour. 3 minutes is just too short. Also listen to Brian - repeated power cycling can be a problem.

gio_b · « **Reply #4 on:** October 29, 2015, 10:39:07 am »

It's a shame you do not plan to load the entire album ,or at least ,to have tha change to select it.
In this case i have to follow your suggestion.
Tks ,giovanni.

dtc · « **Reply #5 on:** October 29, 2015, 11:10:13 am »

Quote from: gio_b on October 29, 2015, 10:39:07 am

It's a shame you do not plan to load the entire album ,or at least ,to have tha change to select it.
In this case i have to follow your suggestion.
Tks ,giovanni.

Just to be clear, I do not work for JRiver. I have just followed the development of playing from memory in MC and I do not believe it is an area that JRiver is likely to change. I would like to be able to control how much is stored in memory and where the decoding happens, but I just do not see that change happening. In the past, it has just not been a priority for them.

Vocalpoint · « **Reply #6 on:** October 29, 2015, 11:21:40 am »

Quote from: gio_b on October 29, 2015, 06:43:41 am

This is because i have power saving on my external hda and is set to power off every 3 min.of inactivity to save power

Why are you so worried about saving power - for an external drive? Do you think it's actually going to matter?

Or would you rather use it as intended and enjoy your music by actually letting it do it's thing?

VP

RD James · « **Reply #7 on:** October 30, 2015, 07:51:36 pm »

I would like this also.
Most players let you set how much RAM to use as a file cache.
I have 32GB so I would like to set 8GB aside to pre-load the whole playlist into memory.

I don't think the current option works right because playing a 100MB high-rez track seems to take up 400MB RAM.

dtc · « **Reply #8 on:** October 30, 2015, 08:10:10 pm »

Quote from: RD James on October 30, 2015, 07:51:36 pm

I would like this also.
Most players let you set how much RAM to use as a file cache.
I have 32GB so I would like to set 8GB aside to pre-load the whole playlist into memory.

I don't think the current option works right because playing a 100MB high-rez track seems to take up 400MB RAM.

The current implementation decompresses the file before loading it into memory. You may be looking at the compressed size, for example for a flac file.

RD James · « **Reply #9 on:** November 02, 2015, 10:04:41 am »

Quote from: dtc on October 30, 2015, 08:10:10 pm

The current implementation decompresses the file before loading it into memory. You may be looking at the compressed size, for example for a flac file.

Why would it do that? Doesn't that mean it can only store one fourth the number of tracks in memory?

Vocalpoint · « **Reply #10 on:** November 02, 2015, 10:29:09 am »

Quote from: RD James on November 02, 2015, 10:04:41 am

Why would it do that? Doesn't that mean it can only store one fourth the number of tracks in memory?

I believe "play from memory" only stores the current track in memory.

There is no concept (that I am aware of) of loading 2 or 3 or 4 tracks in memory at one time.

VP

RD James · « **Reply #11 on:** November 04, 2015, 08:31:55 am »

Quote from: Vocalpoint on November 02, 2015, 10:29:09 am

I believe "play from memory" only stores the current track in memory.

There is no concept (that I am aware of) of loading 2 or 3 or 4 tracks in memory at one time.

VP

Lots of players have the option to do it. Usually separate options for memory play, how much ram to use, and if you want to decode in memory.
Seems pointless to decode in memory since it takes up 4x as much ram for something that takes 1% CPU to do in realtime.

Vocalpoint · « **Reply #12 on:** November 04, 2015, 08:49:46 am »

Quote from: RD James on November 04, 2015, 08:31:55 am

Lots of players have the option to do it. Usually separate options for memory play, how much ram to use, and if you want to decode in memory. Seems pointless to decode in memory since it takes up 4x as much ram for something that takes 1% CPU to do in realtime.

Play from memory is not about CPU - it's about NOT reading from disc in real time. If one is streaming over the network - dropouts and glitches are common. With the Play from Memory feature - the current file is loaded in a background thread to system memory (capped at 256 MB) and played from there.

Not sure I understand why you are worried about RAM usage. RAM is there to be used all the time. I use Play from Memory with no issues.

VP

dtc · « **Reply #13 on:** November 04, 2015, 10:45:57 am »

Quote from: Vocalpoint on November 04, 2015, 08:49:46 am

Play from memory is not about CPU - it's about NOT reading from disc in real time. If one is streaming over the network - dropouts and glitches are common. With the Play from Memory feature - the current file is loaded in a background thread to system memory (capped at 256 MB) and played from there.

Not sure I understand why you are worried about RAM usage. RAM is there to be used all the time. I use Play from Memory with no issues.

VP

The issue of decoding before loading or after loading is about CPU. In the past, MC loaded the compressed file and decoded on the fly. That was changed to decoding before loading, at least partially, I believe, because of concerns from some about the CPU usage for decoding on the fly. That approach uses more memory but less CPU while playing. It is also possible, on long tracks, for the memory to have to be reloaded during playing. Since the rest of the track has to be decompressed, it is possible to have dropouts when the decompression is going on.

I believe he current memory cap is 1 GB. That was changed a while ago. That is one reason people want to load more tracks. The allowed memory is almost never used, except for very long tracks. That was especially true when MC used to load compressed files into memory.

People with large memory systems would like to dedicate several gigs for playing for memory, including loading the whole album into memory. Unfortunately, MC does not allow that and there does not seem to be interest in moving in that direction.

blgentry · « **Reply #14 on:** November 04, 2015, 03:57:59 pm »

Quote from: dtc on November 04, 2015, 10:45:57 am

People with large memory systems would like to dedicate several gigs for playing for memory, including loading the whole album into memory. Unfortunately, MC does not allow that and there does not seem to be interest in moving in that direction.

Why would someone want to do that? (Dedicate large chunks of memory so many songs could be played from memory.)

Brian.

dtc · « **Reply #15 on:** November 04, 2015, 04:20:43 pm »

Quote from: blgentry on November 04, 2015, 03:57:59 pm

Why would someone want to do that? (Dedicate large chunks of memory so many songs could be played from memory.)

Brian.

There is a crowd that thinks the electrical noise of the disk access and even the CPU put noise on the ground that gets into the DAC and compromises its sound. Galvanic isolation isolates noise on the data lines but not typically on the ground. Those folks would like to as little electrical activity in the PC as possible, for the whole album. Not something I worry about, but some do.

I do occasionally get glitches when MC loads data into memory in the middle of a track, for large tracks. Loading a whole album at one time would eliminate that issue. The problem really only showed up when I went to large hi-rez files after MC was changed to decompress files before loading. Others have also reported this problem.

Vocalpoint · « **Reply #16 on:** November 04, 2015, 04:26:17 pm »

Quote from: dtc on November 04, 2015, 04:20:43 pm

There is a crowd that thinks the electrical noise of the disk access and even the CPU put noise on the ground that gets into the DAC and compromises its sound.

This "crowd" needs to get out more

VP

blgentry · « **Reply #17 on:** November 04, 2015, 04:36:03 pm »

Quote from: dtc on November 04, 2015, 04:20:43 pm

There is a crowd that thinks the electrical noise of the disk access and even the CPU put noise on the ground that gets into the DAC and compromises its sound. Galvanic isolation isolates noise on the data lines but not typically on the ground. Those folks would like to as little electrical activity in the PC as possible, for the whole album. Not something I worry about, but some do.

I do occasionally get glitches when MC loads data into memory in the middle of a track, for large tracks. Loading a whole album at one time would eliminate that issue. The problem really only showed up when I went to large hi-rez files after MC was changed to decompress files before loading. Others have also reported this problem.

Hmm. If you're not concerned about the possible sonic differences, why do you use play from memory? Do you play from a NAS and are concerned about network congestion? I'd think with a wired connection there'd be almost no possibility of the network influencing the flow of data for playback. But I haven't tried it, so this is all theory for me...

Thanks for the explanation.

Brian.

dtc · « **Reply #18 on:** November 04, 2015, 04:43:32 pm »

Quote from: blgentry on November 04, 2015, 04:36:03 pm

Hmm. If you're not concerned about the possible sonic differences, why do you use play from memory? Do you play from a NAS and are concerned about network congestion? I'd think with a wired connection there'd be almost no possibility of the network influencing the flow of data for playback. But I haven't tried it, so this is all theory for me...

Thanks for the explanation.

Brian.

If it worked properly for me, I would use it just as a possible way to eliminate noise. It is not a big deal, but why not use the option if it is available.

The other reason I would use it, if it worked better, is there can be timing issues getting data off my usb drive. I have a slow computer and have 24/192 files on the usb drive. I have to really work with buffers, etc. to keep from getting glitches. Loading it all into memory would eliminate that problem. But, when they decided to load uncompressed data, it pretty much stopped me from using it.

dtc · « **Reply #19 on:** November 04, 2015, 04:47:31 pm »

Quote from: Vocalpoint on November 04, 2015, 04:26:17 pm

This "crowd" needs to get out more

VP

Perhaps, but many dacs have galvanic isolation on the data lines because of concerns like this. The PC environment is electrically very noisy compared to a typical audio device. Certainly DAC designers do their best to eliminate extraneous electrical noise. This is not something I really worry about, but some do.

dtc · « **Reply #20 on:** November 04, 2015, 08:21:38 pm »

Brian

Current DACs use asynchronous USB control, which means the DAC controls the timing of pulling data from the PC. Before async USB, the PC controlled the timing as it pushed the data to the DAC, which was far less accurate. A PC is just not good at delivering bits in real time. Before aysnc USB, memory playback was one way to try to make the timing more accurate, since the PC did not have to go out to disk, which could interrupt the timing on the usb. With asynch USB output timing is not really an issue. Only after asych USB became the norm, did people start to worry about the electrical noise, rather than the USB timing.

RD James · « **Reply #21 on:** November 05, 2015, 07:00:19 pm »

Quote from: blgentry on November 04, 2015, 04:36:03 pm

Hmm. If you're not concerned about the possible sonic differences, why do you use play from memory? Do you play from a NAS and are concerned about network congestion? I'd think with a wired connection there'd be almost no possibility of the network influencing the flow of data for playback. But I haven't tried it, so this is all theory for me...

Thanks for the explanation.

Brian.

I have playback problems with USB and my NAS.
With long tracks my USB HDDs go to sleep and they don't always spin up in time to play the next one so there's a gap between tracks.
Or the network is congested and playback from my NAS is interrupted in the middle of a track. This happens a lot with DSD.
If it loaded the full playlist into memory there would only be a small pause before playback begins.

I don't see how CPU or Disk access could alter the sound.

Quote from: Vocalpoint on November 04, 2015, 08:49:46 am

Play from memory is not about CPU - it's about NOT reading from disc in real time. If one is streaming over the network - dropouts and glitches are common. With the Play from Memory feature - the current file is loaded in a background thread to system memory (capped at 256 MB) and played from there.

Not sure I understand why you are worried about RAM usage. RAM is there to be used all the time. I use Play from Memory with no issues.

VP

I converted some files from FLAC to WAV and it looks like CDs compress 2x, high-rez compresses 4x, and DSD compresses 8x.
If you use CDs you might not notice but using 8x as much memory is the difference between fitting a single DSD track or a full DSD album in memory.
An 750MB DSD album was 6GB when decompressed to WAV!

dtc · « **Reply #22 on:** November 05, 2015, 08:48:28 pm »

Quote from: RD James on November 05, 2015, 07:00:19 pm

With long tracks my USB HDDs go to sleep and they don't always spin up in time to play the next one so there's a gap between tracks.

Sounds like you need to change the timing for the drives to go to sleep. They should be be active for several hours a a time, at a minimum. That is an easily changeable option.

RD James · « **Reply #23 on:** November 06, 2015, 10:00:08 am »

Quote from: dtc on November 05, 2015, 08:48:28 pm

Sounds like you need to change the timing for the drives to go to sleep. They should be be active for several hours a a time, at a minimum. That is an easily changeable option.

There's no option with these disks. They ignore the system setting because they're USB.

blgentry · « **Reply #24 on:** November 06, 2015, 11:34:35 am »

I have a Western Digital USB drive that likes to spin down on it's own constantly. It makes things slow because a lot of processes like to interrogate all of the disks for some reason... like when doing a Save As for example. I did research and found (like you), there wasn't a system setting to change it. I also think the WD utilities are unable to change this timeout. Which frankly is stupid. Your drive may have utilities available (which probably came on the drive when you bought it and can be downloaded) to adjust this and other settings.

So what did I do? I got around it of course.

I run a process every 30 minutes that touches a zero byte file in the root of the drive. So it's always available and doesn't slow my system down any more.

Brian.

RD James · « **Reply #25 on:** November 09, 2015, 09:17:20 am »

Quote from: blgentry on November 06, 2015, 11:34:35 am

I have a Western Digital USB drive that likes to spin down on it's own constantly. It makes things slow because a lot of processes like to interrogate all of the disks for some reason... like when doing a Save As for example. I did research and found (like you), there wasn't a system setting to change it. I also think the WD utilities are unable to change this timeout. Which frankly is stupid. Your drive may have utilities available (which probably came on the drive when you bought it and can be downloaded) to adjust this and other settings.

So what did I do? I got around it of course. I run a process every 30 minutes that touches a zero byte file in the root of the drive. So it's always available and doesn't slow my system down any more.

Brian.

Loading the full playlist into memory would properly fix this without any disk access.
Just load it all into ram and let the disk sleep.
Wifi dropping out wouldn't interrupt music playback.

blgentry · « **Reply #26 on:** November 09, 2015, 09:36:05 am »

You prefer to fix the symptom. I prefer to fix the problem. Or you don't like my problem fix. <shrug> Either way, MC doesn't appear to be able to do what you are asking for. Maybe they'll change this. Maybe not.

Good luck with your setup.

Brian.

AndrewFG · « **Reply #27 on:** November 09, 2015, 09:54:19 am »

Quote from: blgentry on November 06, 2015, 11:34:35 am

I run a process every 30 minutes that touches a zero byte file in the root of the drive. So it's always available and doesn't slow my system down any more.

Cool idea. I think it is a feature for the guys at JRiver to consider adding to MC (feature request) -- the feature could be called something like "Keep drives awake while streaming" ..

JimH · « **Reply #28 on:** November 09, 2015, 11:41:24 am »

Drive Keep-Alive

mwillems · « **Reply #29 on:** November 09, 2015, 11:56:31 am »

Quote from: blgentry on November 09, 2015, 09:36:05 am

You prefer to fix the symptom. I prefer to fix the problem. Or you don't like my problem fix. <shrug> Either way, MC doesn't appear to be able to do what you are asking for. Maybe they'll change this. Maybe not.

Good luck with your setup.

Brian.

If you really want to fix the problem you should find a way to set the spin down/sleep parameter on your drive directly

On Linux hdparm will let you directly set the sleep/spindown parameters on drives (at the firmware level), and it can solve the spin down issues with WD drives (I know because I used it to fix that issue on my WD greens). On OSX, I think the equivalent commands are pmset and/or hdapm? I don't know anything about Macs but those might be worth investigating. On the windows side, there's a port of hdparm, and you can also do similar things with 3rd party programs like Crystal Disk Info (although it doesn't actually change the firmware settings, and needs to be running to keep the fix "applied").

Quote from: JimH on November 09, 2015, 11:41:24 am

Drive Keep-Alive

There's already an open source windows app in the space called "KeepAliveHD"

Great minds...

dtc · « **Reply #30 on:** November 09, 2015, 12:00:16 pm »

KeepAliveHD

Vocalpoint · « **Reply #31 on:** November 09, 2015, 12:03:25 pm »

Quote from: mwillems on November 09, 2015, 11:56:31 am

If you really want to fix the problem you should find a way to set the spin down/sleep parameter on your drive directly

Or use a real hard drive - instead of a USB drive to store the actual content.

I am confused how RDJames says he is using a NAS - but then indicates a USB drive is in the mix and falling asleep midplay.

Is the NAS an actual computer with real drives or what? If it is - use the NAS and stream from it - problem solved.

Or am I missing something here?

VP

RoderickGI · « **Reply #32 on:** November 09, 2015, 03:54:38 pm »

Small NAS systems allow expansion via USB drives. That could be the situation here.

RD James · « **Reply #33 on:** November 09, 2015, 09:11:39 pm »

Quote from: blgentry on November 09, 2015, 09:36:05 am

You prefer to fix the symptom. I prefer to fix the problem. Or you don't like my problem fix. <shrug> Either way, MC doesn't appear to be able to do what you are asking for. Maybe they'll change this. Maybe not.
Good luck with your setup.
Brian.

Loading the playlist into memory eliminates disk access.
Keeping a disk spinning for hours, or spinning up for every track wastes power.

Quote from: RoderickGI on November 09, 2015, 03:54:38 pm

Small NAS systems allow expansion via USB drives. That could be the situation here.

It is. So there is no option to run a program to keep the disk busy and stop it spinning down automatically.

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Author Topic: Load entire album (Read 12030 times)