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[Wasper]

Hello everyone,

Not sure anyone can help but I'll ask anyway.  My setup is a mini PC 32g SSD with 2 gig of ram and CPU is an Intel Atom 1.44GHz.

Last week everything was working fine....  Since then, two things has changed.

I updated MC with the last stable version.
I bought a Vizio 4k TV.  The native resolution of the MiniPC moved from 1600X?? to 3860X2160!!!  I'm accessing the PC through VNC.
Memory seems fine and CPU also. 
Is MC support 4K definition?

Here is my problem:
Outputting audio data through my DAC(Wadia Di122) instead of HDMI(connected to the tv) will stop working after few seconds.  Sometimes MC crash, sometimes it continues playing without any sound out...

Removing the HDMI cable will bring back the resolution to 1024x768 and the audio will then play correctly.
DVD video(no blue-ray yet!) play just fine with audio+sound through HDMI cable.  Of course, it fails if I'm trying to output stereo track with the DAC.

Is it a bug of the new MC?  I could go to prior version but even with a backup library, I will lost settings...  I'll do if no choice!
Doesn't seems to be a memory problem, but maybe I'm missing something...

Anyone can help?

[RoderickGI]

4K TV has a lot more copy protection built into it. I believe 4K requires an unbroken HDCP 2.2 signal chain to work. Usually the video won't display if you don't have a complete HDCP chain, but I think I have read about the video displaying and audio not being processed.

Note that I don't have a 4K display, so I could be wrong. I've just read about it. I think you should look into HDCP 2.2.

There are some users using MC with 4K displays.

[RD James]

Do you have JRiver configured to play to your USB device, or is it configured to play to the "Default Audio Device" ?
If it's the latter, connecting an HDMI cable is probably switching the default device.

[Wasper]

Thanks to all for the reply!

Effectively, It behaves like hdmi is stealing the sound device.  However, mc is configured to use the usb wasapi wadia driver published by the wadia company.  I even disabled the audio hdmi driver and I'm still having the issue.  The song could play between 30 seconds to 4 minuts before it stops.  Upgraded the hd Intel vidéo card with the latest version as well!

[RoderickGI]

If it plays then stops, that sounds a lot like a copy protection issue. That is one of the things that protection does.

[Wasper]

Effectively, it looks like it might be the problem. 

However, I'm not sending protected content to the tv set!  Let's be clear,  I'm playing a flac file which output audio data to my DAC while HDMI is connected to the TV.  The display is fine on the TV showing the MC interface.  After a short time MC crash.  The same flac playing with audio sent through HDMI will just play fin on the tv set and MC won't crash!

So, to listen music, I have to unplug the HDMI cable (forget about the media show!).  Then, if I want to play a video concert, I'll have to put back the HDMI cable and use my other DAC for DTS, Dolby, etc...  Selecting the stereo track of a DVD and sending the audio track to my stereo DAC will also cause MC to fail.  If it's copy protection that does that... it really sucks!

Moreover, I'm not sending any HDCP content at all to the tv box. 

 

[JimH]

HDMI has some control features that the TV might be trying to use.  I've forgotten what they are called, but check the settings on the TV.

[RoderickGI]

If you are sending the MC interface to the TV at 4K resolution, then the TV is possibly trying to validate the hardware chain back to the source. HDCP is encryption across the hardware chain, not in the source material, as I understand it. So the TV finds that the PC, or most likely the video card, isn't HDCP 2.2 compliant, and does something about it, via the HDMI cable. In this case, shuts off the audio. More usually the video would be blanked out.

But you need to do research on what the TV and HDCP 2.2 are all about. I don't know enough. Is the Vizio even HDCP 2.2 compliant? Perhaps someone who is using or has set up 4K TVs will chime in to help.

BTW, you could try sending the video from MC to the TV at 1920x1080 resolution, letting the TV upscale it or just showing a small picture, and see if the problem goes away.

[Wasper]

Problem solved.  I'll post my story in case someone else has the same issue.

First, I discarded HDCP as I had some HDMI port without HDCP enabled.  Moreover, display was always find. Then I tought it could be a problem with the Vizio set.  My wife didn't like the set too much as she found it a little bit to big.  Good for her,  with my problem, we decided to return the tv and buy a 55 inches LG.

Guess what, same problem!

Then I tried evrything possible.  Installing the driver in compatibility mode, disable all the unecessary windows service, changing bios setting, etc...  I even did a dual boot to try Windows 8.  Nothing worked.

One day...

Usb audio was working fine for more than 10 minuts while the HDMI cable was connected and I thought the problem might be resolved.  Anyway, I went to sleep expecting it will run all night long.  Then, I forgot something, and I opened the light!  Usb audio stopped working right away. Restarted the Nuc(HTPC), closed the light, restarted music.  I opened the light and USB audio stopped working again.  From then, I knew it was related to power surge.  Tried an extension to reach another AC device and the problem was still there but less present.  It would confirm the electricity problem.  Then, I decided to unplug the HDMI comming from my cable box to the other port of the TV.  Everything went fine from this moment.  Then I plugged my coax cable to my monster power bar for AC regulation and outputed back the coax to my cable box.  With my recent research I knew that HDMI and coax cable transport electricity and it's very sensible.  Anyway, after doing that, I plugged back the HDMI cable from the cable box to my TV and I didn't have any fail since then.

So, I must have dirty AC in my house and some AC spark running from the coax cable that were reaching the DAC through the path of coax cable, cable box, TV HDMI 1, TV HDMI 2, IntelNuc(GPU, motherboard, USB), DAC!

Lucky that no device got burned...

Unbelivable! I spent 100 hours to figure this out!  But I did!  I'm explaining my case in case it could help someone! I feel so relax now...

Sorry for the bad english.

Thanks to everyone that tried to help me.  It wasn't an easy one!

Regards,

[glynor]

Wow. That is a super-oddball case. Glad you got it sorted!

[RoderickGI]

Well done in persisting and finding that cause. That isn't something I have had to deal with in a very long time.

I suspect that the AC component of your household electrical supply is fine (well, it may not be good, but good enough), but that the electrical ground voltage of your AC supply and the Coaxial cable were different. So the ground level from the coaxial cable was, as you say, making its way from the coaxial cable through all your gear to the DAC, which may have some form of Earth-leakage circuit breaker that detected a current flow from its AC power supply earth to the chassis earth and shut down the system. Probably trying to avoid some sort of Ground Loop that would either damage the DAC, or create unwanted noise on the output.

As the problem was less obvious using a different AC outlet, you may have some leakage to earth in your AC supply, which wouldn't be a good thing, since that is potentially using power you are paying for. Maybe that is something you could have checked.

Your solution would be isolating the coaxial earth and replacing it with the AC supply earth, avoiding the issue.

PS: Your English is fine.