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[jmcomp124]

To the authors and JRiver....

Some of you maybe familiar with my username from avsforum.com. This is Jai from avs.  
I recently purchased Media Center 9, primarily for ASIO support and also the excellent interface that jriver offers. My configuration is an HTPC with RME Digi96/PAD sound card with high-end audio equipment. I see a clear improvment with ASIO, however there seem to be some minor errors.  

1. Media Center leaves a snippet in the buffer that causes endless repitition of a snippet if while playing a track, I go to tools -> options. The only way to stop it is closing media center and restarting my preamp (Lexicon MC-1). Is this a bug ? If so, can the author fix it please. My source files are .apes.  

2. Occassionally, when I try to play a track, it almost seems like the software is running on brakes, i.e., there is no audio and the progress bar moves very slowly and stops. This is a sporadic error and not predicatable. I have the latest version of RME drivers and have had no such problems with Winamp.  

Are these known errors ? If so, are they fixed ? If not, how can I help you fix it ?  I am very interested and I want to see it perfected.  
Thanks,
-Jai

[Marko]

I don't frequent the avs forums, so I'm not familiar with your nick, glad you posted though

1. Media Center leaves a snippet in the buffer that causes endless repitition of a snippet if while playing a track, I go to tools -> options. The only way to stop it is closing media center and restarting my preamp (Lexicon MC-1). Is this a bug ? If so, can the author fix it please. My source files are .apes.

I've been experiencing this problem a long time now when using ASIO on my internal PCI sb audigy player card. For me, this happens when accessing certain streaming media, and a reboot is required to stop the repeating buffer. digitalRogue mentioned that he/she has had similar experiences with midi files.

So, slowly more users are coming forward with this similar ASIO problem, but while the end result is the same, the causes seem to differ.

If the developement team have any plans to look into this it would be very cool indeed. I can help pin-point where this got broken....
Some time back, during v9.0 beta testing, you released a build heralding the change "needing windows media player installed is no longer a requirement for media center to work" I can't say which build that was, hopefully you keep track better than I do, but that's where it broke. Prior to that, ASIO was working sweetly here.

I've looked @ my streaming audio problem and I think the fact the URL doesn't point to a file might be causing difficulties. does that sound plausible? the URL does work fine using directsound however.

[Mike Noe]

jmcomp124:
I have a similar setup as you (RME PST, Proceed AVP) and I have the same issue with the ASIO except I don't have to restart the AVP, just MC.  Seems like Matt posted at some point a short time ago that this problem resides in the ASIO 2.0 SDK, not MC.  Do I remember correctly?

It doesn't take long to get used to stopping play before going to "options".  I guess I just see it as a nit, but I agree, it can be annoying.

I'm pretty sure I'm running the latest RME drivers as I've gone over to the DSP Output mode of 24/96 and I don't think the earlier drivers really supported this.

HTH,
Mike

[jmcomp124]

Marko and Mike,
Thanks for your post in confiming the problem. Mike the DSP mode 24/96, do you use that for resampling PCM sources ? Do you hear any significant differences between unsampled and resampled tracks ?
Thanks,
-Jai

[jmcomp124]

I mentioned 2 issues. It seems like folks have already seen one, as I gather from Marko and Mike's post. Has anyone seen something similar to my second issue. Please see 2., at the beginning of this thread.
-Jai

[Mike Noe]

I haven't seen your #2 in my setup.

Yeah, I've been toying with the DSP output mode upsampling on APE sources from PCM CDs exclusively.  I'm afraid I get a bit tedious, but there doesn't seem to be a large difference, but it's fun to play around with to see what the software/hardware can do.  

In the end for just sitting around listening to music, I've found that I like the sound best when running the 24/96 to the RME and letting it do the DAC work out to a tube-based pre/amp setup, taking a stand-alone DAC (AVP) out of the loop.  Everything else (DSP) turned off.

[jmcomp124]

Mike,
Since you have a similar setup, can you please perform the following experiment for me ?

Switch to hairstyle mode, gote Media Library, choose a certain track and play it. Please report if you have any problems. Try different tracks and let us know what you observe.
Thanks,
-Jai

[Matt]

1. Media Center leaves a snippet in the buffer that causes endless repitition of a snippet if while playing a track, I go to tools -> options. The only way to stop it is closing media center and restarting my preamp (Lexicon MC-1). Is this a bug ? If so, can the author fix it please. My source files are .apes.

The ASIO driver for that card must not be written in a thread safe manner.  However, next build will be smarter about when it really needs a second ASIO instance, and when it can piggy-back on an existing one.

Please let us know if it's fixed.  Thanks!

[Mike Noe]

Hmmm.  Weird, never noticed that before.  

Basically, when I play a track, it goes to full screen track info (display) mode, which makes sense I guess.

Then, when I go back to hairstyle and choose "stop", the screen just whites out and the track stops.

If I hit F11, it goes back to mega.

The audio never had a problem during this process, not sure if that's what you're seeing or not.

-Mike

[shadow=gray,right,400]Media Center Registered 9.1.218 -- C:\Program Files\J River\Media Jukebox\

Microsoft Windows XP  Workstation 5.1 Service Pack 1 (Build 2600)
Intel Pentium III 448 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 261 MB, Free - 86 MB

Internet Explorer: 6.0.2800.1106 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.82 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2800.1106 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shell32.dll: 6.00.2800.1233 (xpsp2.030604-1804) / wnaspi32.dll: Internal ASPI Layer

Ripping /   Drive E:   Copy mode:ModeSecure   CD Type:Auto   Read speed:Max
 Digital playback: Yes /  Use YADB: Yes /  Get cover art: No /  Calc replay gain: No /  Copy volume: 32767
 Eject after ripping: Yes /  Play sound after ripping: No  

Burning /  Drive E: HP       CD-Writer+ 8200    Addr: 1:0:0  Speed:4  MaxSpeed:4  Use MJ Engine:Yes
 Test mode: No /  Eject after writing: Yes /  Direct decoding: No /  Write CD-Text: Yes
 Use playback settings: No /  Normalization: None
[/shadow]

[digital:rogue]

Hmmm, as was mentioned, I experience the problem listed in 1; however, I was not able to duplicate the problem in number 2.

-rob-

[Marko]

Possibly one more for the list

Having quite a morning with MC.  For the first time in a long time, MC just crashed although I'm not sure why.  It died and left a half-second loop of music playing that I couldn't get to go away until I rebooted my machine.  This may or may not have something to do with changes in ASIO.  I'll try to re-create it to see if it wasn't "just one of those things."  

[jmcomp124]

I did some more research and testing to see if ASIO was indeed necessary for bit-perfect playback. With help from folks in AVS, I was able to make some inferences.

The RME digi96 driver bypasses the windows Kmixer. One way of testing this is to use a DTS CD. I tested Alan Parsons DTS CD with both ASIO and wave_out and both played back the CD with no problems. If you are able to play DTS CDs, you can conclude that the bits are not corrupted by the windows kmixer. Hence, in my case, ASIO is not necessary because my RME card driver can do bit perfect playback even with wave_out. Since Media Center is more stable with wave_out than ASIO, for now I am going to be sticking to Wave_out until all issues with ASIO are resolved. I am not 100% sure if the DTS CD test rules out all possible type of corruption that ASIO would circumvent. If one can get ASIO to work and get it to be very stable, then that may still be the best choice. Hope someday the probelms with ASIO will be fixed.
-Jai

[digital:rogue]

You make a good point jmcomp, and also leads to the point that ASIO is most notable for reducing latency in your audio signal; therefore, it might only be totally necessary for professional level audio mixing or a/v work. I, for one, just need to completely geek out when it comes to setting things up...it has to be the best it can be, even if that means being twenty times more than I truly need.  Hey, if a car enthusiast can have a car with 630hp, I want my audio down to 2ms latency...