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[steff]

Well,
I initially got the MC23 license just for one reason: theatre view.
I am (personally) interested only in playing audio and most of my audio is high resolution.
There are tons of app, even free of charge, on the market for this job and I tried MC23 just because the theatre view.
I personally loved the look and feel of this view.
Spending 500€ I can get a laptop with touch screen and place it together with the turntable and amp and DAC.
Do not think I use this setup and put a mouse\keyboard to manage the laptop PC: no way, but just for emergency.

Unfortunately I experienced some problem with the MC23 GUI, both the standard view and theatre view and I reproduced the problem on 3 different laptops. Moreover, if you read the original post, I also reproduced the very same problem at office. Managing the IT infrastructure for a large corporate, I can access almost every kind of technology at enterprise level.

The problem has never been solved in MC23 so I did not used "in production" the touch screen laptop with MC23 and theatre view, but I crossed my fingers and upgraded to MC24 and then again to MC25.
Believe me: I got the MC25 licence when it was available and never used it: I tested it just some days ago and... no changes... problems, the very same problems, are still there.
I am no alone with such problems.

It is not an OS problem, it is not because of the network or the NAS or the disks to be spinned up.
It is because the way MC is developd.

Let's assume I have I VERY slow network and it takes 5 minutes to load a flac file from the NAS.
I do not pretend to play the music before the file has been loaded and at the same I do not pretend to use MC to do other works while it is loading, but... BUT...
I PRETEND that the system is stable during this time.
Unfortunately, during this time, the MC GUI becomes blurry, out of focus, greyed out, it expands to the full screen, it overlaps everything else including the windows taskbar.
All of this... without doing anything... just looking at the screen.
And... if I touch something on the screen, I get a windows pop up saying that MC is not responding and asking me if I would like to close the program.

This is not nice and is not normal.

If I open my SAP interface and I ask to load a purchase request, I get the answer in 1 second, but if I ask to load all the purchase request going back 5 years, it takes 5 minutes and the system keep stable.

If I load the very same FLAC files, from the very same computer, to be played with the stupid Windows Media Player... I do not experience the behaviour of MC.
If I use Foobar, forcing to play from memory... I just need to wait and it is solid rock.

This is the reason why I got MC23, pay the upgrade to MC24, then MC25 and never used the product.

[JimH]

I recall this problem and I don't think we could reproduce it. Is there something that the problem machines have in common?
Setup
File location
Antivirus
Video driver
Etc.
MC depends on the OS to load the files.

[JimH]

It would also be interesting to test with a new library.

[steff]

The problem occurrs even without library and playing from the network mount point.
I told that I reproduced with 3 different laptops, HP and Lenovo.
Windows Defender, Symantec and McAfee.

I will shot a video and share it with you all

[JimH]

That won't help.

Empty library?  No files?

[JimH]

All Win 10?

I'll merge this with your original thread.

[steff]

Yes, all of them are Windows 10: one is the home edition (or the very basic one) one is Pro and the other Enterprise.

I mean that this occurs playing audio files from the library and also playing audio files picking up them directly from the filesystem (the network mount).

In any case the AV was configured according to your best practice: exclude from the scan the MC directory, the music folders, etc.
On Windows 10 it is not possible to totally disable AV, or I am not able to do this.

Moreover I have a severe concer how memory playback is managed.
If I choose to play from memory, so that at first the file is loaded then is played...
If am listening to  file and I change the song, then from one side MC continues to play the old song, on the other side it is loading the new song and this is a nonsense and contributes to the problem.
MC at the same time play something and load something else.
Memory playback should be designed to dedicate the computer to play and nothing more and not load while playing.
It would be very nice to have at least a switch to stop playing a song if I switch to another song.

[steff]

This message has been moved back to the MC23 section, where no one is still interested, while it is applicable for sure to MC25, since just tested.

[JimH]

Did you test with a new library?

Did you test without memory playback?  A large media file could cause problems, especially if it's loaded from a network location.

[Awesome Donkey]

If it only happens with files loaded over the network, and not when testing local files located on the machine itself, the issue is probably related to the network which might be too slow to handle it in a timely manner. I think you said 150Mbps is your network speed, but these days that's not really that much when 1Gbps networks have become pretty commonplace. I myself use 1Gbps hardwire for my network (and NAS) and I don't have any issues with network bottlenecks.

[JimH]

If it only happens with files loaded over the network, and not when testing local files located on the machine itself, the issue is probably related to the network which might be too slow to handle it in a timely manner. I think you said 150Mbps is your network speed, but these days that's not really that much when 1Gbps networks have become pretty commonplace. I myself use 1Gbps hardwire for my network (and NAS) and I don't have any issues with network bottlenecks.

And you can discount heavily the nominal speed.  No network does what it might do.

[steff]

First - You moved back this post to MC23, but this is applicable to MC23, MC24 and MC25, since I reproduced with all of them, so please move to MC25

Second - I Never said that my network is 150 Mbps. It is based on Cisco 3850 Gbps switch for the wired and Cisco 1815 for the wireless at home.
and if you are interested, the higher the speed the more evident the problem.

Third - It is not a problem of the network. Even if it is very slow, then who cares? Should I improve the network speed to reduce the time where the problems appear?
I can wait, but MC shoud not mess up everything while while waiting.

It happen just with memory playback AND during the time where the file is loaded from the netowrk to the computer.

Moreover, have a look at this old post in the MC24 section
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,115542.0.html

I was not alone with this problem.

Maybe most of people do not care so much about this problem, but I do, because the only reason I got the MC23 license was Theatre View, then upgraded to MC24 hoping to see the problem solved, again upgraded to MC25... but nothing.
I am paying and I am not using the product. it is not a money matter... this is the proof... I spend thousand €€€ for turbtable kartdriges... why not spend few $$$ for JRiver?
But at this point I see that there is no intention to change MC behaviour, so... I give up.
I will not upgrade to MC26 and will stop spending time with JRiver.

Foobar can play from memory and while I wait my huge 384 kHz PCM FLAC to be loaded, my PC does not mess up its windows, so this is the proof that the root cause is not the network, the antivirus, the NAS, etc.

[RoderickGI]

Jim, this is a real issue. It is very easily observed. There has been a lot of discussion about it from various people.

If Windows asks if you want to close MC, then the issue has happened, even if it was for a short time before the Windows message.

Mostly, the issue has been dismissed, or people have been asked to test stuff ad Infinitum. Occasionally some technical reason was given why it happened, or couldn't be fixed. But that isn't a user issue.

I do see it happen with Windows Explorer on rare occasions, but not for as long as it happens with MC, or as often.

Simply put, the MC UI should always remain responsive, even when you have asked it to do something. Or at worst, MC should show the "Working" message (which it does, for example, when loading files to view in the MC Explorer), the MC window shouldn't expand, and a user should be able to switch to another application while MC does its thing.


Sorry to hear you are giving up Steff. You get points for persistence up until now.

[steff]

Thanks for your cooperation.
I suppose JRiver developers are not interested to invest time and money to work on this problem.
Also MC25 if affected, but the message has been pushed back to MC23 section, where few people look into.