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[PJ03029174]

Hi

I've just downloaded a trial of 23.0.103 and was hoping someone can help with some idea's.
At the moment, I'm experiencing occasional dropouts when playing FLAC audio. It's not very often, maybe once in 5 songs.
I'm using a Mac Mini (2014) running Yosemite 10.5 (needed due to drivers for Chord Qute EX USB DAC)
If I run the files from the internal HDD the dropouts stop. I'm using the Mac mini solely as a music player so don't think its a hardware issue and hopefully software.

Im using the DAC in Exclusive mode and enabled Integer mode, I've tried increasing the software buffer (to 250ms) and tried the Hardware buffer to Maximum.

Does anyone have any idea's I could try? Maybe an older version?

Thanks in advance

[DJLegba]

Sounds like the hard drive is going to sleep. Try disabling sleep mode, or, if you don't want to go that far, change it to something like one hour.

[RD James]

Try enabling Memory Playback. I recommend the "Load full file (not decoded) into memory" option.
That way the disk is only accessed at the start of a track, and not during.

[DJLegba]

Try enabling Memory Playback. I recommend the "Load full file (not decoded) into memory" option.
That way the disk is only accessed at the start of a track, and not during.

Not a great option for classical music, as this can cause gaps between tracks.

[RD James]

Not a great option for classical music, as this can cause gaps between tracks.

There's not much which can be done about it unless JRiver add the ability for Memory Playback to queue up multiple tracks in advance.
I'd rather have gaps between tracks than interruptions in the middle of a track, but ideally neither would be happening.

[DJLegba]

There's not much which can be done about it unless JRiver add the ability for Memory Playback to queue up multiple tracks in advance.
I'd rather have gaps between tracks than interruptions in the middle of a track, but ideally neither would be happening.

Yes, constantly queuing multiple tracks would be a better solution. Until that's possible, memory playback is always going to introduce gaps between tracks. I have my external hard drive set to sleep after 30 minutes of inactivity. That solved the problem for me.

[PJ03029174]

Thanks for the input , il give both options a try. I didn't consider the HDD going to sleep as I assumed if the audio file was on the USB HDD and the song was playing, then the driver would always be in use?

[RD James]

Thanks for the input , il give both options a try. I didn't consider the HDD going to sleep as I assumed if the audio file was on the USB HDD and the song was playing, then the driver would always be in use?

It shouldn't be able to sleep during playback. I don't think that is likely to be the problem here.
Enabling Memory Playback can allow drives to sleep, since it loads into memory at the start of the track and then sits idle - which is why it can introduce gaps in-between tracks as you wait for the drive to wake up again. It depends how aggressive the drive is about going to sleep.
If Media Center had the option to keep multiple tracks queued in memory, that would solve the problem as you would have, say, three tracks stored at all times, and would never be waiting for the disk to wake up.

[DJLegba]

It shouldn't be able to sleep during playback. I don't think that is likely to be the problem here.

I'm sure you know a lot more about how this works than I do, but it's my understanding that the memory playback switches are in there to satisfy people who believe that disk activity during playback is somehow going to degrade the audio quality. But that doesn't mean that when memory playback is turned off, MC is constantly reading the disk. It will eventually, during playback, fill a buffer and stop reading from the disk. If the sleep setting is aggressive enough, the drive can go to sleep before MC decides it needs to get more data. My explanation may be wrong, but I can certainly tell you that I was bothered by this problem until I changed the default sleep setting of my external HD. It will be interesting to hear how it gets resolved here.

[RD James]

I'm sure you know a lot more about how this works than I do, but it's my understanding that the memory playback switches are in there to satisfy people who believe that disk activity during playback is somehow going to degrade the audio quality. But that doesn't mean that when memory playback is turned off, MC is constantly reading the disk. It will eventually, during playback, fill a buffer and stop reading from the disk. If the sleep setting is aggressive enough, the drive can go to sleep before MC decides it needs to get more data. My explanation may be wrong, but I can certainly tell you that I was bothered by this problem until I changed the default sleep setting of my external HD. It will be interesting to hear how it gets resolved here.

Most of the recent developments to Memory Playback are indeed about placating audiophiles and their crazy beliefs.
I find that very frustrating, as there are improvements which could be made to Memory Playback that would have actual benefits to playback; i.e. preventing slow disk/network access having any effect on playback whatsoever.

As it is just now:
If Memory Playback is disabled, there's a constant low amount of disk activity during playback - so the drive shouldn't be able to sleep.
Since it is being streamed from the drive directly, it's possible for playback to be interrupted if something else is accessing that disk at the same time, if it is badly fragmented, or for a number of other reasons.
 
Enabling Memory Playback completely eliminates disk activity during most audio playback, with a couple of exceptions for things like SACD ISO, depending on how you have it configured.
 
If the drive is aggressive about sleeping, it's possible that it can go to sleep when Memory Playback is enabled if its sleep time is less than the length of the track being played.
The prebuffering setting in Media Center adjusts how much time it has to wake the drive and load the next track into memory, and can be anything from 2-20 seconds.
For many external drives though, 20 seconds is not enough time to wake up, and will mean that playback is not gapless if it can't load the track into memory in time.
And it's not as easy as extending that from 20 seconds to something like 60 seconds, as you have no control over playback during that time.
 
That's why it would be ideal if Memory Playback kept multiple tracks queued up in advance.
Unfortunately the "load full album into memory" option does not work as you might hope.
If I recall correctly, it will load up to 30 tracks into memory. But if you have one more than that in your playlist, it reverts to loading all tracks directly from the disk.
All ≤30 tracks must be loaded into memory before playback can begin, so it can delay playback for several minutes.
This approach is not memory efficient either, and if those 30 tracks go over a certain amount of RAM, it reverts to playing back directly from the disk. But it will only do that after you have waited for those 30 tracks to be loaded into memory first.
This is why I recommend the "Load full file (not decoded) into memory" option. It's the only sensible option of the three.