More > JRiver Media Center 24 for Mac
Having dropout issues
Dennis in FL:
Yep, I saw that thread and posted my results in it.
I just hooked up my Apple laptop to my USB DAC and while still using the main MC library on my desktop Mac I had zero drop outs for over 30 minutes at the default buffer settings. I then changed my desktop settings back to the default while still listening to the laptop and there was a very short hiccup the moment I changed the settings on the desktop server.
My laptop is a few months old and my desktop is 5 years old.
Another 30 minutes of listening again gave zero dropouts.
Then I turned on Time Machine on the laptop and I got drop outs. ARGH!!!!
Time machine is a background backup utility. But after that initial drop out....I didn't get any others - and I've been listening now for over 30 minutes.
Is this something you can isolate on your end......it is frustrating trying to debug something like this and basically MC is unusable. I have a Sony HAP Hi Res player and it never has dropouts on the same files so I can eliminate that. I have files on different hard drives and it isn't any particular hard drive. I have USB 3.0 on all drives and very high speed internet. I have tried USB and toslink outputs.
JimH:
At this point, it doesn't appear to be a JRiver problem.
blgentry:
As I've stated previously:
1. Dropouts occur when RAM is heavily utilized. So, when you have lots of stuff open and they use most of your RAM dropouts are more likely.
2. Disk access seems to be an issue here. Not just I/O speed. But more like "touching" the filesystem can cause problems. I've noticed that when my file systems got more than ~70% full, the dropouts started happening a lot more often. There's something odd with Macs and touching file systems. For example, when you have external drives that are sleeping (hardware setting inside the drive) and you open a file on a drive that is AWAKE, Mac usually (but not always) wakes up all of the external drives first. This causes the mac to "beach ball" until the external drives wake up and return status. Even though the file being asked for was not on that drive. I do not understand this. Just reporting.
3. JRiver spent what seemed to be a decent amount of time trying to replicate this and were unable to. All of their test machines have SSDs. My one Mac that has this problem has a spinning disk. I think on Macs with SSDs as their main drive, dropouts are not an issue.
4. Try GIANT buffer sizes. 500 mS worked well for me. 1000 mS made my dropouts (seemingly) disappear altogether.
Brian.
Dennis in FL:
I tried my laptop with an SSD and got dropouts but the library was on the iMac with the spinning disks.
I'll give a test with a hi res file on the local SSD drive.....
MSchott:
--- Quote from: JimH on May 13, 2019, 06:16:10 am ---Please read this thread:
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,119818.0.html
and the links in it. Particularly DJLegba's link to a report of an Apple problem.
--- End quote ---
Thanks Jim. That thread was referenced earlier in this current thread. I have downloaded the latest version of Mojave and increased buffering to 750. My iMac is the 27” model with 1TB Fusion drive and 8GB of RAM. I’m using only about 20% of the hard drive.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version