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[Alex Peychev]

I have a Dell PC with internal SATA Bluray drive and external Plextor SATA DVD drive. Win7 Pro 64bit and integrated Win Media Player can play from both drives (there are no conflicts), but not J River MC; it does not play/rip from the external Plextor drive. I have to disable the bluray drive in order to play/rip on the Plextor. It is interesting that MC see both drives and shows track list when a CD is inserted in the Plextor, but as soon as I try to play or rip, I hear reading attempt noises from the Bluray drive which is empty, and the J R MC comes up with an error asking to check the file path, etc. Thanks!  

[JimH]

That might be a hardware configuration problem.  Please try a Google search for similar problems.

[Alex Peychev]

If that was a hardware problem, Windows Media Player would have the same problem, but it does not; it is just J R MC. Thanks!

[JimH]

Please try a search.

[Alex Peychev]

Please try a search.

Hello Jim,

Again, there is no such problem with Windows Media Player or any other Windows 7, 64 bit application. I also installed Winamp and Foobar to see if there will be a problem but they all work fine. It is ONLY J River Media Center having this issue.

I have highly recommended J R MC to my customers and plan doing so in the future because you guys have done a very nice job, and your MC sounds best, IMHO! So please try look into this problem for me. I’d appreciate your help!

Thanks much!

Alex Peychev
www.aplhifi.com

[glynor]

Weird.  Can you read/rip from the BluRay drive in MC?

[Alex Peychev]

Weird.  Can you read/rip from the BluRay drive in MC?

Yes, no problem read/rip from BD. I also changed the BD to a CD/DVD-ROM drive but the problem remains. MC recognizes both drives. I can set read speed and rip mode. It reads CD TOC from both drives, so everything is fine until play or rip button is pressed. If the CD is in the internal SATA drive, it plays/rip just fine. If the CD is in the external SATA drive and I try to rip/play, something really weird happens; instead of playing from it, the MC tries to read from the internal drive. Because there is no CD in it, it comes up with an error message asking to check the file path/location. As soon as I disable the internal drive, everything is fine with the external one. 

[glynor]

One last question... Are you running your SATA ports in AHCI mode or in PATA/IDE Emulation mode?

I use a SATA BD-ROM drive at home, but have a second BD-RW SATA Drive at work.  I can bring it home this weekend and test it out for you.

[Alex Peychev]

One last question... Are you running your SATA ports in AHCI mode or in PATA/IDE Emulation mode?

I use a SATA BD-ROM drive at home, but have a second BD-RW SATA Drive at work.  I can bring it home this weekend and test it out for you.

Yes, all SATA ports are in AHCI mode. 2 internal (HDD and BD) and 2 external (CD-ROM and RAID1 HDDs).

I just tried with two CDs in both drives. CD1 in the internal BD and CD2 in external CD-ROM. Pressed play on the internal drive with CD1 and MC looks like it is playing but there is no sound. Pressed play on the extrenal drive with CD2 and it plays and I got sound but it comes from the internal drive playing CD1.

Thanks!

[glynor]

I have my BD-RW drive in my laptop bag to come home this weekend and I'll try to do a test. If I don't, it will be "because beer".  I'm going to a holiday party in an hour, so...

[Alex Peychev]

Sounds good! :-)

If the external drive is connected via USB, everyting is fine.

I tried this on another PC that has internal SATA drive and eSATA port and all works fine, but that computer has SATA configured in RAID mode.

Thanks and have fun at the party!

[glynor]

One last set of questions, since I'm thinking of it...

1. Are you on an Intel chipset or an AMD one?
2. What drivers are you using (the vendor's or the default Microsoft ones)?

I ask this latter question because if the answer to #1 happens to be AMD, the various AMD chipsets are known to have SERIOUS SATA problems.  Most people recommend running them in IDE mode if possible (annoying) though you can get decent performance out of them in AHCI mode as long as you DO NOT install AMD's drivers for them and just use the default Microsoft drivers.  The AMD drivers with the SB750 and earlier southbridges are KNOWN to be horribly buggy.  The absolute latest version of the AMD southbridge has, apparently, finally fixed much of this, but that only applies to AMD SB850 chips and later (which would be included in only an AMD 890GX or 890FX chipset board).

Unfortunately, it can be challenging to get Windows to revert back to the Microsoft drivers without wiping and re-installing from scratch.  You usually have to uninstall the driver package from the Control Panel Uninstall Programs utility, reboot, and THEN go into Device Manager and delete the drivers there, making SURE to check the "remove software" box.  Then reboot again and it SHOULD grab the Microsoft ones.

Likewise, it could be worth it to try updating the Intel Storage Matrix drivers (or whatever they call it nowadays).  I've had random weirdness with some versions of those drivers, but the current version is working well on my systems currently.

Of course, all of this is moot if the problem does happen to be with MC directly, and it happens to me too.  However, since you found one configuration with dual SATA drives that DOES work, in RAID mode (which is generally just AHCI with RAID enabled anyway), that lends me to suspect that you're seeing something more specific to that system.  The system I'll be testing with will be an Intel P35 board in AHCI (not RAID) mode, so it should be a pretty good test.

[Alex Peychev]

It is AMD, Phenom II, Quad Core. Drivers are the original ones the PC comes with; it is a Dell Zino HD 410. So I am not sure if these are Win drivers or AMD.

While I understand and agree with you on all accounts, I am puzzled that any other audio program works fine, except for the J R MC?

Will look into the driver situation while you are having beer. :-)

Thanks!

[glynor]

The drivers that came with it could very well be bad AMD ones.  If you check the Device Manager on the actual SATA channel, you can see what the vendor of the drivers are.  You want to see them listed as Microsoft (for any non-very-recent AMD board).

While I understand and agree with you on all accounts, I am puzzled that any other audio program works fine, except for the J R MC?

MC does some fancy stuff when reading CD audio that many other applications don't do, so it may be more sensitive to issues than some other "dumber" applications.  A good alternative application to try out would be EAC in Secure Mode.

But, it could very well be a bug in MC.  Let's see if I can reproduce it.

But, for now, delicious beer.

[Alex B]

I have no personal experience on eSATA optical drives, but in general ACHI is known cause some problems with certain HW combinations. Do you happen to know what is the motherboard chipset? Have you installed the latest chipset drivers from Dell or the motherboard/chipset manufacturer?

As a test, could you try the IDE and/or RAID modes? For testing IDE, you probably would need to have the drive connected and powered on boot.

BTW, does eSATA provide any advantage over USB with a DVD drive? E.g. faster speed, less CPU usage, etc.


EDIT

glynor posted (and Alex Peychev replied) while I was writing my reply.

Some time ago I enabled the ACHI mode to use eSATA with an ASUS/AMD board (AMD 785G chipset), but I have changed back to the IDE mode. ACHI didn't provide S.M.A.R.T. info and it was slower than IDE. I lost the ability to connect and disconnect eSATA while the system is running, but since I use eSATA only when I make backups on external hard drives that is acceptable to me.

EDIT 2

He did it again while I was writing my edit...

[Alex Peychev]

Uninstalled AMD drivers and let Win7 install Microsoft ones per your instructions. WOW, it works!!! :-)

Thank you so much for your help, you are the greatest!

Happy Holidays....and be careful with that beer! :-)

Best wishes to all,
Alex

[glynor]

I AM!  Glad it worked!

PS.  Today is apparently international lager day.

[glynor]

BTW, does eSATA provide any advantage over USB with a DVD drive? E.g. faster speed, less CPU usage, etc..

SATA is an order of magnitude faster than USB2, and does generally result in much lower CPU utilization as well (though this depends on the USB implementation and the SATA implementation).  Whether that matters when writing to optical media is dubious, of course.  This matters much more for hard drives.  Still, I've also just found SATA tends to be less "touchy" in many cases, though USB CD/DVD burners generally work okay.

Some time ago I enabled the ACHI mode to use eSATA with an ASUS/AMD board (AMD 785G chipset), but I have changed back to the IDE mode. ACHI didn't provide S.M.A.R.T. info and it was slower than IDE.

If you want to use AHCI mode on that board, you can do so with acceptable performance if you DO NOT install the AMD drivers (the ones from your motherboard vendor) and just let Windows use it's built-in drivers.  Not only are there bugs with the AMD drivers (as this thread proves), but they are slow.  The one tradeoff is that the Microsoft drivers have much higher CPU utilization than the AMD ones (but we're still talking pretty low numbers overall on a modern PC).

Hot swap is a nice feature, and there are power savings from using AHCI mode.  If you have a fast drive, you can also see some real benefits from Native Command Queuing, though this is mitigated somewhat by the performance issues on the SB750 and earlier AMD chipsets.

[Alex Peychev]

Well, it looks like Intel also has problems with their drivers.

New Core i3 Toshiba laptop with external RAID1 enclosure connected with eSATA. Severe hick-ups and MC lock-ups when playing 176.4/24 files.

First thing to do is download and install the latest drivers from Intel (5 series AHCI controller) because the laptop drivers were outdated. This brought some improvement but still bad.

Then I followed your instructions and removed the Intel drivers so Win 7 can install its own. WOW, it works! :-)

Thanks again!
Alex Peychev