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Skogkatt: Clicks when starting playback

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Skogkatt:
I have tried all Wasapi flavors as well as ASIO and found absolutely no problem playing music but if I stop a track and play another: CLICK!!! (all VST plugins and DSPs disabled)

I have also tried a cheap USB stick (Terratec Aureon) under Wasapi and ASIO: same as above.

Another test:

1) Played and stopped music (stopped during loud music) under MC, then played a track with few seconds of silence under Audacity (a free audio editor): click at the beginning of silence's reproduction, repeatable.
2) Played and stopped music (still with loud music) under Audacity, then played a track with few seconds of silence under Audacity: no click, consistently!
3) Played and stopped a track under MC (just before music starts, during the short silence there is at the beginning of some music tracks): consistently no clicks when starting a new track

I'm not a SW developer but my (faulty?) logic tells me that when MC stops playing music, a residual number of bytes remains somewhere outside MC and causes a click/pop the next time any audio application starts playing again.

That's why I initially proposed an option to add a selectable amount of silence after a stop with the purpose to flush buffers with nothing (silence): ideally I would stream silence all the time during pauses...

BTW: If I understood correctly its purpose, "Stop: Fadeout (slow, normal, and fast)" doesn't want to collaborate as I don't get any fadeout after a Stop. 

Matt:
I spent some time testing this.

I have a Sony AVR here that adds a click when starting S/PDIF.  It's especially pronounced if it receives AC3.

But my headphone amplifier connected with analog has no such click (on the same soundcard, and also on a second sound card).

One thing you could try is Options > Audio > Play silence at startup for hardware synchronization.

I tried adding more pre-rolling of silence and/or post-rolling of silence in the WASAPI - Event Style code, and it didn't help in the case of the Sony AVR.

Skogkatt:
Matt,

many thanks for spending your time investigating this problem.

All my tests were performed using the setting you suggested (Options > Audio > Play silence at startup for hardware synchronization): I think this is selected by default during MC's installation.

Unlike yours, the DAC in my Sony receiver has an automatic mute that not only cuts clicks but also music if the track doesn't have enough silence at the beginning. This makes the Sony not suitable for additional tests…

It seems that, as other problems that may affect sound reproduction, also this one is highly dependent on the HW/SW configuration.

However, for me it is interesting to stress the fact I was able to consistently reproduce the problem with three different DACs: one dependent from a driver (Realtek HD to SPIDF) and two driverless using USB interface.

JimH:
Are you using VST plug-ins or anything else that could affect sound?

Are you certain all DSP effects are off?

Skogkatt:
I purposely re-run tests with DSPs unchecked, all of them.

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