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[Ancient_Audiophile]

Hi Matt,
If I remember right, in another thread concerning SACD, you said that it might be possible to do decompressing multi-threaded.  Is that implemented at this point, or not ?

I ask because a 2.2ghz dual core processor is evidently insufficient to keep up with the requirements.  I know that many current model "fast" machines have a quad core that is even less than 2.2ghz, because the current trend is to use less power and generate less heat by using many cores that are slower.   So, multi-threading support would seem to be a must for any cpu-intensive process in general.

This is just my 2 cents (and I don't have much insight into the specifics of the decoding going on here), thanks.

PS  I am running Vista 32-bit and MC 18.0.68.  MC is converting to 24bit and 96khz.  I had the buffering after 12 tracks of no buffering, and another SACD plays all the way through.   So, it is almost enough.

[Matt]

Would you run Help > Benchmark and post the full results?

DST packets are like 4000 bytes and decompress to about 8000 bytes.  It's almost impossible to thread _inside_ tiny packets like this (the average decompress time is about 1.5ms/packet on my work machine).  Instead, we could pool up multiple packets and decompress multiple at a time.  This would work, but it's a bit of an architecture shift.

In your case, it might be enough to increase Options > Audio > Prebuffering.

[Ancient_Audiophile]

I just started Media Center and immediately ran the benchmark - I had run it before, but only remembered the final number (1084).

The benchmark was about 15% lower this time .... and immediately thereafter was a message:

"397 files imported.... 397 files total".

Grrrr.... I was going to talk about this issue later, but when it interferes with what I was doing....

On the initial use, I had clicked on the little notice in the bottom corner, with the countdown.   In the resulting dialog, I had clicked on "No Import".

Now, it is importing anyway.

No audio files are in the right folders yet - I am just testing the functionality.

Software doing things without asking, is one of the most often voiced gripes on the Internet.

I've read complaints about MC automatically changing tags, and when I read that, I was sure that it was user error, but now I am not sure.

After first starting MC, all I've done is:

- Click on the countdown
- Select "No Import" (don't remember exact wording)
- Play one SACD ISO
- Play another SACD ISO
- Run Benchmark

The second time, all I did was:

- Run Benchmark
- Saw import results

Normally I would inquire if I had done something wrong, but in this case, I didn't have a chance to do much of anything.

....I just thought - I can't be the first person to notice this - and sure enough, there is:

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=71943.0

so I posted a suggestion there... and back to SACDs....

Anyway, after the import, I ran the benchmark a third time and the results were about the same as the first time, and here they are as requested:

=== Running Benchmarks (please do not interrupt) ===

Running 'Math' benchmark...
    Single-threaded integer math... 10.480 seconds
    Single-threaded floating point math... 4.326 seconds
    Multi-threaded integer math... 10.496 seconds
    Multi-threaded mixed math... 4.346 seconds
Score: 641

Running 'Image' benchmark...
    Image creation / destruction... 1.878 seconds
    Flood filling... 1.208 seconds
    Direct copying... 2.269 seconds
    Small renders... 6.990 seconds
    Bilinear rendering... 6.677 seconds
    Bicubic rendering... 5.211 seconds
Score: 908

Running 'Database' benchmark...
    Create database... 0.902 seconds
    Populate database... 3.136 seconds
    Save database... 0.530 seconds
    Reload database... 0.111 seconds
    Search database... 3.527 seconds
    Sort database... 2.762 seconds
    Group database... 1.610 seconds
Score: 1709

JRMark (version 18.0.68): 1086

[Matt]

You can configure auto-import in Options > Library & Folders.

[JimH]

1086 isn't a very powerful PC.

Check your auto import settings.  Tools/Import.

[sla]

I was running Foobar before and was doing double floating conversion to 88.1 from multichannel files and there was almost 100% load [many drop-outs].
on AMD Athlon II X2 270u (2 cores 2Mhz) Pass Mark: 1255. Stereo files or fine [0-5% load].

I gave up on multichannel anyway as there is no DSD dac that supports multichannel.

Another thing: Theatre view may also take quite significant part of your CPU power [on my PC [=no graphic card], just on-board card HD 4250] it 0-5% when running classic view and 25-30% when running in Theatre Mode.


   
 

[Ancient_Audiophile]

1086 isn't a very powerful PC.

I remember Leo Laporte on TV demonstrating a custom PC cooler that was going to allow him to run at 1.0ghz for the first time ever... huge drama... I can imagine if I had emailed him "in only a few weeks, this PC will be considered too weak to use for anything".  
Anyway, the particular processor was chosen 5 years ago because as a 2.2ghz Dual-Core, it was capable of decoding Blu-Ray without using GPU acceleration.
I don't doubt that these SACD decoding processes might need really high processor loads, but if so, SACD is the most demanding consumer application ever.

By the way, when I was referring to multi-threading, I was thinking more in terms of decompression in one core, and decoding in another core.   Does that make any sense (in terms of the actual specifics of what is being done)?
====
Update: It turns out that the problem is not insufficient processor.

I looked more closely, and the reason that MC played the first 12 tracks perfectly, and then buffered on the 13th track,   is that the album has 12 tracks, and MC read the SACD ISO and created a playlist consisting of all the tracks in stereo, followed by all of the same tracks in multi-channel.  So, I guess it is the process of mixing down from 5.1 to 2.0 that is causing buffering.

Is there currently some sort of indication in MC about the number of channels in a given audio track ?   And is there some global option setting of what to do with SACDs that have both stereo and multi-channel versions included on the same disk ?

[Gedeon]

I've just had the same problem today with an ISO SACD.

The buffering problem appears decoding and buffering a 6 channel track that perhaps is the most demanding kind of audio track i've ever found with more than 300khz sample rate per channel (as shown in audio-path)

I've an Athlon64x2 4800 @2700Mhz and it doesn't seem to be the bottleneck but... who knows ?

Also I've to say that for me isn't a big issue...

[Ancient_Audiophile]

Another player has SACD choices:

* Always play stereo when both stereo and multichannel are present
* Always play multichannel when both stereo and multichannel are present
* Always ask user when both stereo and multichannel are present
* Always play both when both stereo and multichannel are present

If MC does not already have these choices somewhere, then it might be good to have.

[Matt]

You can configure channel mixing in DSP Studio > Output Format.

You can filter SACD tracks in any view by the 'Channels' column.

[Matt]

In a coming build:
Faster: DST decompression (used by SACD and DFF files) uses 4 threads for decoding instead of running single-threaded.

[bulldogger]

I looked more closely, and the reason that MC played the first 12 tracks perfectly, and then buffered on the 13th track,   is that the album has 12 tracks, and MC read the SACD ISO and created a playlist consisting of all the tracks in stereo, followed by all of the same tracks in multi-channel.  So, I guess it is the process of mixing down from 5.1 to 2.0 that is causing buffering.

SACD does not mix down like DVD Audio. There are separate stereo tracks and separate multi-channel tracks. The reason that you are seeing buffering is that the amount of data being decoded tripled with multi-channel, not because of down-mixing.

[bulldogger]

In a coming build:
Faster: DST decompression (used by SACD and DFF files) uses 4 threads for decoding instead of running single-threaded.

Bravo. I've never seen anything like JRiver. The way you all respond to issues is well beyond anything I have ever seen with any product I have purchased. I continue to be amazed.

[Ancient_Audiophile]

SACD does not mix down like DVD Audio. There are separate stereo tracks and separate multi-channel tracks. The reason that you are seeing buffering is that the amount of data being decoded tripled with multi-channel, not because of down-mixing.

Makes sense.  (BTW, that means that 1084 is sufficient for stereo SACD tracks.)

But it would be good to not have the player queue all the stereo tracks and then all the multi-channel tracks of the exact same song (unless the user has some reason to do so).

[bulldogger]

Makes sense.  (BTW, that means that 1084 is sufficient for stereo SACD tracks.)

But it would be good to not have the player queue all the stereo tracks and then all the multi-channel tracks of the exact same song (unless the user has some reason to do so).

I actually like to see all of the tracks but I understand. If you extract just the stereo tracks, then you can just see those. It might be difficult to play the entire iso file yet block some tracks that are there from showing.

[Ancient_Audiophile]

It is not the "seeing" of the tracks that is a problem, it is the queue-ing of the same song twice, once as stereo, and another time as multi-channel.

In an SACD player (or a DVD-Audio player for that matter), the different versions (stereo vs multichannel) are selectable differently, or you can have a default (such as stereo) and then the player always selects that version when a disk is inserted.

So, it would be worthwhile for Media Center to do this in a similar way.

Currently (unless I have missed an option), Media Center will queue all the stereo tracks for playback, followed by all the multichannel tracks (the exact same songs).

If your DAC is stereo-only, then it would make even more sense to always only queue the stereo versions for playback.

Anyway, that is the suggestion.

[psam]

Same problem here, not on all tracks though.

I am listening to an .iso image of a TOTO album. This is a 3.3 GB file containing 6.1 audio I believe. I am downsampling to 2 channel audio at 24/192 because this is where my Antelope Zodiac DAC is maxing out.

In some tracks, the bitrate is around 5600 kbits/sec, but in some others it jumps to more than 16400 kbits/sec. I have no idea why.

In these higher bitrate tracks,  the track pauses, "buffering" shows up and then the track continues.

The transfer rate from the hard disks reaches spikes of 8 Mbytes/sec and the measured transfer rate is 40-60 Mbytes/sec.
The benchmark on this PC is:
JRMark (version 17.0.60): 2640

I hope my hardware is not a no-go for such material!!!
Eagerly waiting for the new MC version to address this!


EDIT: Got it! I was selecting the multichannel version of the track.Choosing the stereo version works fine!!

[Toytronic]

Another player has SACD choices:

* Always play stereo when both stereo and multichannel are present
* Always play multichannel when both stereo and multichannel are present
* Always ask user when both stereo and multichannel are present
* Always play both when both stereo and multichannel are present

If MC does not already have these choices somewhere, then it might be good to have.

You probably refer to Foobar and it's SACD decoder plugin, and i agree with you 100%. Those playback options will be most welcome inside MC, and jugging by the amount of topics related to SACD on the forum, i think it is safe to say that SACD isn't a niche market anymore and that any improvement on this functionality will benefit a lot of users.

I think it will be nice to add those options linked to the "channels" ones in the "Output Format" window. For exemple, if i select "2 channels (Stereo)" as my option, only stereo dsd track will be added to the library during the auto-scan and available for my listening pleasure. Since multichannels DSD cannot be downmixed, it makes perfect sense. Then, if i choose one of the multichannels options available, every track, both stereo and multichannel will be added during the library scan and ready to play after that.

As a complement, we can imagine to add another option in the same part of the menu that specified to always prefer stereo version of the DSD track when available, regarding the choice made in the "channels" section. This could be helpfull for people using MC as both a video player and an audiophile player, people that want to listen to a movie soundtrack in it's full glory (5.1 / 7.1), but do not consider multichannel as a necessary good way to listen to music.

What do you think Matt, i'd like your feedback on this

[Matt]

You could remove the multichannel tracks from your library.

Search for:
[Channels]=>2

Then select all and remove from the library.

Or, set up an Access Filter to hide certain files from you.  View > Access Control > Show only files matching search > [Channels]=<=2.

[Toytronic]

Hi Matt,

Thank you for your reply. Removing multichannel tracks manually doesn't seems like the right way to do it, not only because you will have to do that everytime you import an SACD ISO (killing the benefit of both the auto-import function and the support of SACD ISO indexation introduce in MC18), but mostly because this has to be done within the MC desktop interface. Since there is now many ways to control MC remotely, says JRemote or Gizmo web interface, and the fact that many users tend to use MC on an headless computer for music purpose only, every interaction that can only be done inside the desktop GUI should be avoid after the initial setup IMOH.

The Access Control trick is a nice one though, and i didn't know that this "party mode" could be used this way. So maybe the best solution could be to implement the same filtering options to the auto-import feature, so that the library will not be populate with files that will never be played because of user's choice or hardware limitation.

[bulldogger]

AWESOME! Buffering issues completely gone. I can play 6 channel SACD files with no problems now. Just upgrade. Wow! This was my only issue with JRiver.

[Matt]

AWESOME! Buffering issues completely gone. I can play 6 channel SACD files with no problems now. Just upgrade. Wow! This was my only issue with JRiver.

I was just going to post here to mention the new build should help.

Even better to see it really did help

[bulldogger]

I was just going to post here to mention the new build should help.

Even better to see it really did help

Yes it did. I just ran a JRMark and my score improved from 1829 with 18.0.68 to a Jrmark of 1966 with 18.0.73. Playing back the tracks that seemed to buffer the most from The O'Jays "Ship Ahoy." No buffering whatsoever so my issues have 100% solved if those tracks play.

[bulldogger]

I have not had any difficult playing stereo SACD. My problems were always with multi-channel. Multi-channel SACD, compressed DST, works well with my machine which has a quad core Intel Q8200 @2.33ghz with 6mb of ram.

I tried my laptop as a test. It's only a dual core Pentium T4400@2.22ghz and 3gb of ram. The laptop  is still unable to play 6 channel SACD. It's still buffering. The JRmark is only 1352 on this machine.

My conclusion is that the increasing to 4 threads will fix buffering for some but not all. You'll still need a faster machine, but the bar as to how fast has been thankfully lowered.

[Ancient_Audiophile]

Hi Matt,

Thank you for your reply. Removing multichannel tracks manually doesn't seems like the right way to do it, not only because you will have to do that everytime you import an SACD ISO (killing the benefit of both the auto-import function and the support of SACD ISO indexation introduce in MC18), but mostly because this has to be done within the MC desktop interface. Since there is now many ways to control MC remotely, says JRemote or Gizmo web interface, and the fact that many users tend to use MC on an headless computer for music purpose only, every interaction that can only be done inside the desktop GUI should be avoid after the initial setup IMOH.

I second the request to have MC automatically hide the multichannel tracks if the output format is stereo.

But those whose output format is not stereo, will still have the tracks repeated twice in the playlist, so that is not a solution.   I can't think of anything that would work other than GUI options:

* Always play stereo when both stereo and multichannel are present
* Always play multichannel when both stereo and multichannel are present
* Always ask user when both stereo and multichannel are present
* Always play both when both stereo and multichannel are present

Physical SACD players (and DVD-Audio players) have these sort of choices in their rudimentary OSDs.

By the way, I am interested in this particular feature, because the SACD playback sounds excellent in MC right now - better than the player/plugin mentioned by another poster, and better than the improved plugin posted to another Forum by another audiophile programmer.

Also, it was the WASAPI fixes implemented by JRiver that brought my attention back to MC, and now that I have had a chance to do some comparisons, that also sounds excellent.  (I know that some people are skeptical that such things can sound "better", but it is helpful to understand that what is going on, is simply fixing things that do not actually work according to theory, and MC's WASAPI implementation does that.)

By the way, it's also interesting to note that just about any audio-related request - no matter how advanced and complicated, like multi-threaded DSD decoding and decompression - is quickly implemented by MC's excellent staff - while most GUI requests are forgotten or rejected - such as adding one checkbox in Custom Install Only (after the filetypes dialogs) stating "Please don't Auto-Install" - which has been requested by many members of the MC Beta Team.

[Ancient_Audiophile]

I have encountered a bug with this 2 channel vs 5 channel issue:

The default device has 2 channels.

When playing an SACD ISO, MC creates a playlist with all the 2 channel tracks, and then all the same tracks in their 5 channel versions.

When I tried this on the previous PC, when it came to the first 5 channel track, it popped a message with 2 choices - Let MC reconfigure itself to handle playing multi-channel tracks with a 2 channel device, or "cancel".  I chose to let MC reconfigure and it worked fine, and then the message never showed up again.

On this PC, I chose the "cancel" option, and it caused MC to crash.  When the same thing happened again, I chose "cancel" again, and it crashed again.

[Ancient_Audiophile]

This brings up another question:

Is there a way to configure MC to play 2-channel tracks with one playback device, and multi-channel tracks with another playback device ?

[Matt]

Is there a way to configure MC to play 2-channel tracks with one playback device, and multi-channel tracks with another playback device ?

You might investigate zones.

[Ancient_Audiophile]

You might investigate zones.

Cool - I read the wiki on Zones and the linked threads.
I setup a second Zone called "Multichannel" that uses the motherboard's built-in 7.1 audio as its device, leaving the stereo USB DAC on the original Zone.
What I am still trying to figure out is how to create a "rule" that:

* If Channels = 2 then use Zone 1
* If Channels > 2 then use Zone 2