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[bob]

http://files.jriver.com/mediacenter/channels/v19/latest/MediaCenter-19.0.115.deb

Purchase link

19.0.115 (2/5/2014)

1. Changed: Completely reworked the linux ALSA audio output device control to be more efficient and reduce latency.
2: NEW: Allow advanced user control of the latency.

19.0.112 (1/30/2014)

1. Fixed: Stability improvements.
2. Changed: Moved timeout to April 9th 2014

19.0.109 (1/23/2014)

1. Fixed: Workaround a curl bug that could cause crashing on slow dns lookups.
2. Fixed: Window focus issues. Need feedback.

19.0.108 (1/21/2014)

1. Fixed: Stability improvements.

19.0.103-3 (1/14/2014)

1. Fixed: Stability improvements.

19.0.103-2 (1/13/2014)

1. Changed: Removed system requirement for libcrypto++ and libboost-regex.

19.0.103 (1/9/2014)

1. NEW: Implemented libboost for regular expressions to match the windows and mac versions.
2. Changed: More dependencies tuning.

19.0.102 (1/3/2014)

1. Changed: Bumped timeout to February 9th 2014
2. Changed: Package no longer depends on the various linux audio encoders to install, they are recommended but not required leaving it up to the user to install. These are Lame, Vorbis-tools, Musepack-tools. They can be 32 or 64 bit.

19.0.94 (12/16/2013)

1. Fixed: Bug introduced from the column header crash fix.

19.0.92 (12/11/2013)

1. New: Added Musepack (mpc) encoder (requires system musepack-tools).
2. Fixed: Pathname length for files increased from 260 to 4096.

19.0.91 (12/10/2013)

1. Changed: More shared library work (stability).
2. Changed: Now requires system libcrypto++9 (>= 5.6.1)
3. Fixed: MPC (Musepack) input plugin.

19.0.90 (12/9/2013)

1. Fixed: .deb pacakge dependencies will allow either i386 or amd64 versions of lame and vorbis-tool and un-arched xfonts.
2. Changed: Reliability in loading shared libraries, was causing problems when switching between audio formats during playback.

19.0.89 (12/6/2013)

1. New: Added OGG encoder.

19.0.88 (12/5/2013)

1. Fixed: OGG input plugin.

19.0.85-1 (12/3/2013)

1. Faster: Drawing from an internal image to the screen is much faster (requires 0 memory manipulations before draw; previously required two copies before draw).
2. Changed: More resolutions avaiable for the dynamic MC Icon.
3. Fixed: DLNA fixes from the main code.

[mcollier]

MediaCenter 19.0.115.  Debian Wheezy 64.

After upgrading, I saw the "something went wrong with playback" message.  I was familiar with this error message from earlier versions, plus I knew that ALSA has been worked on.

So, I immediately deleted my .jriver folder and restarted.  After I selected the proper ALSA device: front:###, it started playing.

I have since discovered that if I stop the track, change the volume using the system volume control, then hit play, I get the playback error.  If I hit OK, and hit play again, playback will start normally. 

I have found that if I adjust the volume during playback, the next time I stop and start, I will get the error again.

[RemyJ]

Hmmm.  I'm finding that this build is much more stable with pulse (Fedora 20 64bit).  With earlier versions there was a 90% chance that a manual track change would not start the new track.   I just did about 50 track changes on 115 with no error.

Occasionally get a segfault opening device settings though...
----
pure virtual method called
terminate called without an active exception

[bob]

MediaCenter 19.0.115.  Debian Wheezy 64.

After upgrading, I saw the "something went wrong with playback" message.  I was familiar with this error message from earlier versions, plus I knew that ALSA has been worked on.

So, I immediately deleted my .jriver folder and restarted.  After I selected the proper ALSA device: front:###, it started playing.

I have since discovered that if I stop the track, change the volume using the system volume control, then hit play, I get the playback error.  If I hit OK, and hit play again, playback will start normally. 

I have found that if I adjust the volume during playback, the next time I stop and start, I will get the error again.

Under audio settings, what are your track change and volume control settings?

[bob]

Hmmm.  I'm finding that this build is much more stable with pulse (Fedora 20 64bit).  With earlier versions there was a 90% chance that a manual track change would not start the new track.   I just did about 50 track changes on 115 with no error.

Occasionally get a segfault opening device settings though...
----
pure virtual method called
terminate called without an active exception

What are your track change settings?
Part of the changes are that only the best  supported bit depth format will be tried, that potentially reduces the number of attempted opens of the device.
I think there are some timing issues with opening ALSA devices, especially pulse. There may need to be some kind of open/delay on fail/retry logic.

As far as the segfault goes, is that only on the device selection pulldown AFTER opening the options window?

[mcollier]

Under audio settings, what are your track change and volume control settings?

Volume is System Volume, Volume protection is not checked, max volume 100

track change: crossfade aggressive, do not play silence (checked), use gapless for sequential album tracks (checked).

[bob]

MediaCenter 19.0.115.  Debian Wheezy 64.

After upgrading, I saw the "something went wrong with playback" message.  I was familiar with this error message from earlier versions, plus I knew that ALSA has been worked on.

So, I immediately deleted my .jriver folder and restarted.  After I selected the proper ALSA device: front:###, it started playing.
...

It looks like the previous setting for the audio device gets lost, probably because of the added advanced fields.
You could have just reselected the device instead of deleting the .jriver folder but whatever works!

[bob]

With those settings for track changes, the audio device is only getting opened once when the play button is hit and closed when stop is hit (or the playlist runs out).
The volume control, I can't seem to track because I can only get internal volume to work on my system, not system volume.
You could try sending a logfile. A lot of status information was added to the ALSA driver during the rewrite.

[mcollier]

With those settings for track changes, the audio device is only getting opened once when the play button is hit and closed when stop is hit (or the playlist runs out).
The volume control. I can't seem to track because I can only get internal volume to work on my system, not system volume.
You could try sending a logfile. A lot of status information was added to the ALSA driver during the rewrite.

Hi Bob, can you tell me how to generate and where to find the log you're interested in?

[bob]

Hi Bob, can you tell me how to generate and where to find the log you're interested in?

~/.jriver/Media Center 19/Log.txt
You can turn it on (if it's not already) in Help->Logging.
Normally you'll want it off. MC starts a new log each time you run it.
You could try internal volume instead of system volume.

[mcollier]

~/.jriver/Media Center 19/Log.txt
You can turn it on (if it's not already) in Help->Logging.
Normally you'll want it off. MC starts a new log each time you run it.
You could try internal volume instead of system volume.

I turned on logging.  Restarted mediacenter.  I could not get playback to work until I went into options->audio->device settings and hit ok, I did not make any changes as the settings were the same as they had been.

That got playback working.  I stopped playback, adjusted the volume and started playback and got the error again.  Log is attached.

I'll try internal volume

[bob]

I turned on logging.  Restarted mediacenter.  I could not get playback to work until I went into options->audio->device settings and hit ok, I did not make any changes as the settings were the same as they had been.

That got playback working.  I stopped playback, adjusted the volume and started playback and got the error again.  Log is attached.

I'll try internal volume

Failed to open audio pcm device Device or resource busy

It looks to me like something else is grabbing the device when we release it.
It's probably a sound daemon or pulseaudio.
Or perhaps a desktop level mixer?

[mcollier]

Failed to open audio pcm device Device or resource busy

It looks to me like something else is grabbing the device when we release it.
It's probably a sound daemon or pulseaudio.
Or perhaps a desktop level mixer?

All I can say about that is...  This is a stock, out of the box wheezy install I put on this laptop exclusively for running MediaCenter.

It is true that the system volume control makes a little "ding" sound after an adjustment is made so one can approximate the new volume level.  So, clearly the OS has to have some access to the device at that time.  However, adjusting to volume during playback works fine, until playback stops.  If the volume was adjusted during playback, the same error occurs.

[bob]

All I can say about that is...  This is a stock, out of the box wheezy install I put on this laptop exclusively for running MediaCenter.

It is true that the system volume control makes a little "ding" sound after an adjustment is made so one can approximate the new volume level.  So, clearly the OS has to have some access to the device at that time.  However, adjusting to volume during playback works fine, until playback stops.  If the volume was adjusted during playback, the same error occurs.

When the volume is adjusted during playback and then you stop, does it ding when you stop?

[mcollier]

When the volume is adjusted during playback and then you stop, does it ding when you stop?

No.

[bob]

I did some testing of this last night on my system and it appears that the hardware devices are exclusive access only.
For example, when my browser is trying to play a youtube video and I go to start MC, MC can't open the device.
When I am playing something back in MC, the browser can't open the sound device.
So, if you really want to do this you are probably going to have to use the pulseaudio (pulse) device and have MC's DSP output format sample rate set to whatever the system is using as a default (usually 48000). Pulse is supposed to be able to mix the sound out to one device.

[Hendrik]

Yeah ALSA is always exclusive access, at least the hardware devices.
If you want shared, you can setup a ALSA "dmix" device, or run a fancy daemon like PulseAudio.

[mcollier]

I did some testing of this last night on my system and it appears that the hardware devices are exclusive access only.
For example, when my browser is trying to play a youtube video and I go to start MC, MC can't open the device.
When I am playing something back in MC, the browser can't open the sound device.
So, if you really want to do this you are probably going to have to use the pulseaudio (pulse) device and have MC's DSP output format sample rate set to whatever the system is using as a default (usually 48000). Pulse is supposed to be able to mix the sound out to one device.

Did I mention that this problem did not exist until v115?  I've been using system volume control without difficulty since the earliest alpha release.

[bob]

Did I mention that this problem did not exist until v115?  I've been using system volume control without difficulty since the earliest alpha release.

The device open is very different now. We were using a barebones approach with no control over the buffering parameters, etc. Now we set up everything as optimally as possible.

You are using the System Volume control outside of MC since MC doesn't do System Volume internally in linux and if the system volume control is operating directly on the device I assume it has control (especially when it beeps). I'm not sure why it would have worked before 19.0.115.

[sfb2]

--solved--