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[drusk]

I've got an audio-only dedicated new MacBook Pro i5 Core with 8GB RAM running MC. Running on battery with earlier versions I could get 9+ hours of listening, no problem, before recharge. With the latest version 19.0.120, I burn through a full recharge battery in 3.5 hours. I checked Task Manger and noticed MC running the CPU at 100+ percent. The Senior Advisor at Apple Care says the program is "over-running" the CPU and therefore the reason for the short battery play time. Task Manage shows no other programs or processes using the CPU except MC. Almost everything is turned off i.e., Mail, iMessage, Spotlight, Bluetooth, Auto Updates, Notifications, and Energy Saver is set to default to put hard drives and un-needed processes to sleep. Is there any reason for the extreme CPU usage? Is there any setting I can make in the MC or the iOS program to restore battery usage time? Please advise. Any help would be most appreciated. Thanks.

[glynor]

MC should not be pegging your CPU cores.  This is certainly not normal behavior.

Poor battery performance will, of course, result from such a rogue process, especially with modern CPUs that derive most of their battery performance from doing a "race to sleep".  The CPU wants to get the work done as quickly (and in large enough "hunks") as is possible so that it can "race" back to sleep, where it only sips power.  When active, the cores ramp up clockspeed and power consumption (and heat generation), often momentarily exceeding their power specifications, in order to power through as much work as is possible as quickly as is possible within their heat envelope.  Then, they race back to sleep and cool down, or are forced to step back a bit to keep within thermal limits.  So there are massive fluctuations in wattage consumed from idle to pegged.  The bad battery performance is a symptom of your problem, but there is something else going on.

First, please describe in more detail under what conditions you see high CPU utilization.  Is it only during playback?  Only when MC has been left running for a long time?

Also, please describe in detail any customizations you've made to MC itself.  In particular, if you've played about in the DSP, you could cause performance problems if you don't know what you were doing.  In particular the Convolution filter, but also things like improper Output Format choices could cause this kind of behavior.

And, lastly, it would be worthwhile to read through this: http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Media_Center_Troubleshooting_Guide

[drusk]

Thanks for the info on how these modern CPUs function. Very interesting. The high CPU utilization happens only when streaming audio from the Mac to my PS Audio Perfect Wave DAC. At idle, with JR open there is no (.2%) CPU usage. There are no other applications running. In fact everything possible in the iOS has been turned off as first mentioned. Once music streaming begins the CPU usage jumps to 100+ percent usage. The MacBook is relatively new, only two months old. So I have no music stored. Actually I only stream internet radio stations. I used 3 of my restores trying to correct the high battery usage and then realized my original JR settings are the same. Deleting and re-installing did not change or re-set my settings to default as I had hoped. Because of the simplicity of my audio needs, I have not messed with any deep settings. Even DSP is off, bypassed, running bit perfect.

I checked my current settings. These are settings I have changed:

Auto Updates: off, disable automatic updates
Audio Device: PS Audio (Core)
Device Settings: Buffering- Minimum hardware size
DSP and Output Format: not used, not checked
Pre-buffering 2 seconds
Play files from memory is used, checked, on
Volume Mode: Volume Disabled
General-Features: All boxes are unchecked except for Media Network
In task bar: turned off "spectrum analyzer" and "song ratings"
Services: all turned off, no search options or "Stores shown in Tree"

These are the same settings used before I updated to a newer version of JR and as mentioned before I was getting at least 9 hours of playback before battery recharge. No other settings or functions have been changed from default. Maybe I could try another re-install, no problem for me, but I would need to somehow completely delete stored JR data. Your advise is much appreciated.
Thanks,

[glynor]

Does it go away if you uncheck Memory Playback?

There are some other threads right now that make me suspicious that this feature might be broken in certain conditions.  I don't know specifics, but look around at some of the other recent threads on the Mac board.  Also, try searching the forum for the name of your DAC.  I remember (vaguely) seeing stuff about those DACs.  There might be driver weirdness or something.

If unchecking Memory Playback "fixes" it, please report back.  They're working on this currently, I believe.

If not, I'd investigate the drivers for your DAC, as the problem (assuming there isn't some weird bug with that DAC and the current builds of MC) probably lies in there, and maybe it is fixed in a newer (or older) driver version.

Lastly, blindly unchecking everything in the General > Features Options section isn't generally a good idea.  To be clear, this does NOT reduce the "footprint" of MC in any discernible way (it still "loads" the code for all that stuff, or the vast majority of it).  That just hides and/or disables that functionality.

It is a good way to get rid of something that irritates you because you accidentally bumble into it and you don't need it.  It is not a "I don't need this and it'll run better if I have it as clean as is possible" thing.

For example, I'm not sure at all what happens if you uncheck Data Support and Linkable Columns.  Might that cause weirdness?  Maybe?  That's almost certainly NOT the problem here, I just wanted to point out that this is generally a bad idea.  This section of MC's Options is considered "Advanced" and unsupported.  In there be dragons.

As I said, that's almost certainly not the problem here.  But I just wanted to mention that... Well... I don't think that means what you think it means.

[jbmjbm0]

I'm now seeing really high CPU consumption from MC 19.0.122 on an i7 Mac Mini running Mac OS 10.9.2.

I recently installed MC version 19.0.122, and while I can't swear the problem wasn't present earlier, I noticed it just after installing that version.

Playing local files from disk doesn't seem to be too expensive;  but streaming audio, whether an AAC stream or an MP3 stream - an example of the latter:

   http://stream0.wfmu.org/freeform-128k

...brings the CPU consumption of MC to the neighborhood of 101.5%, per Activity Monitor.  This makes the temperature of the Mini rise precipitously, because it's better suited to absorb quick bursts of high usage than extended ones.

This high usage occurs whether MC is outputting via USB in integer mode to the Schiit DAC or via Core Audio out the Toslink output.

Unchecking "play from memory" doesn't seem to make a difference.

[glynor]

Roll back to version 121 or 120 and see if the problem goes away.

[jbmjbm0]

Roll back to version 121 or 120 and see if the problem goes away.

I just reinstalled 19.0.120, and the problem is actually there as well - I just didn't notice it before installing 122.