INTERACT FORUM
More => Old Versions => JRiver Media Center 21 for Mac => Topic started by: hoyt on February 13, 2016, 09:58:59 am
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I'm not sure if this is working as intended or not... I have my MC installation set for internal volume, I realize if I change that to system volume the problem goes away, but regardless, this seems confusing to me. If I set my Mac volume to 10%, then open MC and hit play, I can change the volume inside MC and it gets slightly louder quieter, but it's capped at 10% of my actual output. I can see the speaker icon in my task bar of the Mac and it's set at 10%. If I manually move that up to 100%, it makes no impact on the music from MC. In fact, if I change it to 100% manually, then stop a song and restart playback, the volume on my Mac goes back to 10%. If I close MC, change the volume to 100%, then reopen MC, the internal volume uses the full range of output from my Mac.
Is that what's supposed to happen with Internal Volume? I get the first part (that it's capped at the level of the system), but once I manually change that volume on my Mac, I'd expect MC to also get louder. I guess my issue with this is that there's no "out" unless I close MC, adjust the volume, and reopen MC.
Thanks!
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Hmm, that's different than my system. I use internal volume in MC. When I change the volume in MC, it changes. When I grab the system volume control, either through Sounds or Audio MIDI Setup, it directly affects the volume in real time.
I'm using my built in sound card in my MBP for this test. I'm not sure what's different between our setups.
Brian.
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I can't think of anything that would be different... Sometimes I run audio over HDMI (thunderbolt) output. In those cases, the "device" volume is fixed at 100%, so I want internal volume control. It's really just when I run to the output of Headphones that I've noticed this.
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If you have exclusive access enabled and the volume setting set to internal, you will not be able to change the system volume while a track is playing. You should be able to stop playback and then adjust the system volume. To be able to adjust the system volume while a track is playing, you will need to go to Tools->Options->Audio->Device Settings... and uncheck the box labelled "Open device with exclusive access."
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I'm not sure for MAC, but basically I've always heard that you should put your system volume at 100%. No attenuation. Internal volume, in exclusive mode, is running through JRiver's 64bit engine, which gives you tons of headroom, so lowering the volume is not going to affect anything (well unless you reduce the volume by more than 48db, but that is a lot). Personally I never touch it once it is set to 100%.
But as I don't know how core audio works, and if you don't have an external preamp in the chain, when you are playing back internet streams from a laptop you might not have a choice but to mess with it as the mac version doesn't have the WDM driver. If you can though, I'd set system volume to 100% and then control the volume from with JRiver.
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I'll have to do some more testing on this because right now I'm getting a different behavior. I do have exclusive access enabled. Right now I have headphones in the standard Mac headphone jack. I set my volume to about 10% on the mac, then opened MC and with internal volume, the first track that played, when I changed the volume buttons on my mac, nothing changed. I saw the Mac on screen display of the volume change and nothing in MC was changing (the volume level didn't move at all). Also, the speaker icon in the title bar of the OS didn't change - it still showed 1 ) instead of going to 3 levels ))).
Then I advanced to track 2 and the volume buttons made the volume in MC change. It seemed to be outputting at 100% at the Mac level, even though the Mac volume was set to 10%. To be clear, this is what I expect to happen, but not what was happening a few days ago. I'm at my office now and don't want to try it without headphones plugged in, but previously, I did not have headphones plugged in. Perhaps that is to blame.
I'll have to do more testing to figure out what's happening when...
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as I said do not have a mac ... the mini jack for headphones running off a motherboard ... euh, not sure how that is handled.
But generally you'd be using a SPDIF out or a USB out to a DAC then a receiver or preamp of some kind right. The headphones would not be plugged in to the laptop at home right? If the MAC system volume is set to 100% you control the volume from withing the program (or using a remote of some kind). I'm not sure if remapping of the media keys is required, this you can do. If running in exclsuive mode, the media keys shouldn't be changing the system volume ... But again I don't use MACs. Using internal volume, in theory, you would only be controlling the volume via JRiver.
If there is a big gain difference though, you might want/need to set-up a separate zone: one for headphones and one for speaker output so you can set a start-up volume for each.
so sure test it when you get home. But I'll leave this for the mac owners now as I don't want to confuse the issue