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[curtisls87]

I'm running MC 22 for ARM on a Raspberry Pi. I have an iFi Nano connected as the DAC. It has worked very well for me for months. Recently, when I try to play a DSD file (any kind, DFF, DSF, ISO), I intermittently get an error, "There is a problem with playback..." Nothing's changed in my setup, and I've tried rebooting the Pi, and I still get this message. It's odd, because if I click Play on a DSD file a few times, at some point, it will work again.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

[bob]

I'm running MC 22 for ARM on a Raspberry Pi. I have an iFi Nano connected as the DAC. It has worked very well for me for months. Recently, when I try to play a DSD file (any kind, DFF, DSF, ISO), I intermittently get an error, "There is a problem with playback..." Nothing's changed in my setup, and I've tried rebooting the Pi, and I still get this message. It's odd, because if I click Play on a DSD file a few times, at some point, it will work again.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

It would be nice to know what changed.
Version of MC, OS updates, etc.
You could try the following:
Go to a terminal prompt as the user running MC.
do
/usr/lib/jriver/Media\ Center\ 22/alsacap
in the resulting output look for your iFi and see what formats it supports. It will look something like this:

Code: [Select]

Card 1, ID `PCH', name `HDA Intel PCH'
  Device 0, ID `ALC892 Analog', name `ALC892 Analog', 1 subdevices (1 available)
    2..8 channels, sampling rates 44100, 48000, 96000, 192000 Hz
    Sample formats: S16_LE, S32_LE
Under sample formats, if there isn't a S32_LE choose the next best format (generally indicated by the number of bits) and in MC
Tools->Options->Audio->Device Settings
Change it from Auto to the specific format.
Report back!

[curtisls87]

Thanks for the reply. I really appreciate it. However, I'm not sure I gave enough information the first time around.

First I will provide the info you requested. Alsacap shows that the USB audio device has the sample format S32_LE. (see screen cap attached).
 MC 22.0.108
Raspian "Jessie"

 The iFi Nano has the capability to do DoP in 2.8MHz and 5.6MHz. The combination of MC22, Raspberry Pi and iFi Nano has for months been playing DSD files without any problems. When looking at Tools => DSP Options. Per the second screenshot, it shows "Source: DoP 2.8 MHz 1bit 2ch." You can also see that I'm actually playing a DSD file at the time of this screen capture, so it works.

However, intermittently, I have to click several times on a DSD file to get it to play. I will initially get a "Something went wrong with playback..." dialog box until one of the clicks starts the song playing. Then it will play the entire album in DSD without a problem.

This has left me scratching my head. 

[bob]

Where are the files stored?

[curtisls87]

They are stored on a firewire drive connected to a Mac Mini that is running MC Server mode. The Pi is a client across my network. I will note that no other files give me a problem with this arrangement (meaning 24/192, 24/96, etc).

[curtisls87]

I'm going to try a different DSD DAC on the Pi, and see what happens. Probably won't get to it until tonight or tomorrow morning.

[DJLegba]

This could be a network issue. Have you tried rebooting your router?

[curtisls87]

Sorry I haven't gotten back on this thread due to the holiday and family events. I believe this may be a problem with the iFi Nano DAC, although I don't have a conclusive answer just yet.

Per the request, I did try rebooting the router, and at first I thought that was it, but the problem returned shortly afterward.

What I have been able to do is to connect the iFi Nano DAC to an iMac I run Debian on and try it there. Lo and behold, it exhibits the same problem on the Debian machine that it does on the Pi. I will probably test it on a Mac, next. Then, I will also try it with direct DSD through ASIO on a windows machine.

More will be revealed.

[curtisls87]

The Mac test has been run. Connected to a 2017 iMac, the iFi Nano DAC never failed once. It seems to be a combination of that DAC and the Linux machines (the Pi running ARM64 and the old iMac running Debian AMD64). I realize the Pi is not a powerful machine, but the iMac is not bad, and as previously mentioned, I can run PCM 24/192 files without issue. More testing to go.

[curtisls87]

Okay, lots more testing done. I believe I've narrowed this down to the issue:
MC22 for Linux (both ARM64 and AMD64) have problems opening various DSD files over the network when connected to a library on a different computer - almost as if it can't grab the file.

What has me onto this is that I took 9 DSD albums (3 ISO, 3 with individual DSF files, and 3 with individual DFF files) and put them on a hard drive that I connected to the Pi by USB. I've tested constantly over several hours and never had a failure.

I don't believe the network itself is the problem because when I used the iMac/Debian machine, and could finally get a file to play, I could monitor the network traffic in and out of the machine and there was no issue with the file download for each song to play. It would show it was receiving the file at about 10MegaBytes (not bits) per second, which is plenty fast. Additionally, if it were a network problem, when I played it on the Mac, if networking was the problem then I should have seen it there. Also, since 24/192 files play fine, that also seems to show that network speed/latency is not the issue.

So, since the iFi DAC works with MC for Mac, using a remote library over the network, and since the DAC works on the Pi with a local library that leaves only the combination of the Pi working with a remote library as the culprit - and since it will work from time to time with no network issues, it seems to point to MC22 on Linux.

I'm open to any other thoughts, but at this point, it seems like it's a bug with MC22 for Linux.

[JimH]

DSD on a Pi reading from a network drive may be a bit of a stretch.  You're asking a lot from a very low power machine.

[DJLegba]

I don't have a Pi but I seem to recall reading that some models have trouble with concurrent heavy loads on the network and USB ports.

[curtisls87]

DSD on a Pi reading from a network drive may be a bit of a stretch.  You're asking a lot from a very low power machine.

That may be, but I'd like to understand why that is. I monitor the CPU utilization in Task Manager when it plays, and it is only about 25% while loading the song, then drops down below 10%, which is actually less than the 50-60% required when I turn off bit streaming  to play these same files over the network via PCM, and they always start and play in that mode. Additionally, on 24/192 files on my Pi, CPU utilization is almost exactly the same and they always play first time, every time.

Additionally, I found I had the same problem on the iMac/Debian machine, so it's not just the Pi where I'm seeing this.


Not trying to be too much of a pain, and I don't claim to have knowledge of the bit-by-bit process by which this works, but it really seems counterintuitive.

[JimH]

It might be network bandwidth or the ability of the Pi to handle that much data.  It's a lot more data than 24/192.

[curtisls87]

It might be network bandwidth or the ability of the Pi to handle that much data.  It's a lot more data than 24/192.

I honestly don't think so. I have the same problem on the iMac/Debian, which should enough horsepower. When I do get a file to play on that system, I consistently see the file transfer taking about 10 Megabytes per second (not megabits). That should be plenty of bandwidth.

Also, I'm interested in your statement that it's a lot more data than 24/192. My understanding of DoP DSD is that it uses 24/176.4 as it's carrier with 16 bits for signal and 8 bits for management. That should be less data than a file at 24/192.

If my understanding is not correct, I am interested to understand the correct information.

[mwillems]

I honestly don't think so. I have the same problem on the iMac/Debian, which should enough horsepower. When I do get a file to play on that system, I consistently see the file transfer taking about 10 Megabytes per second (not megabits). That should be plenty of bandwidth.

10MB a second is probably significantly more than you can expect to get consistently out of a raspberry pi's ethernet connection.  It's theoretically a 100Mb connection (so ~12MB/sec), but in reality most people see 40 to 60Mb/sec speeds even with no port competition (the USB controller and NIC share a single USB2 controller so they can steal bandwidth from and interrupt each other).  The USB ports actually have higher bandwidth than the NIC in benchmarks, but they still all share a controller.  If 10MB/sec is a steady state rate of data transfer over the network, that is probably not reliably achievable for extended periods on the Pi's network interface. 

I recognize you're seeing this in some cases with Linux on a non-pi system, but that doesn't mean they're necessarily not working for the same reasons.  For example, ISO's haven't historically worked well in a cross-platform client server environment because MC doesn't support cross-platform file names (so the client can't just grab the file directly because it's looking at the wrong path), and MC can't natively serve ISOs (like it does with, say, MP3s or FLACs), so the inability to play ISOs on a client machine that isn't running the same OS as the server machine is (last I checked) a known problem.  DSF and DFF may be a different story if MC can serve them natively (I have no DSD files, so I can't test).

If your server is a Mac, that would explain why Mac clients have no problems, but linux clients do.  In any case, the Pi may not be up to the task of streaming large files over the network in real time.

[bob]

Another possibility involves the linux network reader code which we've recently rewritten to be more efficient. There were some issues with it however and the last build had to be re-worked. What build are you running?

[curtisls87]

Hi Guys,
I continue to be thankful for your responses - I'm learning a lot!

Bob, I'm running 22.0.108.

[akira54]

I do not want to hijack this thread but am interested in the nature of the disruption when playing DSD files. When I try to play a SACD iso it will play for 20 seconds then stop for a few seconds then start again. It never improves. The RPI 3 is served the file by a NAS (nfs connection) over the lan. When I do the same using MC22 on a W7 machine there are no such interruptions. 

[JimH]

The Raspberry Pi has limited CPU.  A NAS connection could be limited bandwidth.

[bob]

Hi Guys,
I continue to be thankful for your responses - I'm learning a lot!

Bob, I'm running 22.0.108.

Can you give 22.0.111-5 a try please?

[curtisls87]

Can you give 22.0.111-5 a try please?

Wasn't able to get to it until this morning. I installed the 111.5 build and have been listening for a while. I did get the failure once or twice, but that was in hard core testing (I was starting and stopping files over and over), not regular listening. In the latter, I haven't had any problems so far. I will continue playing with it over the next few days and let you know what I find.

[bob]

Wasn't able to get to it until this morning. I installed the 111.5 build and have been listening for a while. I did get the failure once or twice, but that was in hard core testing (I was starting and stopping files over and over), not regular listening. In the latter, I haven't had any problems so far. I will continue playing with it over the next few days and let you know what I find.

Thanks