Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[MSchott]

Running 24.0.75 on my iMac. I’ve been running this version without issues since it came out but in the last few weeks a file will stop playing for a few seconds then resume. Nothing has changed in my system in that time. Any suggestions?

[Dennis in FL]

I've also had dropouts but I can't figure out what the cause is.   I had them with 24 and 25 media center and tried various settings like buffer increase.   But every so often - I get it again.   I don't get drops with other music software like itunes or streaming services (Amazon Music).   I also don't get drops with the same Hi Res music files on my Sony HAP player.

Frustrating.

Is this on Macs only?

[bugeyed]

I had what I thought were random drop outs with MC24 on a late 2014 Mac Mini Mojave with an extremely slow spindle drive. Turned out to be caused by Time Machine. It was set to do a back up every hour & every time it started & I was playing music, I would get a drop out from .5 to 2 sec. SSD upgrade fixed it, but I also turned off Auto backup.
Kev

[Awesome Donkey]

Perhaps related to this?

https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,119818.0.html

[MSchott]

Perhaps related to this?

https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,119818.0.html

Thank you. My iMac has the fusion drive. I will try the software update and change buffering on JRiver and report back.

[Dennis in FL]

I also have a fusion.   And I had changed the buffer and already had the software update......ANd thought I had gotten rid of dropouts.   At least they are reduced.  I believe the fusion issue is not the cause.   The first poster in the thread Awesome Donkey linked had his music files on an SSD ---- I still get the dropouts now and then.   Almost like the buffer empties too quickly and then skips while reloading.   

I had thought it was a CPU issue....but as I say above, other music software on the same machine NEVER has dropouts.   Then I thought it was just iso files......but I haven't been diligent about writing down the file types when I get the skips.   

It comes down to - all else can be forgiven....but the playback reliability.

I'm still fiddlin' with it.

[MSchott]

I also have a fusion.   And I had changed the buffer and already had the software update......ANd thought I had gotten rid of dropouts.   At least they are reduced.  I believe the fusion issue is not the cause.   The first poster in the thread Awesome Donkey linked had his music files on an SSD ---- I still get the dropouts now and then.   Almost like the buffer empties too quickly and then skips while reloading.   

I had thought it was a CPU issue....but as I say above, other music software on the same machine NEVER has dropouts.   Then I thought it was just iso files......but I haven't been diligent about writing down the file types when I get the skips.   

It comes down to - all else can be forgiven....but the playback reliability.

I'm still fiddlin' with it.

Unfortunately this is the case with me following the buffer change and software update. I haven't played a lot of music yet but am still getting dropouts. The strange thing is 2-3 weeks ago this was not the case.

[Dennis in FL]

I wonder if it is possible to poll the Mac users to find a common setting, or hardware issue causing this?   Or there is a deep, hard to find,  bug in JRiver MC with only Macs.   I just disabled my Norton Firewall and other protections.   While I was doing it, I got several dropouts......but shortly there after I got several short drops and one was over a second long. 

I also have Windows on my MAC.....by using the software Parallels.   Do you have something similar?  I disabled it completely as a test and I still got dropouts and turned it back on.     

So I've eliminated Parallels & Norton, with Toslink and USB/DAC outputs.  What else?   I have a Mac laptop with an SSD.  I can try that.

[JimH]

Please read this thread:
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,119818.0.html

and the links in it.  Particularly DJLegba's link to a report of an Apple problem.

[JimH]

We added that to the Weird Problems thread back in March:

https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,24031.msg828535.html#msg828535

[Dennis in FL]

Yep, I saw that thread and posted my results in it. 

I just hooked up my Apple laptop to my USB DAC and while still using the main MC library on my desktop Mac I had zero drop outs for over 30 minutes at the default buffer settings.   I then changed my desktop settings back to the default while still listening to the laptop and there was a very short hiccup the moment I changed the settings on the desktop server.   

My laptop is a few months old and my desktop is 5 years old.

Another 30 minutes of listening again gave zero dropouts.

Then I turned on Time Machine on the laptop and I got drop outs.   ARGH!!!!

Time machine is a background backup utility.  But after that initial drop out....I didn't get any others - and I've been listening now for over 30 minutes.

Is this something you can isolate on your end......it is frustrating trying to debug something like this and basically MC is unusable.  I have a Sony HAP Hi Res player and it never has dropouts on the same files so I can eliminate that.   I have files on different hard drives and it isn't any particular hard drive.   I have USB 3.0 on all drives and very high speed internet.   I have tried USB and toslink outputs.   

 

[JimH]

At this point, it doesn't appear to be a JRiver problem. 

[blgentry]

As I've stated previously:

1.  Dropouts occur when RAM is heavily utilized.  So, when you have lots of stuff open and they use most of your RAM dropouts are more likely.
2.  Disk access seems to be an issue here.  Not just I/O speed.  But more like "touching" the filesystem can cause problems.  I've noticed that when my file systems got more than ~70% full, the dropouts started happening a lot more often.  There's something odd with Macs and touching file systems.  For example, when you have external drives that are sleeping (hardware setting inside the drive) and you open a file on a drive that is AWAKE, Mac usually (but not always) wakes up all of the external drives first.  This causes the mac to "beach ball" until the external drives wake up and return status.  Even though the file being asked for was not on that drive.  I do not understand this.  Just reporting.
3.  JRiver spent what seemed to be a decent amount of time trying to replicate this and were unable to.  All of their test machines have SSDs.  My one Mac that has this problem has a spinning disk.  I think on Macs with SSDs as their main drive, dropouts are not an issue.
4.  Try GIANT buffer sizes.  500 mS worked well for me.   1000 mS made my dropouts (seemingly) disappear altogether.

Brian.

[Dennis in FL]

I tried my laptop with an SSD and got dropouts but the library was on the iMac with the spinning disks.

I'll give a test with a hi res file on the local SSD drive.....

[MSchott]

Please read this thread:
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,119818.0.html

and the links in it.  Particularly DJLegba's link to a report of an Apple problem.

Thanks Jim. That thread was referenced earlier in this current thread. I have downloaded the latest version of Mojave and increased buffering to 750. My iMac is the 27” model with 1TB Fusion drive and 8GB of RAM. I’m using only about 20% of the hard drive.

[Dennis in FL]

Well, I seem to be drop out free for some time now - even when Time Machine runs.

What is different? 

Not much

 I created a new smaller library with all music files on a single external hard drive and only about 1/4 of the files.   That's it.