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[shAf]

With some talk of finalizing v.11, I thought I better reports some wierd playback problems with last release (299).

MP3 tracks are simply failing to play.  One track will finish, the next will queue, but nothing happens.  I tried to stop/start a Neil Young MP3 and it progressed, but was silent.  It didn't play correctly until I quit/restarted MC.

The same happened with another track, but restarting it worked.

And, I just stopped/restarted a Paul Simon track because he sounded like the chipmunks.  At the moment MC seems to be playing all tracks correctly, and it's difficult to tracethe problems to anything specific.

tia 

Media Center Registered 11.0.299 -- E:\music\J River\MC11\

Microsoft Windows 2000 5.0 Service Pack 4 (Build 2195)
Intel Pentium 4 2408 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 523 MB, Free - 167 MB

Internet Explorer: 6.0.2800.1106 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.81 / Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2800.1612 (xpsp2.041207-1145) / Shell32.dll: 5.00.3900.7032 / wnaspi32.dll: N/A
Ripping /   Drive D: PLEXTOR DVDR   PX-708A    Mode:ModeSecure  Type:Auto  Speed:2
  Digital playback: Yes /  Use YADB: Yes /  Get cover art: Yes /  Calc replay gain: Yes /  Copy volume: 32767
  Eject after ripping: No /  Play sound after ripping: No 

Burning /  Drive D: PLEXTOR  DVDR   PX-708A     Addr: 1:1:0  Speed:5  MaxSpeed:5  BurnProof:Yes
  Test mode: No /  Eject after writing: No /  Direct decoding: Yes /  Write CD-Text: No
  Use playback settings: No /  Normalization: None

[shAf]

... sorry to bump this back into existence, but build 303 does the same thing.  Playback will simply stop at the beginning of tracks.  The playback buttons show 'stop' and 'pause', as if it should be playing.

... any advice to troubleshoot(?)

tia 

[GHammer]

I've seen this a couple of times in the past week.
Always on an MP3. Could be just luck that an APE/APL hasn't done it.

[shAf]

I may have found a clue, and it would seem to point at MC11's MP3 decoder ... leastwise, the following described MP3 tracks used to play fine.

Today, the errant tracks are rips from DVDs ... e.g., Sarah McLachlan's Mirrorball and Neil Young's Greendale (live).  They are Lame 3.92 rips and difficult to believe the is the encoder.  The only difference I can find is these are 48000Hz, while most MP3s are 44100.

As an experiment, I tried to convert these to OGG but they gained playback time (480:441) and played slow.

Is it a bug in the decoder, or did I miss a playback compatibility setting somewhere?

EDIT: I should have mentioned ... these 48000Hz will play fine, BUT playback halts when going from 44100Hz to 48000, and again when going from 48000Hz to 44100.

tia 

[Alex B]

I can't reproduce the playback problem on my system. I tried with several 44.1 and 48 kHz mp3 files. I guess it depends on which playback settings are selected (the DSP and track change options) and/or which soundcard & drivers are used. You didn't describe yours.

The Ogg Vorbis encoder plug-in seems to have a bug.

I converted some 48 kHz MP3 files to several formats. I used MC11, Foobar2000 and MS Windows Media Encoder. I'll make a table and post the test results soon.

[GHammer]

Hmmm, I have no 48K files in my library.

[Alex B]

Well, I didn't make a table. My findings are clear without it.

MC converts correctly 48 kHz mp3 and wave files to the following formats:

Wave, Monkey's Audio, MP3, Musepack (using the external encoder plug-in), FLAC (using the FLAC plug-in). All of these are 48 kHz after the conversion.

MC makes a mistake when it converts 48 kHz files to Ogg Vorbis format. It doesn't resample the files, but they are wrongly marked as a 44.1 kHz and they play too slowly in all player programs. The command line Vorbis encoder and some other GUI programs handle encoding 48 kHz files correctly so the problem seems to be in the MC's Vorbis encoder plug-in.

When converting to Windows Media format the files are always 44.1 kHz after the conversion. However, the WM encoder resamples the files correctly and they play at the normal speed. The WM encoder itself could make 48 kHz files, but MC doesn't have adequate encoding options.

[shAf]

I can't reproduce the playback problem on my system. I tried with several 44.1 and 48 kHz mp3 files. I guess it depends on which playback settings are selected (the DSP and track change options) and/or which soundcard & drivers are used. You didn't describe yours.

The Ogg Vorbis encoder plug-in seems to have a bug.
[...]

Thanx for looking in to this.  I didn't think to disable the DSP settings I use. However, that does not seem to help on this problematic installation at my home HTPC.

I tried several playback ptions ... to no avail ..

Not until did I switch from ASIO out to wave out was the switch over from 44.1k o 48k (and vice versa) remedied.

My HTPC employs the Revo 7.1 and its driver's ASIO buffer size is set to 2048 latency samples.

It's too bad that your implimentation of the OGG encoded is flawed ... an it be fixed?

tia
~~~~~~~~
Media Center Registered 11.0.299 -- E:\music\J River\MC11\

Microsoft Windows 2000 5.0 Service Pack 4 (Build 2195)
Intel Pentium 4 2395 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 523 MB, Free - 230 MB

Internet Explorer: 6.0.2800.1106 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.81 / Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2800.1612 (xpsp2.041207-1145) / Shell32.dll: 5.00.3900.7032 / wnaspi32.dll: N/A
Ripping /   Drive D: PLEXTOR DVDR   PX-708A    Mode:ModeSecure  Type:Auto  Speed:2
  Digital playback: Yes /  Use YADB: Yes /  Get cover art: Yes /  Calc replay gain: Yes /  Copy volume: 32767
  Eject after ripping: No /  Play sound after ripping: No 

Burning /  Drive D: PLEXTOR  DVDR   PX-708A     Addr: 1:1:0  Speed:40  MaxSpeed:40  BurnProof:Yes
  Test mode: No /  Eject after writing: No /  Direct decoding: Yes /  Write CD-Text: No
  Use playback settings: No /  Normalization: None

[Alex B]

Can your Revo automatically switch sample rates on the fly? When you use Wave Out the Windows kernel driver handles the situation. With ASIO the soundcard gets unaltered audio stream.

My Terratec DMX 6fire 24/96 soundcard has an automatic switch and ASIO can be used with different sample rates. Though, I have not tried cross-fading different sample rate files. I guess that would be a problem anyway.

One solution could be to resample everything to 48 kHz (or to 44.1 kHz if the 48 kHz files are minority). MC has 32-bit internal signal processing and it uses Shibatch's high quality resample filters. I doubt you will hear any quality differences.

The 48 kHz Ogg Vorbis problem is clearly a bug and should be fixed.

[shAf]

One solution could be to resample everything to 48 kHz (or to 44.1 kHz if the 48 kHz files are minority). MC has 32-bit internal signal processing and it uses Shibatch's high quality resample filters. I doubt you will hear any quality differences.

My RIP'd DVDs are a definite minority ... just several albums.  How can MC be used to resample?

[Alex B]

Options > Playback > DSP & output format > Output format > Sample Rate > Select 44,100 Hz

DSP Studio has also a separate button.