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[jdindc]

I have read through all of the previous threads about people who have had audio dropouts when using their Mac Mini to run MC.  Unless I missed something, the problem was never fully solved -- although some people were successful in lessening the frequency of the dropouts.

A bit of background.  I downloaded MC 24 last year and ran it on my MacBook Pro (Early 2015; 8gb RAM).  I had occasional audio dropouts of about 2 seconds.  But I always assumed that the problem was that I was using my MacBook to run many other applications at the same time, and therefore that the dropouts were caused by the strain on my MacBook's memory.  That's why I purchased a 2018 Mac Mini with 8gb RAM to use as a dedicated music server running MC.  I even optimized it for audio performance by removing or turning off all non-essential functions and applications.

Unfortunately, the dropouts continued on my new setup.  They seem to occur randomly; there seems to be no relation to the whether the file being played in 44.1kHz or 192kHz.  And because I don't use the computer for anything else, they always occur when the only thing the Mac Mini is doing is playing music.  I have checked the Activity Monitor after a dropout occurs and never saw anything that stands out; I also confirmed that I have more than enough available memory.  I have tried several of the recommendations suggested in previous threads, including increasing my buffer.

A bit more info.  My USB DAC (ESS Sabre 32-Bit) is inside my integrated amplifier (Yamaha AS-801).  My music files (mostly FLAC) are on an external hard drive.  But in order to rule the external hard drive out as the cause of the dropouts, I moved some of the files to my Mac Mini (which has SSD memory), and then played only those files.  But the dropouts persisted.

Having spent a bunch of money a new setup solely to prevent dropouts, I am discouraged.  I would greatly appreciate any help.  I am not as computer savvy as most people on this forum.  But I will do my best.  Thanks in advance.

Josh

[blgentry]

I had a thread about this a while back on my Macbook Pro.  I spent quite a lot of time and effort trying to resolve it.  That's not quite strong enough.  I spent months with many, many, many hours of effort towards fixing this.  What I found, in the end, is a buffer of 750 to 1000 mS fixed the vast majority of my dropouts.  My dropouts were extremely brief.  You said yours are around 2 seconds each.  Mine were something like 1/10 to 1/4 of a second.  Very quick, but you could hear them easily.

When I changed hardware and got a much more capable iMac, I never saw the dropouts again. 

Have you tried using a software buffer as big as I have recommended?  To be very clear I mean this setting:

Tools > Options > Audio > Audio Device > Device Settings > Buffering > Software > (set value here)

How are you connected to your DAC?  USB?  Network?  SPDIF?  Something else?

I might be buying a Mac Mini soon to use as an HTPC, so I'm interested in this topic.  On the other hand, I have a Raspberry Pi 3 running raspian linux and using MC24 for Linux.  I do not EVER recall hearing an audio dropout on that platform.  So I might just buy 2 or 3 Pis instead.  We'll see.

Good luck!

Brian.

[jdindc]

Thanks for the reply, Brian.  I read through the long thread on this subject from 2015, so I know that you and a few other people put a lot of time and effort into trying to find a fix.  I've tried most of the suggestions made in that thread and a few other forum threads that mentioned dropouts. 

Today I tried memory playback and also completely removing MC from my computer and then installing a fresh copy.  But neither change stopped the dropouts.  (I was surprised that memory playback didn't help.)  As usual, the dropouts occurred when MC was the only thing running on my computer, and when I had a few gigabytes of unused memory (according to Activity Monitor).

To answer your questions, the largest buffer I have tried was 500 ms (so I will try 750 and 1000), and my DAC is connected via USB.

Josh

[RayG]

I have an old (2012) Mac Mini. I had dropouts, skips and stutters, even after I upgraded to 16GB of RAM. Then I replaced the HDD with an SSD. Problem 99% gone.

[jdindc]

Thanks, Ray.  I tried moving some music files to the SSD drive on my Mac Mini and then only playing those files, but the dropouts continued at pretty much the same frequency.

This morning I tried increasing the buffer to 1,000 ms, but that didn't stop the dropouts either.

I'm not a computer expert, but the fact that using memory playback didn't stop (or noticeably reduce) the dropouts makes me think that whatever is causing them isn't memory-related.

Question: If the "EQ" bars near the top of MC (that move as a song plays) were to keep moving during a dropout, would that prove that the dropout was not caused by MC or something that occurred before the file moved through MC, such as the hard drive?  I've never been able to look quickly enough to notice before the music restarted.  But I will keep trying.

Josh 

[jdindc]

I don't know if it helps, but I was able to confirm that the "EQ" bars continue to move during a dropout.

Josh

[blgentry]

jdindc:  Did you say your dropouts are LONG, like 2 seconds each?  That's very different than what I experienced on my system.  That might indicate a different failure mechanism.  Have you tried a different DAC?  Or maybe the internal sound card of the Mac?  Just trying to isolate the variables.

Brian.

[blgentry]

RayG:

Your SSD experience seems similar to mine in some ways.  My MacBook Pro that had the problem had a regular spinning hard drive in it.  At one point I did a FULL reinstall of everything from scratch on that Mac.  My initial tests, after reinstallation, showed no dropouts!  But then I started loading more programs, and more media files (like videos that were large, which pushed the drive utilization up.  What's really odd is, the more full my drive got, I started noticing dropouts.  As it got more full, I got more dropouts.

I never got that drive "very full" (like over 90%), but I definitely noticed a correlation between drive fullness and dropouts.

My new Mac had an SSD from the start and quadruple the RAM, and a faster processor.  It's never had dropouts.  Not sure what combination influenced that the most.  The SSD might be the whole key.  Or not. 

Brian.

[DJLegba]

Are you aware of this? It certainly sounds like something that could be relevant.

http://cdm.link/2019/02/apple-2018-glitch/?fbclid=IwAR2RD3_r5nGms0j4HMHdxSqaSwpWXGhbxfJAJACDK7c2fFfd7Bb7zlY2KSw

[Awesome Donkey]

Oh wow, that's not good. Hopefully Apple fixes that ASAP in an update.

[JimH]

Are you aware of this? It certainly sounds like something that could be relevant.

http://cdm.link/2019/02/apple-2018-glitch/?fbclid=IwAR2RD3_r5nGms0j4HMHdxSqaSwpWXGhbxfJAJACDK7c2fFfd7Bb7zlY2KSw

Thanks for that.

[bugeyed]

i had what I thought to be random drop outs until I turned off Time Machine auto backup. It was happening every hour, so it seemed random. My mac mini late 2014 also had a horribly slow hard drive before I replaced it with an SSD, but turning off auto backup fixed the drop outs before I changed the drive.
Kev

[JimH]

Thanks.  I've added both of those reports to the "Weird Problems" thread.

[RayG]

Am I the only Mac user who's never looked at that thread because it's filed under Windows?

[Awesome Donkey]

Am I the only Mac user who's never looked at that thread because it's filed under Windows?

True, but usually the MC for Windows forum section is the "main" forum section.

[jdindc]

Thanks to everyone for their tips and suggestions.  To respond to Brian's question, my dropouts are between 2 and 3 seconds.  I have done a lot of experimenting in an effort to isolate the variables.

First, given prior experimenting and Brian's comment, I suspected that the problem might be related to either my USB cable or my USB DAC.  So rather than connect my Mac Mini to my USB DAC (which is inside my integrated amp), I used a 3.5mm to 2-Male RCA Adapter Cable to connect the MM's headphone jack to an analog input on the amp.  This meant that I was using the MM's internal DAC.  I was still using MC to play the same music files.  I played music this way for hours with no dropouts.  (If it weren't for the drastically inferior sound quality of MM's internal DAC, I'd just keep this setup.)

Second, to eliminate MC as the cause of the problem, I played the same music files using my normal USB setup (MM's USB output to USB DAC), but I used iTunes instead of MC.  The dropouts returned.

Taking the above two experiments together, I initially figured that the problem was either my USB cable or my USB DAC.  I was going to buy a better quality USB cable to rule that as the cause out.  Then, if that didn't work, I was going to see if the dropouts persisted with another USB DAC.

But then I saw DJLegba's post about audio glitches affecting 2018 Macs.  The glitch is caused by Apple's T2 security chip, and it impacts some external USB 2.0 audio hardware.  I am not sure if this glitch is what is causing my dropouts, but it certainly seems like it could be.  I read everything I could find about the glitch on several forums.  One workaround that seems to have worked for some people is to use a Thunderbolt 3 Dock (such as the CalDigit Thunderbolt 3 Mini Dock).  I'm not exactly sure how the dock solves the problem.  But I believe it bypasses Apple's internal USB, thereby bypassing the glitch.

I also read that Apple is aware of the problem and working on a fix.  But I've learned not to hold my breath waiting for Apple fixes.  But FWIW, the final post on one of the forums (posted 3/16/19) says that "the most recent macOS Mojave developer seed contains changes that improve the reliability of USB audio devices."  So perhaps an OS fix is on the way and my problem will be solved.  If this glitch is the cause of my dropouts, that is.

I know that it now seems likely that MC is not the cause of my dropouts.  So I'm not sure how relevant my posts are to this forum.  But I figured that it might be worth updating people on my situation in case they are experiencing similar audio glitches with their 2018 Macs.

I'd appreciate any thoughts/suggestions that people have.  Thanks again to everyone.

Josh

[blgentry]

Your results seem to strongly indicate that the "2018 T2 bug" is your issue.  I never saw dropouts of the length you have.  Nor was I able to get dropouts from other applications, despite really trying to force the issue by intentionally using TONS of RAM to try to provoke failure.

I'm very hopeful that an OSX update will fix this T2 issue.

Regarding the Thunderbolt dock:  I'm guessing that this fixes the problem because the T2 chip is not used in Thunderbolt communications.  I have a $65-ish box that plugs in to the Thunderbolt port on a Mac and provides one USB3 port and one eSATA port.  It might also "fix the problem" since it is only on the Thunderbolt bus and not on the USB bus.  Looks like it went up in price a bit:

https://www.amazon.com/Kanex-Thunderbolt-eSATA-plus-Adapter/dp/B00LOLBBQQ

Good luck to you.

Brian.

[jdindc]

Thanks, Brian.  I'm very hopeful that you're right and that the next OSX update will fix the problem.  I'll report back as soon as I know.

Josh

[jdindc]

I'm happy to report that it's been several days since I upgraded my 2018 Mac Mini to OS 10.14.4, and I've had no dropouts since.  I'm relieved that the problem seems to be completely fixed.  Thanks to everyone for their help.

Josh

[Awesome Donkey]

Looking at the changelog for 10.14.4, it mentions this...

• Improves the reliability of USB audio devices when used with MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac mini models introduced in 2018.

There ya go, looks like they indeed fixed it.

[Dennis in FL]

I'm using an iMac and my dropouts are quick...less than a second.   I have tried reading in the entire album and closing my separate Windows memory hog (Parallel) and still got them.   I now think I may be getting other audio signals from either the operating system or my internet browser.   

I've played the files themselves on another device (Sony HAP) and they are all fine.

[Awesome Donkey]

Are you using macOS Mojave 10.4.4? If you're not and using an older Mojave, I'd recommend updating ASAP as Apple fixed an audio dropout issue with USB DACs in 10.14.4.

[Dennis in FL]

I thought upgrades were automatic......thanks so much for that alert.   I had an earlier verison....updating now.

[Dennis in FL]

I thought upgrades were automatic......thanks so much for that alert.   I had an earlier verison....updating now.

I upgraded to 10.14.4 but still get the occasional hiccup.   Not too often, but certainly not audiofile quality.
I suspect MS is doing something in the background ?   

Is there a way of changing the priority of background tasks lower?

[JimH]

I'm not sure you can change priorities on a Mac, but we don't ever recommend it.

[Dennis in FL]

I just increased the software buffer one notch and also changed the hardware buffering to MAX.   I still heard a little blip......

THere's also an "integer" option which I didn't understand

[blgentry]

Dennis:

What I'm about to say is mostly my opinion backed up by my own experiences with this.  JRiver staff might disagree.  It's my opinion.

If your iMac has a spinning disk drive and not an SSD, I believe that this is the real source of the problem.  JRiver was never able to duplicate my problem and I believe all of their test machines have SSDs.  My newer iMac (2014) has an SSD and I've never heard any kind of interruption in MC's playback on that Mac.

About the software buffering:  Try at least 500 mS.  500 mostly removed the problem for me.  I believe 750 made it totally go away... it's been a long time since I tested it.

Good luck.
Brian.

[JimH]

We have two Mac's and I don't think either has an SSD.

Edit: I was wrong.  They both have SSD's.

And if a spinning disk was the cause of the problem, that would be a hardware or OS problem.  We just use the OS to read from a disk.

[Dennis in FL]

I have a 2014 iMac with a 3TB fusion drive.   The fusion drive has (I think) a 128GB SSD section but I have no idea which files end up in the SSD - the idea is the SSD gets the most frequent files in use.   

I also have a Macbook Pro with a pure SSD drive but I have yet to try MD25 on it.   Maybe today.

In the mean time, I'll try a little more on the software buffer.

But since I'm reading the entire album into memory.....doesn't that eliminate the disk access speed issues?

[blgentry]

I have some weird theories on why this might be true, but I think simply having a spinning disk drive that is fairly full (over 60%) can cause this to happen.  I might be wrong; this is based on my system and the reports of others.  I don't have any data on Fusion drives so who knows. This is mostly educated guessing anyway as opposed to any kind of real scientific conclusion.

The software buffer should really help.  500mS should remove most of your dropouts.  750 *should* eliminate them entirely.  I would bet your system with the SSD will have none.  I'll be interested to hear your results.

Good luck!

Brian.

[Dennis in FL]

I just played about 30 minutes of a classical album and so far I heard no dropouts at 500.    Previously - there was a hiccup maybe every 5 minutes or so.   

But something strange happened with MS....It was almost frozen.   I couldn't stop playback.   Eventually I went to Playback>Stop in the menu and that worked.   I was getting no response from the "buttons" however.   I wonder if that was a result of the new settings.

[Dennis in FL]

I had a thread about this a while back on my Macbook Pro.  I spent quite a lot of time and effort trying to resolve it.  That's not quite strong enough.  I spent months with many, many, many hours of effort towards fixing this.  What I found, in the end, is a buffer of 750 to 1000 mS fixed the vast majority of my dropouts.  My dropouts were extremely brief.  You said yours are around 2 seconds each.  Mine were something like 1/10 to 1/4 of a second.  Very quick, but you could hear them easily.

When I changed hardware and got a much more capable iMac, I never saw the dropouts again. 


Brian.

Brian....I'm still having this issue with a 2014 iMac.....can you share what hardware you now have that doesn't have this problem?   

PS: I don't use a USB DAC yet.....right now I am just using the MAC optical out directly to my receiver.

[DJLegba]

Brian....I'm still having this issue with a 2014 iMac.....can you share what hardware you now have that doesn't have this problem?   

PS: I don't use a USB DAC yet.....right now I am just using the MAC optical out directly to my receiver.

I tried to add Airplay support to my system with an old Airport Express device, using the Toslink port from the AE to my DAC, but I got regular dropouts. Further research revealed that the AE's Toslink output exhibits jitter beyond the tolerance of my main DAC. Interestingly, I also have a Naim Muso Qb that works fine with Toslink from the AE (this was just a test - the Qb already supports Airplay, so I don't actually need the AE device with the Qb).

My main DAC works just fine with Toslink input from a Google Chromecast Audio device, and from my old Toshiba TV, so in my case the AE's optical out is definitely the culprit. That may not be your problem, but it's something to think about.

[Dennis in FL]

For a test of outputs --  I just tried hooking up my USB DAC to headphones instead of they way I had it --- Toslink to a Denon receiver.   

I also returned the buffer to 150 from 750.   

So far I have had two drop outs (DFF file).  Seems worse.

Argh!!!

[DJLegba]

Do you get dropouts with hi res FLAC or ALAC files?

[Dennis in FL]

It was a DFF hi res file

I just increased the buffer back to 250 ms and so far it's OK......but I need to test longer.

[Dennis in FL]

" ... Some [apple mac] applications have trouble with audio above 16/44.1. If any applications you use don’t play audio correctly after making this change, you’ll need to switch back to 44100.0 kHz and 2ch-16bit—at least while using those programs."

from https://www.macworld.com/article/1160651/how-to-find-and-play-high-resolution-audio-on-the-mac.html

[blgentry]

Brian....I'm still having this issue with a 2014 iMac.....can you share what hardware you now have that doesn't have this problem?   

My main Mac is pretty beefy:  2014 27" iMac, quad core i7, 32 GB RAM, SSD main disk.  I really think the SSD is the part that matters, but it's an educated guess.

Brian.

[blgentry]

" ... Some [apple mac] applications have trouble with audio above 16/44.1. If any applications you use don’t play audio correctly after making this change, you’ll need to switch back to 44100.0 kHz and 2ch-16bit—at least while using those programs."

from https://www.macworld.com/article/1160651/how-to-find-and-play-high-resolution-audio-on-the-mac.html

One of the reasons to buy JRiver MC is that it handles audio sample rate/bit depth changes for you transparently.  I have never had to touch the Audi Midi settings on my Mac while using MC.  It does it all for you for all audio rates supported by your DAC.

Brian.

[Dennis in FL]

I have a very similar Mac...except I have a 3TB fusion drive.   the rest is the same....32GB RAM, i7 quad core, etc.

I'm going to give Apple a call and see if there's anything they know. 

In the mean time, I'll try a mega buffer.

[bob]

It was a DFF hi res file

I just increased the buffer back to 250 ms and so far it's OK......but I need to test longer.

Playing in DSD bitstreaming mode to the Dac or PCM?

[Dennis in FL]

I have encoding and bitstreaming set to "none"

[Awesome Donkey]

That means MC is converting DSD to PCM on-the-fly, which is a very resource intensive operation (one of the most intensive tasks MC can do, especially multichannel content). That might be the source of your dropouts, the Mac's hardware might not be powerful enough to handle that conversion on-the-fly, hence the dropouts.

If your DAC supports DSD (DoP) I'd try enabling DSD bitstreaming and seeing if the dropouts cease - I wouldn't be surprised if they stop.

[bob]

That means MC is converting DSD to PCM on-the-fly, which is a very resource intensive operation (one of the most intensive tasks MC can do, especially multichannel content). That might be the source of your dropouts, the Mac's hardware is simply not powerful enough to handle that conversion on-the-fly, hence dropouts.

If your DAC supports DSD (DoP) I'd try enabling DSD bitstreaming and seeing if the dropouts cease - I wouldn't be surprised if they stop.

Just tested with DSD bitstreaming here on a 2012 Mini with10.14.4,  lots of memory and an ssd... No gapping noted

[Dennis in FL]

I have a ESS Sabre32 Reference ES9018-K2M DAC chip (Supports PCM audio up to 384 kHz / 32-bit, DSD audio up to 12 MHz (DSD256 or DSD4x) ) on USB

I changed to DSD 1X (4X) didn't work) and DSD bitstreaming.....so far the playback is perfect.   I need to give it more like an hour long test.

Previously I had Core Out (imac) toslink or the above to my receiver with none/none

[Awesome Donkey]

I changed to DSD 1X (4X) didn't work) and DSD bitstreaming.....so far the playback is perfect.   I need to give it more like an hour long test.

Which would confirm my thought, the Mac isn't capable of handling DSD-to-PCM conversions on-the-fly without issues.

Also using DSP Studio's Output Format > Output Encoding set to DSD 1X, 2X or 4X would invoke a conversion process (in the case of resampling DSD 1X to let's say 2X or 4X will always go through a DSD > PCM > DSD conversion with a PCM stage always in the middle) and you'd probably experience the dropouts because the Mac hardware isn't capable of handling it on-the-fly.

[Dennis in FL]

I guess it boils down to the MC default settings for a MAC.   Which is where I was last week.   

So output encoding to the DAC should be NONE?   

Note that NONE is also recommended as the choice for bistreaming.

I have it as dsd


The iMac I have is decent - an i7 quad core at 4GHz wtih 32GB memory

[MSchott]

I have a ESS Sabre32 Reference ES9018-K2M DAC chip (Supports PCM audio up to 384 kHz / 32-bit, DSD audio up to 12 MHz (DSD256 or DSD4x) ) on USB

I changed to DSD 1X (4X) didn't work) and DSD bitstreaming.....so far the playback is perfect.   I need to give it more like an hour long test.

Previously I had Core Out (imac) toslink or the above to my receiver with none/none

Can you please list the steps to make this change? I changed Output Encoding to DSD in DoP format and also to DSD Bitstreaming. Is this correct?

[Dennis in FL]

That's what I did also.   I originally had encoding to none but I got an error on one file.   I changed it back to DSD 1x.   I assumed that goes directly to the DAC chip but one of the subsequent errors I got was Core Audio related.   I am still a novice here and have been spending a lot of time since getting MC last month on this one problem.

I hope these settings are the correct ones.

[Awesome Donkey]

If DSD bitstreaming works for you, I'd recommend set output encoding as none and let DSD be bitstreamed and PCM to playback as PCM without any conversion. This way you avoid any conversions, and with no conversions, less chance of dropouts (or they may be eliminated completely).