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[Tango-DJ]

MC 29 regularly freezes (stuck at "Buffering...") when playing new files. The freeze lasts 5–10 seconds. This happens one out of ~10 times I try to play a new file, i.e. very often.

I followed the "first steps" in the troubleshooting guide. A log is attached. I confirm I have the latest MC build. My computer is a maxed-out 2021 Macbook Pro (Apple M1 Max, 64 GB Ram, 8 TB SSD). The files are on a local hard drive. My hard drive is working fine. I don't have any antivirus software. Activity Monitor doesn't show anything unusual, e.g. MC is consuming around 2.5% of CPU and around 350 MB of memory.

[bob]

/Google Drive/ in the path?
Is it really local?
Are lyrics lookup turned on for playback? If so, try turning it off.

[Tango-DJ]

Sorry for the delay. Yes, the files are local—they are just uploaded to Google Drive for backup purposes.

I turned off lyrics lookup, but it made no difference.

The freezes persist in MC30, with the same frequency.

[blgentry]

Are you saying that you personally created a folder named "Google Drive" and put all of your music in it?  MC is playing files from that folder.  If that folder is actually in Google cloud storage, that could explain the delays.

I would try removing these Google Drive files from MC.  If for no other reason than it is confusing to be calling local files by a remote service name.  Have MC import the files from their primary location in Music or wherever you have them.

Brian.

[Tango-DJ]

'Google Drive' is a folder that Google Drive creates automatically when the app is installed. It is analogous to the 'Dropbox' folder created by the Dropbox app. All the files stored in this folder are local; the only difference is that a copy of these files is stored on the cloud. All my personal files, including my music collection, are stored inside this folder, to minimize the chance of data loss. It is not feasible for me to exclude my music collection from Google Drive, since it would involve finding an alternative backup solution, and I doubt this is causing the freezes anyway.

[blgentry]

I find it suspicious that you have this unusual problem and you just happen to have all of your files in a "cloud" created folder.

I would suggest that you copy half a dozen albums out of there into your Music folder.  Make a new MC database and import just those few albums.  Then play them for a while and see if you get a freeze.  If you do, then my suspicion is probably wrong.  If there are no freezes then that might indicate the source of the problem.

Perhaps someone else has other ideas to try.

Brian.

[Dawgincontrol]

I'm thinking it is what's causing the buffering.

Copy some folders/albums to a different folder on your computer (ie C:\Music), set up MC to look there and test them. 

If that works, you can still keep your back-ups on the "Google Drive.

Basically agree with bigentry above.

[zybex]

Sorry for the delay. Yes, the files are local—they are just uploaded to Google Drive for backup purposes.

Files in Google Drive are not assured to be locally materialized in the default "streaming mode" config. They are fetched to your local PC on demand, and "emptied" when unused for some time. You still see the filename and full file size, but there's actually nothing there until an app tries to read it. This causes your buffering issues (and likely the import issues on the other thread). This feature is meant to allow you to have hundreds of GB in the folder while actually not taking much space in your drive.

On the Windows version of Google Drive you can set it to "mirror mode" where all files are locally materialized. You may need a larger disk for that, but it should work. After enabling that give it some time to actually pull all files, check the progress status.

[Tango-DJ]

Files in Google Drive are not assured to be locally materialized in the default "streaming mode" config. They are fetched to your local PC on demand, and "emptied" when unused for some time.

I understand that, but I am not using the "streaming mode" config. As noted above, the files are locally stored.

Although I was reasonably confident this would not solve the issue, I chose to temporarily uninstall Google Drive. Since the 'Google Drive' folder is an ordinary directory in my file system, the only thing special about it is that it is watched by the Google Drive app and synchronized with a remote copy whenever the local file changes. With that app gone, the 'Google Drive' folder is exactly like any other folder. Alas, the problem persists: the second file I tried to play triggered the "buffering..." problem.

[zybex]

Make sure you reboot to unload the GDrive driver.

[Tango-DJ]

I just did that and the problem persists. Attached is a log report, in case it helps diagnosing. After resetting the log, I started playing tracks and the second or third track I played ("Amarga sospecha") triggered a 5–10 second freeze.

[Tango-DJ]

After spending +30 minutes searching and browsing this forum, I came across several similar reports. Example:

There is one small issue that existed long before V30 that you might want to investigate. Occasionally, maybe once out of 10 times, when double clicking to play an MP3, MC stalls for about 3 seconds saying it is "buffering". I know this is not caused by my hard drive spinning up because a minute earlier a different MP3 on the same drive played without a buffering delay.

This is exactly what I'm experiencing: indeed, this user's "maybe once out of 10 times" corresponds to my original observation that "This happens one out of ~10 times".

[Tango-DJ]

I appreciate the feedback, but as I noted above, Google Drive has been ruled out as the culprit given that the problem persists after I uninstalled the app and restarted the computer. Moreover, this is an issue that has been reported by other users who do not use Google Drive. At this point, Google Drive has become a red herring, that is preventing us from identifying the real cause of this issue.

[bob]

The log has a log of these:

0005238: 6166228992: Playback: CCoreAudioPlugin::CoreAudioPlayCallback: Error check failed!, outOutputData=600003a4fac0, outOutputData->mNumberBuffers=1, m_aryStreamChannels.GetSize()=0

Seems to indicate an issue with core audio.
What's the output device?
Are the device options set to exclusive or not?