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[Vocalpoint]

While I realize v19 has been sunsetted - we are still using it full time as we make the slow transition to v20.

One thing I have noticed (for whatever reason) lately is my RAM usage in MC when simply playing a track in v19. While I always open Task Manager for all sort of things - just in the last ten days or so - I have been noticing MC seems to use around 130 MB of RAM (which seems excessive) when in use. I also remember previous versions immediately shedding their RAM load when the app was minimizing either to the tray or to the taskbar - but my RAM usage seems to remain consistent.

Is this a normal range for you guys? I seem to remember MC using like 20MB of RAM in a minimized state - and maybe 50 with the app up...and just want to make sure I am not seeing things here?

Appreciate any updates.

VP

[dtc]

Running MC 19 on Windows 7 I am around 40 MB to 50 MB.  On a Windows 8 client (TRemote) I am at 60 MB.  Not sure why the difference, but nothing close to 100 MB. I am running audio only and doing nothing fancy.

[Vocalpoint]

I think I found the culprit - I have Play Files From Memory checked under Playback Options.

Makes sense that reading the files into memory upon playback is going to make the memory usage go up

Just wondering if this option has any real benefits tho.

Any comments on this would be appreciated.

VP

[Arindelle]

I think I found the culprit - I have Play Files From Memory checked under Playback Options.

Makes sense that reading the files into memory upon playback is going to make the memory usage go up

Just wondering if this option has any real benefits tho.

Any comments on this would be appreciated.

VP

Personally, I find no sonic benefits (sound quality) whatsoever, and am sort of a skeptic regarding people saying they do hear differences. But to each his own opinion

However, I have a slow network, and I use it on a client when my son is gaming online  -- helps with skips and buffering issues when you are listening to entire albums. I don't like it with playlist as much and separate DSP settings per track or if you are "zapping" a lot. Helps me streaming video though. I never use it on my main system which is fed directly from the media server PC, only on clients.

[Vocalpoint]

Personally, I find no sonic benefits (sound quality) whatsoever, and am sort of a skeptic regarding people saying they do hear differences. But to each his own opinion

However, I have a slow network, and I use it on a client when my son is gaming online  -- helps with skips and buffering issues when you are listening to entire albums. I don't like it with playlist as much and separate DSP settings per track or if you are "zapping" a lot. Helps me streaming video though. I never use it on my main system which is fed directly from the media server PC, only on clients.

Thanks!

I also noticed another troubling issue yesterday where I had a track playing in MC (local library pointing to media on network server)...and then did a basic album copy (CTRL-C) and then pasted the tracks to a local folder (CTRL-V) in Windows Explorer. While the file copy was happening - MC playback sounded horrible - cutting out every second or two. It smartened up after the copy finished - but I had never had that happen before. Granted - copying files this way is not a normal occurrence for me but it was troubling none the less.

Then I started thinking - if the track is playing from local memory - why is it cutting out? Was the file copy operation using so much CPU that MC can't keep up - even with the entire track (or a good portion of it) in local RAM?

VP

[mwillems]

Thanks!

I also noticed another troubling issue yesterday where I had a track playing in MC (local library pointing to media on network server)...and then did a basic album copy (CTRL-C) and then pasted the tracks to a local folder (CTRL-V) in Windows Explorer. While the file copy was happening - MC playback sounded horrible - cutting out every second or two. It smartened up after the copy finished - but I had never had that happen before. Granted - copying files this way is not a normal occurrence for me but it was troubling none the less.

Then I started thinking - if the track is playing from local memory - why is it cutting out? Was the file copy operation using so much CPU that MC can't keep up - even with the entire track (or a good portion of it) in local RAM?

VP

Did you execute the copy operation near the beginning or end of a track?  I ask because MC's memory playback doesn't necessarily wait for the whole track to enter memory before it starts playing, it gulps up the data and decodes it as fast as it can at the beginning, but playback starts before it's completely finished (otherwise it might take five or ten seconds to start playback).  So MC's memory playback is potentially "vulnerable" in that early-in-the-track time window.  

If that wasn't the case in your instance, I'm not sure what could be causing it; maybe try to reproduce the conditions while looking at resource monitor to see if the CPU is pegging out? 

[Arindelle]

oops MWillems posted at the same time

might not be directly related, but my understanding is its putting 1 whole gigabyte into memory. Now on a fast network it won't matter, but on cpl like me at the moment (sorry powerline I think its called?), it does.  A whole album in flac is usually much less than that. But when changing tracks adding DSPs, cross fading etc; its going to try to reload the gigabyte. A copy/paste is normally in normal ot high prioity, so if the 1Gb hasn't been transferred to local memory, that process probably is lower priority than the copy process (guessing but it makes sense to me ) . edit: I was wrong and is not loading more than a track at a time; apparently I could play the entire album because because of my mapped drives as pointed out below. Not because they were all loaded into memory. Sorry for any confusion, my bad

This would be more obvious in a playlist. But you can test this too, just turn off your server remotely, and even with it off it will play the entire album (or most of it) even with it (mediaserver.exe) off provided that there was enough time to put the tracks into the buffer. Doesn't seem to work that way in a playlist. Might be wrong but zapping on the fly is definately not as responsive with the memory option on.

[Vocalpoint]

My understanding is its putting 1 whole gigabyte into memory.

I am not seeing a GB. I downloaded RAM MAP (awesome tool fro SysInternals) and now when I have been watching this closely - it looks to me like I am seeing a basic 150MB or so for basic MC operation and then additional overhead for the track at hand.

Example - as I type - MC is up and playing nothing...RAM = 157,844 (private total under Ram Map)

Then I fire up the first track of an album - whose physical size is 42.8 MB = MC RAM usage goes to 205MB and remains constant for the entire track playback.

It will then vary per FLAC track size as the next items play - but nothing like 1GB of memory being used.

@mwillems - I will need to test this some more - but it is the first time I have ever experienced it.

Cheers,

VP

[dtc]

Playing from memory only puts only 1 file at a time into memory. At the end of the track it loads the next track. So, the 1 GB is only used if you have a track that is 1 GB or more long. That is why you are seeing smaller memory usage than the full 1 GB. If you look at your track size and the memory size you will see they correlate and will be the same size for uncompressed tracks.

In previous versions, MC put the compressed file (like flac) into memory and decompressed after that. Now, they decompress first and put the uncompressed (wav) data into memory. The change was because some people complained about the extra cpu cycles being used to decompress when a track was playing. Unfortunately, some now are concerned that the uncompressed data is too big (more than 1 GB) and that causes overhead to fetch, decompress and load the data, while the track is playing. You can run into this  if you are playing long high rez files of classical or albums with very long tracks.

In previous version I used play from memory, mostly because it was there. With the new scheme I have dropped using it. I never did hear any real difference.

[randycw]

I have never heard any sonic differences.  However I use MC 19 with Android tablets throughout my house as zone controllers.  Therefore MC often has 4 to 5 zones active and I have found that having it play from memory, versus fetching from the disk, works much better with no skipping.  I ought to point out that I put 12GB of RAM with the plan of having 6 to 8 zones active at any one time.  Turns out we rarely have 6 to 8 separate stream going; we do often have 8 zones active, but two or three are often linked and listening to the same thing.

[Arindelle]

Playing from memory only puts only 1 file at a time into memory.

I didn't know that. 

How is is then that if 1) I choose all tracks of an album to play from a client .. 2) wait a minute or so .. 3) close down media server on the sever pc frome the client remotely -- the entire album can still be played?

(for info I have lettered, networked  drives reading from the server PC, no NAS, not using UNC paths: so files are not local)

[mwillems]

(for info I have lettered, networked  drives reading from the server PC, no NAS, not using UNC paths: so files are not local)

Unless I'm misreading what you're saying, it sounds like its probably because your client still has direct file access to the files in windows. If I'm reading you right, you have drives on the server mapped on the client as network drives. 

In that case the client doesn't need an instance of MC to serve the files (that's the whole point of mounting the network drives on the client).  The client still needs the server to serve the library, and for that reason you're likely to run into problems if you try to keep using the client instance with the server instance off, but you should be able to finish whatever you're currently playing.  You might be able to just keep on going indefinitely (in a read-only mode) if you don't have auto-sync or authentication on.

[Arindelle]

Thanks MWillems and thanks dtc ... always ready to learn 

I'll edit my post so others aren't mislead

[dtc]

You can see the tracks loading just using Task Manager. At the end of the track, MC will be using maybe 300 MB for a large high rez file, or maybe 100 MB for a small CD rez file.  As the track ends,  it will drop back to 50 MB or so, then build up again as it loads the next track. It is particularly obvious if you do it will large files, such as high rez or DSD file. Do it going from a short track  to a long track or the other way around and it is pretty obvious. Originally I bought more memory to try to load the entire album into memory only to find out that it was track by track. The extra memory gained me nothing. It was cheap so I did not really mind. It just took me some time to figure out what the problem was. Unfortunately, this process is not discussed very much, since most people here do not use play from memory.

[Vocalpoint]

Unfortunately, this process is not discussed very much, since most people here do not use play from memory.

Well - I turned this off after this exploration and I find MC much more responsive - the tracks seems to start instantly where before I would always seems to see a quick "buffering..." message top mid screen when a song would start.

The delay would see even a tad longer if a higher res file was being played.

I am going to leave this off for the go-forward since I cannot hear any difference and quite frankly - I shouldn't

Thanks for the all the replies.

Cheers,

VP