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[blgentry]

I'm using OS X 10.9.5 "Mavericks", which is the latest version of this branch.

I don't think I've done anything you'd categorize as OS modifications.  I've changed an option in energy saving.  The renice stuff didn't work, so I abandoned it.

The only even slightly non-standard thing I've done (that I can think of) is to create symbolic links inside of the Media Center app to outside directories and files.  One link to a Custom Resources directory so I can use Resource.xml to do key mapping.  Then a half dozen symbolic links from the Skins/Standard View directory (inside of the app) to some skins outside.

All of this stuff is still on the same drive.  All of it, included the linked files, the OS, the app, and the media on the internal drive.  So I don't think these links make any difference.

I'll post more status after I've got several hours of play time accumulated with this .112 build.

Thanks,

Brian.

[blgentry]

I'm pretty sure this build has made the problem worse.  I've had 7 dropouts in about 2 hours.  Compared to yesterday I got 3 in 2.5 hours.  Here's today's log from when I installed .112 until now.

---log----
5/28  18:20  Installed Media Center 20.0.112

5/28  18:25  Started Playback
5/28  18:26  Dropout.
5/28  18:30  Dropout.  30 MB RAM free.  Over 2 GB cache
5/28  18:37  Pressed Pause

5/28  19:03  Pressed Play to resume
5/28  19:03  Within 5 seconds of pressing play, got a dropout.  This hasn't happened before that I remember.
5/28  19:38  Pressed Pause

5/28  19:40  Pressed play to resume
5/28  19:53  Pressed Pause.  Ran Benchmark.

=== Running Benchmarks (please do not interrupt) ===

Running 'Math' benchmark...
    Single-threaded integer math... 4.916 seconds
    Single-threaded floating point math... 3.448 seconds
    Multi-threaded integer math... 1.407 seconds
    Multi-threaded mixed math... 1.000 seconds
Score: 1764

Running 'Image' benchmark...
    Image creation / destruction... 1.305 seconds
    Flood filling... 0.578 seconds
    Direct copying... 1.203 seconds
    Small renders... 1.654 seconds
    Bilinear rendering... 1.363 seconds
    Bicubic rendering... 0.823 seconds
Score: 3176

Running 'Database' benchmark...
    Create database... 0.532 seconds
    Populate database... 2.559 seconds
    Save database... 0.686 seconds
    Reload database... 0.400 seconds
    Search database... 1.503 seconds
    Sort database... 1.642 seconds
    Group database... 1.209 seconds
Score: 2521

JRMark (version 20.0.112): 2487

5/28  20:58  Pressed Play to resume
5/28  21:11  Dropout.  70 MB RAM free.  almost 2GB cache.  Small read and write spike at the same time.
5/28  21:24  Dropout.  Time Machine is doing a backup, so it's touching the disk.
5/28  21:28  Dropout.  Media Center was reading while Firefox was writing
5/28  21:55  Pressed Pause

5/28  22:00  Pressed Play to resume
5/28  22:08  Built missing thumbnails on 94 that weren't built yet.
5/28  22:24  Dropout.  Longer than usual.  Write from launchd and firefox.  Read from Media Center
---end log---

Thanks,

Brian.

[glynor]

I'll post more status after I've got several hours of play time accumulated with this .112 build.

I hadn't noticed it was out. Sweet. That build has quite a few changes from the old one anyway, a lot of them nice.

If that doesn't seem to help, do the regular troubleshooting things:

Remove everything weird. That means, for science, remove your links, run standard skins, no plugins, no nothing but MC and your Library. Then, if that works, add things one at a time until it breaks.

By the way, hard links will generally perform better than symbolic links. If you happen to find this to be the cause (which is unlikely, but who knows), then hard links will probably be better behaved.

Symbolic links are essentially a redirect.  It first opens the Symbolic link, which is a pointer to the "real file".
Hard links are not a redirect. Both filesystem "items" point to the same data on disk.  They are both "the file" and are both equally valid, they just happen to point to the same bucket of bits on the hard disk.

Unfortunately, it is tough to hard link to a directory.  More:
http://flummox-engineering.blogspot.com/2014/05/creating-directory-hardlinks-on-osx.html

In any case, don't do any of this until you find something that works.  For testing, run regular (now, and anytime you're having a weird issue with any application).

[blgentry]

^ Based on my prior experience I'm pretty confident that my skins and symlinks have nothing to do with this issue.  But I'm remaining cooperative.  I just re-copied 20.0.112 into the Applications folder, overwriting the earlier one.  So my key mappings are gone and only the stock skins are there.  I'll run with this for about 2 hours of logged "play time" and see what I get.

Thanks,

Brian.

[glynor]

I agree, but you know... The general rule remains. And I've been surprised before.

[JimH]

You've said above that it seemed to be related to browser usage.  It would be good to prove this one way or the other.

[glynor]

You've said above that it seemed to be related to browser usage.  It would be good to prove this one way or the other.

He's basically proven that it is related to disk access, not just Firefox, if you read up the thread carefully.

The problem, at the core, is probably just that HFS+ is a steaming pile of fail, and he's pretty disk limited. Modern versions of OSX are really built for Solid State storage (at least for the OS).  This is mainly to hide the concurrency problems inherent in HFS+ which is (now that they've abandoned the wacky discoveryd adventure, it seems) is the main Achilles heel of OSX today.

That would be fine if Apple didn't still sell machines with only spinning disks.  But they do.

[JimH]

He's basically proven that it is related to disk access, not just Firefox, if you read up the thread carefully.

Antivirus?

[blgentry]

Regarding the browser:  I did try Safari also and found I had the same dropouts occurring.  I never just sit at this computer and listen to music only.  I'm always doing something else.  Unfortunately, I'm not likely to use this computer for just music listening, pretty much ever.  So even if i proved it worked well as long as I didn't touch any other programs, that wouldn't be all that useful for *me*, for the way I use my computer.  I hope that sounds logical and reasonable.

Regarding disk access and this problem:  My whole log tells a little more of the story, but it *mostly* seems disk related.  It's hard to type everything I see into the log, but I've definitely had dropouts happen when the disk graph showed pretty much nothing.  Also remember that I'm now running firefox with NO DISK CACHE at all.  So, in theory Firefox should almost never be touching the hard drive.  Other than writing browser history (tiny), cookies (tiny), and new bookmarks (tiny), I'm not sure why it would hit the disk.

Regarding SSD:  That might fix my issue; not sure.  This machine is an early 2011 and I'm not sure ANY of them came with SSD.  Just a data point.

This whole thing is just odd though.  My gut feeling is that we are missing something.  Because, even though this machine is on the older side, it's not being used in a high performance way.  It's not like I'm rendering video, or doing photo editing all the time.  Nothing disk intensive.  The CPU *sleeps*, and even when I bang on it (ripping DVDs), the machine performs SUPER well.  On everything except audio dropouts in JRiver.

Thanks for the continued consideration and help. 

Brian.

[Awesome Donkey]

The problem, at the core, is probably just that HFS+ is a steaming pile of fail, and he's pretty disk limited. Modern versions of OSX are really built for Solid State storage (at least for the OS).  This is mainly to hide the concurrency problems inherent in HFS+ which is (now that they've abandoned the wacky discoveryd adventure, it seems) is the main Achilles heel of OSX today.

This might be the reason I can't reproduce it as I have OS X installed on an SSD and my music library on an internal HDD formatted to NTFS.

[blgentry]

Oh and I forgot:  Anti-virus.  I don't run that on a mac.  In *my* opinion no one should.  But that's another discussion!

Brian.

[JimH]

Playing music is just such a light load on any drive.  MC should have no trouble delivering multiple streams.

[Matt]

For anyone having this problem, does it change at all if you use memory playback (Options > Audio > Play files from memory instead of disk)?

That cuts the disk I/O out of the loop completely after the first few seconds.

[Foxman50]

blgentry, how are you generating those log files. I'm sitting back waiting to see how you get on with solving this but i'd like to see whats in this file at my end.

If you can say in very easy terms as i'm very new to mac. Many thanks

[blgentry]

If only I was automatically generating the logs...

I type every character you see there, by hand, as it happens.  It's getting a little tiresome, but I really want to fix this, so I'm trying to document it in a way that others can read.

So break out a text editor and start typing if you're crazy like me. 

Brina.

[JimH]

Moved my DAC to a dedicated USB2 port directly on the Macbook Pro.

What is the DAC?  Did you test playback to anything else?

[Awesome Donkey]

When the dropout happens does it appear to still be playing (e.g. no sound) or does playback stop completely?

[blgentry]

Re:  DAC.  It's a Schiit Audio Modi 2.  I've used this with VLC to watch movies quite a bit and gotten no dropouts.  Further, I used to not have this DAC and I used the built in sound of the MacBook Pro.  I had dropouts with the built in sound too.

Re:  Does it keep playing?  I'm not sure if the counter is increasing as I hear the momentary dropout, but playback certainly continues after I hear the sound stop briefly.  These dropouts are usually much less than 1 second.  Occasionally they are 1 to 2 seconds, but 95% of the time it's so fast that you hear it, but you wouldn't be able to see if the counter stopped, even if you were looking at it.

Brian.

[glynor]

Hmmmm... I didn't know you were using a third-party DAC.  Can you do some additional testing with the built-in audio, just for good measure?  And by testing with the built-in audio, I mean DISCONNECT the external USB DAC.  If the DAC is misbehaving, it could be causing system interrupts that apply even when it is idle.

Also, do me a solid and fsck.

By the way, not blaming, just trying to narrow down the cause.  Before any of that, though, do what Matt asked.

[glynor]

Playing music is just such a light load on any drive.  MC should have no trouble delivering multiple streams.

I agree.  Something is wacky.

To do this, it should not require a SSD.  MC can certainly play back audio reliably from slow disks on OSX.  Mine are network drives and I've used it with one of those laptop-USB-no-power portable jobs, just a couple weeks ago, for hours and hours without so much as a single hiccup.

And I was mixing in videos at the time.  The machine is a 2011 15" Macbook Pro (Sandy Bridge).  I did upgrade it to an SSD, but the music was all on a cruddy external USB disk.

[blgentry]

Re FSCK:  I just booted into an external installer disk and ran Disk Utility Repair Disk on Macintosh HD and got two minor repair messages.  I'm now booted normally again, listening to MC.  I'll log any dropouts.

Re Disconnecting the DAC:  I've had dropouts without this DAC in the past.  I've only had the DAC for maybe 3 weeks now and I had dropouts before that.  If you really have a good reason, I can use the built in sound, but I don't see a logical reason right now.

Re memory playback:  I've tried this in the past and it seemed to make the problem worse.  It seemed to read the disk an average of twice per song and dropouts *seemed* to happen during those reads.  HOWEVER, I'm willing to try again.  In fact I will definitely make this my NEXT testing step.  I want to run with no other changes than having run Disk Utility Repair and see if I get dropouts.  If I *do*, then I'll move to memory playback as the next isolated change.  Dutifully logging everything on the way.  <whistling like a dwarf, but wishing I was Gandolf instead>  (I know, mixed metaphors, but it amuses me in this otherwise not amusing situation!) 

Thanks,

Brian.

[Awesome Donkey]

Also build 113 was released with another change, I'm interested if it still happens there too. I'm hoping it doesn't!

[blgentry]

Ok, I'm on the latest build (.113) and have experienced 2 dropouts in 17 minutes.  To review, here's where I am, with my current configuration:

Firefox running with no disk cache
Time Machine disabled
Running latest build 20.0.113
Enabled Play Files From Memory instead of disk
Recently Repaired main disk from cold/external boot

I guess I'm going to turn play from memory off and keep testing.  Either that or move my WHOLE library to an external drive.  <shrug>  I'm starting to get sort of frustrated.

But I continue to appreciate the attempts to help.

Oh and here's my log since my last report:

---log---
5/28  22:36  Pressed Pause

5/28  22:39  Pressed Play to resume
5/28  22:39  Within 5 or 10 seconds, got a dropout.
5/28  22:50  Pressed Pause

5/28  23:11  Reinstalled 20.0.112 to remove symlinks I added earlier.  Will run with included skin.

5/28  23:25  Restarted MC and started playback
5/28  23:44  Dropout.
5/29  00:05  Pressed Pause

5/29  09:19  Disabled Time Machine as a test

5/29  09:24  Pressed Play to resume
5/29  10:02  Dropout.  Small read and write spike at the same time
5/29  10:04  Pressed Pause

5/29  17:35  Booted into installer disk and ran Disk Utility Repair Disk on Macintosh HD

5/29  17:43  Started Playback on MC
5/29  18:08 Dropout.  Read and write at the same time.

5/29  18:09  Stopped Playback.  Set Options > Audio > Play files from memory

5/29  18:10  Started Playback
5/29  18:25  Dropout.  This happened when I started the download of the latest Media Center!  I'm not counting this one.
5/29  18:37  Pressed Pause

5/29  18:47  Pressed Play to resume
5/29  18:54  Dropout.  Playing hi-res (24/96) file.  iotop shows read from Media Center and writes from launchd and firefox
5/29  19:01  Stopped playback.  Quit MC.

5/29  19:01  Installed 20.0.113

5/29  19:04  Launched MC.  Started Playback
5/29  19:07  Dropout.  Seconds after song change (16/44.1 FLAC)
5/29  19:21  Dropout. 
---end log---

Brian.

[blgentry]

An idea I forgot to ask about:

Should I enable logging from MC?  Then try to correlate the times I get dropouts with the MC log entries?  I don't know what's logged or if it would be helpful.  Which is why I'm asking. 

Brian.

[JimH]

Re Disconnecting the DAC:  I've had dropouts without this DAC in the past.  I've only had the DAC for maybe 3 weeks now and I had dropouts before that.  If you really have a good reason, I can use the built in sound, but I don't see a logical reason right now.

It would confirm that your memory is correct and eliminate the DAC or its driver as a factor.

[blgentry]

Ok, trying to be civil...

There is no driver, this is a Mac.

I can take this additional step if you insist.... and I guess I will since now two of you are insisting that I must not be remembering correctly.

Brian.

[JimH]

There is always a driver.  Software applications talk to software drivers, which talk to hardware.

Nobody is insisting anything.  We're just asking you to test things that might rule out possible causes.

[blgentry]

If you want to be pedantic about it, yes there's a driver.  Like there's a driver for the keyboard that's built in to the laptop.  What I'm saying is, OS X recognizes this hardware without any driver installation.  There are no third party drivers or configuration.  It's "driverless" (what Schiit calls it) in OSX.  This is because it uses the USB 2.0 audio standard, which is built in to OS X (after some version I can't remember).

I understand you guys are trying to help and I thank you.  I've been on your side of the desk too, so I have to remind myself that you don't know me, my capabilities, my technical prowess, my education, or anything.  I'm just some dude with a Mac that's got audio issues.

So I followed your and Glynor's directions and switched back to the built-in sound on the Mac and ran for a while.  I was starting to wonder at about the 20 minute mark.... and then I got a dropout.  I let it roll for about an hour and got 3 dropouts.

I did some poking around on my machine and was reminded that the previous owner of this machine used to have a Digi Designs sound interface (DAC, soundcard, whatever) and it still appears in Audio MIDI Setup.  I did a bunch of online research and was able to manually remove every component I could find *including* a kernel extension I didn't know was there.  I've since rebooted twice and I can't find any trace of it any more, in the kernel, or in Audio MIDI Setup.

I'm now playing from MC again, through the Schiit Modi 2.  It hasn't been very long, but I'm continuing to keep a log.  I've got my fingers crossed that the dropouts are over.  I'll report back in a while with results.

Brian.

[JimH]

I did some poking around on my machine and was reminded that the previous owner of this machine used to have a Digi Designs sound interface (DAC, soundcard, whatever) and it still appears in Audio MIDI Setup.  I did a bunch of online research and was able to manually remove every component I could find *including* a kernel extension I didn't know was there.  I've since rebooted twice and I can't find any trace of it any more, in the kernel, or in Audio MIDI Setup.

Please post a link or two in case someone else has a similar problem.

[blgentry]

Here is a page from Avid (the new owner of Digi Designs I think) on how to manually remove their drivers.  This isn't even an article; it's just a list of files.  It doesn't say so, but what they mean is, "take this list of files, find them on your system, and delete them".

http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/en_US/how_to/Manually-Uninstall-Avid-Audio-Interface-Driver-Components-Mac-OS-X

It's a PITA; I even tried their uninstaller package for the device that I know was installed here.  It didn't do anything; in fact it stopped with an error message.

...and now for the bad news.  I continue to get dropouts.  <sigh>

I've got a few ideas about what to do next, but I don't like any of them.  What do you guys think?

Brian.

[JimH]

If you were on Windows, I'd say it's Nuke and Pave time.

If you have a Windows machine, you might substitute it, just to test.  You might learn something.

[blgentry]

"Nuke and Pave".  Hahahahaha. 

At least something to make me smile in all this. 

I could do the same in OSX:  Clean OS install, and then do a Time Machine migration of all my user files.  I think there's a bit more to it like re-installing all my apps from scratch.  It's a long process either way; like a half day project.

I may end up doing it.  I think I'm going to do more testing first.  I've got a few more ideas.

Brian.

[glynor]

I was going to ask a bit about this too, just as a test...

Do you have a second drive you could boot to and install a clean copy of OSX?  If so, I'd do this:

1. Carbon Copy Cloner (or Super Duper) your existing install over to the secondary/external drive. Rename it slightly so you can tell them apart easily.
2. Test it and make sure it boots (hold Option at startup and the Mac will let you choose which drive to boot to).
3. Wipe the regular drive and install a clean copy on the machine without that external/secondary drive connected.
4. Try it out.
5. If it fails, then we can be absolutely, positively sure that something doesn't perform right with your hardware in MC. That rules out everything but the hardware itself.
6. If it succeeds, then we know it is a conflict with something on your install (either something broken, or maybe a software conflict).
7. If it fails, boot to that cloned drive, and test there too.  If it works with the cloned drive, then I'd guess you have a bad/dying hard drive.

I'm sorry... I've tried, and I just can't reproduce anything like this on my two Macs, and all of my ideas (and I think Matt and John's ideas) have come up empty. It is baffling.

[blgentry]

Assuming I wanted to do this test that's going to require many hours of effort...

Wouldn't it skip a lot of steps to just boot straight into a secondary drive with a clean install of OSX, then add MC, and some of my media files?  Wouldn't that rule out several things at once?

How about this:  What if another player on my hardware can play the exact same files from my media library for some period of time (say 2 hours) without a dropout?  That is probably going to be my next test unless someone says the logic is flawed there for some reason.

Brian.

[glynor]

Wouldn't it skip a lot of steps to just boot straight into a secondary drive with a clean install of OSX

I suggested the other way around for two reasons:

1. If you do it the way I suggested, and it "fixes" the issue, it tells us two things at once:
* There is nothing wrong with your disk hardware.
* There is something "wrong" (or conflicting) on your existing installation, software wise.

If you do it the other way, it can only tell us the second thing, and not rule in or out the first (and if it still fails, you'd still have to rule out disk trouble).

2. You're not really saving time that way, because if it works, you're going to want to migrate anyway. My way, you're already there. The other way, you have to (unless you have a third disk) do what I suggested anyway, so you can start fresh (because you're going to need somewhere to "stash" your existing install while you build the new one).

How about this:  What if another player on my hardware can play the exact same files from my media library for some period of time (say 2 hours) without a dropout?  That is probably going to be my next test unless someone says the logic is flawed there for some reason.

I guess I'd assumed you'd already done this, but that doesn't really tell us much, because MC uses the hardware very differently than most other players.

I'd like to emphasize, that I'm not convinced this will help.  Like I said above, where there's smoke, there's usually fire.  But, we're stumped right now.  Plus, this gave me a lot of pause:

and was reminded that the previous owner of this machine used to have a Digi Designs sound interface (DAC, soundcard, whatever) and it still appears in Audio MIDI Setup.

The machine had a previous owner and you're still using their installation?!?

That is... Well, you have no control over (or knowledge of) what chaos might have happened on the machine before it got into your hands. Maybe it went through three "bad" upgrades? For example, how long has that partition been around? OSX has trouble with in-place upgrades sometimes. It is known. Or, what if they'd installed (and partially removed) wacky, troublesome system services or mods in the past?

If I ever buy used hardware, step one is a nuke and pave. Period. No exceptions.  Even if the owner is my buddy from IT and I know they probably have something okay. Still not worth it. Start fresh.

So, those two things combined made me suggest it the way I did.

[glynor]

Also, the Logs generated by MC might be useful. I didn't answer that because I'm not sure with this issue.  I think it is a hardware or data delivery stall, which probably won't be shown in the logs. But, they can't hurt.

It would be especially helpful if you can correlate when the stalls happen to something happening in the Logs in MC.  The built-in logs do a lot of latency tracking (basically every entry has a timestamp, and major operations show the total latency of the step).

[glynor]

I suggested the other way around for two reasons:

I'd also say, your estimate of time is probably not quite right. Not in "real work" anyway. The clone will take a while, but you can walk away for that part.  OSX does clean installs pretty quickly, once you wipe the drive, so getting the new one up and running should be fairly quick.

Then you just have to migrate some media content over, and install MC itself.

Remember, you're not setting up the whole system on the internal drive just the way you "like it".  It is a test. If it works, then you can decide to do the rest of that work, but if it doesn't, you clone your old install back over and you're no worse off for the wear.

[blgentry]

Re another player that works:  So you're saying even if another player with the exact same files has zero problems that doesn't tell you anything?  I'm not sure I can agree with that.  But moving on...

Re reinstallation, cloning, etc:  The problem on my 2011 MBP is USB2.  I have no firewire drives, so all of this would have to be done across USB2.  It has no USB3 ports.  It's something like 5.5 hours to clone my drive from internal to external.  I'm guessing similar from external to internal should I decide to do that.

Now, to be completely forthcoming, I *do* have a nifty Thunderbolt to USB3 adapter from Kanex.  It makes a HUGE difference in transfer speeds.  But you can't boot a drive from it!  So I can't clone from an external drive on USB3.

...and yes I have a fairly large amount of data on my internal drive (around 430 GB), so it takes a while to move it all.

Oh and regarding why I still have the "original installation".  This was the first Mac I got that didn't ship with installation media.  It took me a while to learn all the concepts of the recovery partition and all of it's complication.  Plus, the whole idea just kinda sucks doesn't it?  Download an image of the OS across the freaking Internet when you need to recover?!??  Luckily I have now done the work to build several stand-alone bootable disks, so I at least don't have to deal with downloading the OS image, which would have cost me even more time in this adventure you are suggesting for me!

I'm now at an impasse.  Maybe I'll just bite the bullet; but it's a big bullet to bite.

Brian. 

[JimH]

Brian,
This is becoming argumentative.  glynor and others have tried to help.  It might be time for you to work on this without their help.  Or take a break from it.

My guess is that this will turn out to be something that goes on the Weird Problems thread eventually.  That thread might also give you some ideas.  There is a link in my signature.

I'm not ruling out an MC problem.  It just seems unlikely at this point.  If it were a widespread problem, we'd see a lot of complaints.

[glynor]

Now, to be completely forthcoming, I *do* have a nifty Thunderbolt to USB3 adapter from Kanex.  It makes a HUGE difference in transfer speeds.  But you can't boot a drive from it!  So I can't clone from an external drive on USB3.

You can use that to clone and just boot it using USB2 if needed. USB3 is backwards compatible with USB2.  It'll just run at the slower speed when connected that way.

Either way, it was the suggestion I was mulling around for a while.

By the way, it is easy to make a USB installation drive for OSX on a thumb drive.  That's the best way, in almost all cases, to do a clean install.  Here's instructions for Mavericks (I think they're identical for Yosemite too):

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/10/how-to-make-your-own-bootable-os-x-10-9-mavericks-usb-install-drive/

I'm not ruling out an MC problem.  It just seems unlikely at this point.  If it were a widespread problem, we'd see a lot of complaints.

There have been a few reports, though.  I'm not convinced either way. I just don't have any other good ideas.

We need to find some way to reproduce it, and then solve it.

Re another player that works:  So you're saying even if another player with the exact same files has zero problems that doesn't tell you anything?  I'm not sure I can agree with that.  But moving on...

It certainly doesn't tell us nothing. Trying to replicate it with another player is certainly a valid step, but it is more of a "proves the hardware isn't broken completely" thing.  It doesn't necessarily tell us if something in MC itself is broken, because the other application might do things wildly differently.

The problem might not have much to do with the actual music playing part of it. It could be something else (MC updating the Library, and the Library itself is in a "bad" sector of the hard drive) or who knows what else.

The problem on my 2011 MBP is USB2.

That's useful to know. My main laptop is a 2011 15" Macbook Pro as well, and that's the one I've been referring to.  It does have 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD, but that's the machine I have, so we're comparing very similar systems if nothing else.

It might be time for you to work on this without their help.  Or take a break from it.

I just don't have many other ideas. I'll keep thinking, but if it was me, I'd go with the test I described above. That's the simplest way to rule everything on the old install in or out.

Keep in mind, hard drives do go bad. Especially laptop drives (which take a beating). It is not a case of if, it is a case of when. If that drive is original, then it is due.  And, like I said, the problem areas on the drive might be places that MC itself is using, but other applications might not (or the data access patterns, particularly the way MC uses its Library, might not match).

[blgentry]

Update:  I'm pretty sure this is solved.

As requested I did a clean install of my system to the internal disk.  Then restored a very minimal configuration of my user account with settings, but no media, and no applications.  Then manually installed JRiver MC and restored my music directory.  Then added and restored a few must have apps (Firefox, Alfred, iterm).

I've got about 2.5 hours of listening in now and I've had just a couple of glitches and they were super short.  In fact, at least 2 I'm not sure where glitches; they were that short.  The other two were induced by what I did.  One happened when I opened the Browse function in Rename, Move and Copy.  This caused some kind of disk load because it made the beach ball appear, indicating a non-responsive application.  Little glitch from that and it didn't happen again when I tried it again.

Then I went totally crazy with the browser.  I opened dozens of tabs, youtube with a 720p video, and intentionally tried to memory starve the system.  I got it to no free memory (which is fairly normally really) and it started driving the disk cache lower and lower.  Around 450 MB of cache and no free memory there was one little glitch.  I even tried closing Firefox and re-opening it with 8 or 9 windows for it to open, all with a few tabs.  In the past, opening Firefox with a bunch of windows for it to load has glitched MC most of the time.  This time... nothing.

I have a guess as to what might have been wrong.  Menu Meters.  I've used Menu Meters since the day I got my first Mac in 2006.  They show things like disk activity, network activity, cpu utilization, etc up in the menu bar where you can see it easily.  It didn't even occur to me to say anything about them, because they're just always there; they're so familiar to me that it's almost like part of the OS.  But I noticed when they were gone!

Because they use low level hooks into the OS and an "undocumented API" (their words), I'm suspicious.  Honestly I'm too paranoid right now to try to install them again and prove or disprove them as the cause.

I've got a bunch more data to restore and a good handful of programs to install and/or restore, but I'm going to wait a half day to a day just to be extra sure.

Thanks for sticking with me.  If I wasn't quite as quick to jump on every suggestion as you might have liked, especially ones that required hours of effort, I won't apologize.  I'll just say thank you.  It appears you were right!

I'm happy you were.

Thanks again for all the effort. 

Brian.

[glynor]

I've seen MenuMeters cause other weird issues. Just saying.

If you want something like that, you might want to check out iStat Menus instead. I know Casey Liss swears by it.  In fact, Marco Arment used to use MenuMeters, but has mentioned a few times that he switched to iStat Menus due to issues and bugs in the former.  Personally, I'm with John Siracusa. It is the Disk Light Observer Effect, and I'm okay without blinking lights and pretty things. I run Activity Monitor in CPU Graph mode in the dock, but that's it.  

Of course, it sounds like you're a little with John on the multiple windows*. I am too, but nowhere near to the same degree.

* Seriously. Listen to that one if you haven't before. Utterly hysterical and informative. Both of the sections of the show I linked to in this post are fantastic, and I'm sure you'd enjoy them.

[Awesome Donkey]

I really hope the issue is finally resolved for you, Brian.

Personally, I use the SysInfo app from the App Store along with the Activity Monitor. But I've also heard good thing about Monity too.

[blgentry]

Of course, it sounds like you're a little with John on the multiple windows*. I am too, but nowhere near to the same degree.

* Seriously. Listen to that one if you haven't before. Utterly hysterical and informative. Both of the sections of the show I linked to in this post are fantastic, and I'm sure you'd enjoy them.

Yeah, I'm a mainly windows guy.  I don't know who John is, but I listened to a bunch of that podcast and it was great!  He's actually very well considered in his argument and mirrors some of my experiences.  He *does* take it to another level though... 30 browser windows with 6 tabs each!  Wow.  I'll probably listen to a few more episodes; they seem interesting.

Brian.

[glynor]

John Siracusa is a PERL programmer who also happens to be the guy who wrote all of the epic Ars Technica OSX reviews up until now. He's on that podcast now, but used to host one called Hypercritical, which was also fantastic (and aptly named). I'm a huge fan, and have been since I read my first of his OSX reviews (the public Beta one, I think).

The other two guys on the show are:

* Marco Arment: former CTO (and lead programmer) of tumblr, creator of Instapaper, creator of Overcast.fm, and writes a blog.

* Casey Liss: Who the hell is Casey? He works for a SharePoint consultant firm and codes in, yes, C# (and dabbles in Objective-C and node.js), in addition to doing a few podcasts and other stuff.

[blgentry]

Another update:  I'm continuing to get dropouts.  Not as often as before, but they are definitely there.  I've also had MC completely freeze several times now.  Let's focus on one at a time.

1.  Dropouts.  Around once an hour of listening time I get a very short audio interruption.  Significantly less than 1 second.  Probably 100 to 200 mS.  I rewind every time to make sure it's not a bad file.  I've had this happen on many files that play fine through the same spot the second time.
2.  Freezes.  When this happens, All audio ceases.  Trying to switch to MC yields no display at all.  It just looks like I'm still using the program that was in the foreground (like my web browser or example).  In all cases I can remember this has cleared itself within perhaps 5 to 7 seconds.  Then the display shows up and audio starts up again at the same spot it left off.  Freezes have only happened a few times.  Maybe 3 or 4 that I can remember across probably 30 or 40 hours of listening.

Things you don't know about my system yet:

Recently I had a hardware problem with my MBP (which is a 2011 as stated earlier in the thread).  Apple fixed it by replacing the logic board, which I gather is essentially the main board of the laptop containing the CPU.  The system seems to be running perfectly fine since Apple serviced it.

I've noticed several other people reporting these glitches or dropouts; some in this thread.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Brian.

[glynor]

Bummer.

[blgentry]

I've noticed that dropouts happen when I'm saving album art to files.  I've also noticed that mild disc activity from other apps can induce this behavior.  I'm attaching a log file created by JRiver during a drop out that happened during an update to a small application (iterm).  This caused some disk writes, but nothing all that dramatic, as the app is small.  The update only took like 10 seconds.

I'm going to keep logging enabled and I'll post if I can capture when MC totally freezes like I've reported before.

Maybe I should turn on play files from memory again?  To see if I can rule out disk activity as a source of the problem?  I think I'll do that now unless someone thinks that's the wrong path.

Brian.

[blgentry]

Well that was fast.  Using memory playback I just got a dropout.  It seemed to happen right as I pressed the hot key to switch to Playing Now (I have that mapped because I use it so much).  Log attached.

Brian.

[AndyU]

Been using MC happily for years on a pc, bought a base level mac mini a while back for other stuff, thought I'd try MC, downloaded it last night, made a library of two albums (FLAC 16/44.1) and have bad dropouts and stuttering. Just playing back to headphone socket.  Doesn't take much to provoke a burst of drop outs - open a page or two in Safari, browse mail, usual stuff - in no way hammering the machine. Opening an app invariably provokes some clicks. 100ms buffering is bad, 250ms somewhat better but still poor, 50ms no good either. JRMark is 2281. Seems to settle after a while. (Like it's only happened once while I am typing this) but as soon as I switch apps (including to MC itself) I get a click or dropout or several. There's nothing fancy or unusual about my set up. My  tiny library is on the macs hard drive, I have a mac bluetooth keyboard, mouse and touchpad and a screen. Only things I've set are integer mode and exclusive access.

Anyone help?