Wav stops playing

[Mike]

Hello Peter.

Well, I think it has come time for me to put XX on the shelf for now. I have no doubt it is the best sounding player around but it doesn't function well for me. It causes me more frustration then it does pleasure and it doesn't seem that that will change for a while.

The wav stops playing thing has gotten steadily worse, with all kind of variations on the theme. Sometimes the song playing will be cut short towards the end and it will jump forward to the next song and play silently through. The other day I detected very low volume coming from the speaker and could barely hear the song (ear at the speaker) and it was playing back garbled, like at slow speed? There is always lots of no data given messages when I return to my computer. Lots of system index out of range messages etc. Today while playing an album that I have played many times before, the music stopped and high volume static replaced the music. Luckily I was using low sensitivity speakers at the time so my speakers don't appear to be damaged. This was accompanied with a large message box that said something to the effect that "System out of range index was out of bounds of the array". I don't know how to do the screen shot thing. I realized when I bought the software (almost a year ago to the day) that it was in the beta stage but I guess I thought things would be ironed out by now. Hopefully someday there will be a fully functional version.
Maybe it is just me having these difficulties, I don’t know. I guess it could be my machine, or my lack of computer skills. But my experience with software is either it works or it doesn’t. Easy for me to say I guess, because I don’t write it.
So it is back to good old fashion CD’s for me, at least for now.
Best,
Mike

[PeterSt]

Hi Mike,

As you know this all started with my idea that everbody should be able to use the software, the PC unexperienced as well. Therefore it is even the more sad that you have the idea that it is just that what bothers you now. And it could be ... I can't tell.

For me the major problem in your case is that we don't know when it started. And of course this is to be combined with that it doesn't bother me.

Since you're giving up anyway, couldn't you start playing unattendedly ? I think you never do, and I also think that matters (IIRC the reports in this topic about elements of what happens with you, are about Attended Playback).

I really wonder what the heck it is that can make things so instable ... I am playing and playing and playing and nothing (but one time -> the WP error).

[PeterSt]

My first album tried played the third song silently then continued on through the album. Album is Van Morrison's Keep It Simple (if only it were so...), .wav files made with EAC. Track length of the song before is 4:30.76, the silent song is 3:16.53, the song after which played fine is 5:43.10.

This is an indication of what I said too. This just CANNOT happen with Unattended Playback. But there's another thing ...

I only now realize that the problem from your quote above shouldn't be mixed with the WP error thing. And I don't think it is ...
*Then* it becomes a familiar problem, which was reported by some in the very beginning (I think Werner was one, although he had a Mac or something), and this is about the driver not releasing the sound device properly and this can also be brought down to USB and the larger buffer it uses. So ... you have a lousy driver somewhere ? ... maybe. But maybe not. I did change something in that area, and this was at March 19 2008. I can change it back in order to see if that helps.

Then, I just looked into the program, and without being sure right now, I think that the "control" of the larger USB buffer size as mentioned, has been eliminated with the switch from being able to play in shared mode to exclusive mode only.

Either way, this just cannot happen with Unattended Playback.
Could you please try ?

[Mike]

Hi Peter,

Yes, I will try Unattended Playback and let you know my findings.

As I stated before XX is the best player I have heard. And maybe because of that it takes more effort to dial in the computer to get it to work properly. I have tried a few other players and although they don't sound as good they seem to be simple to setup and to use. They also play the files without problems.

Of course I acknowledge my part in all this; I just don't have the time or the inclination to read all the posts that might be related to this issue and then try to figure it out on my machine. I am of the group of people I think that just wants to install the player, make a couple of adjustments and then listen. Not sure if you have developed a Help system yet but that would also be good for people like me.
Listening now in Unattended Playback……….
Best,

Mike






 

[PeterSt]

I just don't have the time or the inclination to read all the posts that might be related to this issue and then try to figure it out on my machine. I am of the group of people I think that just wants to install the player, make a couple of adjustments and then listen. Not sure if you have developed a Help system yet but that would also be good for people like me.

Ehhm, but that would be the most normal Mike. XXHighEnd is not for nothing still in beta, just because I know these kind of problems are there for some, and as soon there's a small thing I can grab on to, I solve it ASAP. But as you'll understand, for cases like this I can only hang on to you guys out there (who helped a LOT already).

If XX only was a normal player, then it would behave normally, but it is not (mainly because it plays all from memory for the good cause) and things are a 100 times more complicated. Add to that the in fact buggy Vista Exclusive Mode WASAPI stuff, and there we are. But I hope you know I try my best.

No, there isn't anything of a manual or help system yet (apart from the ToolTips and what's said in the Release Notes) which is just because we're still in beta (I just added functionality over the last few weeks which can use 30 pages of help alone ...). And indeed, by now there are so many things nobody knows, just because all is stacked in those Release Notes only. But a manual will be there ...

With what I just added, the one but last major thing I wanted from the beginning is in there, and after the last thing only bug solving remains. But I guess I have to travel the world so solve some of the things you have out there (may be 3 or 4 things only, but difficult enough (because I can't copy them) to travel around a bit ... maybe ... ).


Btw, don't tell me you're playing for 24 hours without problems now ... ?

[Mike]

 

[PeterSt]

Nah, no needed Mike. But this is *very* important anyway ...
I played several albums yesterday over USB and ATtended, but you know ... nothing went wrong. Anyways, it is most obviously it is there (Attended Playback) where I must look for your culprit;

I will finish off my current activities, blow off some from it, and then will create a version (or more) of which I expect may help your Attended Playback (which btw you shouldn't want at all, because it sounds "worse" IMHO). If you then can bear with me ...
That will take another week though at least, just to take some breath outside of this environment. Pffff

[PeterSt]

Ok. Here is some experience of myself :

Got myself a Toshiba Satellite (with nonexant sound device), suffed XXHighEnd on it plus some 40 albums, brought it with me during my brake from the last 10 days, and started playing over the loudspeakers (bweh) Attendedly, and witched off "Show as Wallpaper".
After tens of hours of testing (no joke), these are my conclusions :

Yes, it is rather easy to copy a mixture of the behaviours as expressed in this topic.

The silent playing of one track, a next normally playing, and another (could be a few tracks later) quiet again, only happens after a cold boot (thus, switch off, and switch on again);

The ChangeWP error seems to happen randomly, but, it did not happen after a cold boot on its own (see next subject).

In one occasion, the silent playing 2 times (one session after a cold boot) 1:1 followed a ChangeWP error, after a first track playing silent without the ChangeWP error. Again, this happened at one occasion (session) only.


In each of above cases, at always using the same Playlist, it is not repeatable where it happens (using a reboot at least).

The playing silent seems dependent on the number of tracks played, and not on the time after start playing.

The ChangeWP error can happen 1 or 2 times per album, or doesn't happen throughout 24 hours of subsequent playback at all.

Note : Once the ChangeWP error during a playback session happened, at a next startup of XX it will reoccur as many times as it happened during the before playback session (not boot session). This is logical to me, because of the process happening then.

In no occasion the ChangeWP error disturbs playback, except of course the one occasion it came along with playing silent.

The silent playing seems to be related to using 64MB of memory by XXEngine3, although I couldn't really prove that. I do have in mind though, that XP has the very same problem with tracks themselves being larger than 64MB (the around 6 minutes boundary). How this can be related to the Unattended Playback where it does not happen (ok, with a DAC behind the soundcard, which is so far my only experience) I don't know.


So can I solve it now ? no, not from this idiotic behaviour and searching for the real cause. However, I will be able to create a backdoor solution for the ChangeWP error for sure, and *hope* it is the solution for the silent playing in the mean time.

I am not sure whether things are related to playing over the internal speakers, which is the same as using a soundcard with output to the (pre)amp. But with above experience I now can test the same with a DAC behind the soundcard, and see whether that matters, of which I expect it just can for the "silent" part of the problem.


I thought you were entitled to know that this has my full attention, and it was just before I left for my brake that I got the hunch of
a. it happens with Attended Playback only (as described a few posts back);
b. it could be related to playing from the souncard (without a DAC behind it). Thank you Russ.
Thus, the latter might not be true, but it gave me the idea of using the laptop and just let it run forever if needed. This by itself needed the conversion of all the albums I brought to 48K, because the Conexant "hi def" driver allowed 48K only, and Engine#3 obviously doesn't swallow that when fed with 44K1.

I let you know when I know more, and if you can contribute to this, don't hesitate to do so !
Thanks,
Peter



PS : In one occasion throughout everything (days of playing), an "Engine#3 did not start etc." occurred.

[PeterSt]

Amendum to my last post (and merely for myself, but possibly recognizeable for you) :

At just shutting down my audio PC in order to start testing, I suddenly realized that something *is* related to a cold boot. At least, for my Vista (SP0) it is :

When my PC is booted cold, at performing x time no activity (an Energy timing setting), the PC will hybernate. Not that I have settings which imply hybernating, but it just does. These kind of things are known Vista quirks, and SP1 is better at this (these things), but it did not solve this specific anomaly. Now :
After XX played "some" time (and then stops because I just wanted it), the hybernating doesn't happen anymore. Just the screensaver jumping in (if not already done long before), and throughout the further boot session, no hybernating anymore.
How much time of playing this requires I never found out, but an hour seems enough. Now :

What if at the moment the PC actually wants to hybernate, the silent playback starts to happen ? With *AT*tended playback there is a moment of just no activity. Then the hybernating starts to activate, immediately followed by "oops not", but in the mean time the sound system has beem shut off. At the next track, the sound system is (rather) explicitly reactivated, and there's sound again. But the hybernating feature keeps on trying, and at a next track there's silence again. Of course you were not allowed to even touch the mouse in the mean time, because that would reset the process ... (which might be because the exact moments can't be repeated).
This happens a few times (I don't think I ever encountered more than 3 silent tracks), and then something gives up on hybernating.

The difference with Unattended Playback would be that there's NO idle time between tracks ever. So, only when I stop playback within, say, 20 minutes, I find the PC hybernating some 15 minutes after that.

Am I seeing ghosts now ?

[PeterSt]

Small update :

Yesterday nothing wanted to go wrong after three cold boots spread over 1.5 hours (which for sure would have given one of the anomalies on the laptop by then), I listened for over 5 hours (without booting anymore) and never encountered a silent track, and since then (11pm yesterday) all is still playing without any error. That's all together almost 24 hours now.

I guess I am now going to test the lot with the soundcard connected to the preamp (and leave the audio DAC out).


Edit :

BUT

After I came home and checking whether all was all right as just explained above (also turned on the sound briefly), I typed this post (yes, that's on another PC), and in the mean time the screen saver jumped in on the audio PC. I woke it up again, and just now there is an "Engine#3 did not start blah blah" right at this moment after so many hundreds of tracks playing allright ? Come on ! this is no coincidence !!
But what am I hunting here ?

[xsheaffer]

Hi Peter,
I feel your pain -
Good news : the restarts due to "unrecoverable" error have stopped. I have no idea why - I was away from home for two weeks and the problem has not occurred since I returned! Maybe I should leave more often...
However, I still cannot get an entire album to play all the way through. After studying the problem, it seems to be completely random which error occurs, when, and for what track/album. The only apparent pattern is that the player rarely makes it past track #5, usually failing to cue it or going silent during.
You mentioned seeing these problems rarely on your main PC - are there some settings I should copy to try to see if they improve the reliability?

Scott

[PeterSt]

Hi Scott, thanks.

As far as what I have seen throughout all the testing by now, these are the problems. Or *were*, because nearly all are solved here now ... working on the last ones :

• There is definitely a difference between the laptop I used and my main audio PC. I mean, it is so easy to copy the problems at the laptop, which just do not occur on the main PC (all with Attented Playback btw), that I really can blame *or* the laptop itself at being more slow, *or* the amateuristic sound device which comes with it (and which come with all laptops as it seems).
  This is in general.
  
  
• The ChangeWP error, which I now nailed down exactly to where/what happens in the code, actually can't be. Difficult to explain when you are not a programmer, but this comes down to reading a record from a file, that file just being available for me to view (Explorer), which that one record is being read as empty. Mind you, randomly and with the exact same file.
  I now re-read the file, giving it another chance, and I just *hope* this solves it, and anyway the error is avoided now.
  
  
• It was known by me for a long time that tracks smaller than 14 seconds would produce the "Engine#3 did not start ..." message, which has been solved now (upcoming version). This just needed my attention.
  Btw, what I reported in my latest post in this topic, just *was* this pure coincidence, of just such a short track passing by. So, hunting ghosts indeed.
  
  
• The playing without sound ... I could never copy that on the main audio PC. This (I state by now) sure is a problem of the particular sound driver, but I can't tell how it is related to what, because just this problem only occured after the cold reboot at the laptop, indeed occurs somewhere in the beginning of the album, then occurs 100% sure one time more, and mostly one other time again. After that, it's ok.
  Testing this is a job which can only be performed when you're really doing something else, because it takes days in general, and I assume I don't have that period of time anymore.
  Besides that, there is just nothing which can be done about it in the problem for debugging, because the program just runs hence all is okay, but the sound device doesn't produce sound. Again, this is the exact same problem as with XP and Engine#1 with files larger than 64MB, and there is just nothing which can be done about it (besides that, MS people don't recognize such a thing (I asked), and by kind of pure coincidence this problem doesn't exist in Vista). This too (XP situation) is 100% sure a driver issue, because any driver going around official XP guidelines, just does work (until you perform alt-tab and alt-bab back to the player, then sound stops).
  Please note that XXHighEnd is special and sensitive to this situation, because it plays from memory, which no other (WASAPI) player is doing.
  
  Side note : I dedicated this silent playing to Attended Playback, because I just tried it like that on the laptop, and then indeed it happens. However, I don't think this is true, or at least I didn't prove it (because I never tried the lapop Unattendedly).
  
  There is one thing I should be able to grab on to, and that this the strict boundary of when silent play starts. This is 100% sure in between two tracks, BUT the playing program (Engine#3) really doesn't know about any difference. This comes down to playing one large file, with no gap in between. However, technically this is not really true, and there *is* a difference : the memory management which is needed to, say, glue the tracks together. And it is just this (I talked about it before) that is rather out of my control, because "managed" dot-net code does it for you. So, it is my expectation that the problem is in this area, which will be the same area as the used memory growing and growing (while I don't incur for that) right in the beginning, untill is shrinks again and it after that never grows again (I mean, not without reason). This might be the same moment when things go wrong, or possibly start to be all right.
  And thus, it is this area which I might be able to influence and just watch with eyes : cause the memory not to grow without reason in the beginning, and I bet that if that can be done, this problem has gone too. Otoh, if you'd know what time it took to tweak the whole lot in order to incur for similar, thinking of the "ticks" topic from Edward ...
  
  
• Since maybe March 2008, "Cue Files" can't play their last track without ending in an error. I'm working on that today.
  
  
• There are always the situations that the track length as indicated by whatever means (and these are as many as formats of WAV files exist, thinking of the means of ripping, tagging, incorporation of all kind of sh*t in the WAV file which never has been a standard ... is wrong. This is the typicle situation that XXEngine3 just dies, and I don't think this can be avoided unless sound degrades.
  Mind you, crashes like these should be covered by a means of error trapping, and it is just this what is deliberately left out for SQ reasons. There may be a time though that I can better recognize what really is music data and what is not, kind of similar to the "Crack Detection" feature. Thus, when I can do that more precise, I can check in advance where music data really stops, instead of the wrong information provided in the header, and as written wrongly in there by whatever program (which already can be a tagging program).
  

Ok, back to work !

[PeterSt]

There is definitely a difference between the laptop I used and my main audio PC. I mean, it is so easy to copy the problems at the laptop, which just do not occur on the main PC (all with Attented Playback btw), that I really can blame *or* the laptop itself at being more slow, *or* the amateuristic sound device which comes with it (and which come with all laptops as it seems).
This is in general.

I'm getting getting crazy here;
Looking at the first few posts from Gerard, he expected that the silent playing is related to a wrong implied track length as the bottom slider shows. So, I just tried to manipulate that. Built in a message when the "manipulation" was applied, which message so far didn't show because I used the wrong settings for that. But instead it happened for real (normal audio PC). Just a second track of an album, the PC running for days now, and especially the whole afternoon playing.

Ok, when the "manipulation" was applied properly, nothing happened. Not with shorter - not with longer than the track is in reality.

[xsheaffer]

Peter,
Just for test, I tried unattended mode and have run through 2 whole albums today without any interruption!

[PeterSt]

Haha, but with unattended mode I'm doing that for 150 days.
But now with 0.9v-5 everything should be better. Only the silent playing problem with attended mode, that stays for now (many like silence, you know ).