XXHighEnd

I`m playing with 09z-8-2  and the sound is Fantastic.

But music often stops when i start playing and when i press next song. Then i get this message: 
Playback stopped because data didn`t arrived in time


Tore

Tore,

This is a new message since 0.9z-8-2 (never announced in the Release Notes) and it tells you :
Well, that all was too slow to provide the data in time for the short buffers applied (Q1 x xQ1 x Device Buffer Size).
It may happen that only once in a while it does not work.

It can happen during playback just the same.

Before (earlier versions) music just stopped and you wouldn't know why. Now you know.

Can happen only with Phase Alignment engaged.

Hope this helps ...
Peter

Hi Tore,

Does it happen when you use the Playback drive also or only when you play music directly from your music hdd?.

In my case it only happens when I play music directly from the hdd where I have the music files stored. If I play with Phase Alignment disengaged as Peter suggests there are occasional stops for a short space of time but also and more important the SQ is worse than with PA engaged. In my opinion the best SQ is with PA engaged and playing directly from the hdd where the music is stored, I mean not using any Playback drive at all (neither Galleries), but this way there are that stops. If that could be fixed using my present Q1:7 x xQ1:1 x 4096 setting that would be a step ahead in SQ.

Regards,
Juan

Hi Juan!

I have just tried without Playback Drive and SFS=1 , Q1=7
It is just the same, not working. Maybe my PC is to slow?

I`m playing with SFS=4, Q1=14, that is working without stops

Tore

Hi Tore,

Yes that´s the problem, without Playback drive the stops are there, as Peter said to make it works PA needs to be disabled but at the same time that´s a shame because the SQ is worse. If your PC is slow mine is slow too because once in a while I also have that same problem. I wonder if the ones with the fastest PC have also this problem.

Juan

Hi Juan,

I am sure it will be a language problem or symantics otherwise, but no way I will have said or will ever say something like "hey dude, to make it work, just disengage Phase Alignment - Done !". No way.

I am sure you don't meant to express it like this, but again language or symantics make at least me read it like this.

So ... not using Phase Alignment will help, but no way I advise it as the solution. I hope this is clear !

Regards,
Peter

Because there's too much "off topic" going on, I now don't know where I wrote it, but please read all my posts from today. One of the first from today will tell you that most probably it is not about being "slow" at all (hint : Page File thing).

And btw, as far as I am concerned your PC is not slow. Nor is mine (find that post).

Best regards,
Peter

Below is Peter's post on the possible page file issue from the Not Enough gain thread:

 Re: Not enough gain
« Reply #12 on: February 26, 2013, 09:04:56 am » Quote 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Quote from: Jud on February 24, 2013, 09:20:47 pm
Don't know whether this has anything to do with anything: My amp kept tripping its safety shutdown a day or two ago when the DragonFly was set to 50% volume.  40% was OK.  I don't recall whether I'd tried the DragonFly at that volume before.  It's the first time the amp has tripped that I can recall.

Jud, looking at this again and after listening last night to a best rendered Who I ever heard before (I very regularly play Who's Next because it has always been very good for SQ) ... your problem is that of a PC/Driver combination which more people suffer from and I recall a topic from Arvind at least. But what I also recall is that he solved it, without real knowledge of how (ehm, at my side). I can't help to solve the problem, but at least I have some new information from lately ...

So, this is about "something" happening in the PC and the most logical would be something like needing to write to the page file. I saw this happening myself (your 20-30 seconds) and it looks to be related to needing more memory at a second load of a track part (per SFS boundary) and although this doesn't imply a "swap out" (it doesn't work like that from off Vista) it implies a "more memory needed" and let's say this always involves the page file. Why my focus to the page file ? well, because it receives the very highest priority of all, and it may stall everything else (when a bit in trouble so to speak).

Long story short : disable your page file just for trials.
Notice : even when disabled it will be there for a smaller portion but that is normal behavior and okay for this test.

Also, and similar to what I wrote two days or so ago, since this doesn't formally stop the stream hence I don't notice a thing of it, again this is about this real stall where all stops. It has to be, or otherwise I'd notice it. This again leads to this highest priority thing and the really only thing I know of which incurs for that *and* may take somewhat longer (and too long) is the page file I/O.

Don't try this with an SFS-Max (notice the Max) of around 400 and 8GB of internal memory only; this will choke your system sooner or not so much later.


And then about this PC/Driver combination ...
I have this PC which *needs* the "After SFS Rounds" to be set, or otherwise a crack will happen shortly after playback started. So, After SFS Rounds solves that, but it is a backdoor solution to something I don't know the cause of (better English perhaps : I have no clue what happens). Now :
This very same PC with the very same drivers and everything does NOT exhibit this with Windows 8.  It hasn't a single time, just like my normal Audio PC never exhibited it under Windows 7.

This is quite important to know, already because of, say, half of all people suffer from this (necessity to use After SFS Rounds). But obviously it is OS related, or a combination with drivers which are different for W8 somewhere under the hood (yes, I said same drivers, but for that I merely refer to mobo / video card etc. drivers). Still, this too seems to be related to some high prio stuff, because I can't find the real relation to the happening in time (after the start) and it feels like a write cache which as some stage *has* to be flushed (to disk). This will not be at the precise same time, but at some stage the OS thinks "NOW there's some free time to do it !".

I know this is in the middle of a topic about something else, so people may not read it, but *if* someone reads this, for this too he might try to shut off the Paging and see whether it helps this issue (so, switch off Paging (Virtual Memory), set After SFS Rounds to 0 and see whether the crack at a few seconds into the track now stays away).

If someone needs help on how to switch off the Paging (Virtual Memory) just let it know.

Peter
 

Thanks Peter and Brian, tomorrow (now is late here) I´ll disable the page file and see if it solves the problem.

Best regards,
Juan

Hi Boleary/Juanpmar,

As yet I haven't been able to solve 3 issues:
1)Playback stops. I increased the Q1 from 14 to 15 & the stopping has reduced, but I still get one stop within 10/15 mins of starting.
2) Fairly loud tick. Within 10 secs at start of a playlist, I get a fairly loud tick. Thats it & it never occurs again until I load a new playlist. 
3) Low level thump at Stop. This occurs every time I stop or when a playlist ends.

I haven't tried 0.9z-8-2 (W7) as yet simply because I am comfortable with RDC. Maybe it would solve some or all the above problems.

Best regards,

Arvind

Thank you for the feedback Arvind (but why do I have in my mind that you solved it ?).

0.9z-8-2 will not solve anything in this area, although it runs more lean so very maybe, but then indeed outside the Remote Control (or RDC as how you refer to it).

Regards,
Peter

Same problems here with that message! Indeed when you switched PA off this message disappears and music start with stuttering for the first seconds. I never hear that stuttering before at the start of a track.

Changing Q1, Q1x, SFS, Buffer,... its very difficult to find a right setting to keep PA on.

Your suggestion to disabling the page file is a solution for this time problem? In version 09z-8-1e i have sometimes a start problem but after a second start it plays.

Johan

Johan, you seem to talk in the context of "this is new to 0.9z-8-2". Is it that what you mean to tell ?

Peter

Indeed! 

I can't believe it.
The *message* is new. Stopping or not should be unchanged.

?

(feel free to disagree, and I'd even say "please" !)

I have the impression that with the same settings in both versions, the latest version hardly starts playing. I get every time this "Playback stopped because data didn`t arrived in time" message. I will test both versions again this evening.

Please answer this question?

Johan, I now see that you referred to something like 0.9z-8-1e which does not exist, and not 0.9z-8-1a. So now I am unsure of changes since then. Still I don't think they exist.
If you are sure the settings are the same, try it the other way around : apply your settings from 0.9z-8-2 to 0.9z-8e and see what happens in the latter.


No. What can I now say more about any suggestion which is a suggestion. And otherwise read that post where you obtained your question from again, maybe.

Peter

My mistake, i mean 0.9z-8e.

I have seen subject message only twice until now and think it is PC power settings related, HDD power settings to be more precise.

Both cases: selected (some) album for playback but did not started playback immediately, due to phone call (today) or other reason (cannot remember
first time, could be typing some mail). Pressing 'Play' button after several minutes resulted with no music but above message. Wallpaper was
shown OK (playing unattended & min OS)

Some people have asked me how to disable the page file. Please follow these steps:

Go to Control Panel>System and Security>System>Advanced system settings>Advanced>Performance, click on Settings...>Advanced>Virtual Memory, click on Change...> uncheck the box Automatically manage paging file...and check No paging file, click on Set> Ok, Ok and reboot the PC.

It solved the problem at least with an album (Anita Baker-Sweet Love. 96kHz/768kHz) and so far I haven´t found more problems on this regard. So disabling the page file seems to have solved the problem here.

Juan

Yes Peter, you're right, my words can lead to confusion, I fully understand that disabling the PA was not your recommendation to solve the problem and that you simply said that it happens (sometimes) only with Phase Alignment engaged. That was a bad interpretation of your words from my side, sorry.

Juan

Also a nice one. :yes: But this should be another version of it all and it is difficult for me to reason out how it would work. Should be something like :

A first reference to the data is still available in some "OS buffer" *) while in practice the disk concerned has spun down. The availability of this first reference allows the program to see that all is OK but at a first next track (load) part the disk has to spin up.

*) Compare this somewhat to Explorer showing the contents of a disk right away, while in the mean time -when you click deeper- you must wait for the disk to spin up.
Not the exact same situation (were it for "buffers"), but it may bring across what -sort of- can be happening.

Peter

The message has appeared again when I turned up the volume on the fly for a few seconds, no problem if it is just a short Alt+U click to turn it up for only -1,5db. I know that there was some problems with Alt+U but I do not remember if it had to do with this matter.

Juan

Juan, well thought. But not related (that Alt-U) because the only thing currently going on with that is using "huge" buffer sizes (like 30 x 20+ x 4096) and then parts are not played or repeated. This is what I said over a week ago (could be in the Release Notes), and that is all. Not applicable to your situation I think.

However, your report about this (I have never seen that myself) smells like the the disk being accessed with the original music data which is something I feel myself from other happenings and would be a bug somewhere. Regarding this, what is your exact situation when this happens ? I mean, file type (like FLAC), play without Playback disk (you said that recently), always copy to XX drive - you get the hunch.
And your SFS and buffer sizes in this case.

Let me know when you have some spare time ...
Regards,
Peter

Peter, that happened with the album Aziza-Always (16bits/32bits. 44kHz/705kHz) and it is stored as wav files. I´m currently playing wit a Playback drive because playing directly from the hdd where the originals files are causes frequents stops. I´m not using Copy to XX drive and the page file is disabled. The other settings can be seen in my sig.

The message appeared again with other album, this time with Dion Best Ballades (16bit/32bit. 96kHz/768kHz) also wav files and with all settings being the same as with the Aziza album. In this case the message appeared just at the start of the first song and this is what I did: I went to the same window where I disabled the page file: System Properties>Advanced>Performance> Settings... and in Performance Options I marked "Adjust for best performance" clicking only "Smooth edges of screen fonts" (to get a better appearance). Later in XX I marked "Don´t do anything with Coverart" (before I had marked "Show as Wallpaper") and finally I moved a little up and down the volume level. I don´t know what part of this whole thing worked but after doing it the album played with no stops and the message was gone. Please ask if you need more information.

Juan

Well, the previous example of Celine Dion Best Balladas sometimes works sometimes not. I have to try several times making the process described in the previous post, charging also another album before this one (as trying to fool XX) and rebooting XX. At the end after some tries it works again but I couldn´t say how to follow an exact procedure to make it works.

Juan

I did a compare of the two versions in attented mode. Indeed more or less the same behaviour. The latest version generates this "..didn't arive .." message. Switching PA off works. An other thing that works is lowering the sample rate to 8x (352.800). In that case you can keep PA active. When I change the buffersize from 4096 to 2048 and a sample rate of 16x XXHE is playing without sound. I see this in both versions.
By the way I disabled the Page File without succes.

For me its not clear what caust this problems. Do I have an out of date system? Is 4GB RAM the problem?
Johan :old:

By all means, do not forget to switch Off Logging !


Juan, the most logical to have helped will be the "Don't do anything with Coverart". Maybe you can confirm that ?


Johan, I rather do not like to think any system is too old or anything. It is just something "we" don't understand (yet).


Keep in mind people, this all is about preventing loud ticks with Phase Alignment. So the Stop is deliberate; without Phase Alignment you'd have small stops anyway which may go unnoticed but of course it is not good.
Sadly it is also about crossing the limits of our systems which will be different for everybody. But let's say I will try to focus on it and see whether I can impove in this area.

Peter

Page file is disabled and i can play with SFS=1 and Q1=7 again.

Sometimes music stops (and i get the message) when i press next song (Alt-N)

I have a 24/96 FLAC cd i can`t start with this settings, i get the message before it is loaded.

That is sad because i like this settings best.

Tore

Just to add another data point, I get these messages about once per album. There are some occasions when I don't get them during a whole album, but these are rare.

I haven't played around with any BIOS, OS or XX settings whatsoever so can't really help Peter find the problem. My machine is pretty quick, although I don't use hyper-threading or over-clocking. The OS, XX and music files are all on a single spinning HDD.

Might using a RAMdisk help?

Of course it'll be great when Peter gets to the bottom of this. But quite frankly, the sound is soooo good right now, I don't mind the occasional annoyance of having to restart a track.

Mani.

Mani, for this particular problem set your HDD spindown time to 7 minutes or more. That helped me.

Peter

Set HDD spindown time to 7 minutes or more?

How do i do this?


Tore

Control Panel - Energy Settings (Power Settings) - click the link to the active scheme (usually denoted "balanced"), Advanced Settings (or something like that) and in there click "disk". In there you will see it.

Peter

Sorry Peter but there is not a consistent behavior, yesterday it was working fine (not always though) clicking on "Don´t do anything with Coverart" and not working with it unmarked but today after turning On the PC the first thing I did was playing this album (C. Dion) with Show as Wallpaper active and there were no stops at all along the complete album. The only message that appeared in this case was

ChangeWp
Error setting the Wallpaper: A generic error ocurred in GDI+

These are my settings in CoverArt.

Wallpaper Max Height: 400
Thumbnail Cache Size: 500
Coverart-Resize Size: 3000

So, the conclusion so far about the "Playback stopped..." message is that the behavior is erratic and that when it stops just trying two or three times it works again not necessarily changing any setting.

Juan

Juan, the Wallpaper error is harmless. I know how that happens and it should not be and must be solved sometime. I have it too half of the times now when starting Playback (and SFS=1).

Peter

I get the same error message "Playback stopped because data didn`t arrive in time" in 1 out of 3 (more or less) cases.

Even worse, sometimes XXHE shuts down completely in the middle of a song.

Disableling the page file didn't change a thing.

Like Juan, without changing the settings it can sometimes work or not.

My settings are the same in W7 as under W8 (see signature).

Diede

I have a shut down so now and than. The pc just freezes and a hard reboot is needed.

With the previous version i had a blue screen when it happens.
that does not happen with this version.
Will play with some settings when i have time.

No errors about data ect..

 :)

@Diede
You are running music from USB disks. Please try and change computer power plan into this:

Control Panel / Power Options
Down arrow on right side: Show additional plans
Choose High performance / Change plan settings / Change advanced power settings
Hard disk: Turn off hard disk after: '20 Minutes'
(default, it should be OK for most but classical music with longer pieces)

One more power plan change:
 USB Settings/USB Selective suspend setting: 'Disabled' 
---

HTH
George

For the record:

This message appears now and then when playing music with 8-2. Sometimes in a track that I just started, sometimes along an abum, but sometimes i can listen to a complete range of 60+ minute albums without a stop. When i switch tracks i've encountered 8-2 won't start playing the new track at all.

This is a 8-2 thing on my system. No such behaviour in 8e. Settings are really different though, now pa is engaged (-1).

Removing engine3 by pressing the "off" button in the q settings area helps for all above stops or not-starts.

Regards, Coen

Ok, what about this :

It seems a kind of logical to me that everybody started using (Xtweaks) Balanced Load at 43. But mind you, this turns -for example- a 3GHz processor into a just over 1GHz processor. Ah, you didn't know that. Well, it is so.

So what about setting it back to how you had it before ?

And do not fall into the pitfall of now seeing a message where before the sound just stopped unnoticed, because it really is the same !

Peter

As I'm only using a single HDD for OS, XX and music nowadays, I have the HDD set to 'never' spindown.

Mani.

Just tried taking Balanced Load from 43 back up to 85, as I had it before. I only played a few tracks and had no stops - but then this is usually the case with 43 too. However, I prefer the sound of 43. It's 'calmer' and less 'in your face'.

I'm still not sure about 'Cool When Idle' though. Even at BL=43 this seems to have a profound affect on the sound. When set to 0, the sound becomes silky smooth... but to the detriment of fine detail IMO. Set to 1, the sound opens up and instruments start vibrating and 'singing' as though they're alive. The only downside seems to be a bit of sibilance. I strongly suspect this has something to do with noise, either in the SMPS or mobo. I don't know which way this works though; is the noise higher with CWI=0 or 1? But the difference seems more pronounced with higher BLs (say 85).

In any event, with my current setup, I prefer CWI=1. Maybe if I had a linear PS my preference would be different...

Edit: Haha, when I'm sitting in my home study/office listening to the music playing (pretty loudly) in the main room, I think CWI=0 sounds more real - beautifully balanced and nothing annoying whatsoever.

Mani.

PS. Peter, many moons ago you mentioned something that was even crazier than your normal 'inventions' - a linear PS for a PC that was the size of a matchbox, or something like this. Did anything ever come of this? Your sig suggests you might already be using something like this. Are there any beans to spill at this point in time???

Mani, no, I am sorry. The "matchbox" was put on hold somewhere a year back. Had something to do with CE regulations, and without that certificate it would catch fire.
Well, something like that. It is not completely dead though.

Regards,
Peter

Like Mani, I have my HD spindown set to "never". In a four hour listening session I had this error five times.

Well for the last three days this error message hasn't occurred. The difference: my wife swiped my flat screen for a work project and I dug an old CRT out of the closet. Viola!