0.9u-6 -- Loud pop when playing next track

[edward]

Peter, I have finally just played with 0.9u-6 and there is a loud pop when it plays the next track. IOW on a playlist with a few songs, it "pops" between each song. The last version I was using was 0.9u-3 and it does not do it with that version. Could it be a bug with the gapless function?

FWIW, if I stop and select the next song and then press play - there is no pop. (It only happens on continous play)

[PeterSt]

With what setting (acc. Double etc.) and file (rate etc.) is dat ?

[hybride]

Edward, i also suffer with plop's/cracks
Just a question. Are you using the native windows usb drivers or did you install a different driver?

[edward]

With what setting (acc. Double etc.) and file (rate etc.) is dat ?

All my settings are in my sig. (set to DAC is 24/96)

Files are 16/44.1

[edward]

Edward, i also suffer with plop's/cracks
Just a question. Are you using the native windows usb drivers or did you install a different driver?

I'm using the M-Audio driver.

I don't hear cracks, just one loud pop between songs.

[PeterSt]

Edward, i also suffer with plop's/cracks

hybride, I'm fairly sure that you talk about something else. Please don't mix up things in that case.
But if you experience the (100% !) same as Edward just explained, then please say so !!

[PeterSt]

Edward,

For technical reasons (hence knowing the program) I can't think of anything else than gapless indeed. The strange thing is though, that I've been playing with the same settings yesterday for quite some hours, and nothing of the kind happened. Ok, one difference : I didn't use Invert.
Can you please check without Invert ?

Otherwise the only technical reason I can imagine, is that your (e.g. FLAC) files are converted late (slow system), that holding back playback for a while, and *then* the DAC is kind of re-initialized. Otherwise it's continues play.

But hold on. I think I can reason it out;
If that's an indeed "gapless" playing album you have at hand (like a live album), I could have made the mistake to apply Invert twice. Difficult to explain, but it would come down to one track playing Invert, the next not, the next again Invert, etc. Now *that* would cause the loud plop, because the voltage will go from minus x to plus x in one straight go.

So indeed, try without Invert and let me know.

[edward]

Can you please check without Invert ?

I did indeed try it with invert and without. Same behaviour.

Also, these are WAV files (not FLAC) and it is not a "gapless" album. The playlist consists of random songs from different artists.



. . . time to sleep now. 
I'll try more settings tomorrow.

[PeterSt]

In that case I really can't think of what happens. If I only had it myself ...

As a side note with hardly a chance that it's related : not only me but others too reported similar, but exactly the other way around as what you describe : at the first initialize of the Soundcard/DAC of a higher samplerate setting, there's a 100% volume pop. This is not related to the fact that the soundcard/DAC already was set to that setting; it keeps on doing it, though randomly. This probably has been so always (with me anyway), but only occurs now because of the pre-amp being eliminated.

From your description I perceive all as the same plop I (and others) have, but in your case it is during playing. When it's not about the Invert I can't think of anything else, and there is really no way the DAC stops in between songs.

Ok ... I have one other idea;
Things have been changed according the calculation on where the music data starts in the file. I did not play attention to gapless, but I recall a few times the song started abrubtly. Like not in the beginning. If this is indeed the case, you should be able to notice it just by a gapless (live etc.) album. Thus, then gapless wouldn't work properly anymore ...
I put my horses on this one.

[hybride]

Edward, i also suffer with plop's/cracks

hybride, I'm fairly sure that you talk about something else. Please don't mix up things in that case.
But if you experience the (100% !) same as Edward just explained, then please say so !!

Ok sorry, don't want to confuse things, but only interested in possible relations with drivers and any unwanted behaviour.

[edward]

Ok ... I have one other idea;
Things have been changed according the calculation on where the music data starts in the file. I did not play attention to gapless, but I recall a few times the song started abrubtly. Like not in the beginning. If this is indeed the case, you should be able to notice it just by a gapless (live etc.) album. Thus, then gapless wouldn't work properly anymore ...
I put my horses on this one.

Well . . . I tried every combination I could think of, and now I'm leaning towards the problem being about the calculation of where the song ends.

As I said before, I only tried with 16/44.1 files. Here are the combinations.

Invert on.
Invert off.
Double (to 88.2) (with DAC is 32/96 & 24/96 and DAC needs 32 bits)
Double/Upsample (to 96) (with DAC is 32/96 & 24/96 and DAC needs 32 bits)
Double and Upsample off (with DAC is 16/44.1)

All combinations exhibit the pop.

So I tried playing two back to back tracks from an album (that run together) and NO POPs. Also, in this case, the gapless was seamless (it did not start abruptly). OK, so again I tried some more different random tracks and NO POPs. So it seems this is track dependent. So I tried multiple combinations with the "problem" tracks, and the POP only exhibits when it is the previous track (even when followed by a "good" track). When I play a "good" track first, followed by a "problem" track, then I get no pop. So clearly the problem with these "problem" tracks is in the ending. I opened a couple of these in Nero WAV editor and did not see anything unusual at the end of the track (no spikes, etc.).

Since these "problem" tracks do not exhibit pops in 0.9u-3, is there anything different with 0.9u-6 about calculating the length of a song?


edit: FWIW when the "problem" track is the only one in the playlist it does not pop when it ends.

[PeterSt]

Since these "problem" tracks do not exhibit pops in 0.9u-3, is there anything different with 0.9u-6 about calculating the length of a song?

Actually, yes. I now take the physical length of the file (track), to be independent of often wrong header data.
Now what ...

Ok, I think I can find another means of doing it right. I hope ...

Thanks a bunch Edward !
Peter


PS: Didn't you see a lot of zeros near the end of such a track ? I saw them before (actually my glitch detection saw it but now I wonder whether that should be skipped for some reason ...

[edward]

Since 0.9u-4 another means of determining the track lengths better was applied. Now this has been set back to how it was before;

Although it is not sure that it was the cause, "plops" were reported at the end of playing a track. When you wish to check whether all is back to normal, test this with the Mem checkbox checked;
When this checkbox is unchecked, the means to determine the tracklength are very different again.

Loud pop is now gone with 0.9u-7, but only if I check Mem. Unfortunately the SQ is better with Mem unchecked.

Can I have the best of both worlds? 

[PeterSt]

I can try ...
But it's strange. If anything I had expected it to be the other way around.

Can you please make a screencopy of your playlist area, and indicate which track is playing (and which is the next to play), the first mentioned ending up in the pop ?

Thanks again.
Peter

[edward]

But it's strange. If anything I had expected it to be the other way around.

Why do you think it's strange? I thought you expected that the "pre-processing" would result in better SQ.

Here's my screenshot: (And yes, I am using Vista - don't worry about the look of the window, I have Visual Effects set to "Adjust for best performance")