Audirvana Plus 2.6

[astrostar59]

Have you tired feeding as is i.e. no sampling? It may well be your CPU is not up to it, or disk reads are too slow. I guess you only use your Mac for music? And have stripped it all back, also stuffed it with at least 8 GIG RAM?

[stewartg]

When a track is playing the A+ timeline appears to show the progress of the upsampling, a light grey growing bar and also the growing track time bar overlaid one on the other

The upsampling progress is always well ahead of the track playing time. I'm assuming this means the computer is creating the growing up sample file quicker than it is playing it out.

This means the computer is powerful/quick enough for the job.

still don't know why it mutes though.

[astrostar59]

True. But do you use your Mac for anything else? Have you disabled sleep in energy save and other tasking. Have you disabled Spotlight and File tracking. Do you surf the web while playing music. Is your music on an external drive? If yes, ensure that drive is not sleep mode enabled.

 

It sounds like a timing error to me, which could be processor load or file transfer stalls. Try running Activity monitor, see if the processor is peaking out.

[wgscott]

i7 Quad core, 8 GB memory, internal and external SSD, no sleep, etc.  The processors easily handle the up-sampling, but this will also happen when not up-sampling. I can also max out the eight CPUs at 100% as a "stress test" without it inducing the issue.  Plenty of free memory, and no page-outs. I am almost certain this is not a hardware issue. I've used this primarily for music playback and a few very low-demand tasks, and have been using it since I purchased it in 2012.  This issue with Audirvana is much more recent. I control it via screen sharing from other computers.

[astrostar59]

44 minutes ago, wgscott said:

i7 Quad core, 8 GB memory, internal and external SSD, no sleep, etc.  The processors easily handle the up-sampling, but this will also happen when not up-sampling. I can also max out the eight CPUs at 100% as a "stress test" without it inducing the issue.  Plenty of free memory, and no page-outs. I am almost certain this is not a hardware issue. I've used this primarily for music playback and a few very low-demand tasks, and have been using it since I purchased it in 2012.  This issue with Audirvana is much more recent. I control it via screen sharing from other computers.

Is it a pause in music playing after you set it going on the first track, or say second track playing by itself? There will be stuttering and pauses in the screen display itself if you screen share via wifi.

[Bob Stern]

6 hours ago, wgscott said:

You can also just highlight a piece of text like this, and a contextual pop-up comes up that says "quote this" .  Saves you having to chop out stuff.

 

Thanks!  That feature is a great improvement over Chris's previous forum software.

[wgscott]

1 hour ago, astrostar59 said:

Is it a pause in music playing after you set it going on the first track, or say second track playing by itself? There will be stuttering and pauses in the screen display itself if you screen share via wifi.

 

It has nothing to do with screen-sharing. 

 

It is a brief (1 second) pause in Audirvana itself.  No stuttering, etc. either in Audirvana or in the shared screen (which I also disconnect after I set things up). 

 

It is an extremely infrequent event, and I haven't managed to find a repeatable way to induce it.

 

It is accompanied by the following entry in /var/log/system.log:

 

On 5/2/2017 at 9:21 AM, wgscott said:

Just happened again, and I found this rather cryptic message in /var/log/system.log

 

 

May  2 09:06:20 tv-stereo-mini Audirvana Plus[57976]: Strong issue, need to restart playback
May  2 09:06:20 tv-stereo-mini Audirvana Plus[57976]: Restarted: 0

 

 

[Umgawa]

Hi there - I have a question re: A+ audio system settings, specifically the 'spl rate switching latency' option. I've set mine @ 2 sec, but although I was aware that the feature is only meant to allow the DAC to catch up to any sample rate switches between tracks, I'm noticing a clear tonal quality change between the different settings. Bass becomes fuller and treble edge diminishes as latency is increased, and for the life of me I can't figure out why, nor whether this is ideal. Is this a side effect or the purpose of the feature? What do others do with this setting?

 

I have an IUSB Nano 3.0 running into my Ifi IDSD Nano so not sure if the reclocking feature of the IUSB makes the latency redundant or necessary. Any suggestions?

[bnbayer]

Since testing A+ 3.0 I can no longer launch 2.6.8

I tried deleting the library files, but instead of creating a new one when I launch, I get an error message. The error says I have a damaged audrivanapluslibrary.sqlite file and I need to delete it. Of course, that's one of the files I already deleted and it's not around to delete again.

How do I get A+ to run again?

[astrostar59]

The installation of V3 adds new structures to the DB, so you can't then re-read that in 2X. You would need to back up the A+ DB and add that back in. Not sure how you can go back now, other than take out the DB file and open 2, then re-import your library. Why do you want to go back? I find V3 is better in all areas.

[SavantGarde]

On 2017-05-02 at 6:21 PM, wgscott said:

Just happened again, and I found this rather cryptic message in /var/log/system.log

 

 

May  2 09:06:20 tv-stereo-mini Audirvana Plus[57976]: Strong issue, need to restart playback
May  2 09:06:20 tv-stereo-mini Audirvana Plus[57976]: Restarted: 0

 

I also have audio drop-outs now and then and when it happened just now I though to check the log and found the exact same two messages as the ones you found. I only have these drop-outs a couple of times per week, some days there is none. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with a lack of memory or processing capacity.

 

By the way, if I turn off Direct Mode these drop-outs become accompanied by distortion. When using Direct Mode, Integer Mode 2 seems to result in the least amount of these drop-outs.

[RunHomeSlow]

6 hours ago, SavantGarde said:

I also have audio drop-outs now and then and when it happened just now I though to check the log and found the exact same two messages as the ones you found. I only have these drop-outs a couple of times per week, some days there is none. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with a lack of memory or processing capacity.

 

By the way, if I turn off Direct Mode these drop-outs become accompanied by distortion. When using Direct Mode, Integer Mode 2 seems to result in the least amount of these drop-outs.

 

I have also occasionnally these too for seems no reason for!  my songs is already all buffered CPU is at 0% all is good and then just stop for 1.5 to 2 secs. It doesn't stop playing, just no sound.

 

I'm on 3.0.6 with Direct Mode on in 10.12.5 and upsampling everything to DSD128

Seems that it can happenned to anyone...

 

How can i see that log file on mine?

[astrostar59]

I thought Direct Mode didn't work in Sierra?

 

Anyway, back to the topic, first thing I would try Ethernet to USB or Ethernet to AES/SPDIF. I found USB can have 'waiting states' just like copying a file to a USB drive, it is not constant. 

 

The other point is, your Mac may be doing some system check or other duty and transfer pauses due to that. I would kill wifi, bluetooth, anything other than music duties. Don't surf on it or use it for email.

 

[RunHomeSlow]

44 minutes ago, astrostar59 said:

I thought Direct Mode didn't work in Sierra?

 

Anyway, back to the topic, first thing I would try Ethernet to USB or Ethernet to AES/SPDIF. I found USB can have 'waiting states' just like copying a file to a USB drive, it is not constant. 

 

The other point is, your Mac may be doing some system check or other duty and transfer pauses due to that. I would kill wifi, bluetooth, anything other than music duties. Don't surf on it or use it for email.

 

 

Yes Direct Mode works with Sierra like before if you are willing to work a little bit for it  easy to find here my recipy...

 

Anyway, back to the topic...  yes wifi is not working, like bluethooth, system optimizer is at extreme settings, i don't surf internet or read email either... like i said it is randomly happening for no reason like SavantGarde said

 

i'd like to see my log if i can see when it is happening to understand, maybe A+ goes to sleep when not working CPU for a bit of time, while the song is loaded in memory... but i'm upsampling at the same time so is it real loaded in memory then? it is not happening often... but i'd like it not happening always

 

[astrostar59]

Some more ideas in this subject. Does your external drive have an energy save mode? If yes turn it off. What is your Energy settings in Control Panel for the Mac. Try 'never sleep' and defeat 'hard disc sleep'. I run Mavericks and never get drop outs. I don't upsample though. Have you tried no up sampling to see it that works?

[SavantGarde]

I asked Damien and he tells me this occurs due to a transient issue with the OS X/macOS kernel sometimes giving higher priority to another process (a design flaw in the kernel, he says), thus stalling audio playback. When playback has been stalled for too long Audirvana restarts audio streaming, resulting in the log messages given above. Setting Audirvana's priority to "Extreme" could help, he says, but it's not guaranteed.

 

I guess this is why Linux distributions lets one install a low-latency or realtime kernel. Unfortunately I don't think that's possible with OS X/macOS.

 

 

[Bob Stern]

11 hours ago, SavantGarde said:

I asked Damien and he tells me this occurs due to a transient issue with the OS X/macOS kernel sometimes giving higher priority to another process (a design flaw in the kernel, he says), thus stalling audio playback.

 

If we could figure out what processes those were, we could use "renice" to lower their priority.  However, I'm sure Damien already would have found those processes if it were possible.  Perhaps they are part of the kernel process and don’t have a separate process ID that can be reniced.

[wgscott]

I think the interfering processes are launchd-related.  

 

I now issue this command upon every restart:

launchctl remove com.tidal.LaunchHelper com.apple.Spotlight

The launchctl remove  command differs from the unload command in that you don't have to specify the location of the file, and the file (in the case of this tidal virus thing) need not even exist.  The frequency of these pauses has now greatly decreased.  I've only experienced one incident since using this trick.  I don't know why launchd was constantly hunting for this nonexistent tidal plist file, but I got tired of trying to track it down and am using this hack instead.  I have a suspicion it came with Audirvana, since it is only in that context that I have ever used tidal.

 

I still have lots of other launchd errors in the console, so it wouldn't surprise me if this might create the issue.

[astrostar59]

Are you getting this error in V2.6 or V3 latest?

 

Not sure if it is related, but I spotted a post that the latest Tidal app update had major display issues and bugs. They seem to float up updates with issues, get feedback, then address them after! Quite possibly the loading element in Tidal to A+ is at fault here, not Damien's work? And it may get resolved by Tidal and the issue go away. Here's hoping!

[wgscott]

Audirvana 2.6.x, but it persists in 3.X.

 

I trialed tidal for a month with Audirvana, but apart from that, never installed it to my knowledge.

[mugsy]

Hi there.

 

A quick call for help. Does anybody still have the original installation file for either Audirvana 2.5.4 (or 2.6?). 2.5.4 was my favourite version overall (for sound, and I prefer to display by Artist, not Album Artist in album view) and as I cannot afford to upgrade to V3 for now, would prefer to get back to that version for now. Many thanks

 

John.

[RunHomeSlow]

4 minutes ago, mugsy said:

Hi there.

 

A quick call for help. Does anybody still have the original installation file for either Audirvana 2.5.4 (or 2.6?). 2.5.4 was my favourite version overall (for sound, and I prefer to display by Artist, not Album Artist in album view) and as I cannot afford to upgrade to V3 for now, would prefer to get back to that version for now. Many thanks

 

John.

 

Just change the numbers at the end of this link for whatever version you want...

https://audirvana.com/delivery/AudirvanaPlus_3.0.6.dmg

[mugsy]

That's fantastic! Thanks so much RunHomeShaw!

[astrostar59]

Or go here:

https://audirvana.com/?page_id=1277#toggle-id-9

 

And look for :

If you still have an Audirvana Plus 2 license and have not yet upgraded to the current Audirvana Plus 3:

Audirvana Plus 2.6.8 program can be downloaded here

For those having a system still running on OS X 10.8 or earlier, the latest compatible version is Audirvana Plus 2.2.6 that is available here.

[mugsy]

Thanks Astrostar! ???