Audio player goes mute - SOLVED

1

It’s several times now that it happens: while playing back an audio file abruptly the audio out mutes, the media player keeps running but no audio.

The issue happened with v.3220 (maybe with 3219 as well, don’t remember exactly…) and now happening with v.3221.

Brad, please can you check and fix it? Thanks!

2

Does it happen with all media files, or just one particular one? Does it always mute in the same place?

3

I’ve been trying to reproduce this here, but seems to work fine. Can you provide some more details on your setup and when this seems to happen?

4

Well, it seems happening quite randomly… it does not happen always and on the same file (if I remember good). It’s quite hard to reproduce it because it happens once maybe or twice, then it works fine for hours and then it can happen again…

I’ll try to “quantize” the problem…

5

Update: it happened today again on the same audio file but in a different position…

Following bug is that - after the audio muted - the audio player does not stop at the end of the file.

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6

Hi @Mistheria

OK obviously something going a miss here. Some questions:

  1. What kind of audio file - wave, mp3 or flac?
  2. When it goes mute you say it continues playing but do wondering if the level meters are still lighting up on the media player slot?
  3. Do VSTi’s continue to sound out? eg: is it just the media player or everything?
  4. What’s required to get it working again? If you stop it and then hit play again does the sound resume? What if you switch files in the media player and/or stop/restart the engine. (not suggesting as a solution - just after clues where the problem might be).

I’ll do a code review on the audio player code base and perhaps setup a load test for it.

Brad

7
  1. The file that caused recently the problem is a .wav, WAV file to download
  2. Don’t remember, today the issue didn’t happen…
  3. VST instruments continue playing normally
  4. To make it work again, just stop and restart the playback.

Thanks for checking about it.

8

OK thanks. And to be clear: nothing else of significance relating to the media player was happening when playback stopped? Also, the file wasn’t on removable media was it?

If it happens again before I get this sorted, please check point 2 above. Very interested to know about this.

9

Sure I’ll check about level meters…

Media file (wav) was on the internal hard drive.

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10

This used to happen to me. The meters would still be responding but the wav files would stop playing half way through a song. It happened randomly but some times more than others.

I turned on the media file display to try to see if it always happened at the same point in the file and it never happened again.

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11

So yes I confirm, the meters keep running. I wanted to say this but waiting for confirmation. However, in the last two days it didn’t happen to me…

12

The meters do keep running! Jeez I didn’t expect that.

Well that eliminates a whole bunch of places where this could be failing so that’s good I guess. I’ve been testing here but haven’t been able to reproduce it.

I’ll setup another test now and run it over night and see what happens.

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13

Hi @Mistheria

I’ve had your audio file on loop for over 48-hours now in a debug build of Cantabile and it’s still playing fine. I’m going to switch over to the release build now and test again.

A couple more points:

  • If this happens again for you could you please also check the media player’s audio output (send) route and see if it’s level meters are lighting up
  • Also check that neither the media player nor its routes gain settings have changed
  • Also try adjust the gain setting on both the media player and it’s sending audio route to see if that wakes it up again (even if they haven’t moved, move them anyway and see if it makes a difference)
  • If you can, grab me a screen shot of the media player, its output routes and the master output levels.

(None of this is intended as a solution - this is for diagnosis to try and figure out what’s going on here)

Brad

14

HI Brad,
sure I’ll send you all the info if/when it happens again…

However, I think that keep running the audio file in loop is not helpful, because if it loads “correctly” it can run per years without problems :slight_smile:

Probably sometime it happens that the file is loaded wrongly …

However, in the last couple days it’s not happening here anymore… thanks.

15

Hi @Mistheria

No problems here running it over night again. I’m a little confused over exactly when this problem happens - sounds like it just happened randomly in the middle of playing which is why I set the long loop mode test in the hopes of reproducing it.

The fact that it plays past the end when in the mode and the fact that the level meters are still lighting up doesn’t make much sense to me - perhaps there’s two issues here but I’ve been unable to reproduce either.

Do you have anything else going on in that song file that might be impacting it? Eg: bindings to the media player, bindings to the media players routes etc…?

Brad

16

Hi @brad, I understand. Well, in the last 4-5 days this issue is not happening. However, I’ve some bindings in the background rack to change program and control the expression pedal. Nothing related to the media player.

Thanks.

17

OK. Not sure what else I can do without being able to reproduce it. Let me know about the above points if it happens again.

18

Not happening anymore! :slight_smile:

But I’ll let you know details you have asked for if it will… thanks!

19

Good to know, but not happy I couldn’t get to the bottom of this. Please let me know if it happens again.

20

Hi @Mistheria @carleden

Update: I received another report of this yesterday but this time it was reported that the audio player’s level meters stopped lighting up (which seems contrary to what was described here).

So I’ve been looking at this again from this new angle and after running some more experiments and I think I’ve found a way to simulate the problem by deliberately stalling the audio reader thread in a debug build. The symptoms seem the same as what’s been described:

  • Audio goes silent
  • Level meters stop lighting up
  • Play position continues to move
  • Play doesn’t stop at the end of the file

For this to happen in a release build the audio reader thread would need to be stalled for quite a while (but obviously that’s what’s happening).

I need to think about how to best fix this but will try to get something out asap…

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