Strange Goings On! (PerfTunes/Foobar/Ripped FLACs)

[monsterjazzlick]

Re: Strange Goings On! (PerfTunes/Foobar/Ripped FLACs)

What I meant with buffering problems is that if you skip/pause/forward/rewind it could potentionally cause glitches on systems that are not up to the task. The player could lose track of the time position, and glitches or skips or even freezing could be the result. This could be about underpowered computers/players, but is more often software related or perhaps slow storage.

But I don't say that you have buffering problems, I just wanted to know how you had listened to the album. Now that you have listened to it again without interruption and without any problems, you know that the album can be be played perfectly on one of your systems.

For what it's worth, when I listen to music on my computer I sometimes hear small glitches in my accurately ripped files. Playing the same files on my media player I don't hear the errors - because there aren't any. But I have just accepted that on the computer you hear small glitches now and then, and I have not bothered to track down the cause. But you might have bigger glitches than mine, annoying you more.

Hi Vilsen,

Thanks for the explanation, I understand what you mean now.

In which case, NO, I don't skip/pause/forward/rewind the music as it's playing. I agree, this type of activity could cause certain playback problems. Once the track, or album, is playing I just leave it going until I am finished listening, period. As I say, often the album might be in 'loop' mode, but that's about it.

I listened, for the 2nd time, to 'Miles On The Corner' - on my Sony Walkman and new SD-card - and (apart from no artwork!) there were no audio glitches. I will listen to the same album, on the dame device, again tonight.

I have to say that I do find it most strange that something like a £600 Dell laptop, with more than acceptable specs, can fail at a simple task of reliably playing back Wav/MP3/FLAC files? However, I am going to listen, through foobar, using the music collection on my C-drive (rather than external-HD) as mville has suggested.

btw - I have switched, in foobar, the Preferences/Output setting to route to my Steinberg external-soundcard now.

Paul

[monsterjazzlick]

Re: Strange Goings On! (PerfTunes/Foobar/Ripped FLACs)

So, you have finally determined and proven that the flacs are fine, due to the fact that you were able to play the flac album without any glitches. There is no need for anyone else to check whether the flacs have issues.

IMO, any playback issues that you have will be down to other hardware/software and/or network issues. If the glitches are rare, you could just ignore them or you would need to investigate/troubleshoot which processes are impacting on your work-PC or Amazon Fire set-ups.

Cheers mville,

Well at least we know that the FLACs are intact.

I would say, on average, that if I 'looped' the same track to play round&round, then out of 10 plays it would glitch once, possibly twice.

Although that's a very brief analysis in it's simplest form.

Paul

[monsterjazzlick]

Re: Strange Goings On! (PerfTunes/Foobar/Ripped FLACs)

I have no experience of the Amazon Fire, so I cannot comment on it's suitability as a DAP.

OK, fair enough. Cheers.

[mville]

Re: Strange Goings On! (PerfTunes/Foobar/Ripped FLACs)

Well at least we know that the FLACs are intact.

Yes, which should ease your stress levels.

I would say, on average, that if I 'looped' the same track to play round&round, then out of 10 plays it would glitch once, possibly twice.

Was this track playing from a local drive or the external HD?

[monsterjazzlick]

Re: Strange Goings On! (PerfTunes/Foobar/Ripped FLACs)

Yes, which should ease your stress levels.

Was this track playing from a local drive or the external HD?

Yes, I feel more relaxed now thanks mville!

The skipping tracks play when using my PC (foobar) with external-HD; and the Amazon Fire (foobar) with a SanDisk SD.

[schmidj]

Re: Strange Goings On! (PerfTunes/Foobar/Ripped FLACs)

First a question: is the Amazon Fire playing FLAC files, or compressed (mp3 or AAC or similar files?) (and BTW, I assume the skipping tracks don't skip in the same place on both the Fire and the PC...) Another question: How are you listening to the Fire? Hardwired headphones or some Bluetooth device?

Back to the PC: Various software designers load up their software with scheduled tasks which they load onto your computer, usually to "call home" to see if there are any updates (or sometimes promos for new software) at some scheduled time every so often, EVEN WHEN THAT SOFTWARE ISN'T RUNNING. (excuse the shouting, but that is not commonly understood by people who aren't software geeks.) And those calls home can easily end up having enough priority and system demands that they interrupt time sensitive operations like reading a USB drive and playing the music from the drive.

As a similar example, I noticed that sometimes when typing something on the keyboard on this pretty powerful multi-core laptop, the program I was typing into would loose the focus for a couple of seconds, leaving out a word or so of what I was typing. Very annoying! Well, I found if I looked at the Task Scheduler (not the Task Manager, but similar) and looked at what if any task it might have just run in the (supposedly) background, I'd see that a task executing program XYZ or whatever had been run by the task scheduler when I saw the interruption.

Most of those scheduled tasks can simply be removed, (You really don't care about those irritating pop-ups that appear telling you that Itunes has a new version...) or the task schedule can be modified (by you) so it only runs when your machine has been idle for some period of time and stops running if your machine is no longer idle; or can be modified to run at 3:00 AM instead of 8:27 PM.

Another thought, since it is a USB drive: Have you tried using a different USB port on your machine? A different USB cable? I've seen issues where some USB ports on computers were unreliable for playing streams because some other task inside the computer was hogging the hardware interfacing that USP port. Also USB cables, particularly USB3 cables, are notorious for not making good connections with the connectors on the computer. The USB3 connector design is far from rugged.

On the Fire, it is possible that playing high bandwidth FLAC files may be at the edge of the capability of the device (as compared to mp3 or AAC files more commonly used on portables) causing it to hiccup every now and then. And I do remember that my old, no longer used, Ipod Touch player would screw up at times, even playing AAC files.

Finally, the reason I asked about Bluetooth is that Bluetooth is a radio signal and subject to all kinds of interference. I've heard hits and dropouts on bluetooth devices fairly regularly. Just part of the terrain, not much you can do about it, other than go hardwire. The same is also true of Wifi, although that seems to typically be more rugged.

[monsterjazzlick]

Re: Strange Goings On! (PerfTunes/Foobar/Ripped FLACs)

Hi schmidj,

Thanks very much indeed for your lengthy reply.

I will go through your points and reply in full over the weekend.

Much appreciated,

Paul

[monsterjazzlick]

Re: Strange Goings On! (PerfTunes/Foobar/Ripped FLACs)

Yes. If the work-PC plays flac albums from the C: drive without issues, but as stated earlier, you have issues playing from the external-HD, then this implies you have a problem with the external-HD.

Hi,

I d/l the Western Digital (external-HD) 'Utilities' s/w tool. I have run a 'quick-scan' and the results came up fine. The 'thorough-scan' can take a few hours, and so I am going to leave it running all night.

Thanks.

[garym]

Re: Strange Goings On! (PerfTunes/Foobar/Ripped FLACs)

Hi,

I d/l the Western Digital (external-HD) 'Utilities' s/w tool. I have run a 'quick-scan' and the results came up fine. The 'thorough-scan' can take a few hours, and so I am going to leave it running all night.

Thanks.

ok. But this does not test the playback chain. Copy some files to c drive and play via foobar2000.

[monsterjazzlick]

Re: Strange Goings On! (PerfTunes/Foobar/Ripped FLACs)

ok. But this does not test the playback chain. Copy some files to c drive and play via foobar2000.

Yes, sure; I can do that tommorow. It's just because the Western Digital 'Utilities' full-scan takes a few hours - plus it's gettin' late here now! - that I thought I would leave it running during these early hours ...

[monsterjazzlick]

Re: Strange Goings On! (PerfTunes/Foobar/Ripped FLACs)

I d/l the Western Digital (external-HD) 'Utilities' s/w tool. I have run a 'quick-scan' and the results came up fine. The 'thorough-scan' can take a few hours, and so I am going to leave it running all night.

I ran the Western Digital (external-HD) 'Utilities' s/w tool FULL SCAN last night. It took nearly 7 hours! Anyway, the report indicated that everything is running 'fine' on the device.

[monsterjazzlick]

Re: Strange Goings On! (PerfTunes/Foobar/Ripped FLACs)

ok. But this does not test the playback chain. Copy some files to c drive and play via foobar2000.

This is still on my list of to-do's ...

[monsterjazzlick]

Re: Strange Goings On! (PerfTunes/Foobar/Ripped FLACs)

Last night, I listened, for the 3rd time now, to Miles Davis's: 'Miles On The Corner' - on my Sony Walkman and new SD-card - and there were NO audio glitches. I will listen to the same album, on the dame device, again tonight ...

[monsterjazzlick]

Re: Strange Goings On! (PerfTunes/Foobar/Ripped FLACs)

First a question: is the Amazon Fire playing FLAC files, or compressed (mp3 or AAC or similar files?) (and BTW, I assume the skipping tracks don't skip in the same place on both the Fire and the PC...) Another question: How are you listening to the Fire? Hardwired headphones or some Bluetooth device?

Finally, the reason I asked about Bluetooth is that Bluetooth is a radio signal and subject to all kinds of interference. I've heard hits and dropouts on bluetooth devices fairly regularly. Just part of the terrain, not much you can do about it, other than go hardwire. The same is also true of Wifi, although that seems to typically be more rugged.

Hi schmidj,

I will work through each one of your helpful questions.

ALL of my music files are FLAC; including to couple of box-sets I purchased on Qobuz last year. So no mp3 or WMA etc.

In 'dBpa' I used the 'recommended' compression setting (which I think is 'Level 5') when ripping my hard-copy CDs.

The skips/glitches have happened whilst listening via bluetooth AND via a cable. The problem with bluetooth appears to be that of 'silence' kicking in very occasionally. I think Garym said he experienced this when listening to music whilst out and about. From memory, any suspect CDs sounded, for a second or two, like they could be corrupt-files.

The album I have experienced the problem on is 'Miles On The Corner'; though I have re-ripped it twice. It HAS jumped in the same place on both my PC and my Amazon Fire - but certainly not every time I play it. However, issues of the same nature have occurred on other albums whilst I have had them LOOPED. As I said before, If a track plays (say) 10 times, then I may hear a glitch once or twice. Also, as stated above, for the past 3 nights 'Miles On The Corner' has played perfectly on my new Sony Walkman. So, as Garym says, it could be a playback-device issue.

My neighbor (in the flat below) says that he has problems with taxis and police cars driving past regularly; and that sometimes their signals even trigger his wireless-doorbell to sound! However, my internet connection is very good and I am on Virgin Media's fiber-optic broadband (200 mb/s).

There are still one or two recommended checks I need to make ...

Paul

[monsterjazzlick]

Re: Strange Goings On! (PerfTunes/Foobar/Ripped FLACs)

Last night, I listened, for the 3rd time now, to Miles Davis's: 'Miles On The Corner' - on my Sony Walkman and new SD-card - and there were NO audio glitches. I will listen to the same album, on the dame device, again tonight ...

OK, so last night listened, for the 4th time now, to Miles Davis's: 'Miles On The Corner' - on my Sony Walkman and new SD-card - and this time there WAS one glitch! It happened on a track it had never occurred on before. I immediately wound back the track, but then it continued playing through without the glitch occurring again.

I was listening, as I was on the previous 3 occasions, via my headphones in 'bluetooth' mode.