Bug 4562 - 96/24 flac issue with the transporter
: 96/24 flac issue with the transporter
Status: CLOSED FIXED
Product: SB Transporter
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Audio
: unspecified
: PC Debian Linux
: P2 normal (vote)
: 7.1
Assigned To: Sean Adams
:
Depends on:
Blocks:
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2006-12-02 08:59 UTC by Markus Schiegl
Modified: 2009-09-08 09:18 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

See Also:
Category: ---


Attachments
96/24 file sent in by bug reporter (33.32 MB, application/octet-stream)
2006-12-04 15:10 UTC, Dan Evans
Details

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Description Markus Schiegl 2006-12-02 08:59:11 UTC
Hi,

while moving more and more 96/24 music into my online music library i found an album
with tracks - after beeing converted to flac - the transporter has problems playing.

symptom:
dropouts/stutter, eventually the transporter crashes/reboots (happened at least 3 times)...

observations:
- bandwidth should be no problem as the uncompressed wav file plays fine.
- 96khz flac without tags plays much better (*)
- 48khz (downsampled) flac with & without tags plays fine
- 96khz flac with & without tags plays fine with fb2k
- frequency analyzer shows high volume above 25khz
- same problem on the analog or digital output

(*) my guess: removing the artist and album tag frees some cpu cycles on the
transporter previously used for scrolling...disabling the VU-meter seems
to improve the situation even more.

One more thing supporting my CPU guess: flac files encoded with -0 have better
results compared to those compressed with -8. Thanks to flac 1.1.3 reencoding
without loosing any tags works like a charm.

Is there a way to get the cpu utilization from the tr/sb? Something like top? ;-)

SlimServer Version: 6.5.1trunk (a few days old), no transcoding
Transporter firmware: 24, VU-meter, album + title scrolling

I'll email support@slimdevices.com how to download one of these flacs.

Any idea what's so special about this track? 

regards,
Markus

P.S: I really love playing all those other 96/24 files - thanks for this feature!
Comment 1 Dan Evans 2006-12-04 15:10:56 UTC
Created attachment 1730 [details]
96/24 file sent in by bug reporter
Comment 2 Markus Schiegl 2006-12-21 06:14:13 UTC
Just tried the latest firmware 26 with the same results.
Has anybody verified this behavior? Any hints I can follow to narrow down this problem?

thanks!
Comment 3 Ross Levine 2006-12-22 14:34:02 UTC
*** Bug 4610 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 4 Chris Owens 2007-02-12 14:05:52 UTC
Ross, could you try to reproduce, pls
Comment 5 Ross Levine 2007-02-21 16:53:22 UTC
I was able to reproduce the stuttering without a problem, but I didn't see any crashing. Firmware 27 SlimServer 6.5.1 on Ubuntu 6.06. 
Comment 6 Markus Schiegl 2007-02-23 07:58:11 UTC
confirmed: no crashes anymore (but still stuttering)
Firmware 27 SlimServer 6.5.2_svn on Debian 3.1
Comment 7 Ross Levine 2007-02-26 16:21:40 UTC
Richard I'm going to assign this one to you. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help. 
Comment 8 Markus Schiegl 2007-05-11 10:58:52 UTC
After a few months I'd like to ask if there's any hope for progress? ;-)

Is https://bugs-archive.lyrion.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4886#c12 a possible solution?

regards,
Markus
Comment 9 Chris Owens 2007-10-02 12:50:31 UTC
If possible it would be ideal to look at this bug before the SC 7.0 release.  I wonder if transcoding to WAV would be a workaround?
Comment 10 Markus Schiegl 2007-10-02 14:01:55 UTC
thanks for bringing this one back!

I'd really appreciate it as i transcode to flac-compress-level-0 at the moment. therefore support for seeking is not available - and a few flac files have playback problems nevertheless.

and while you are it: any chance for full & native 88.2/24bit support? (#4712) :-)
Comment 11 Blackketter Dean 2007-12-28 10:39:32 UTC
Sean: do your recent changes fix this?
Comment 12 Sean Adams 2007-12-28 15:02:04 UTC
have not tested this case yet. If it is fundamentally a cPU overload condition then it should be rsolved in the new branch as I've freed up a ton of cycles. However, this case probably warrants further investigation if it also causes a crash. Maxing out the CPU should not trigger a crash...
Comment 13 Sean Adams 2008-01-31 16:41:44 UTC
Fixed in trunk 17060 / firmware 40
Comment 14 Markus Schiegl 2008-02-01 00:19:37 UTC
confirmed! thanks a lot
Comment 15 David A. Gordon 2008-03-05 15:47:21 UTC
Sorry if I'm posting this in the wrong place, but:

I have a 24/96 FLAC file that my Transporter is having problems with; I get noise and pops shortly after playing.

The FLAC is encoded at level 8; encoded at level 4, the track plays fine, and it plays fine decompressed to WAV.

I just don't want to have to reencode my FLAC library...

I would provide a sample of the file, but it's quite large, and I've tried twice now to break it into smaller chunks and the smaller chunks don't have the problem. I suppose I could burn the track to CD and send it in for analysis :)
Comment 16 Sean Adams 2008-03-06 08:54:48 UTC
(In reply to comment #15)
> Sorry if I'm posting this in the wrong place, but:
> 
> I have a 24/96 FLAC file that my Transporter is having problems with; I get
> noise and pops shortly after playing.


David, are you running firmware V.40? This bug is believed to be fixed in V.40 so if you are still seeing problems after upgrading, I will need to get a sample file from you.
Comment 17 David A. Gordon 2008-03-15 16:23:25 UTC
Seems to be fixed, thanks!
Comment 18 James Richardson 2008-04-29 11:28:38 UTC
Changing fixed target to 7.1 as FW 40 will be released then, not in 7.0.1
Comment 19 Johannes 2008-05-13 14:09:19 UTC
I've added some comments in #4886 realizing that the same problem seems to be addressed here. This problem seems to be resolved for the squeezebox v3. Now that there is a resolution for Transporter will this issue likely also be addressed for the SqueezeBox? 

In this specific case the tracks are not created by me but by record company Linn Records therefor I cannot influence the way these tracks where created.
Comment 20 Sean Adams 2008-05-13 15:10:07 UTC
These optimizations would not be applicable to SB3, and SB3 does not support 24/96 anyway. The only reasonable solution would be to add support in Squeezecenter for a correct downsampling algorithm.
Comment 21 Johannes 2008-05-14 00:11:56 UTC
Thanks Sean, I was not aware of these limitations on the SqueezeBox. It is not stated in the documentation, website, nor FAQ. The custhelp system simply states:

"Yes, the Squeezebox (v2 and 3) and the Transporter include built-in support for FLAC audio in the firmware. For older models of Slim Devices players, FLAC is still supported by either decoding to raw PCM or re-encoding as MP3."

What would you suggest me to do?

Jo
Comment 22 Sean Adams 2008-05-14 08:13:43 UTC
Johannes, the supported sample rates are listed on each of the products' web pages. Squeezebox can play 24/44.1 and 24/48, and Transporter can additionally play 24/88.2 and 24/96. http://www.slimdevices.com/pi_squeezebox.html
Comment 23 Johannes 2008-05-14 12:17:35 UTC
OK, I rest my case. 


What confused me is that on my SqueezeBox 3 a 24/88.2 FLAC stream plays without a problem. (!) 

Maybe the text should be extended with 24/44.1 24/48 and 24/88.2 only.
Comment 24 Spies Steven 2008-07-01 10:14:04 UTC
*** Bug 8615 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 25 Chris Owens 2008-07-30 15:32:54 UTC
This bug has now been fixed in the 7.1 release version of SqueezeCenter!  Please download the new version from http://www.slimdevices.com if you haven't already.  

If you are still experiencing this problem, feel free to reopen the bug with your new comments and we'll have another look.