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Hello.
First post- I'd like to say how great I think XBMC is and how helpful this forum is.
I've recently installed XBMC live 10.0 dharma beta 4 on an Acer Revo 3610. My Revo is connected to an Onkyo 507 AV receiver via HDMI.
My problem is while playing music files, both FLAC & MP3. When in the last 2 or 3 seconds of a track, there is an audible break in sound (maybe a half second gap?) before continuing to the end of the track and seemlessly starting the next track.
Now, the strange thing is, this only happens the first time playing the tracks after turning on the PC- if I were to go back now and play the same tracks there would be no issue.
I have searched the forum and there have been sporadic similar issues reported previously but I didn't come across a solution.
I realise I've not provided great detail (logs etc) at the moment but will return later to post the full nature of the issue, but thought I'd put this out there for the moment in case it's a simple fix.
Cheers.
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I have also experienced this. It occurs exactly 4 seconds from the end of the track. Any track. My setup is similar to yours, an ion base system connected to an AVR via HDMI.
I have a 'custom' device in my audio output settings, and this issue occurred for everytrack no matter how many times I played them. I found that if I switched back to 'HDMI' the problem didn't occur, but only if I did it before playing anything. I could then switch back to my custom output and it would be OK.
This was running XBMC-Live Dharma B4 installed to disk . I didn't have this problem running a minimal Ubuntu with XBMC Dharma B1, so I did a re-install of minimal Ubuntu and B4. The problem is was still there. I spent all my spare time over a week trying to fix it, but couldn't. Is it B4? I don't know. I couldn't prove it and I didn't want to go on an install-fest to test other systems. However, I did find that if you use dvdplayer instead of paplayer, you do not get the drop-out before the end of the track, but will get a gap between tracks. Could this be something to do with hdmi handshaking? I don't know - I stopped trying to fix it.
I now do not use xbmc for audio playback. Since I only used paplayer for playing ripped CD's (flac), I decided to use mpd for all my audio playback (via xbmc/MPDClient). Using an external audio player you do not get this problem.
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Thanks for the reply Balthazaar. I'm just back from work and trying to investigate this now.
Yes, it seems the issue occurs about 4.5 seconds before the end of every track like you say, however, as I've mentioned above, for me, this only occurs on the first instance of playing the track after the PC is turned on, any subsequent plays performs perfectly. This leads me to think that it's perhaps a cache issue rather than an HDMI issue? Not too sure as yet. I'm completely new to LINUX as well which doesn't help.
I should also mention that I had previously (& briefly) installed 9.11 and had the same issue. Additionally, it doesn't matter whether I'm in library mode or file mode. Another thing I should perhaps mention is that my music files are on an external USB HDD.
Anyway, log file to follow shortly. It would be interesting to read if anyone else has had this issue?
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2010-11-21, 00:24
(This post was last modified: 2010-11-21, 00:43 by DerekElephant.)
Had a quick look at the log file; the issue arises at time 22:05:14 (5 seconds before the next track begins). At first glance it looks as if it is a caching issue that enables gapless playback? How to fix though, hmmm....
On further investigation, this appears to be key:
22:05:14 T:3075054448 M:1692831744 WARNING: CALSADirectSound::GetSpace - get space failed. err: -32 (Broken pipe)
Any ideas?
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2010-11-21, 15:42
(This post was last modified: 2010-11-21, 16:06 by DerekElephant.)
OK, I've solved the (self-inflicted!) issue but have created another one!
I had previously altered the .asoundrc file to enable menu sounds by adding:
pcm.!default {
type plug
slave {
pcm "hdmi"
}
}
Now, this somehow has been causing the drop out in sound (not sure why?).
Anyway, I deleted the .asoundrc file and let it rebuild itself on reboot and I've now got seemless playback of sound files. I would really like menu sound though, any ideas?
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I had similar problems on my Revo 1600 using an Turtle Beach USB sound card for the TOSlink optical connection to my Yamaha receiver. I think there is a bug in PAPlayer that has to do with the buffer size of various audio hardware. PAPlayer is the default audio player in XBMC and DVDPlayer is used for video. I was having the pauses in my music playback. However, when I changed my default player for audio to DVDPlayer (it will also play audio), the issue went away. I don't really see the advantage of using PAPlayer (or why it is needed) when DVDPlayer handles almost every format of audio.
FYI: to change your default player for audio, select a music track and bring up the context menu, then choose play with and set DVDPlayer as the default player.
-hogfan
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Paplayer has proper support for album image + cue files. DVDplayer has trouble with this (especially with multichannel flac). DVDplayer does not have gapless playback over hdmi for all formats.
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After about a week or so with no problems, this issue has suddenly and randomly resurfaced. I've tried recovering the .asoundrc file which didn't work. Weird. Really need help with this one now.
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Still looking for help with this issue- still can't solve it.
However, I have noticed that if I navigate in the library and open up an album, exit that album then re-enter that album and start playing results in flawless playback. Weird again! I'm convinced it's a cache issue...
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I am experiencing gap of approx 1 sec around 3-4 seconds before the end of FLAC encoded tracks on gapless albums.
Has the originator of this thread, or anyone else has found a solution to this problem? Is it limited to the Revo 3610 or are other Atom/Ion machines effected? I have tried updating to the latest xbmc from SVN, however this did not fix the problem.
Once I have played the FLAC album once - suffering the issue of course - subsequent playbacks do work seamlessly...
Thanks in advance and regards,
-landstatic
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Got the problem aswell, on a Revo r3700 had the problem on dharma and now Eden. If it only happens once, as landstatic says than tbh im fine with that. Excuse for a marthon music session.
