DSP on but no audio
Hello,
I have recurring problems in an installation running in a museum that opened last month in France.
I find a workaround every two days, but the problem comes back everytime; so it seems I don't aim at the source and thus need your help.
I have exactly the same collective set on 4 exactly similar machines (same sofware; Windows XP family ed.2002 SP3, same hardware). I use Max 5 runtime 5.0.7 and the integrated sound card.
Typically, the problem is that audio stops after a while, with way/no way, depending, to turn it back on.
Sounds are OK when played outside from Max, speakers are OK.
The ezdac is blue and my vu-meters light as expected, but no sound at all goes out - this definately sounds like a driver problem; do you confirm that?
Last week I found a fix consisting in selecting "another" audio driver (among ad_mme or ad_directsound). One strange thing is that, depending on the machines, the one to work was either the one or the other. (note: if I selected the wrong one, I got an "ad_mme: stopping due to error", and the ezdac set back off after a couple of sec each time I tried to put it on.)
I have to check this out, but it even seems that it's not the same everytime.
To dodge this strange behaviour, I had asio4all installed, and forced on startup the selection of ad_asio4all via "adstatus driver".
But: for a couple of days again, the audio have gone out on 2 of the 4 machines, with no reason. It just breaks after a while.
Even if forcing manually the driver with adstatus, no sound gets back.
The top cool thing is that that the musuem is 500km from here so I only can give clear and simple instructions to people there, and thus must bet carefully on the best diagnosis.
My clues are:
- on the forums, I found it may relate to an authorization problem; how could it be the same with a runtime??
- could this be that max (auto-lauched on start-up) is opened BEFORE drivers are operationnal, so that they misfunction?
I could try and delay the launch then.
- is it basically Max (my) or Windows+drivers fault? Be honest It is important at this point that I can clean myself from all the trouble seen here...
In about 8h (when the musuem closes) I can have further tests made, in particular I'd ask for a copy of all messages from the console - too bad I don't have em already.
Let me know if you already have some clues...
This is very urgent, I'd rreeeeeeeeaaally appreciate some help!
Thomas B
just a shot in the dark:
how much ram do the machines have?
are there any operations going on heavy on ram?
background:
i had this happening on a mac mini once, where the system would start to page out after a while and corrupt the audio driver.
(the long and the short of it at:https://cycling74.com/forums/index.php?t=msg&goto=73642&rid=0&S=6a4eba3809573ea43e01b6a5a274be04#msg_73642
hth
hans
Hi Hans,
Thank for helping.
I think machines feature 2Go RAM that's I think (thought?), enough for me. My app basically inputs a webcam stream and 3 sensors, uploads a pic once in a while to an external database, with one sample looped in the background (8Mo) plus a couple of other ones triggered at times (~1Mo each), through sfplay~.
I'm not handling RAM operations other than Max's default recipes.
Btw, samples are "read" on startup in the sfplays~ and just being triggered after that (they're not re-read/loaded each time, in case that could have lead to the same sypmtoms you had in the thread you pointed).
And that's the only app running on the PC aside from a USB RFID badge reader.
Still something looking strange/risky to you?
Thomas
hi thomas,
as i said, just a shot in the dark. but if there is a way to look for memory leaks (ram being eaten up by one of the other processes), i´d try to check that anyway.
in mac world that would be done with the shell and the top-command. don´t know about windows.
maybe the usb rfid reader?
good luck!
h