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Hi,
Purchased Live a few weeks ago – been doing exhaustive tests and to date extremely impressed. Got rid of our hardware processing now! Running three test systems on VMware ESXi – Windows 2003 SP3 clean build – StationPlayList feeding Breakway Live pipeline (no audio cards involved) and 192K shoutcast stream via SPL’s Oddcast encoder.
Works perfectly for a few days – absolutely perfect – but then annoying clicks on the audio appear randomly and not associated with peaks. I use a clean 400Hz audio test tone MP3 320K file for testing this problem – the clicks are much easier to hear then and if I then close down Breakaway Live and restart it then all is well again for another few days.
On our other two identical systems I have run SAM4 and its internal processor and also StationPlayList and its processor plugin and these run forever with no clicks.
Processor is only around 22% and generally stable performance – thought it may be related to the Virtual Machine environment or at least this may give Leif a clue to my issue. If it is the VM environment it is a pity that it does not work as the other nasty software processors do appear to work all-be-it the sound quality is inferior by a long way!
I can provide RD access to these demo systems as well as audio feeds and I can leave it in with clicks when it next starts to go wrong if this can help the developer.
Absolutely impressed with this software so I do not want to give up on it. Hopefully the issue I have can be resolved and I’m more than happy to help in anyway possible.
Test audio feed – http://83.170.80.31:8504 – I have not long rebooted Live so it is probably OK at the moment
Best wishes,
Andy
Hi Andy!
Virtual machines are great for a lot of things — except audio! I have never been able to get audio anywhere near stable in one, except if the VM is prioritized and in the foreground, with nothing else in the host machine. That, unfortunately, defeats the purpose of using a VM in the first place.
I use VMs for lots of things, but glitch-free audio isn’t one of them 🙁.
Best,
///LeifThanks Leif – I suspected it was the VM but such a pity that the other two processors manage to work in the VM environment. I’ll need to go back to the dedicated hardware again but fully understand that at least it is the VM platform that is causing the issue. The same build but with other software processors work for months without intervention hence why I had hoped Breakway Live would work in the same environment.
Lets hope that VM technology results in its own improvements to allow audio applications to work more along the lines of dedicated hardware platforms.
Appreciate your prompt response and if I manage to get it working I’ll let you know.
Best wishes,
Andy
Hmm.. That’s an interesting point. Perhaps it’s me who has missed something?
What were the other software processors, and how did they interface to other software?
The problem in Breakaway is certainly I/O, not the algorithms. No promises, but if you can explain a configuration that did work in a VM, perhaps I can develop a workaround or fix.
Best,
///LeifLeif,
The other software processors that are working well are SAM4 with its internal processor – in fact I am running 3 instances of SAM4 and its own processing and finding no issues – I was trying hard to load the VM to the point where it started to become instable but VMWare seemed to cope well. The hardware is pretty decent spec and I will list that at the end of this post. I can also give you direct remote desktop access to the system when it does become unstable so you can hear it for yourself.
Also using StationPlayList with its own processor module – it is basically Sound Solution 1.3 (and I think the SAM4 processor was based on that too but can’t be sure).
All systems are running the audio path in the same way – SPL/SAM4 into Breakaway Pipeline — Breakaway Live from the Pipeline and then processed and output into Oddcast encoder to Shoutcast server. No sound cards used in the audio path – digital all the way through.
Hardware is 2 x Intel Xeon CPU E5405 @ 2.00GHz – 8GB RAM – motherboard Supermicro X8DTL
The actual VM is running at 0.491MHz and using 35MB of RAM out of 512K allocation, 1CPU and Windows 2003 Standard SP3 fully patched.I really thought I had found a VM solution for broadcasting and the SAM4 system is being used in production now for almost 4 months with no audio glitches.
The Breakaway Live system sounds by far the best and along with StationPlayList it is a fantastic setup other than these audio clicks that start around 3-5 days after reboot. To clear it I only need to close and restart BreakawayLive and then it runs perfectly again for another few days.
If you need access then let me know and I can post details to you personally.
Best wishes,
Andy
I had a very similar experience, except I have been using BL for a while now, and only started getting the clicking after the new version came out. Recently I did a lot of tweaking to my OS (XP-SP3) and completely removed BL, rebooted and re-installed. As soon as I tried it there was clicking!! ARRGGHHH!
Turns out it was the Sampling Rate in the I/O section…I had to change it to 44.1 from 48…for the Output Pipeline, and viola, clicking gone. I also had the issue where it was fine for a few days then it came back..and I had to reboot to get rid of it. I am now about 3 days in…and so far, so good. If I make it a week and the clicking doesn’t come back, I’ll assume it’s gone for good. Just wanted to share my experiences.
I had the same experience with Riplee with BBP version 0.90.69 that still use.
Sometimes the "clicks" heard as vinul sound and on my system happent when
I’ve change emu0404 with an Esi Juli@ and then to 48000.
44100 in I/O and card option solves the problem but do not disappear it…Next days I will update BBP to the last one and I will change back to emu0404.
From my experience with BBP last 5 months, Esi Juli@ sounds a bit better on high freq. but
emu0404 was very stable and have great software.Thanks George & Riplee for your comments.
I will keep one VM with the "faulty" installation to allow Leif to look at it when it presents the clicks again however as I can create a clone of the VM I will change the I/O to 44.1K from 48 as suggested and see if this helps. My installation does not use any soundcard so it could still be something else but I really appreciate your replies as this could all help Leif understand what the issue may be.
At least one good thing using Virtual Machines is that I can replicate an exact system a number of times and use different configurations in order to compare and to help the developer.
Andy
Stevenaj, this is general a nice idea and prroject byt at the past I did also this "experiement" and I have to
agree with Lief…VM machines isn’t for audio, even for virtual audio cards.
Virtual is always….virtual !
George
I know excactly what you mean…
Emu0404 didn’t dissapear the problem but it’s much better than Esi Juli@.The "clicks" are pure digital (also I use spdif optical connection between two cards) and they produced
after BBP as I can monitor the sound before BBP input.
At this state (BBP input) sound is without "clicks".This days I found the time to play with an iMac (XP) and test the BBP for these reason
without soundcards.
iMac do everything (playlist software,BBP,streaming) with only 11% cpu load and with the default services running.
Until this time (2 days system running) no clicks….Riplee just some questions to see if we have something common on this issue:
-Are you using remote desktop or other remote desktop applications on the BBP pc?
-Did you try to run BBP minimized?
-Did you run at the same time RTA software to monitoring BBP input or output?Regards,
G.George,
I am using Remote Desktop and I haven’t tried minimizing the application, but I was using the RTA previously, and I was suspicious of that actually. Since I re-did the system as I mentioned, I have removed it, and as I said, so far no clicks. Funny you should ask that, because although I coldn’t really see how it could be a factor, I am not using it currently, and I have no clicks yet. I guess if I continue with no clicks, I will introduce it again and see what happens. 😕
I think that the problem appears after the RTA 0.62 version for both of my computers (one with BBP the other for streaming).
But for the pc with BBP I’ve also to suspect remote desktop and vnc.Strange combination don’t you think?
I was on vacations for 10days without "touching" remotely the pc with BBP…. no clicks for 10 days!!!
When came back click appears 2 days later after using BBP pc with remote desktop and vnc.
Reboot and everything is ok…until next time.I still use RTA and remote desktop/vnc applications on both computers for better investigation.
I did the same configuration on the iMac to do everything but without remote desktop/vnc.BBP labs working hard this weekend…
It’s back…and really annoying me now!! 🙁
Here is a link to my stream…can’t support too many listeners, so if you can’t get it try again later.
I have tried everything I can to correct this issue…it’s a nasty distortion that only appears after about 5 days of uptime or so. I am pretty sure if I reboot the machine, or as some have suggested, just close and re-open BL, the problem is gone for a few days, only to re-appear!! 😕
I have not used the RTA since rebooting the machine, so I guess that’s not the cause, as was speculated earlier in this thread.
I will say again, that I never had this issue with the previous version of BL….it seems to have started after the first upgrade was released a while back, and I have installed every incremental build that was released, whether it addressed an issue I was experiencing or not. One of the builds mentioned fixing a memory leak, which I was hopeful would address this, but I guess not. The only thing that I haven’t tried yet, is to remove this version and re-install the last build of the previous release (the version numbers escape me right now, but I am sure this build is 90.81. I think the old one that didn’t seem to have this issue ended in 69…but I am not positive.
If anyone has any suggestions please share them, as I am running out of things to try at this point! I really thought it was gone this time, only to get to work, pop on my headphones, and find that it has reared it’s ugly head again!!
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