Songs won't load in the players -- warn when sound devices are not working

[Geert]

Just updated to Mixxx 1.9.2. Now songs won't load in the player when I drag them from the library or when selecting 'Load to deck x' from the context menu. Other controls respond to mouse actions fine.
Rescanning the library doesn't solve the problem.
OS: Windows 7 32 bit

[RJ Skerry-Ryan (rryan)]

Hi Geert,

What file type are the files? MP3? M4A?

Thanks,
RJ Ryan

On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 5:53 PM, Geert <email address hidden> wrote:

> ** Attachment added: "Mixxx log"
>
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/888796/+attachment/2592568/+files/mixxx.log
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are a member of Mixxx
> Development Team, which is subscribed to Mixxx.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/888796
>
> Title:
> Songs won't load in the players
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/mixxx/+bug/888796/+subscriptions
>

[Geert (geert-x)]

I tried MP3 and flac.

[Daniel Schürmann (daschuer)]

I have seen this behaviour on resume from standby (Bug #799526)
I this case it is also not possible to load a track ... without a warning.
We should consider to give an error message or to show the decks as "disabled".

[Geert (geert-x)]

This morning the problem was gone without making any changes to the software configuration. Yesterday I also rebooted the PC without succes, so I don't think it's related to Bug #799526. What has changed today is that I booted the computer without connecting my Hercules RMX controller. I connected if afterwards and now Mixxx is working fine.

[jus (jus)]

Tested with 1.10 final MacOS X 10.6.8

I found that if you have no valid output device selected for MASTER in Preferences->Sound hardware, Mixxx refuse to accept tracks without notice no matter the format.

[Maxime Bochon (maxime-bochon)]

The same for me, if no device is selected, no track can be loaded. This is not really a bug, but this behaviour is quite disturbing. Moreover, attempts to load tracks seem not to be totally ignored but only postponed. Indeed, when the user corrects the sound configuration, previously ignored actions are performed automatically. So it would be good if this behaviour could be replaced with this one: no device or an invalid device would be the same as a valid but muted device.

[jus (jus)]

We get relatively frequent feedback from users who could not load any tracks but do not know the reason. So this issue is obviously pretty widespread and certainly frustrating, specially for new users .

The proposed behavior by Maxime in the previous post sounds good to me, additionally we should inform the user that no valid sound device is selected. Some other dj software does this by visual feedback in the GUI.

[Owen Williams (ywwg)]

I just got burned by this bug recently, and I'm hardly a newbie! we already warn for missing vinyl and mic input, we should warn for this too.

[RJ Skerry-Ryan (rryan)]

Any progress Owen?

What we probably need is a watchdog timer in SoundManager that fires every 5 seconds or something and checks the time since the last callback. If it exceeds some set limit then we can pop a warning.

[Owen Williams (ywwg)]

ok I'll start working on this now

[Owen Williams (ywwg)]

Maybe I can just check the [Soundmanager],status CO? It looks like it's set to CONNECTED only when a sound device is open. So I can hook up to all the Play COs, and if the state is disconnected we can pop up the error.

[RJ Skerry-Ryan (rryan)]

The issue with that co is it doesn't get updated if the callback is borked
(ie after suspend). A watchdog timer should check time since last call back
I think.

On Thu, Nov 27, 2014, 1:35 PM Owen Williams <email address hidden> wrote:

> Maybe I can just check the [Soundmanager],status CO? It looks like it's
> set to CONNECTED only when a sound device is open. So I can hook up to
> all the Play COs, and if the state is disconnected we can pop up the
> error.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are a member of Mixxx
> Development Team, which is subscribed to Mixxx.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/888796
>
> Title:
> Songs won't load in the players -- warn when sound devices are not
> working
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/mixxx/+bug/888796/+subscriptions
>

[RJ Skerry-Ryan (rryan)]

You could probably hook the check on to guitick. It fires at 20fps so you
could say if time since last callback > 2 or 3x the latency, update sound
manager COs to a warning state. That way skins can show a status indicator.

On Thu, Nov 27, 2014, 1:49 PM RJ Ryan <email address hidden> wrote:

> The issue with that co is it doesn't get updated if the callback is borked
> (ie after suspend). A watchdog timer should check time since last call back
> I think.
>
> On Thu, Nov 27, 2014, 1:35 PM Owen Williams <email address hidden> wrote:
>
>> Maybe I can just check the [Soundmanager],status CO? It looks like it's
>> set to CONNECTED only when a sound device is open. So I can hook up to
>> all the Play COs, and if the state is disconnected we can pop up the
>> error.
>>
>> --
>> You received this bug notification because you are a member of Mixxx
>> Development Team, which is subscribed to Mixxx.
>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/888796
>>
>> Title:
>> Songs won't load in the players -- warn when sound devices are not
>> working
>>
>> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/mixxx/+bug/888796/+subscriptions
>>
>

[Owen Williams (ywwg)]

I was thinking of something more like the current vinyl warning. If the user presses play, and there are no output devices configured, pop up a warning message that takes them to the hardware preferences. I think that's better than adding something that's constantly checking and yet another skin element.

This wouldn't catch some crazy user that only uses samplers, but I think most users push play on a deck so I think it would be helpful.

[Owen Williams (ywwg)]

Actually, maybe just hook up to the slotFileLoadSongToPlayer! Then that will catch people just trying to scrub.

[Owen Williams (ywwg)]

(This won't detect if a sound device gets disconnected or something, but seeing as mixxx usually crashes when that happens I don't think we need to cover that case right now)

[RJ Skerry-Ryan (rryan)]

That works -- we probably want a separate bug for detecting when the callback has gone awry then since that won't help if the device callback stops firing (unplugged, resume from suspend, etc.) or if a non-master sound device stops working (Mixxx will still appear to work since the master is driving the engine).

[Owen Williams (ywwg)]

OK it turned out the watchdog method was cleaner than the load-track method. I tested with suspending my laptop and it worked.

I tried to make sure the warning doesn't pop up when the library is being scanned or if the startup "nodevices" dialog is shown.

[Owen Williams (ywwg)]

https://github.com/mixxxdj/mixxx/pull/408

[Owen Williams (ywwg)]

I was getting a lot of false positives and negatives, so the simple approach didn't work. This will need more careful design

[Ferran Pujol (ferranpujol)]

I would like to note that a GUI indicator is better than just warning the user in response to an action he or she tried to do.
With a GUI indicator the user could be aware of any problems in advance. Whereas with a message responding to a user action, the user might not be aware of the problem until he or she wanted to begin the performance.

[Daniel Schürmann (daschuer)]

A solution with a CPU clock is here:
https://github.com/mixxxdj/mixxx/pull/894

[Be (be.ing)]

Is this really fixed? I think the problem has shifted. Now decks can load and start playing without any output configured. So instead of users getting confused why they can't load tracks, they will likely get confused because they don't hear anything. Should we pop up a warning dialog when a track is loaded without any output configured?

[Daniel Schürmann (daschuer)]

We already have a warning if no sound card is configured at all.

The original issue here was, that a normal user cannot understand why no sound card prevents to load a track. This is now fixed as well.

IMHO now have solved the most itching issues now. Is there anything else we can do?

[Be (be.ing)]

Okay, I forgot about that warning on startup. I think the issue is solved then.

[mr j surya (jon22)]

wont work saids that primary sound driver or other devic is in use when it isnt?

[Daniel Schürmann (daschuer)]

This is a realeased bug. Please file a new one if you have still an issue.
Include you is version and Mixxx version.
Tell us what you do, what happens anf what should happen. Thank you.

[Swiftb0y (swiftb0y)]

Mixxx now uses GitHub for bug tracking. This bug has been migrated to:
https://github.com/mixxxdj/mixxx/issues/6101