Audio Break Up Using MPAR (1 Viewer)

[Adam86]

Good evening,

I wondered if someone could help me look into this issue that my Dad is having with his MediaPortal install.

A couple of months ago he bought a new Onkyo Amp and replaced his old amp which only had a single optical input. I took the opportunity at the time to utilise HDMI fully and use the single output from the PC and connect that to the amp for both video and audio. I configured his setup to use the MediaPortal Audio Renderer with the same settings as I use as mine has worked flawlessly since day one on my Onkyo setup.

Unfortunately, he had issues where the amp would start going "crazy" and kept trying to switch between PCM and whatever other signal it thought it was receiving. I tried setting MPAR to AC3 encoding "Forced" from "Auto" and it appeared to fix the issue and he was happy. However he has pointed out that mainly on the TV side of MediaPortal he his having an issue where the sound keeps breaking up - like someone is muting the sound and unmuting it very quickly. He showed me last night on a few recording's and I saw and heard the issue myself : every time you skipped the clip back it happened in exactly the same place each time. I was quite baffled so I took a copy of the recording and tested it up at my house on my MediaPortal setup and it worked absolutely flawlessly without any glitch so that definitely rules out an issue with the recording.

Both our setups and specifications are very similar. His system specs are:

Intel Core i5-3470 CPU 3.20GHz using the onboard Intel HD Graphics 2500
8GB DDR3
120GB SSD for OS install and apps
2TB SATA3 Drive for storage
Windows 8.1 Pro

I've attached the logs when I had cleared them (I have backed up the older logs if required but wanted a clean slate) and got him to test the one recording which was the worst.

It would be great if someone could help diagnose what is potentially happening here.

Thanks

 

[HomeY]

like someone is muting the sound and unmuting it very quickly.

Since he's running Windows 8 on the HTPC, it might be the 'silent stream bug' that's causing the issues.
Give Marc's AVR Audio Guard a try.

I do notice a bunch of lines in the MPAR log that state 'Not Enough Data', which could be a buffer issue.
Is he running a multi-seat setup?

I was quite baffled so I took a copy of the recording and tested it up at my house on my MediaPortal setup and it worked absolutely flawlessly without any glitch so that definitely rules out an issue with the recording.

Well done That's narrows it down. Also makes me think it might be a buffer issue.

Lets see if the Audio Guard fixes things, if not, we need to look somewhere else.

As a side note: Maybe he can test without any plugins (there are a LOT of outdated plugins on his system, see the MediaPortal-Error.log for these), by using the WatchDog (search for 'Watchdog' on metro UI), select option #1 and give it a go.
This will disable all plugins and use the default skin, so we can test 'core' functionality.

 

[Adam86]

Thanks for getting back so quickly. I will have a look at the AVR right away, maybe it is something to do with it being a Dell system as my machine is a custom built machine as opposed to his.

If that doesnt work I will test out the feature of disabling the plugins to test - I'll also update the plugins that are outdated that can be updated - its just something thats slipped from my mind will report back as soon as possible

EDIT : Forgot to say, its running single seat, this is the only PC in the house running MediaPortal.

 

[davidf]

If it's on the TV side then it's likely that his tv is running a little faster than 50hz. TV and recordings (I think recordings) are sent at 50 frames per second, in the UK, so as MPAR matches the video frames to the tv frames. Given a bit of time it will run out of audio.

Symptoms would be that it starts OK then starts to stutter and doesn't recover - disable Mpar for tv in the configuration.

Your tv runs at 50 hz or below so you don't have the problem (press shift 1 and look at the bias value,your fathers will be > 1 yours < 1 - could be the other way round as I can't remember the calculation)

 

[Adam86]

Hi davidf,

There maybe something to back this up as he did say it mainly only happened on TV stuff, however it does happen with other content. I did try the Shift and 1 but I can't quite remember what the results were now.

However, I have tried the AVR guard a try and setting MPAR encoding back to auto and so far my Dad says its been working perfectly - however he hasnt used MP much for the last couple of days as unfortunately there has been a family issue.

 

[Adam86]

Just thought I would give an update on this.

My Dad said everything seemed perfect for a couple of weeks and then the issue occurred again - I've ended up disabling MPAR on the TV side and using FFDshow instead for the TV side. He says its been fine now apart from one recording but I havent had chance to look a that yet.