Radioboss just stops playing anything randomly

[DITSolutions]

We keep having instances where Radioboss will be playing along and just stop. App is still responsive and you can work in it, but playing any audio files at all do not have any audio, nor does the RTA/Graphical EQ show activity. Manually selecting the next track and stopping and restarting the stream does nothing. It may play fine for a week, or a day, we never know until we get the alert from our monitor that it is offline.

No error logs are reported and the only way to fix it is close and re-open the application. It doesn't happen on the same songs and not on a schedule that we can tell that coincides with the IDs and sponsor messages.

What can we do to isolate this and fix it to keep this from happening.

Silence detection is set to on for 30 seconds and is being ignored.
Autostart with Windows is turned on and the station is stable when connecting to diagnose. As I mentioned the app is still open and appears functional other than no tracks will play at all.

Version 7.1.4.0

 

[djsoft]

Silence detection is set to on for 30 seconds and is being ignored.

It should detect the silence at least. If it doesn't, it looks like something's completely wrong. Does it run on a real computer or it's a virtual server?

 

[DITSolutions]

It did detect the silence, and switched tracks. But the new track it selects doesn't play. When we connect to check the track, it can't be manually started either. It will not play any audio until the software is closed and re-opened. Yet, I can play any files with media player just fine as a test of the audio card.

It is a virtual workstation hosted on ProxMox.

 

[DITSolutions]

Here is an example of what we see when connected after an "outage"

 

[djsoft]

It did detect the silence, and switched tracks. But the new track it selects doesn't play. When we connect to check the track, it can't be manually started either.

This is completely different from the original post:

Silence detection is set to on for 30 seconds and is being ignored.

and this new situation is easier to handle actually. RadioBOSS detects silence but no music can be played either manually, or when silence detector starts the music, so it means that the sound device had stopped.

You can try the following: open Settings, Playback, for the main device, select No Sound device. And same for Monitor device (if some real/virtual device was selected there).

 

[DITSolutions]

Didn't mean to add any confusion. The image was created after I initially posted and the Silence detector did fire, and switch track, but still no audio output.

The current sound device is (WASAPI) Default, and Monitor was already set to none. That said, we are passing a physical sound device (Through USB) to the virtual station. The device still plays audio even when RadioBoss doesn't. That is our confusion on why it hangs until closed and re-opened.

I'll test this change the next time the audio stops and see what occurs. It seems counter intuitive to disable the soundcard that is the On-Air player.

Thanks!

 

[djsoft]

I'll test this change the next time the audio stops and see what occurs. It seems counter intuitive to disable the soundcard that is the On-Air player.

Disabling it is needed to understand the reason why the playback stops. From what happens, it's very likely the sound card is causing it - it stops processing so the sound stream stops. In some (most) cases, RadioBOSS detects such cases, and re-inits the device, but here it seems a bit different.

Maybe it's not the sound card itself, but something in between as there are virtual machines involved and physical-virtual bridge.

What you can also try: open Settings, General, click the Advanced Configuration button, and set the "Audio - Device stall check" to "True", this will probably detect that the processing has stopped (while reported device state is OK) and restart the device.

 

[DITSolutions]

It quit playing again a moment ago. I changed the On Air to No sound card and when it played, it had no audio output to the transmitter. So I switched it back over to WASAPI and restarted.

I did also add the Audio-Device Stall Check to true which was defaulted to false.
I will updated if we see the same issue occur again.

Thanks!

 

[djsoft]

I did also add the Audio-Device Stall Check to true which was defaulted to false.
I will updated if we see the same issue occur again.

Event if this check works, this does not solve the core issue (device/connection to the device stopping), I think you should check everything. Probably do not use RadioBOSS on a virtual machine.

 

[matteolop]

Probably do not use RadioBOSS on a virtual machine.

Hi, what do you think if in the future, together with your RadioBOSS Cloud Staff, you and I were to add a Windows VPS with RadioBOSS Desktop pre-configured by you, as an additional option.

This would avoid common errors and optimize performance for those customers who don't have a physical PC at home?
You and your staff would then manage RadioBOSS Desktop itself and the single VPS, since we'll be renting it from your website.

I think it would be more reliable for everyone, and support would be able to access it independently and efficiently.
Of course, the whole thing comes at a higher price, but someone would be willing!

 

[DITSolutions]

Event if this check works, this does not solve the core issue (device/connection to the device stopping), I think you should check everything. Probably do not use RadioBOSS on a virtual machine.

In this case, the system is in a lights out building 200 miles away, installed on a server platform. I can control every facet of the device, virtual machines and redundancy from anywhere I can connect. We even have a spare physical server to fail over to if needed. Stability hasn't been an issue with the system at all. Perhaps the audio adapter might be something to look at or perhaps you can recommend a stable USB type audio device that is known to work with RadioBoss.

As I mentioned, when it stops playing, it did work fine under another player without any trouble. And since I have set the Audio Check to true, it has caught the issue once already and corrected it which is good and only was down a few seconds.

Why it stalled, I don't have any way to identify without some other debug logs or something. It would help to know if this was a USB issue, Audio driver, or where the "Stall" is detected in the logs. Are there any other ancillary logs to review other than the playlist log on the main screen located anywhere? Perhaps something could be written to Windows event log for RadioBoss?

 

[djsoft]

This would avoid common errors and optimize performance for those customers who don't have a physical PC at home?
You and your staff would then manage RadioBOSS Desktop itself and the single VPS, since we'll be renting it from your website.

For this, RadioBOSS Cloud exists. Providing access to a regular RadioBOSS software is a totally different topic, and this actually was our first try before creating RadioBOSS Cloud - it didn't really work out, for a number of reasons.

Virtual PCs are generally not a problem, it depends on what software is used there. In this topic's case, it looks like the sound card is the problem (it's not properly routed from a virtual machine).

 

[djsoft]

Stability hasn't been an issue with the system at all. Perhaps the audio adapter might be something to look at or perhaps you can recommend a stable USB type audio device that is known to work with RadioBoss.

From what happens, stability (of the system itself or RadioBOSS) is not a problem the problem is that audio device stops (or connection to the audio device stops).

Why it stalled, I don't have any way to identify without some other debug logs or something.

From the log you posted, RadioBOSS did detect that the device has stopped and successfully restarted it, so I suppose playback works after that?

RadioBOSS does not know the reason why a device had stopped. It can only receive a notification that it did, or, as in your log, it checks if the device actually works (audio data is being requested) and if it's not it will stop and start the device again.

You need to check all the chain:
1. The device itself if it works properly without virtual machine being involved
2. How the device is bridged from virtual machine to a real device
3. Probably try other devices, also update drivers and other related software.