[castleofargh]

That was way too real for an april 1st prank. I can't laugh at all

I loved the bit on gauge and how science isn't clear on it. lot of golden nuggets but this one was my favorite.

 

[castleofargh]

so today I played a 3 second long mono MP3 track in foobar(some old piece of a sound with absolutely nothing special about it, it's something I used to have as a sound alert on IRC ages ago(well IRC ago), and it pretty much broke audio on my computer.
after some half backed diagnostic, I noticed that ASIO was still fine, but DS and wasapi were dead. foobar would give me some unknwon error number, youtube had no sound etc. reboot did nothing to help, windozzzz 10 diagnostic saw nothing, unplugging/replugging the USB DACs didn't help. it felt like this time I really had messed up(well I have a complete hard drive image just about a month old so I didn't start crying just yet).
in the end I got Direct Sound and WASAPI back by disabling my devices and enabling them back. somehow they came back ON with the wrong/not my usual settings??? the order of my devices is different so now my virtual cable for headphone DSPs is set to the wrong output. my shortcuts to switch DACs are wrong, same for Room Eq Wizard and other audio apps. a really effective waste of my time.
I looked up everything and I believe I'm back to traditional configuration, but I had no idea a track could initiate such a mess. even less so when it's 3second long. if magic is science we don't understand yet, then I just witnessed magic ^_^.

 

[Glmoneydawg]

so today I played a 3 second long mono MP3 track in foobar(some old piece of a sound with absolutely nothing special about it, it's something I used to have as a sound alert on IRC ages ago(well IRC ago), and it pretty much broke audio on my computer.
after some half backed diagnostic, I noticed that ASIO was still fine, but DS and wasapi were dead. foobar would give me some unknwon error number, youtube had no sound etc. reboot did nothing to help, windozzzz 10 diagnostic saw nothing, unplugging/replugging the USB DACs didn't help. it felt like this time I really had messed up(well I have a complete hard drive image just about a month old so I didn't start crying just yet).
in the end I got Direct Sound and WASAPI back by disabling my devices and enabling them back. somehow they came back ON with the wrong/not my usual settings??? the order of my devices is different so now my virtual cable for headphone DSPs is set to the wrong output. my shortcuts to switch DACs are wrong, same for Room Eq Wizard and other audio apps. a really effective waste of my time.
I looked up everything and I believe I'm back to traditional configuration, but I had no idea a track could initiate such a mess. even less so when it's 3second long. if magic is science we don't understand yet, then I just witnessed magic ^_^.

I would recommend getting a turntable and some records just to be on the safe side

 

[castleofargh]

I was thinking exorcism or voodoo as the more rational solutions, but I might one day even resort to some obscure arcane such as vinyl. nothing is off the turntable at this point.

 

[Glmoneydawg]

I was thinking exorcism or voodoo as the more rational solutions, but I might one day even resort to some obscure arcane such as vinyl. nothing is off the turntable at this point.

The line for crazy is different for everyone

 

[Raketen]

so today I played a 3 second long mono MP3 track in foobar(some old piece of a sound with absolutely nothing special about it, it's something I used to have as a sound alert on IRC ages ago(well IRC ago), and it pretty much broke audio on my computer.
after some half backed diagnostic, I noticed that ASIO was still fine, but DS and wasapi were dead. foobar would give me some unknwon error number, youtube had no sound etc. reboot did nothing to help, windozzzz 10 diagnostic saw nothing, unplugging/replugging the USB DACs didn't help. it felt like this time I really had messed up(well I have a complete hard drive image just about a month old so I didn't start crying just yet).
in the end I got Direct Sound and WASAPI back by disabling my devices and enabling them back. somehow they came back ON with the wrong/not my usual settings??? the order of my devices is different so now my virtual cable for headphone DSPs is set to the wrong output. my shortcuts to switch DACs are wrong, same for Room Eq Wizard and other audio apps. a really effective waste of my time.
I looked up everything and I believe I'm back to traditional configuration, but I had no idea a track could initiate such a mess. even less so when it's 3second long. if magic is science we don't understand yet, then I just witnessed magic ^_^.

Upload it to Napster as Despacito.mp3

 

[castleofargh]

Upload it to Napster as Despacito.mp3

 

[analogsurviver]

Well, the described "miracle" is PRECISELY the kind of thing I got used to hate with digital audio that is not self- contained and has got to be run with a computer - WITH A PASSION.

But, it CAN get worse - not only not working at all, but with JUST slightly modified settings; if you are not monitoring your audio on a good pair of headphones, you might just as well discover, that you have been recording a live event with imbalance, etc, etc - AFTER the done deed.. Of course, by then it is too late ...Even if all you have been doing with you computer has been powering off at home and powering up on the recording location - in the EXACT same application, no other work being done on it - absolutely nothing else at all.

Various digital gizmos ( khmomputers, sound cards, DACs, etc ) , under certain combinations of hardware and software, are bound to do this... by default. The best graphic illustration on this theme I have seen about a week ago: a perfectly calm man meditating on his knees ( marked in the photo as "perfectly fine running PC" ) just to be hit in the head full gas by a soccer ball from an adjacent soccer player ( marked in the photo as "Microsoft Windows Update" ).

The "loveliest" so far has been jRiver (19, IIRC ) ; it proved to be the most "predatory" software so far. You can pray to your PCM god to not have to work with DSD; the said soft would usurp anything DSD by disconnecting DSD capable DAC from each and every other soft also doing DSD - requiring you to manually configure it for the required app EACH time after the "usurpation"..

I have yet to see a turntable capable of unscrewing its perfectly mounted and aligned cartridge - just because you wanted to play a 45 RPM 12" record ....

 

[StandsOnFeet]

https://genius.com/Douglas-hofstadter-contracrostipunctus-annotated

 

[Joe Bloggs]

Well, the described "miracle" is PRECISELY the kind of thing I got used to hate with digital audio that is not self- contained and has got to be run with a computer - WITH A PASSION.

But, it CAN get worse - not only not working at all, but with JUST slightly modified settings; if you are not monitoring your audio on a good pair of headphones, you might just as well discover, that you have been recording a live event with imbalance, etc, etc - AFTER the done deed.. Of course, by then it is too late ...Even if all you have been doing with you computer has been powering off at home and powering up on the recording location - in the EXACT same application, no other work being done on it - absolutely nothing else at all.

Various digital gizmos ( khmomputers, sound cards, DACs, etc ) , under certain combinations of hardware and software, are bound to do this... by default. The best graphic illustration on this theme I have seen about a week ago: a perfectly calm man meditating on his knees ( marked in the photo as "perfectly fine running PC" ) just to be hit in the head full gas by a soccer ball from an adjacent soccer player ( marked in the photo as "Microsoft Windows Update" ).

The "loveliest" so far has been jRiver (19, IIRC ) ; it proved to be the most "predatory" software so far. You can pray to your PCM god to not have to work with DSD; the said soft would usurp anything DSD by disconnecting DSD capable DAC from each and every other soft also doing DSD - requiring you to manually configure it for the required app EACH time after the "usurpation"..

I have yet to see a turntable capable of unscrewing its perfectly mounted and aligned cartridge - just because you wanted to play a 45 RPM 12" record ....

Should I count my blessings that my digital playback chain has always been about this complicated and hasn't crashed into a smoking heap in a decade?

 

[analogsurviver]

Sample rate merely 48 kHz... - the absolute minimum required in order for the RBCD to work as it should under the real world conditions.

 

[bigshot]

Hogwash.

 

[Zapp_Fan]

so today I played a 3 second long mono MP3 track in foobar(some old piece of a sound with absolutely nothing special about it, it's something I used to have as a sound alert on IRC ages ago(well IRC ago), and it pretty much broke audio on my computer.
after some half backed diagnostic, I noticed that ASIO was still fine, but DS and wasapi were dead. foobar would give me some unknwon error number, youtube had no sound etc. reboot did nothing to help, windozzzz 10 diagnostic saw nothing, unplugging/replugging the USB DACs didn't help. it felt like this time I really had messed up(well I have a complete hard drive image just about a month old so I didn't start crying just yet).
in the end I got Direct Sound and WASAPI back by disabling my devices and enabling them back. somehow they came back ON with the wrong/not my usual settings??? the order of my devices is different so now my virtual cable for headphone DSPs is set to the wrong output. my shortcuts to switch DACs are wrong, same for Room Eq Wizard and other audio apps. a really effective waste of my time.
I looked up everything and I believe I'm back to traditional configuration, but I had no idea a track could initiate such a mess. even less so when it's 3second long. if magic is science we don't understand yet, then I just witnessed magic ^_^.

Sounds like maybe Foobar tried to force windows to switch to a low/unusual samplerate (say 8khz or something) and into mono in a way that W10 didn't like. If there was any other audio device that was also trying to maintain an incompatible sample rate, or stereo output, I could imagine that causing a crash.

 

[castleofargh]

Sounds like maybe Foobar tried to force windows to switch to a low/unusual samplerate (say 8khz or something) and into mono in a way that W10 didn't like. If there was any other audio device that was also trying to maintain an incompatible sample rate, or stereo output, I could imagine that causing a crash.

the mono and plain strange sample rate is something I'm kind of used to "thanks" to podcasts and various free audiobooks recorded by a guy on the toilet with the mic in his earbud. then those nice guys(it's not ironic, they put in time to do that) seem keen on trying to fit 20hours of reading into a 5mo file, in case the sound quality wasn't bad enough. but in my case it never got beyond foobar not playing it, or some horrible artifacts in the audio.
because of the amount of annoyance it caused me, I don't plan to try and reproduce the effect for diagnostic. I'm curious but not that curious. it was mono 44.1 128k LAME3.97 (so yeah it was made a while back). I see online that there existed a version called lame_3.97_stable, maybe that's a clue? ^_^ anyway I converted that piece of crap to stereo AAC and that works just fine. the demon didn't pass on to the copy so the world is safe(for now).

 

[Raketen]

the mono and plain strange sample rate is something I'm kind of used to "thanks" to podcasts and various free audiobooks recorded by a guy on the toilet with the mic in his earbud...

I was skeptical about audiobooks for children, but after that remark the illustrations seem gratuitous.