[Ableza]

Roon is an app on OSX. It starts when I launch the app.

The Roon player, yes. But what about the server? Where is your music library housed?


And by the way sorry to everyone else, I now this is not the Roon support thread.

 

[ArmchairPhilosopher]

I have trouble with this, too. Roon always sees the Gungnir, but will sometimes connect and play music, other times it will not. I've changed my start-up procedure (I assemble my rig prior to each listening session). The sequence is:
- Mac speakers muted, Mac closed,
- Gungnir power off,
- connect USB cable between Gungnir and Mac,
- Gungnir power on,
- computer opened, speakers then unmute on their own,
- speakers muted by me,
- Roon opened and started, speakers unmuted by me.
After that, Roon plays music through the "System Output," not thru "Gungnir USB." This sequence works every time and the music sounds fine. I know, it is wonky as hell, so any explanation / advice is welcomed. Note: keeping the rig assembled all the time is not an option. Thanks, in advance.

As @Ableza already said, MPLAB X is an IDE (integrated development environment) provided by Microchip. It can be used to write firmware for their microcontrollers with. It can also write ("flash") that firmware to these microcontrollers.

To be able to do so, it needs to communicate directly with certain programmer/debugger hardware via USB.

MPLAB X is essentially NetBeans with a few custom plugins added to it. NetBeans, in turn, is a programming environment developed by the Apache Foundation. It is written in Java and designed to run on all kinds of different operating systems without the need for much operating system-specific code, if any. "Build once, deploy everywhere" is what they like to call this principle. To accomplish that, these frameworks are usually designed to weasel their way around as many operating system functionality as they can. So my theory is that they access the USB ports as close to the hardware layer as they can get away with, and they might end up locking something up that macOS would otherwise manage for them if macOS's USB APIs would be used as originally intended.

Something similar applies to Roon. It, too, is designed around one of those "build once, deploy everywhere" frameworks (Microsoft's Mono/.NET in their case). And it, too, needs to have direct access to your USB ports. One of Roon's core features is the Roon audio pipeline. The entire purpose of that is to control every layer your audio data has to travel through to get to your DAC, so that they can ensure that no unintended up- or downsampling or some other form of conversion happens. For that, Roon needs to be able to communicate with the DAC directly, not through macOS's general audio pipeline. And so they, too, will try to hook onto your Mac's USB ports as close to the hardware as they can get away with.

My theory is that Roon does this in a somewhat cleaner way, meaning without blocking ports that it didn't find a DAC connected to. MPLAB X's behavior seems to be less considerate in that it apparently keeps blocking the ports in such a way that it renders Roon incapable of discovering any connected DACs.

MacOS itself seems to be unaffected by all that, by the way, because the OS still discovers connected USB devices just fine, and DACs still work when the default audio pipeline of the OS is used.

There's a lot of guessing on my part involved with the above. I didn't have the time nor the inclination to dig much deeper into what exactly caused the issue, but based on my own knowledge and experience with these things I'm relatively confident that I'm not too far off the mark with this.

Whether or not my assumptions are correct, none of the above is really relevant to what you are experiencing anyway. Neither MPLAB X nor NetBeans are shipped with macOS, you would have to install either of them deliberately.
But the cause is probably still similar.

My guess would be that you have something installed on your Mac that either meddles with your Mac's USB ports or (more likely) something that hijacks macOS's audio pipeline. A lot of people use software by Rogue Amoeba, for example, to reroute their audio pipelines for some reason or another. Airfoil, Loopback, Audio Hijack, SoundSource … all of them are designed to hook into and meddle with macOS's audio pipeline. And while I'm sure that a lot of people are happy with the results, I always found that these applications cause more problems than they solve.

So my first step would be to check if you have anything like that installed on your mac and try to uninstall them as cleanly with as little residue as you can. With apps like these that try to inject themselves as far into the OS as they can, a simple delete of the app bundle is often not enough, so you'll probably have to follow a tutorial or two to actually get rid of everything.

If that doesn't help, the next step would be to check if you have any other software installed on your Mac that requires a connection to specialized hardware via USB.

 

[rfernand]

After Roon updates (or the machine is restarted) I sometimes see that in the OS X Roon app. The settings don’t seem “sticky”. I’d hit the Roon forum if this is annoying you too much - Note I don’t use the OS X app that often because the server is elsewhere and I tend to use the phone for control.

 

[Ableza]

Navigating computer system settings to try and make setups work correctly can be like:

 

[bevanc]

As @Ableza already said, MPLAB X is an IDE (integrated development environment) provided by Microchip. It can be used to write firmware for their microcontrollers with. It can also write ("flash") that firmware to these microcontrollers.

To be able to do so, it needs to communicate directly with certain programmer/debugger hardware via USB.

MPLAB X is essentially NetBeans with a few custom plugins added to it. NetBeans, in turn, is a programming environment developed by the Apache Foundation. It is written in Java and designed to run on all kinds of different operating systems without the need for much operating system-specific code, if any. "Build once, deploy everywhere" is what they like to call this principle. To accomplish that, these frameworks are usually designed to weasel their way around as many operating system functionality as they can. So my theory is that they access the USB ports as close to the hardware layer as they can get away with, and they might end up locking something up that macOS would otherwise manage for them if macOS's USB APIs would be used as originally intended.

Something similar applies to Roon. It, too, is designed around one of those "build once, deploy everywhere" frameworks (Microsoft's Mono/.NET in their case). And it, too, needs to have direct access to your USB ports. One of Roon's core features is the Roon audio pipeline. The entire purpose of that is to control every layer your audio data has to travel through to get to your DAC, so that they can ensure that no unintended up- or downsampling or some other form of conversion happens. For that, Roon needs to be able to communicate with the DAC directly, not through macOS's general audio pipeline. And so they, too, will try to hook onto your Mac's USB ports as close to the hardware as they can get away with.

My theory is that Roon does this in a somewhat cleaner way, meaning without blocking ports that it didn't find a DAC connected to. MPLAB X's behavior seems to be less considerate in that it apparently keeps blocking the ports in such a way that it renders Roon incapable of discovering any connected DACs.

MacOS itself seems to be unaffected by all that, by the way, because the OS still discovers connected USB devices just fine, and DACs still work when the default audio pipeline of the OS is used.

There's a lot of guessing on my part involved with the above. I didn't have the time nor the inclination to dig much deeper into what exactly caused the issue, but based on my own knowledge and experience with these things I'm relatively confident that I'm not too far off the mark with this.

Whether or not my assumptions are correct, none of the above is really relevant to what you are experiencing anyway. Neither MPLAB X nor NetBeans are shipped with macOS, you would have to install either of them deliberately.
But the cause is probably still similar.

My guess would be that you have something installed on your Mac that either meddles with your Mac's USB ports or (more likely) something that hijacks macOS's audio pipeline. A lot of people use software by Rogue Amoeba, for example, to reroute their audio pipelines for some reason or another. Airfoil, Loopback, Audio Hijack, SoundSource … all of them are designed to hook into and meddle with macOS's audio pipeline. And while I'm sure that a lot of people are happy with the results, I always found that these applications cause more problems than they solve.

So my first step would be to check if you have anything like that installed on your mac and try to uninstall them as cleanly with as little residue as you can. With apps like these that try to inject themselves as far into the OS as they can, a simple delete of the app bundle is often not enough, so you'll probably have to follow a tutorial or two to actually get rid of everything.

If that doesn't help, the next step would be to check if you have any other software installed on your Mac that requires a connection to specialized hardware via USB.

Normal service resumed! Was starting to miss your long posts!

 

[AstronomerXI]

I interviewed Marty Balin in 1991 when he was trying to stage a solo comeback with his song "Better Generation." He stated that after they had their first big hit that Starship became a big business that was "all about building the retirement fund."

Not surprising, and you can't really fault him/the band/their management. But it's the definition of "corporate rock", or I guess pop, now. "Here's the formula that the AI analysis says will be hit, fill in the blanks, auto-tune the bejayzus out of the vocals, and ta-daa: hit song." A commodity product. Some of that Starship junk, like WBTC, sounds like highschool musical fluff.

 

[Ableza]

Not surprising, and you can't really fault him/the band/their management. But it's the definition of "corporate rock", or I guess pop, now. "Here's the formula that the AI analysis says will be hit, fill in the blanks, auto-tune the bejayzus out of the vocals, and ta-daa: hit song." A commodity product. Some of that Starship junk, like WBTC, sounds like highschool musical fluff.

Indeed. And even though WBTC was way before AI and auto-tune, it was very much in the spirit of the corporate hit machine tunes that have plagued pop music since the beginning of recording.

By the way, Balin's song "Better Generation:" made me think he was saying: "You kids and your crap music today, we were much better in my day. Get off my lawn!"

 

[riffrafff]

 

[ghfiii]

FamilySearch follows a one-tree structure in principle as well, but there will sometimes be duplicate person records. Which are pretty easy to dedupe, though. And the environment is usually intelligent about suggesting when you should do that.

Ancestry might connect to a few more information archives, but the user base at FS is more focused on genealogical accuracy...which you'll understand given who supports the site.

And it's free.

I'm active on several genealogical sites, including the ones mentioned here. They vary in capabilities and UX, and there isn't one out there that's perfect. In fact, each and every one of them has its own pretty serious flaws. But far better than nothing.

Thank you

 

[StimpyWan]

Nice artwork, but I never want to hear another Bob Seger song, in my lifetime...! A good musician, though very over-played, on my local Classic Rock station...!

 

[DougD]

By the way, if you want simple and reliable, then music servers and streaming is not the way. Simple and reliable = buy an Urd and spin discs.

Welcome. You will fit in well around here.

 

[Ableza]

Welcome. You will fit in well around here.

after 9 1/2 years I think I have it figured out.

 

[tin-ear]

I've had this idea bouncing around me head for a while. Electronic were invented in the late 1800's. Electronic measuring came a while later.
If you think about, all, with rare exceptions, of the musical instruments used in Symphony Orchestras were invented before there were devices to measure the sound they created. The sounds they made, the quality, the pitch, etc. etc., were made by human beings using their ears. And they were able to get scores of performers playing in tune!

 

[feelingears]

Glad I finally have something to contribute to this crowd of audio kooks: For you um, tingling-types, may I recommend https://www.dz-nuts.com/ while you listen? (Or at least when you ride.)

By the way, if you want simple and reliable, then music servers and streaming is not the way. Simple and reliable = buy an Urd and spin discs.

This is the way.

 

[artur9]

I don’t think Urd has any speed variation, so while you technically could, it might be painstakingly slow to do, as the cd transport would have to playing in real-time. I think @Jason Stoddard alluded to that fact somewhere in the thread. If I can find it, I’ll add it.

I'd be more interested in what it would take to make the Urd compatible with my HiFi Rose RS250B. It says it can control "any USB CD drive" and that sounds intriguing/tantalizing...

NVM! I see that it's not a mass storage device. Waah! https://www.head-fi.org/threads/sch...most-improbable-start-up.701900/post-17642971