Mac OSX JRMC (J River Media Center) Crashes on Fast Track Changes / Lingon "Auto Restarter" App

[Artifex]

Hi folks,

 

Like many of you, I keep switching from one music player application to another, in pursuit of the best sound/experience combination. Lately I've come back to the JRMC+JRemote combination, which (at this point in time, for me) seems to be the best one currently. Yes, HQPlayer possibly sounds the best, and maybe I haven't spent enough time fiddling with it, but its spartan user interface (and complex options) makes it too difficult to use (again, for me), and even more so over an iPad Parallels Access remote connection (I especially hate that the iPad keyboard comes up every time I do anything simple, like change tracks) even for simple use, let alone playlist setups. I love the Audirvana sound and its native Mac interface, but (and maybe I'm doing it wrong) I've never been able to figure out how to reliably set up playlists that survive library changes, and even at its best, trying to control Audirvana via the iPad (even with the great Parallels Access automatic full-screen function) is way too fiddly. And the Amarra interface is so ugly (reminds me of a 90's era WinAmp skin) I just can't bear to use it (yup perhaps I care too much about the aesthetics...).

 

So, until Audirvana gets its iPad remote app (hopefully soon...), I'm (at least this week!) back to JRMC+JRemote. JRemote really is fantastic - I've tried the Linn Kinsky and other remote apps, but only JRemote feels like a non-beta, mature app. Also, the latest version of JRMC now has a great "Pono" (heh!) skin which gives it close to a true Mac native Yosemite app appearance (thank god!).

 

So, so far, so good. Decent SQ from the Mac player. Decent iPad remote experience.

 

However, the one viper in this acoustic Garden of Paradise that crops up again and again, is the tendency of JRMC to crash. Repeatedly. Whenever I try to change tracks too quickly. Essentially, if I start playing a track, and then, within 2-3 seconds I try playing another track, JRMC crashes to the desktop, with the usual OS X Crash Report window showing up. If not the first time, then the 2nd or 3rd time I do the rapid track change thingy. Yes, 100% reproducible.

 

So, why not just avoid this silly behaviour, you say... Well, unfortunately for me my missus and house guests do sometimes use the system too, and it's not practicable to conduct pre-use training for everyone!

 

Enter Lingon, by a (I think) Swedish developer called Peter Borg. https://www.peterborgapps.com/lingon/

 

With Lingon X 2.0 (there is also a crippled version, Lingon 3.0 on the Mac App Store, which I haven't tried due to bad reviews) I've been able to (extremely easily and quickly) get JRMC to automatically restart every time it crashes. JRemote is also pretty good in that it pretty much automatically re-establishes a connection with JRMC whenever this happens (although one sometimes needs to hit the refresh icon to fix some playlist errors).

 

Kudos, to this Peter Borg fellow, for Lingon, and for keeping it really cheap ($5 to $10).

 

However, the frequent JRMC crashes really bug me, notwithstanding the above band-aid fix.

 

Is this "crash on rapid track changes" problem unique to my system, or does anyone else experience it? If so, I was curious if anybody had a suggestion as to how I can fix it?

 

Many thanks in advance!

 

 

Art

[Matt Ashland]

Boy, the crash is really a mystery. I just tried rapidly changing tracks here in the office and it worked fine.

 

Are you playing to DLNA or playing DSD or anything else notable? If just certain files crash when you switch, could you provide a sample to matt at jriver dot com?

 

Thanks.

[Paul R]

Boy, the crash is really a mystery. I just tried rapidly changing tracks here in the office and it worked fine.

 

Are you playing to DLNA or playing DSD or anything else notable? If just certain files crash when you switch, could you provide a sample to matt at jriver dot com?

 

Thanks.

Hey Matt - the .64 (I think) version would crash once a day at least on Yosemite, mostly because it went into some kind of forever wait state when the disks were spun down during the night with normal power saving. JRMC wold stop responding and the only cure was a force quite and restart. Might be something similar here.

 

I might still have some old crash logs around here if you want them. I have not seen that behavior since the last upgrade though. (I'm not at home, not sure what the exact version numbers are.)

 

-Paul

[Paul R]

Hey Matt - the .64 (I think) version would crash once a day at least on Yosemite, mostly because it went into some kind of forever wait state when the disks were spun down during the night with normal power saving. JRMC wold stop responding and the only cure was a force quite and restart. Might be something similar here.

 

I might still have some old crash logs around here if you want them. I have not seen that behavior since the last upgrade though. (I'm not at home, not sure what the exact version numbers are.)

 

-Paul

 

And I woke up this morning with both JRMC instances here running on Macs crashed. Driving me and the better half crazy... .87 I think. No time to chase it down this morning, judt giving a data point.