Victor M.

Thanks for the suggestions. I do think I need to try a new OS, so maybe one of these.

I’ll grab another hard disk and start fresh, using the year-old disk to copy my library and scripts.

In my researching, I’ve encountered a number of complaints about PulseAudio.

Anybody familiar with either AV Linux or KX Studio?

Aaron:

I have various people running this system, so command line is definitely out of the question. Everyone knows Windows, so if my next attempt doesn’t work perfectly I’ll have to cave in and buy Win10. Being the sole geek is not good for the organization.

(The way cmus is described tells me it very should work extremely well.)

Bob:

I’m using a small amount of my year-old 2 TB hard disk.

TOP says I’m using <10% of my CPU. I haven’t run any updates, in the year it’s been running.

I hardly look at bitrate, so don’t know. Clementine shows song moving smoothly with no sound, then sound kicks in at five seconds into the song.

If music is corrupted, why would it play smoothly in several other programs?

________________

On 20190430, at 06:49, Bob Elzer <bob.elzer@gmail.com> wrote:

hard drive or ssd? What size and how much free space?

Have you tried running top to see if the CPU is getting overloaded?

Are you doing regular updates? You say it was running fine, did you start having problems after an update. If that is the case, do you really need to do the updates? If it ain't broke...

Could be a drive problem how old is the drive?

What bitrate is the music? Is the music stuttering or actually continuing later in the song?

Can you copy the music file you had the problem with to another computer to make sure it didn't get corrupted?

_____________________

On 20190430, at 01:25, Aaron Jones <retro64xyz@gmail.com> wrote:

Try cmus if you are comfortable doing it from the command line. You get a tui for managing it but it can also be scripted. 

https://cmus.github.io/

_____________________

On Tue, Apr 30, 2019, 1:49 AM Victor Montoya <victor.montoya1@cox.net> wrote:

I suggest Linux Calculate.  It is a Gentoo based distro that I believe doesn't have pulse audio.

I also suggest Linux MX.  It is Debian based and had system d and pulse audio by passed.  It will also probably be easier to install and maintain.  I find that many audio problems have their roots in System D and pulse audio.

_____________________

On Apr 29, 2019, at 11:13 PM, Victor Odhner <vodhner@cox.net> wrote:

A computer I built, dedicated to play music in church, is muting pieces of the music. It used to run smoothly.

Can someone suggest a more stable music-playing distro of Linux, and/or a better play-list manager?

Requirements;
Maintain my mp3 library and manage play-lists.

Build a play-list for an event. Play each song on cue, and stop when done.

Play a video program to a separate port (video projector), but not simultaneously with playing music.

I had used Clementine for managing and playing the music.

Now music is not always played smoothly: some segments are muted, and an occasional “rogue” note is played out of place.

I have tried different tests, switched some hardware, but I think my problem is software.

The problem: Clementine has served us well for about a year.

Now, when I play a song, it mutes the first five seconds of the song!

A few songs work well, consistently. For a few other songs I get the first beat of the song, then it plays the next five seconds silently, then turns the sound back on. Every now and then, just a beat or two is replaced by a rogue note from the same song; those are not reproducible.

Clementine has a feature where we can mark the last song in a group, but now that is broken too: it stops at the end of the marked song, but spits out one beat of the next song!

Status: I am desparate.

I could try to update from Mint 18 to 19.

I thought Linux wouldn’t jerk me around like Windows does. Maybe the wrong distro?

Does PulseAudio have something to do with this? Should I use JACK?

I could try AV Linux — it’s 32bit not 64, but is supposed to be extremely stable with rich audio repositories.

I could try KX Studio — supposedly very stable, with frequent tested updates of audio tools.

I could switch to (gasp!) windows since I’m the only Linux geek in the organization. Help me to be strong!

The problem is not just with Clementine.

                        I tested with some other software:

* Rhythmbox plays well, with the occasional injection of a rogue note.

* Media Player seems to run well, and SM Player & MPV likewise. But these aren’t good for managing play lists.

* VLC sputters along continually in a sort of motorboat pattern. You can hear the song faintly, with bits of the song alternating with muted moments several times a second.

* I tried Audacity for an extra “player” test: I used it as the “open with” choice for a song. As it launched, it made a nasty scratching noise that I have not learned before. But then when I hit the play button it rendered the song nicely, like Media Player etc.

In my research I’ve found discussions of earlier troubles in Mint, with scratching noises and stuff. Mine seems different.

Does this sound like 

Computer Configuration:

Intel Celeron CPU G3930 800.048 MHZ

MOBO Gigabyte H110M-M2-CF

Audio HDA-INTEL PCH, USB Audio CODEC

CODEC REALTEC ALC887-VD

HDA Intel PCH Line Out ALSA Driver Ver K4.10.0-38-generic

(Audio is fed from USB port to a Behringer U-Control adapter, then to the Mackie mixer board.)

MINT 18.3 (MATE 1.18.2 Metacity Marco)

x86_64 Linux - OS Release 4.10.0-36 generic

Memory: 8 GB.

Thanks for any suggestion you might have for me.

Victor Odhner

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