Amazing to see how much unRaid has flourished! Great job, guys!

 

I've been experiencing two frustrating mind numbing issues with sound. Either I get:

1. No Sound at All

I have to bend over backwards and do backflips to get sound going again. Often there's no rhyme or reason to it. Sound can be working one moment, and not the next.

Or as soon as I fire up the TV, I can spend a couple hours working to get the sound back.

 

The virtual machine is always running, and I'm not shutting down my unraid server at all.

I don't have sleep enabled.

 

I thought this article was my saving grace:

Fix video and audio playback problems on Firefox for Windows
https://support.mozilla.org/t5/Videos-sound-pictures-and/Fix-video-and-audio-playback-problems-on-Firefox-for-Windows/ta-p/37394

 

It did seem to solve my initial issues, and I considered the problem gone.

 

Another reason I found for the issue, that I had thought finally solved it, was the install order of the virtio drivers in the windows environment on the virtual machine.
I had overlooked this initially, and again thought I finally once and for all solved it.

 

But this issue with no audio still comes back to haunt me.

 

No rhyme or reason. And when I do get sound back, I've not isolated anything specific that is the silver bullet.

 

I've read on another unRaid sound issue thread, the solution was to disable/enable the sound device driver in windows. This does not appear to help.

 

And it occurs with both windows installed VNC and Firefox/Chrome.

 

I have ZERO sound issue with OpenElec.

 

So Windows seems to be forcing the issue somehow.

 

I've searched high and low on this one and tried everything I can think of.

Will continue to monitor and observe and report back any useful findings.

 

 

2. Offensive sound modulation.

Playing a video results in sound that is distorted and unbearable to listen to.

 

Again this occurs in Firefox (netflix), and VNC.

 

With the Firefox/netflix, it seems 90% of the time I'll adjust the time slider of the video and it will begin playing properly.

Worst case, I need to restart Firefox entirely.

 

For VNC, for quite awhile I resorted to the same solution 99% of the time: restarting.

Lately though that hasn't seemed to work.

This issue has become especially persistent lately... and in the most troubling cases, I've isolated the issue to opening a RAR file in VNC over the network.

 

I created a virtual machine as my http media server which runs Windows10.

I'm downloading vids on my primary machine to my main system folders.

On the virtual machine (fresh install), I'll start VLC, and open up the network shared folder from my primary machine, grab the plain .rar file and drop it on VNC in the virtual environment.

 

In the most extreme cases, I unpack the rar to the desktop of the virtual machine, and then drop the mkv/mp4 video file in VNC.

While this seems to solve this issue, this workflow leaves a lot to be desired.

 

 

 

In looking at two threads here on the forum after signing in to post these comments, I do notice there have been recent challenges with SMB, and now these issues seem to have a context.

 

Hopefully, these observations provide some value and insight.

 

Even despite these issues, I can't express how happy I am to have two unRaid servers.

Best decision I ever made was to jump on unRaid v4 and hold on for the development and ride of a lifetime!

 

Great job, guys, thank you for all your tireless efforts and steady updates/releases!
unRaid is Pure Distilled Greatness!!!

Edited April 16, 20179 yr by Xochipelli

isolating vm cores from unRaid via syslinux.cfg can help with distorted audio in some cases with windows.

Thanks for the tip.

Assigned more cores to the vm in it's configs, and issues of no audio and/or distortion seems to be solved.
Will report back if I find things go sideways again.

Edited April 24, 20179 yr by Xochipelli

Hate to say it, but I still have audio issues.

I got so annoyed, I've been running Olec lately.

I did take the time to research your response 1812.
I made mods to my syslinux.cfg file:

  append isolcpus=1,2,3,5,6,7 initrd=/bzroot

 

and assigned cpu 1,5 to this particular vm.

 

Finally had the chance to update and reboot the machine to test.
With this windows vm being the only vm running, still getting issue.

 

Defeating this audio gremlin has been the only thing standing in my way of complete unRaid nirvana.

Edited June 2, 20179 yr by Xochipelli

I changed my cpu for this vm to 2,6
and after another reboot of the machine, things seem to be okay.
Threw a bunch of different audio sources at it (VNC), and those tested well.
So has youtube and netflix.

Maybe things are looking up?

I did also look at this thread,

https://forums.lime-technology.com/topic/52396-audio-stutteringvms-freezing-on-nvidia-cards/

 

I would have tested http://www.lilchips.com/vmaudiofixtray.htm
but things are sounding good for the time being.

 

See how it goes for a bit. That will be my next test if I do have problems with the audio again.

maybe you didn't have enough threads assigned and it was maxing out the 2, causing the stutter/clipping after core isolation....

Thanks 1812

I actually tested that.
I assigned threads 0,4 to unraid and the remaining to that vm keeping the others shut down.

Issue persists.

I've been using Olec since. Great for ripped content... but still looking for a netflix/youtube solution if that's going to be an option.

 

I'm looking pretty hard at just biting the bullet and getting a dedicated machine for the media room.

This issue has been a real dastardly bastard.

I hung up my vm shortly after my last post, pulled out another dedicated machine with windows, and I've been using that since.

Problem solved... mostly.

 

For some unknown reason, out of nowhere I started getting the exact same problem last night on this dedicated machine.

 

Turns out what I was experiencing might actually be a vlc issue. I found a lot of documentation with users experiencing the exact same issue using vlc.

Usually the problem is seems to from problems associated with playing mkv files over vlc.

First solution is typically to select different output source (to waveform)

Second was to enable time stretching

 

Seemed to work for a bit and then found I thought too soon.

 

So installed my retail version of divx 10 pro.

Problem gone.

 

So I want to blame vlc and possibly offer a formal apology to unraid thinking there was a structural issue somewhere in the kernel or coding.

I'm really hoping this proves to be the case 'cause I'm a much bigger fan of unRaid than I am of vlc

 

And hopefully there are others who have already discovered this to be true for themselves.