Audirvana crashes constantly

Dear Audirvana Team,

After switching from Mac to Windows, I am extremely disappointed with Audirvana. Audirvana Studio simply doesn’t run reliably on two of my computers. To be honest, in over 30 years, I have never encountered software that crashes so often and is so completely unreliable.

Can I send you some sort of log (if so, where can I find it?) so you can assist me further? Studio randomly shuts down after a few tracks.

Thanks for your help
Best
Dominik

Hi @domiji,

If you encountered a crash, please send us audirvana_studio.dmp and audirvana_studio.log file at [email protected]

It can be in two different locations :
C:\Users[your login]\AppData\Local\Packages\Audirvana.Audirvana-[… id number that can vary]\LocalCache\Local\Audirvana\Audirvana
C:\Users[your login]\AppData\Local\Audirvana\Audirvana

to show AppData folder:

Hello Antoine,

Thank you for your quick response.

In the meantime, I’ve stumbled upon a small phenomenon. The crash happens almost exclusively when a song is being loaded. Strangely enough, though, this only occurs when streaming via Qobuz. So far, I haven’t been able to reproduce a single crash with Tidal.

Just a guess on my part:
Audirvana tries to load the song from Qobuz and then send it to the DAC via Kernel-Streaming, but the response time from Qobuz is too slow?

Thanks and best regards,
Dominik

When you play your track with the waveform enabled, do you see the slow loading?

Hello @Antoine ,

the crash happens before the song is loaded or the waveform “starts”. The weird thing is that i wasn’t able to reproduce a single crash with songs from Tidal. It only happens with Qobuz songs.

Hi @domiji,

To make sure we are on the same page when you are talking about a crash, do you have the software closing automatically and generating an audirvana_studio. dump on your desktop?

Hi @Antoine

I’ll try to explain it in more detail:

Audirvana tries to load a song via Qobuz, and even before the waveform appears, Audirvana starts to freeze and then crashes. After that, the program simply closes. An audirvana_studio.dump file is not generated on the desktop.

When playing with Tidal, Audirvana has been running smoothly since this morning.

Can you go into the Audirvāna settings and in the My Account section? You will see a ‘Start Log Session’ button; click on it and reproduce your issue. After you reproduce it, click 'Stop Log Session’ and send me the audirvana_studio.log file you can find by clicking the 'Open Log Folder’ button at [email protected]?

1 Like

Hello @Antoine

thanks for your quick replies :slight_smile:

As far as i can tell, Audirvana really only crashes when Qobuz Songs are played. The logfile told me this:

2024-09-24 12:18:18.917 [debug]: FLAC decoder: HTTP reader returned less bytes 6835 than requested 8192
2024-09-24 12:18:20.212 [debug]: FLAC decoder: HTTP reader returned less bytes 1985 than requested 8192
2024-09-24 12:19:00.779 [debug]: FLAC decoder: HTTP reader returned less bytes 6578 than requested 8192

But most of the time Audirvana isn’t able to write anything to the logfile. Maybe because it simply freezes.

I’m sorry, but I’ve now canceled my subscription. I experienced so many bugs and crashes today that i am so frustated about Studio. This was my third attempt with Audirvana, and it just doesn’t work. As an early adopter, I already had issues with the release of Studio, a year later it was still a buggy disaster, and now in 2024, it’s still almost unusable. As a result, I’ve reactivated my Roon subscription and am happy to have a trouble-free software experience.

Antoine, thank you for your help. The support from Audirvana has always been very good, quick, and friendly.

Best regards,
DomiJi

You must ask yourself why many satisfied Audirvana + Windows users that have Qobuz subscriptions do not experience the behavior that you are experiencing… Is it really Audirvana software or is it something in your system configuration that is precipitating this behavior?

:notes: :eye: :headphones: :eye: :notes:

2 Likes

Hi,
regardless of the configuration of the sytem, a software must not crash. The software must show an error and must resume.

In an ideal world you are right. In a world of computers with countless variables less so. Even Windows or MacOS crash now and then when some (hardware) problems occur. No software can be tested fully on all different hardware configurations possible.

3 Likes

@HTox, If you are running Windoz you are the crash test dummy…

@AndyLubke, Simple things should be simple and complex things should be possible. - Alan Kay…

@Agoldnear, I’ll consider myself lucky not having crashes on either my MacOS or Windoz kit running Audirvana Studio streaming from Qobuz…

1 Like

The rush to blame the playback software app is always galling to me. The vast majority of users of Audirvana have no issues, same goes for Roon but the 60 or so support posts a day on their forum suggests that for a minority of people it is a buggy mess.

People should always ask why does it not work for me when it works for the majority of people. If you have constant crashing and there is no flood of other posters with the same issues you need to ask the question why? The complex interaction between OS and apps running in the background can lead to many issues which can cause a problem with your playback software. People’s recent experience with macOS Sequoia which impacted a few users of many of the digital music playback software applications is a perfect case in point. In the OP’s case some logical fault finding was in order, but then I regrettably have to say some people prefer to rant and throw their toys out of the playpen………

1 Like

I never feel like there is a problem around the corner… If something does crop-up I’ll question my configuration first and then look for solutions… My system is rock-solid in its current incarnation with macOS 12.7.6 Monterey on my 2016 MBP i7 2.7GHz, and 16GB RAM, running Studio… USB to the DAC… etc, etc, etc…
:notes: :eye: :headphones: :eye: :notes:

Hi @HTox ,

From my perspective, we tend to have fewer and fewer software crashes. That being said, sometimes this can happen, and in such a case, you need to send us all the information we need.

If you experience a crash, send us at [email protected] the crash file generated and instructions on how to reproduce it. Once we have reproduced the crash, we email the person to send a test version to check if this fixes the issue.

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Years ago I did support for a computer company that had customers at some major aerospace companies… It was surprising that some PhD analysts and engineers could not follow three steps, in sequence, to trouble shoot their issues… :nerd_face:

3 Likes

Maybe they forgot the simplicity of asking people to give information :grimacing:

Hi folk,

  • Window, MAC and drivers run in kernel space, Audirvana runs in Userspace. In kernel land, it is very difficult to recover when an error ocure.
  • If an user app crash and produce a core dump, the app has a bug. If a specific configuration produce a corner case, the app must detect it and exit with an error.
  • I do not say taht for Audirvana, that is a global view and it is my own perspective and I know that if Antoine receive a crach dump, he will try to find the problem in order to fix it.

@Antoine, do you have some documentation to activate the debug mode in Linux and how to fetch the core dump after a crash?