Audio Output doesn't follow setting of computer...

[jamills6377]

I decided to connect my Bose bluetooth headset to my Mac this afternoon so that I could work on sequencing without bothering anyone around me. The headset connects properly and tells me that it is connected. When I play a sequence in xLights, nothing comes through the headset ... despite having the headset selected as the output device in the settings control panel of the Mac. If I switch to iTunes (or other sound producing programs such as Youtube in Safari) on the Mac, the sound comes through the headset as expected. When I then switch back to the xLights program, no sound comes through the headset.

It seems that xLights doesn't pay attention to the control panel sound setting on the Mac.

[QldKing]

Does it work if you close xlights then start it up again? I had that issue a lot using Bluetooth headphones on the mac.  Found I needed to connect to the headphones first, then start xlights.

[Ebuechner]

You shouldn't use Bluetooth audio devices for sequencing.
They all suffer from a delay that under normal circumstances isn't an issue but when you're trying to time lights to the music it can throw things off.

[QldKing]

You shouldn't use Bluetooth audio devices for sequencing.
They all suffer from a delay that under normal circumstances isn't an issue but when you're trying to time lights to the music it can throw things off.

Well there you go - was not aware of that. May explain a few things. Is the delay big?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[jamills6377]

That did it! xLights plays through the headphones now after restart the program/turning on the headset first.

As for the delay, I don't notice any significant delay - maybe I'm not picky enough or maybe Bose headsets have a better quality than those which cause the delay. I watched the waveform scroll along and listened to what I was hearing through the headset and it seemed to sync up to me.

[jamills6377]

While that is a work around for this...it would seem to me that there is still some sort of bug in the program that doesn't have it looking for the proper output source on playback. Certainly not a critical error, but perhaps it's a simple fix that could be addressed.

[Dazzled]

I worked with Keith last year on this problem and also given the right conditions you can actually lockup the playback. So Keith put in some extra logging but we were never able to pin point what causes this on the Mac and decided to leave it there as it didn't seem to be causing problems for other users.


Stuart

[jamills6377]

Oddly, just as an aside, I noted that Audacity behaves in the exact same way - doesn't follow the computer's sound setting. So it is not simply anxLights behavior. Perhaps something to do with the programing framework being used.

[Gilrock]

When you say "doesn't follow the computer's sound" I can't tell if you are expecting it to switch without you having to restart xlights or not.  I know on Windows I can't just plug in my headphones and have them automatically work.  I have to go into my sound settings and tell Windows I want the headphones to be primary and its usually safer to just close programs before the switch and restart them.

[jamills6377]

By saying "doesn't flow" I mean does not behave like iTunes or other music/movie software on the computer. For example - if I am playing music in iTunes and it is coming trough output device A, then I go to my settings/control panel for sound and tell the computer to play through a different output device as soon as I make that choice the sound moves to that device without me having to close and re-open any software. I would have thought that xLights would be looking or direction from that same bit of information that tells those programs where to play their sound. It seems it doesn't.

[Gilrock]

Well if it starts to bother me that's when I'll look at it.