DPS 2.0 Testing (OSX)

[xaqmusic]

Thanks, vukodlak75.  We will run our tests with VLC and sort this issue.

MtB,

You will notice Bongiovi DPS does post a fair amount of info to the console.  This is mostly related to video/audio sync and other messages broadcasted from the core processing library.

– I looked at the messages this morning and I noticed some of the housekeeping tasks that normally run in 1.0.7 to maintain audio/video sync are not running.  This is most likely due to the way we had to change the audio handling code to work with our new cross platform core processing library.   This is a good clue to help vukodlak75’s issue…

[MtB]

now I have time to attach images (:

for the record, each and every reboot, I am getting the nag screen

 

btw, where can we find the updates? or what is the current version?

 

nagscreen 1

nagscreen 2

[xaqmusic]

New Beta Test Version is available 2.0.0.10

Please check the Dropbox folder for the new version.

NOTE:  You will see a message from our auto update mechanism; “Insecure Update Error“.  You can safely ignore the message.  This message is temporary until we have the update loaded on our server.   Will test that in the next version.

Changes include:

2.0.0.10 – public beta

• Fixed issues with the Ask dialog responsiveness.
• RTA calculations are now only made if the main window is open.
• The main window is not always forced to the front and can now be behind other system windows.
• Fixed issues with the Winter Worlds skin.
• The beta timeout date is 6/1/2016.

2.0.0.9 – internal release

• Added statsd collection for certain functions.
• Updated Setup Helper
• Updated icons
• Added support for updating the app using Sparkle.
• Updated skins, help and icons.
• Fixed an issue with high CPU usage when not playing audio.
• Fixed some issues with dragging the main DPS window around screen.

[MtB]

quick check in regarding to .10

not in a particular order, regarding to seriousness

 

– bass / treble balls still off center and still possible to carry out of the bounding box. also tooltips regarding to the values are not visible

– still getting the registration nag screen

– theme switching still makes click sound

– stereo controls on / off exists on two separate pages on the exact same location. dunno if its a conscious decision or not.

 

on the plus side, resync does not turns off dps by default 😛

 

it might be nice to have a switch to turn on / off rta. yeah it looks cool and fun, but if it consumes cpu, then nice to have an option to turn off (:

 

ps: who is sparkle 😛

cheers,

[xaqmusic]

MtB,

• The EQ pad is still work-in-progress.  We see the issue with the circles.   We may not have the frequency and gain readout ready for the first release BASIC version.  However, the movement will be limited to up/down only so the controls will be more like normal bass/treble.
• We cannot reproduce the registration nag.  Do you have 1.0.7 installed also?  Did you click “Always Allow” when DPS asked to use the Keychain?  Please let us know more about your system so we can make this problem happen on our computers.
• We will address the clicking sound during skin switch later.  It is still on our list.
• The DPS on/off, output mode selection, content selection and stereo on/off controls always remain on the left side of the UI for all tab selections.  Are you saying the Stereo Field controls with 2 circles is also appearing on a different tab than HOME?
• I’m glad re-sync is working for you 🙂
• As of 2.0.0.10 the RTA is only active when the UI window is open.  When the UI window is closed the RTA function is not called.  The new RTA is more efficient than the Windows version and only adds 10-15% to the total DPS CPU consumption.
• Sparkle is the open source library we use to provide secure software updates.  It is a very secure system so all components (web and client side) have to be in place for the messages you see to go away.   We will have another beta version soon that has the final Sparkle components in place.

Let me know if you have any questions!

[MtB]

[quote=63038]MtB,

• The EQ pad is still work-in-progress. We see the issue with the circles. We may not have the frequency and gain readout ready for the first release BASIC version. However, the movement will be limited to up/down only so the controls will be more like normal bass/treble.

cool, waiting to test /see it out (:

• We cannot reproduce the registration nag. Do you have 1.0.7 installed also? Did you click “Always Allow” when DPS asked to use the Keychain? Please let us know more about your system so we can make this problem happen on our computers.

yes, and didnt have the problem on 1.0.7. and yes, always allow I clicked. if there is a way i can generate some sort of log, i can send it back to you guys.

in addition, it doesnt requires reboot, also, today, needed to quit and relaunch the dps, i also got the nag screen again, though, on the messages pane, it seems activated.

to check, i’ve cleared the com.bongiovi.dpsonline entry in the keychain and regenerated it, still, no joy.

my test system is an humble macbook pro late 2011, i7 2.5 16gb ram with ssd bla bla, mac os 10.11.2 installed

 

• We will address the clicking sound during skin switch later. It is still on our list.

cool (:

• The DPS on/off, output mode selection, content selection and stereo on/off controls always remain on the left side of the UI for all tab selections. Are you saying the Stereo Field controls with 2 circles is also appearing on a different tab than HOME?

your explanation cleared it out. some how, at first, i connected the on off switch and stereo field displacement controls, so it seemed weird to have the controls on other panes. but sure, why not 🙂

• I’m glad re-sync is working for you

yeah me to (: tough, I have a dream, one day, we can live without having to use the resync anymore 🙂

just thinking out loud; isnt it possible to find a way to also, automate the resync? i.ex: since we are hooking up the sound output through dps, when system doesnt generates sound, on some sort of interval, dps can schedule to auto-resync. dunno. as I said, just thinking out loud.

• As of 2.0.0.10 the RTA is only active when the UI window is open. When the UI window is closed the RTA function is not called. The new RTA is more efficient than the Windows version and only adds 10-15% to the total DPS CPU consumption.

i think, i miss explained myself 🙂 i was talking about an overall switch 🙂 I mean, yeah its a nice eye candy, but, on reality, besides being eye candy, what is the use case for it? 🙂 i cant see the bands also, band/frequency-wise its too limited, doesnt have peak hold or adjust the fall speed or peak hold, cant see the difference between pre and post etc etc 🙂 btw is it post or pre, i mean the rta source? if, dunno if you have anything planned on the roadmap, we can start utilise the rta then hell yeah to have it. other than that, at least for me, its just an eyecandy. btw, for ios family, check out RTA Audio from AiNeuron s.r.o. its pretty handy on some cases when you cant get your hands on a proper rta. for example; if I can see the rta, and send signal band by band to my output, gradually, I can start fine-tuning the response range of and for my speakers/headphones. but this is advanced geekery 🙂 if you are interested to hear out my idea, i can try to explain the use case scenario on an email though I might ask for some sort of finders fee hehe 😛

 

• Sparkle is the open source library we use to provide secure software updates. It is a very secure system so all components (web and client side) have to be in place for the messages you see to go away. We will have another beta version soon that has the final Sparkle components in place.

nice to meet with the sparkle 🙂

Let me know if you have any questions! [/quote]

[xaqmusic]

MtB,

The nag screen is a weird one for us!  The only thing I can think of is there is a bit of code left over from 1.0.7 we missed and it is being triggered on your system.  This codebase has gone through several programmers hands over the years so this is a real possibility.  I will experiment with my hypothesis.

Re-Sync

We actually do automate a lot of re-syncs to be sure video and audio are always in sync whenever a video is played.   You will see messages in the console like “silence detected, starting timer”.  We trigger a re-sync every 5 minutes during silence.  We also trigger a re-sync 2 seconds after launch.  We don’t want to trigger re-sync while audio is playing because you will hear a dropout.

Sitting in the middle of the OSX audio path, as DPS does, is a rather unnatural process.  There are a lot of kernel and Core Audio things happening in the background that are undocumented.  So we find ourselves treating symptoms rather than finding cures.  As always, we will continue to refine the experience.

RTA

The Windows version has a switch to turn off the RTA so it is totally reasonable to add this to the OSX version.  You are correct about it being eye candy!  There are many good RTAs out there that are useful for analytical purposes so I suggest you use those when making critical audio decisions.  We use Spectrafoo in our lab.

However, we will be implementing our RTA in the profile creation tools we have created for our OEM customers.  This will have calibrated output levels and some ability to change weighting and ballistics.  This RTA is based on cascading band pass filters instead of FFT so the CPU usage is better and the low frequency bands are more accurate.

The RTA is always placed after DPS processing so you can see the results of the DPS profile.  Turning DPS off will show the original audio spectrum.

[hrvoje31]

Hi,

This is my first post so be gentle. 🙂

First of all, congratulations on getting out public beta for OS X and allowing users to get DPS for free. Great work!

Today’s beta expiration, unfortunately, messed things up and I can no longer test the software as I get “This version of Bongovi DPS has expired. Please upgrade to the latest version to continue to use” message no matter what I do.

The most notable issues I had with version 2.0.0.8 have been been already reported by vukodlak75 (3rd post), but will repost since setup is different. I use MacBook Air 13″ (2012) with Sennheiser Momentum over ear and mostly in-ear ones for convenience.

The first thing I had issues with was registration itself. DPS was installed on a clean system, meaning no other DPS software or security software running in background. Due to reported bugs with UI, I had issues with setup/registration. I see that today’s update moved setup window(good thing). When I entered email and password DPS froze. I got spinning wheel (cursor) and application would not respond and CPU usage was high. I had to kill the process in Activity Monitor. Afterwards, application started normally and set up window appeared again and allowed me to configure the application.

I also had issues with delayed window when plugging in the headphones for the first time. It took approx. 8-10 seconds for windows to appear and and it did not switch.

Check for updates is broken (which you are aware of).

I am happy to report after a long time (Maverics broke it) I did not have to resync audio buffer and I did not get distorted/crackling sound like I did with version 1.x. I usually had issues with streaming/flash videos, but with 10.11.2 and v2.0.0.8 I watched streaming video (IPTV) for hours without distortion.

I do hope you will work more on UI. It could use some refinement and resembles Metro too much. 🙂 To be clear, at first, it is not clear what is On/Off (blue/white check-boxes), no deactivate button, not clear what is clickable and what isn’t – for example in Messages – Read More, Manage My Account, Check for update.

Hoping for more profiles and access to new ones in the future, even though I am fine with current ones as is.

I certainly do hope you work A LOT more on integration between – BongioviDPS.com, store.dpsplugin.com, dpsinsider.com, bongioviacoustics.com… No offense, but it is a mess. Different profile for each. Not being able to edit profile (change email for example). In the future, my.bongiovidps.com is supposted to work as a hub, I assume? I realise it is not plugin related, so apologies.

Below are screenshots of registration/expiration issues I am having.

What I did, as stated, installed DPS. Had issues, as stated. Once I set it up all went well and I did not open or change things until I got expiration notice today. I updated and got the same message. Uninstalled/reinstalled, the same thing. Found out about hidden file inside Users folder. It seems to have reset the license, it did ask me for login again but it, again, froze the application.

I can no longer use the app but in trial mode. I deleted everything with bongovi – digitalpowerstation in name that I could find with Find My Files. Cleared caches/Rebooted in safe mode. Reinstalled the app. Repeated the step and still no luck bypassing error messages. I am not going to reinstall/restore the system just for DPS because everything else is working and it would take me days to set other things. If there is a way to clear out relevant files that the app checks but are cryptically named you can PM me to test it, if not…unless the future update resolves this I cannot test it.

xaqmusic, you state in your post from two days ago that:

The beta timeout date is 6/1/2016.

Is that correct?! If so, why such short timeframe. I got the same expiration date with previous beta, and the current one was released two days ago only to expire two days from its release with no new beta.

I am a bit confused.

Regards,

H.

http://imgur.com/a/rSMhc

[hrvoje31]

Sorry, I was not able to edit my previous post to add this:

I was able to install and activate version 1.07. It showed up in store account. I deactivated it as well. Thinking it might resolve it, but it did not. For example, even though v2 was activated, it did not show on store account. I did not try to install v1.07. activate it, uninstall/or keep it and then install v2. Ran uninstall/install/repair disk permissions too many times today already. 🙂 My system takes unusually long to turn on after installing/uninstalling DPS, unless I run repair permissions.

[xaqmusic]

hrvoje31,

Thanks for the extensive feedback!  It really helps.  I just want to respond to a few things briefly (I’m at CES 2016 to time is tight at the moment) and will go into more depth later:

• We found the cause of the “demo trial period is over” and this will be fixed in the next update.
• I think I know why the beta timeout is happening.   The date is 6/1/2015 which, in the USA, is June 1, 2016 (month/day/year).   Is your date setup to be day/month/year?  That could be causing the issue and should be a simple fix.  We use the beta timeouts to be sure test versions and old versions aren’t floating around causing trouble.
• If you are testing 2.0.0.8 we have improved the high CPU and headphone detection issues in 2.0.0.10
• We are also painfully aware of our scattered profile/web presence.  DPS 2.0 is all about simplifying this process.  We have a lot of legacy concerns so please bear with us during the transition.

more to come later…

[hrvoje31]

xaqmusic,

Thank you for fast, informative and quick reply. Especially since you posting live from CES. I really appreciate it!

I think the date format is the issue. Yes, I am in Europe and use day/month/year instead of month/day/year. 🙂 So, the cause of “all the issues” I am having is a simple bug time format bug. I was just confused by the entire thing as both betas expired at the same time.

Apologies on a bit of a mess in my post as I stopped/started writing it a couple of times and messed sentence structure.

I do hope my comment regarding websites was not taken negatively. 🙂 It is a non issue, but it might be confusing for some.

I am sure you are all hard at work with Windows release, CES, negotiating things with vendors, improving things and bringing end users new releases/better web experience.

First thing’s first, have fun at CES!

Regards,

H.

[vukodlak75]

I updated.
I only had time to watch a video (for work). The audio sync in VLC is good now.
I’ll play around with it more tomorrow.
Thanks.

[3rik]

Hello,

Please consider users listening to music via an USB DAC. I currently have a Teac UD-501 and I have noticed 2 more bugs :

– When powering up my iMac Retina (late 2014), sometimes DPS does not “remember” that I’ve set output to the DAC and chooses the built-in input by default (the problem was here on 1.0.7 too).

-I had noticed some distortion with 1.07, I’ve never had idea to check whenever it could be due to the DPS. After installing 2.0.0.8, DPS on, not using EQ, Destop Speakers, Paris speakers profile, still distortion on some songs. I’ve is-nstalled 2.0.0.10 and there’s more now distortion than on 2.0.0.8 with the same songs. As I said, Teac UD-501 DAC USB connected, M-Audio DSM-1 monitoring, M-Audio SBX10 subwoofer. When I set DPS to off, magic! no more distortion. I play my music with Replaygain (album) on. To be honest, I’ve used other speakers profiles for testing purpose only, I always use Paris profile which sounds the best to me.

Thanks,

Eric

 

[xaqmusic]

hrvoje31,

Thanks for the kind feedback!   CES has been very successful and there are a lot of amazing projects on our plate this year.  Between our soundbar, headphone, TV, automotive, medical and DPS 2.0 programs we are going to be very busy!

3rik,

I know why you are getting distortion.  The Mac Core Audio engine is the only OS platform that allows audio to exceed PCM 0dBFS.  This is because the audio path is 32bit floating point.  All Mac audio enhancers take advantage of this extra headroom that does not exist on Windows, Android or even iOS.  However, this only works on the Built-In output of your Mac.  A USB external speaker driver will convert the floating point samples to integers where the maximum output is limited to 0dBFS.  Any floating point samples that convert to a positive dB value will be clipped to 0dB and you will hear distortion.

We have two ways to address this.   First, you need to turn off “Volume Boost”.  This feature only exists on OSX for the purpose of pushing audio 6dB into the available headroom.  This is especially nice for laptop speakers.

It is also possible for us to add an option to turn on the new peak limiter function (this is default in Windows) for those Mac profiles that do not currently have it engaged.  The peak limiter will prevent any audio from exceeding 0dBFS and causing the distortion you hear.

What profile are you using that is causing distortion?   I can provide a version of the profile that has the limiter turned on.  I will check the Paris profile you mentioned to be sure the limiter is engaged.

Regarding “remembering” the USB output:  DPS will remember the last used output for each category.  However, if the output is does not exist at the time Bongiovi DPS launches it will “forget” the driver and automatically choose the default driver.  DPS cannot connect to a driver that is not available on the system.  Let me know if this is what you observe on your system.

[3rik]

xaqmusic,

Many thanks 🙂

Infact, I cannot install 2.0.0.10 because it says that the testing has expired. Here in France, we use DD/MM/YYYY and I’ve installed it yesterday that is 08/01/2010…

I have never used the “Volume boost” 😉

I have distortion issue with all profiles that sound like Paris profile (to my hears, more bass, less miss, and a little more treble than other profiles).

I’d really like to try 2.0.0.10 with your “new” Paris profile that have the limiter turned on with my Teac UD-501 DAC ! 🙂

Thanks 🙂

Eric

 

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