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Topic: Problem with schnofler's ABC/HR Tool (Read 3367 times) previous topic - next topic
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Problem with schnofler's ABC/HR Tool

Hello. I wanted to do an ABC/HR test with schnofler's tool, but when I hit the OK button to start the test, I got this error. FYI I also can't import a test configuration. What can I do to solve this problem? (Addition: I'm unfortunately using Windows 10 on this (not-old) computer. I say "unfortunately" because I love Win7 and even Win8.1 is much less annoying to me than Win10. I will try this in the old computer when I have time if the problem isn't already solved, which has Windows 7 on it.)

Re: Problem with schnofler's ABC/HR Tool

Reply #1
Windows 10 is not the problem. I'm unfortunately not familiar enough with Java to willingly spend more time to figure out what you might possibly have done to trigger the error. Something is NULL which causes exception message to also be NULL.
For reference the tool works fine even on Windows 11 using a Java from https://adoptium.net/temurin/releases/. I tested on a machine that was already using JRE 17 LTS for Ubiquiti.

Re: Problem with schnofler's ABC/HR Tool

Reply #2
Thanks for information. Now I tried it in the old computer and it didn't even start there (before and after updating Java).

Re: Problem with schnofler's ABC/HR Tool

Reply #3
...

Do you have Java 8?
Maybe this software doesn't support newer versions (17, 19, 22, etc) of Java.

Re: Problem with schnofler's ABC/HR Tool

Reply #4
...

Do you have Java 8?
Maybe this software doesn't support newer versions (17, 19, 22, etc) of Java.

The folder which has the bin folder which has javaw.exe which runs when I run the JAR file is named "jre1.8.0_431", and the control panel says "Version 8 Update 431".

Re: Problem with schnofler's ABC/HR Tool

Reply #5
Tested on Windows 10 with Oracle Java Version 8 Update 431 and things worked even better than with the newer Adoptium version. This combination managed to open pre-existing encrypted configs too.
I have tried so simulate problem scenarios by removing the files referenced in test config, that gives a proper error about missing file. Tried nulling the config file, that gives a proper error. Tried removing the test file references from config file, that too gave a different error. Tried leaving internet sourced marking to the .jar file, that didn't cause any launch issues.
I can't reverse engineer the steps Klymins has taken to make things not work.


Re: Problem with schnofler's ABC/HR Tool

Reply #7
That's what I tested too. That's the first useful information you have given, btw. You for example didn't make it clear in your first post what kind of test configuration you had created that you then failed to load, or if you were loading some pre-existing configuration found from the depths of the internet.

There is a newer ABC/HR tool bundled with the various listening tests performed here on Hydrogenaudio. But I didn't see any functional difference between that rarewares version and the one with newer version number. Both manage to load my test config and play the samples.

Re: Problem with schnofler's ABC/HR Tool

Reply #8
That's what I tested too. That's the first useful information you have given, btw. You for example didn't make it clear in your first post what kind of test configuration you had created that you then failed to load, or if you were loading some pre-existing configuration found from the depths of the internet.

There is a newer ABC/HR tool bundled with the various listening tests performed here on Hydrogenaudio. But I didn't see any functional difference between that rarewares version and the one with newer version number. Both manage to load my test config and play the samples.

Can you give the link of that newer tool in case of it being able to work in this computer? (My configuration was a random (no Turkish chars) title, .wav files as reference and test samples one each (for testing), and all other options at their defaults, and this error is not limited to importing configurations as I already said.)

 

Re: Problem with schnofler's ABC/HR Tool

Reply #9
Included for example in the sample sets here: https://listening-test.coresv.net/index.htm. But I don't expect there to be any difference in behavior.


Re: Problem with schnofler's ABC/HR Tool

Reply #11
Have you tried placing your test configuration file in a different place? For example, directly on C:\, or in your non-C:\ storage. Folder names and file names containing non-ASCII or special characters including a space tend to cause trouble on a legacy software, so renaming and moving file might be worth trying.

Re: Problem with schnofler's ABC/HR Tool

Reply #12
Non-ascii characters that are still part of your ANSI codepage are no problem, neither are spaces (this isn't *nix). Real unicode characters in the path to the .jar file will prevent double click opening of the ABC/HR tool. But in that scenario the Java VM will give an error like "Error: Unable to access jarfile <path-to-jar-with-unicode-characters-replaced-with-question-marks>".
If you open a command prompt in the abchr.jar directory and launch it manually from there, it will work without trouble. You can even have unicode characters in the audio file names and they will be perfectly preserved in the config file in UTF-8 encoding.

Re: Problem with schnofler's ABC/HR Tool

Reply #13
Removing the spaces solved this problem, but apparently it can't decode most or any codec(s) (I tried with MP3, Vorbis, and AAC-LC in M4A; it doesn't see Opus). This is the error it gives when I give it an MP3, for example. Is converting all lossy files to PCM my only option, or can I make the tool read these lossy codecs?

Re: Problem with schnofler's ABC/HR Tool

Reply #14
Spaces are not a problem for Java or for the ABC/HR tool. Not for the old 0.5 from Rarewares or for the newer bundled in the example files I linked.
Had you told what you are doing from the beginning people could have told you that the tool is for WAV files. It supports decoding files too, provided that it can access the required decoder binaries and there is configuration for the format so it knows how to do it.
I don't think ABC/HR has been tasked to do the decoding in any of the listening tests I have seen, it makes no sense to leave it for that tool. But the author has added support for that as a convenience feature.
I was surprised to see that its decoding support handles files with spaces too. Impressive work from whoever created this thing 20 years ago.

Re: Problem with schnofler's ABC/HR Tool

Reply #15
Thanks.

Re: Problem with schnofler's ABC/HR Tool

Reply #16
The tool can't read saved sessions anymore after I installed JDK. I'll probably start a new test as I think I am not going to get over 60 different encodings per sample to score (I'll probably open a new topic for suggestions about that) but I thought maybe this is the signal of a bigger problem. (I also sometimes couldn't decrase the score while I was doing the test FYI, and saving the session and opening it was my way to solve this but I'm suspicious about this too.) What should I do?