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Topic: When the APE would become reliable? (Read 5115 times) previous topic - next topic
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When the APE would become reliable?

Tons of wavs are waiting for compression... I've deleted 3.97 and afraid to use 3.99 now...

When the APE would become reliable?

Reply #2 –
And your exact problem is ?
As far as I'm aware of, all or most of people who reported "problems" with monkey's audio were using some kind of broken hardware; apparently monkey is more sensitive to hardware issues than other codecs, but that's still a problem with your computer not with monkey software.
Microsoft Windows: We can't script here, this is bat country.

When the APE would become reliable?

Reply #3 –
I have tons of 3.98 and 3.99 encodings. Not one single problem.
Wavpack Hybrid: one encoder for all scenarios
WavPack -c4.5hx6 (44100Hz & 48000Hz) ≈ 390 kbps + correction file
WavPack -c4hx6 (96000Hz) ≈ 768 kbps + correction file
WavPack -h (SACD & DSD) ≈ 2400 kbps at 2.8224 MHz

When the APE would become reliable?

Reply #4 –
I got aprox. 500 albums encoded in APE 3.97 High, and I never faced any kind of pb.

Please be a bit more explicit in the issue you are supposed to face.

When the APE would become reliable?

Reply #5 –
"The Ape" is reliable, something your end is not.  Overclocked?

When the APE would become reliable?

Reply #6 –
There are issues with Athlon processors. Around 40% of files I compressed on an athlon machine would not decode. A couple of years ago I emailed the author & received a reply acknowledging the problem. Although this was two or three versions ago the problem persists as far as I can see. I actually encode across my network so that it's a pentium doing the work, even though it's much slower.

Cheers,
Alan
Cheers,
Alan

When the APE would become reliable?

Reply #7 –
There are absolutely no problems encoding APE with Athlons. As has been pointed out before, it _is_ sensitive to flakey hardware and people with bad RAM or motherboards (and there are quite a few bad Athlon mainboards on the market) *will* have issues, but that has got nothing to do with Athlons or APE itself.

When the APE would become reliable?

Reply #8 –
Quote
There are issues with Athlon processors. Around 40% of files I compressed on an athlon machine would not decode. A couple of years ago I emailed the author & received a reply acknowledging the problem. Although this was two or three versions ago the problem persists as far as I can see. I actually encode across my network so that it's a pentium doing the work, even though it's much slower.

Cheers,
Alan

This means that your particular athlon machine is broken, I've been using monkey on three different athlon machines for years with no single stability issue. Monkey author probably listens to "bug reports" like this everyday, there is nothing he can do about it.
Microsoft Windows: We can't script here, this is bat country.

When the APE would become reliable?

Reply #9 –
Quote
There are absolutely no problems encoding APE with Athlons. As has been pointed out before, it _is_ sensitive to flakey hardware and people with bad RAM or motherboards (and there are quite a few bad Athlon mainboards on the market) *will* have issues, but that has got nothing to do with Athlons or APE itself.



Quote
This means that your particular athlon machine is broken, I've been using monkey on three different athlon machines for years with no single stability issue. Monkey author probably listens to "bug reports" like this everyday, there is nothing he can do about it.


Acknowledgement from the author notwithstanding!!!

OR the fact that I used the machine very extensively for over two years without the slightest problem with any other application!!!

I will concede (and always have, actually) that it may be the chipset rather than the CPU.
   
Cheers,
Alan

When the APE would become reliable?

Reply #10 –
Quote
OR the fact that I used the machine very extensively for over two years without the slightest problem with any other application!!!

Does slowing down your computer solves the problem?

We had many similar reports regarding Lame, and most of them disapeared when slowing down the computer. The machine was just not totally stable, and this was unnoticed in most other applications.

When the APE would become reliable?

Reply #11 –
Quote
OR the fact that I used the machine very extensively for over two years without the slightest problem with any other application!!!

I will concede (and always have, actually) that it may be the chipset rather than the CPU.
   

Try running a Prime95 for an hour or two... it can do a CPU/mem stress test and tell you if your overclock is producing math errors.  For a lot of people, some math errors aren't that big of a deal, and they never notice them.  For those who do math intensive operations (like FLAC/APE compression, etc) it CAN be a problem.
Are these Nazis, Walter?
No, Donny, these men are nihilists. There's nothing to be afraid of.

When the APE would become reliable?

Reply #12 –
Also run memtest86.  If it reports anything other than zero errors, the RAM needs to go.

I've been a moderator on the Gentoo Linux (a source based distro) forums for a while and this sort of thing is common when a new user first starts compiling software.  The compiler gets an ICE or a seg fault an they insist it's a bug in gcc.  99% of the time it's an overclocked system, bad ram or a flaky motherboard.  Invariably they'll cry "it doesn't happen when I'm doing X or Y or when I'm running Z!"  Well, some things stroke your computer in the right way...  Sometimes even after clocking their CPU back to normal or swapping out the RAM fixes their problem, they insist it's a bug in gcc.

Interestingly, a few of the other 1% have been cases of remarked RAM or CPUs sold fraudulently.  So, you might be overclocking without even knowing it.  Even some genuinly marked CPUs or motheboards aren't 100% stable at their rated frequency... 

Oh, and if you still end up waiting for APE for whatever reason, you can use flac - the compression ratios aren't quite as good, but it has built in checksums and is pretty fast.

Quote
For a lot of people, some math errors aren't that big of a deal, and they never notice them. For those who do math intensive operations (like FLAC/APE compression, etc) it CAN be a problem.

I disagree strongly with this.  A few "math errors" are bad for anyone.  A bad calculation or a misread memory cell doesn't only mean you might get a corruped APE, or a miscalculated spreadsheet or a glitch in an image - it could just as easily be something like miscalculated memory address which could crash your computer or corrupt your filesystem.

With problems like this as common as they are, I wonder how often when I hear somebody reboot their computer after a blue-screen or GPF and mutter something about "damn windows" that it should be the flaky hardware that is blamed instead of the flaky OS...
I am *expanding!*  It is so much *squishy* to *smell* you!  *Campers* are the best!  I have *anticipation* and then what?  Better parties in *the middle* for sure.
http://www.phong.org/

When the APE would become reliable?

Reply #13 –
phong

So, you mean to say, that 100% of bugs are because of hardware problems? 
And, to the point:
Actually I had no right of saying that it is not reliable, while I also didn't experienced any problems. BUT, people on the Monkey Forum are saying so scareful things. That it won't decode, and so on...
So, although I have an Athlon, you've calmed me down to use 3.99.

When the APE would become reliable?

Reply #14 –
Quote
phong
So, you mean to say, that 100% of bugs are because of hardware problems?

No,  - just that there are a certain class of crashes that have a certain smell, the smell of ozone and melted plastic and burning electronics.  Well, not really, but this sort of thing does smell like hardware instead of software problems - espescially when they can be reproduced only intermittantly or only on certain machines.  Certainly, it could be a software bug that only affects athlons, but it's worth banging on the hardware a bit or underclocking it first before screaming bug.
I am *expanding!*  It is so much *squishy* to *smell* you!  *Campers* are the best!  I have *anticipation* and then what?  Better parties in *the middle* for sure.
http://www.phong.org/

When the APE would become reliable?

Reply #15 –
Quote
Also run memtest86.  If it reports anything other than zero errors, the RAM needs to go.

you sure mean memtest86+:

Quote
The first version of Memtest86+ was released on early 2004, based on memtest86 v3.0 that was not updated since mid-2002. Our main challenge was to provide an up-to-date version of this useful tool, as reliable than the original. Our work started when we got the first AMD64 system. Unfortunatly, the original memtest v3.0 didn't run at all. After looking at the source code, we fixed the bug.After some days, I saw lot of other things like chipsets or CPU that were not correctly detected or not detected at all. As I'm the chief-editor of a french hardware website (www.x86-secret.com), I have access to lot of recent hardware and I can test and debug on quite all available motherboards on the market. After adding detection for all current CPUs, I've added detection for all current chipsets (SiS, VIA, nVidia, Intel) and ECC Polling for AMD64, i875P and E7205. Then, I decided to display some useful settings for the most popular chipsets. For exemple, on i865PE/i875P series, memtest86+ will now display FSB & Memory frequency, PAT status, memory timings, ECC status and the number of memory channels. Next version will perhaps contain several enhancements and bug-fixes.

When the APE would become reliable?

Reply #16 –
Thanks to those who suggested ways to check my Athlon. I had actually tried prime95 when I first discovered the problem with Monkey's Audio & it revealed no problems. It's a 1 GHz machine at least a couple of years old. On the whole I was happy with the machine while I was using it, (except for the ape problem) but like several other of my colleagues I was not inspired enough to persevere with Athlons. The machine in question has been shuffled down the food chain, replaced by a 3 GHz P4. All's well that ends well.

Cheers,
Alan
Cheers,
Alan