Hi,

I'm running BOINC on some of my older Macs, although they're still used for light duties such as being printer servers and streaming music around the house wirelessly.

Since I started using SETI@home (my only BOINC project) I have found that I can't stream music properly. It has occasional cut-outs where (presumably) a buffer runs dry.

I have BOINC set up to use up to 100% of the processor, and I'd rather not cut that back, since these machines seldom do anything nowadays. The "do work after idle for x minutes" setting doesn't help, since playing music doesn't seem to count as 'work' - no keystrokes.

Curiously, playing DVDs is OK. It's just iTunes - which I would think is a less exacting job.

Hoping that future updates to either BOINC (to make its idle detection more sensitive), or iTunes (to make it more assertive) will solve matters in the future.

Meanwhile, is there a work-around? Thaks for any ideas...

Software: Tiger (10.4.11) and iTunes `(v7.6.2)

Hi,

I'm running BOINC on some of my older Macs, although they're still used for light duties such as being printer servers and streaming music around the house wirelessly.

Since I started using SETI@home (my only BOINC project) I have found that I can't stream music properly. It has occasional cut-outs where (presumably) a buffer runs dry.

I have BOINC set up to use up to 100% of the processor, and I'd rather not cut that back, since these machines seldom do anything nowadays. The "do work after idle for x minutes" setting doesn't help, since playing music doesn't seem to count as 'work' - no keystrokes.

Curiously, playing DVDs is OK. It's just iTunes - which I would think is a less exacting job.

Hoping that future updates to either BOINC (to make its idle detection more sensitive), or iTunes (to make it more assertive) will solve matters in the future.

Meanwhile, is there a work-around? Thaks for any ideas...

Software: Tiger (10.4.11) and iTunes `(v7.6.2)

Richard,
iTunes obviously needs some of your processor to play music around the house. So if you want the music to work properly, you will have to drop the amount of processing that BOINC is using to 80% or 90%.

Another option you could try would be to use another media player like real player. But that will want some processing power also! But you say that dvd's play OK so are the dvd's using a different player?

Some sacrifice has to be made if you want your music!

John.

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I have BOINC set up to use up to 100% of the processor, and I'd rather not cut that back, since these machines seldom do anything nowadays. The "do work after idle for x minutes" setting doesn't help, since playing music doesn't seem to count as 'work' - no keystrokes.

You're going to need a small compromise I think. Maybe even a change to 95% would be enough? BOINC will only take what is spare "up to 100%" if that is what you have it set to, but if I-tunes is a low priority task too then the 2 may be battling for the same resource. If you free up just a little that may solve the conflict.

While I'm here I'll move this across to the number crunching forum where it may get more answers from those in the know.

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While I'm here I'll move this across to the number crunching forum where it may get more answers from those in the know.

Oops. Sorry for posting on the wrong 'channel'.

And yes... it seems that playing a DVD is high priority, but streaming music wirelessly is the lowest priority job. There must be a way to change that. A command line interface junkie will probably know...

It could be, as BOINC and the project communicate using a local internet addr and port, that this is interrupting the music if it is also using the network.

Since I started using SETI@home (my only BOINC project) I have found that I can't stream music properly. It has occasional cut-outs where (presumably) a buffer runs dry.

I have BOINC set up to use up to 100% of the processor, and I'd rather not cut that back, since these machines seldom do anything nowadays. The "do work after idle for x minutes" setting doesn't help, since playing music doesn't seem to count as 'work' - no keystrokes.

Curiously, playing DVDs is OK. It's just iTunes - which I would think is a less exacting job.

I'm not a Mac expert, but since others are clearly guessing, I'll throw mine into the mix.

Lowering the percentage of time BOINC uses probably won't help that much. Setting this to 95% means 19 seconds of processing, then 1 second crunching, and unless iTunes buffers more than 19 seconds ahead, that won't do. 90% would be 9 seconds "on" and 1 second off, etc.

Most likely, iTunes is running at the lowest possible priority. So does BOINC. If you could raise the priority on iTunes, the OS will take time away from BOINC and give it to iTunes as needed.

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A couple other thoughts.

*IF* your iTunes library is large then the updates to the meta-data file can take some time, particularly on slower machines. These updates occur on each track played to update play count and the like. Host iTunes on the fastest machine.

If you have multiple computers and you are just using a master library because it is "easier" you could try one of the two synchronizing tools (TuneRanger and/or SuperSync) to create libraries locally and then you will not have to use the network to play the music.

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A couple other thoughts.

*IF* your iTunes library is large then the updates to the meta-data file can take some time, particularly on slower machines. These updates occur on each track played to update play count and the like. Host iTunes on the fastest machine.

If you have multiple computers and you are just using a master library because it is "easier" you could try one of the two synchronizing tools (TuneRanger and/or SuperSync) to create libraries locally and then you will not have to use the network to play the music.

Hi Paul, nice to see you back :o)

[/off-topic]

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I would recommend a program that can do the same job as iTunes, but with a smaller resource use (iTunes can be an extremely heavy user). Use any media player of your choice, and use airfoil to stream
http://rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/mac/

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I'm a Prefectionist ;)

You mentioned that you have them "around the house" I would assume this means wireless?
(I have the same setup older macs around the house on wifi and had issues like you talked about
but moved from wireless B/G to A for WiFi)
Thinking you might not have enough bandwidth in that spectrum or a lot of interference?
just an idea. You could hardwire them and run a few tests.

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Well, I solved my problem... kind of.

I recently got a new Mac Mini, to have a computer for (very occasional) running of Windows programs. When I'm not using it for that purpose, say 95+% of the time, I allow it to crunch for SETI@home.Turns out it's more effective in that role than all of my older Macs put together, plus it's completely silent and doesn't leave my office feeling like a sauna. (I must be saving a lot of electricity, too...)

So now I leave the business of entertainment and Internet to the other machines, and they run without stuttering as a result. Despite the higher volume of SETI traffic in my household, the wifi handles the load. Clearly, it was just that the BOINC software doesn't run as discretely as it ought to. The BOINC Manager is actually a pretty poor piece of software. Very un-Apple-like user interface, and it doesn't play fair when your computer is trying to do other tasks. Moving it onto the Mac Mini has really worked for me, though.

Now we just need to get a more efficient worker on that little Mac Mini.

http://tbp.berkeley.edu/~alexkan/seti/seti_enhanced-i386-v8-core2-nographics.zip

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