VLC CRASHES AUDIO ON MACBOOK

[niallzagreb]

I have a weird problem with my new macbook which I have also witnessed on a new macbook Pro both bought May 2009.

When watching AVI files on VLC, the audio sometimes disappears and crashes the audio on the whole mac. This at first seems like a software problem but then you realise it has actually affected the whole mac because no sound at all on any program.

After this happens, when you try to turn up the volume control you just get this crackling sound a little like static interference on an old radio... or no sound at all

Things return to normal once you restart. Another way to solve it is to put in an earphone jack into the the headphone jack and take it out a few times but this is a boring procedure which would be good to avoid.

This only happens using VLC and haven't had the issue with quicktime player or DVD player.

Any ideas what this might be?

[The DJ]

I have never seen such problems. Do you have any extensions or software installed that change the audio settings ?
(VLC uses normal auhal audiounit, like most applications, unless you use digital audio. This should be pretty safe, since it's what almost any application uses).

[salvekvick]

I have experienced this as well. Sleeping and waking the MacBook isn't enough, it needs to be rebooted. I haven't had the chance to try the headphone jack method.

It has so far only been triggered by repeated CMD+ALT+ARROW searching (extremely rare, have sometimes tried triggering it by excessive searching with no audio crash). Not sure if the video/audio formats matter.

I have tried killing the "coreaudiod" process, with no result.

This has happened with several versions of VLC up to the current. Latest incident was today (june 16th 2009, version 0.9.9a). I have no special extensions or other software to meddle with system audio or VLC audio. Unless Perian would be one of those.

[ajmas]

Could you submit the contents of the panic log? The locations are described in this knowledge base document: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2546

[salvekvick]

Could you submit the contents of the panic log? The locations are described in this knowledge base document: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2546

Hello.

There seems to be a misunderstanding. It's not a kernel panic, it's simply the audio that stops working.

If I misunderstood the question, please clarify.

Edit: And when it does stop working, there are no error messages shown. Just a loud click from the speaker. The "loud click" can be heard at, more or less, random after that when one tries to play more sound files.

[The DJ]

Again, I hear your pain, and quite possibly, VLC does throw bad data at the audio output. HOWEVER... the fact that you loose ALL audio after that, and that you get a clicking sound, is not VLC's fault. It means there is a bug in either the audio driver or the coreaudio deamon that means that it doesn't properly recover from bad situations. If VLC can trigger this problem, then in theory so can other applications.