Bandit
Member
Posted 2 years ago
My alarm (which wakes me up) was working fine up until I updated to 2.1, after which it no longer plays any sound. When I right click the alarm and go "test", sound works fine, however at 8am in the morning, it plays no sound, and this isn't ideal as you can imagine.
Any ideas? How can I debug?
Edit: I have registered the software
Mark
Administrator
Posted 2 years ago
Did the alarm display window pop up at all, or was it jus silent?
If it popped up, ensure that your computer's system volume is not muted or set to a very low level; Citrus 2.1can do this for you if the "Ensure volume" option is checked on the program options screen. Also ensure that your computer speakers are turned on, and that headphones are not re-routing the audio. Finally, Citrus is configured to gently fade in the audio at alarm activation time, which may take a short while to notice.
If the alarm window didn't pop up, make sure your system time is set correctly and that your alarm was set to the right time as well (for example, AM instead of PM).
If none of these basic things apply, is there any other inormation you can provide?
Bandit
Member
Posted 2 years ago
Wierd I never received an email saying that you'd responded. Glad I checked.
1) Yes the alarms pop up and say they're playing music
2) Yes the system volume is at 100% (and always is, this is a desktop computer)
As an aside I'm a pretty astute technical person, and should be able to help you with more advanced debugging other than the obvious if you can direct me where to look. Is there a debug flag for the software I can use?
Edit: Using Windows 7 RC1 and the alarm worked fine before upgrading to 2.1
Mark
Administrator
Posted 2 years ago
Thanks for the extra details, Bandit. I'm particularly surprised to hear that the alarm test works, but the real alarm doesn't---since there isn't any difference between a test alarm and a real alarm from Citrus' perspective. Is there any other information you can give me? Do any error messages appear, for example? Are you using a 32-bit of 64-bit version of Windows? Do you have any third-party codecs installed that could be causing conflicts? Does this happen every morning?
There's no debug mode in the released version of Citrus, but I do have a special debug version that outputs a log file for diagnostic purposes. If we can't resolve the issue here, send me an email and we'll see if the log offers any insights. 
Bandit
Member
Posted 2 years ago
I've got 64bit Win7. Do have a bunch of codecs installed but as I say, the test works fine, but launching in the morning doesn't.
The _only_ difference I can think of is that the computer may be in some sort of "sleep" state, and I don't mean that literally as sleep/hibernate is turned off (desktop computer), however the monitor is set to switch off after x amount of time, and there's a screen saver etc.
It's midnight here and I'm off to bed, so am going to set it to "launch external player" and see what that does.
James
Mark
Administrator
Posted 2 years ago
Yeah, let me know if that works. (The external player is usually a good failsafe.)
Either way, if you'd be willing to volunteer some testing time, I'd be interested in seeing the logs from the "debug" version of Citrus running on your system. Contact me via email if you're interested and we'll see if we can arrange anything.
Bandit
Member
Posted 2 years ago
The external player worked like a charm, but kinda defeats the purpose of Citrus (could just run a .bat script that launches a .m3u file). I'd be happy to help you debug, however I'm just leaving on a trip for a week.
If you'd like to drop me a line at james [at] bandit.co.nz in the mean time I'll get back to you once I'm back.
Anonymous
Posted 2 years ago
I'm also having some problems with the latest 2.1 version, I'm also using win7 64bit,
but I think my problem is abit different from bandits, the songs that I use as alarm, no longer loop, so they play through once and then the alarm goes silent, I did some testing and got the same result in the test mode as when setting off a real alarm, the sound/music plays once and that's it, any solutions?
Mark
Administrator
Posted 2 years ago
You're the second person to report this behaviour with 64-bit Windows 7, Anonymous. I'm going to be upgrading to 64-bit Windows 7 as soon as the retail version becomes available, so hopefully I can reproduce this error and get it fixed quickly.
In the meantime, I'm not sure what to suggest other than using a really long, loud first song as your alarm media. 
Bandit
Member
Posted 2 years ago
Yet to hear from you Mark. Any developments?
Mark
Administrator
Posted 2 years ago
Since Microsoft has abandoned Quartz without offering any practical alternative, I'm experimenting with a different media API. I may send a quick test program to you to see if it works. If it does, it'll likely quickly make its way into Citrus.
Bandit
Member
Posted 2 years ago
Alright cool, until then I'm using the "Open External Player" option.
I was also thinking that since you can now manipulate the system volume, you could include a "not recommended" fade method, by changing the system volume instead of the alarm volume (would work for me, with the additional benefit of my songs being logged to last.fm!)
Mark
Administrator
Posted 2 years ago
Interesting idea... I suppose I could add it as a super advanced option for people that really know what they're doing. I'll think about it some more.
I'm looking into using the Windows Media Player API for Citrus' internal player, which may actually have the side effect of supporting Last.fm. If that's true, that would definitely be a fun benefit. Until then, there are still some limitations to the API that I have to overcome. I'll keep you posted!
Bandit
Member
Posted 2 years ago
Hey Mark
My alarms (set to Open External Player) have been working intermittently - yesterday my wakeup alarm worked, today - no dice. There must be something to do with the "upcoming activations" feature (or a date bug) that is causing this, because it says my last activation was last week (even though it ran yesterday), and the alarm is set for Mon -> Fri.
Either way I'm now going to setup a .bat script run via Windows Task Scheduler to wake myself up and disable Citrus until you've been able to debug.
James
Anonymous
Posted 2 years ago
I'm having the same problem, using Windows 7 64bit retail copy. It's really odd because I thought I had it working last night, I set up an alarm to go off in 10mins time, put my computer in sleep mode, computer woke up, and the alarm worked fine, sound played, snooze function worked fine. But when my alarm went off this morning, the computer came on, the alarm activated but no sound played.
I've uninstalled Citrus 2.1, and reverted back to a copy of Citrus 2.0. I was using 2.0 in Windows 7 previously without any problem, so I'm hoping that will work fine until the 2.1 version is fixed