Crashing occasionally, seemingly when balance has been moved away from center by OSX bug.

Question

Crashing occasionally, seemingly when balance has been moved away from center by OSX bug.

Closed this issue 5 years ago · 11 comments

OSX: 10.14.1 (18B75)
Hardware: MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2018)
Ballast: 1.1.0-beta

Since I started using Ballast I've noticed that every time I've needed it, it has been closed. Upon seeing this happen a few times I started taking more notice of when Ballast was running.

It seems that Ballast is running most of the time, and does run when I start up. However when the audio balance gets screwed up Ballast will not be there, and from the pattern of seeing this happen I think Ballast may be crashing just as it's trying to reset the balance.

This happens maybe once every 3-7 days?

After restarting Ballast it will immediately fix the balance and increment the "corrected" counter.

I don't do any OSX app development but happy to give it a go if perhaps you could point me to where in logs or otherwise I might be able to see some errors? It would be hard to reproduce during testing I think since its relatively rare.

Answer 1 · 2018-12-22T06:33:47.000Z

Thanks @mcelligottnick. I encounter the same problem, but only on one of my MacBooks. I've been meaning debug these crashes further.

When the app crashes it should save a crash report to the directory:
/Users/<user-name>/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/

The crash files will be prefixed with ballast_. If you have any of these files, please post the most recent crash report in this issue or a pastebin. Should help provide some great context.

Thanks for raising!

Answer 2 · 2018-12-23T23:44:36.000Z

Hey mate here is the pastebin of my most recent log. Let me know if I can be of further help.

Answer 3 · 2018-12-24T08:23:26.000Z

Cheers! Hmm these crashes were different to what I was expecting.

There's a debug log crashing, potentially wrong var type or unable to read memory address of the var. Only happening when the app is unable to retrieve the Audio Device ID 🤔

Hmm, I'll see if I can get a release out soon with logging disabled 🎅⛄️

Answer 4 · 2018-12-25T03:18:30.000Z

Hello! I have had a similar problem except Ballast only starts up when I restart my MacBook. I cannot open Ballast from the app itself and I have it set to open with each login through another app. Every time I use a different audio source (eg moving from Spotify to Discord) Ballast disappears from the menu bar with the audio being imbalanced again and I cannot reopen it without restarting.

Here is the Pastebin of the most recent crash report if it helps. Otherwise this works beautifully! Thank you so much for dedicating your time to this 😀

Answer 5 · 2019-02-12T23:29:47.000Z

hey @jamsinclair any chance you are able to take a look at this, or point me in the right direction to helping solve it?

Answer 6 · 2019-03-06T01:34:31.000Z

Thanks @mcelligottnick @chairamisu. Finally got around to taking a look.

I suspect the app was encountering an audio error that I wasn't handling properly. Hopefully fixed in: https://github.com/jamsinclair/ballast/releases/tag/v1.2.0

Let me know if it helps! 😄

Answer 7 · 2019-03-06T03:03:03.000Z

@jamsinclair thanks mate, will re-open if the issue persists.

Answer 8 · 2019-03-25T23:21:26.000Z

Hey @jamsinclair this issue is still there with the new build. I had two crashes yesterday;

Let me know if you need anything else.

Answer 9 · 2019-03-26T11:19:56.000Z

Thanks for that @mcelligottnick! Hmmm I'll investigate further 🤔

Answer 10 · 2019-05-04T16:30:26.000Z

I just revisited the issue tonight @mcelligottnick. I feel bad for not noticing this sooner, your logs show they crashed using the older version 1.1.0.

This may have happened due to having both the old and new .app files and the launch at login option checked. Try removing all ballast.app files from your mac and download the latest version again 🤞

Answer 11 · 2019-05-05T02:04:25.000Z

Cheers mate will try that, and let you know how it goes.