Hello,

This is my first day using Amarok, and let me just say I am VERY impressed. I am new to Linux in general and am using Linspire 5.0 on an Athlon 3000+ system. The problem that I am having however is that Amarok seems to peg the processor at 100% nearly all of the time. When it starts up the CPU is at idle until I start playing anything. And then no matter what I do, stop the music, skip tracks, etc. it will stay at 100%.

Amarok is using the Xine engine by default on my system. I installed the GStreamer engine also, and the same thing occurs. None of the last.fm stuff is on. \"Watch folders for changes\" doesn\'t seem to do anything (infact checking and unchecking this option does not even ungrey the Apply button, so I am not sure if it works anyway). Minimize/Maximize doesn\'t seem to help, nor does turning off the Analyzer/menu bar.

Amarok is running the background while I typed this and I just noticed something. The CPU load will sometimes go down to idle after about 3 minutes of uninterupted play of the current song. As soon as a new song comes on the CPU pegs again. Any ideas?

Thanks!

Try starting it from the shell, by calling \"amarokapp\", and see if it prints any unusual debug output, like something looping forever.

If you don\'t see any debug output (amaroK normally prints **** of it), you may have to enable it using the \"kdebugdialog\" tool.

Out of curiosity, are you using KDE with kompmgr (translucency) enabled?

I just noticed that if I have the amaroK playlist window open (ie, not minimised to the system tray) my CPU usage shoots up to around 70-80%). as soon as I minimise it again, CPU usage drops to a more normal 1-5%. Disabling translucency fixed this immediately.

Thanks for the replies guys. Turning on and off the KDE translucency effects doesn\'t seem to make any difference for my problem (they were "on" by default on my system). The CPU will stay at 100% with Amarok maximized, minimized or on the system tray.

Here is what I got when I ran Amarok from shell:

AdamsPC:~# amarok
amaroK: [Loader] Starting amarokapp..
amaroK: [Loader] Don\'t run gdb, valgrind, etc. against this binary! Use amarokapp.
QLayout: Adding KToolBar/mainToolBar (child of QVBox/unnamed) to layout for PlaylistWindow/PlaylistWindow
AdamsPC:~# kdebugdialog

where kdebugdialog has everything checked that contains "amarok".

Again I noticed that after about 3 minutes of playing a song the CPU goes down to 3-5%, but then shoots up to 100% if I hit "next song". It won\'t always drop down like this, maybe only on every third song or so...

I have figured out exactly what causes the problem. It has something to do with the cover art thing. If I open Ararok and play files that do not have any art associated with them the CPU stays low. However, as soon as I tell it to fetch the cover art or play a song that has art associated with it, the processor pegs and will stay that way even if I go to a track without any art. It does not matter what tab I am on either, the processor will stay at 100%.

Any ideas on how to fix this?

Thanks

I have installed Amarok on 3 computers and all 3 exhibit this same problem. Amarok was installed using Linspires CNR package. I am wondering if anyone else has this CPU utilization issue here, so that I can either tell if it is a bug with Amarok or if it is a bug with Linspires package. I just want to know who I need to complain to

I do not understand the Linspire amarok behavior.
I am using Amarok on a SuSE 9.3 Pro PC, since long ago, installed with the rpm packages availabe at Guru\'s web page and it works fine without any kind of explicit bugs. I use also Xine and I like it, installed with the rpm packages available at the web page from packman.linux2linux.
It seems your problem has something with the Linspire packages.
Regards,
J-L

It could very well be a SQLite threading issue, causing the database code to loop forever while trying to do a query. If you can look at amaroK\'s debug output, you would see this easily.

If that\'s the case, disable the \"Retrieve similar artists\" feature from the last.fm settings. Alternatively, you could switch to MySQL.

The first time I experienced this problem was when I installed Kubuntu 5.10 (it never happened with Ubuntu Hedgehog), and after some time I realized that the problem could be fixed by just selecting the simplest Context Browser Style (Settings > Configure Amarok > Appearance).

Nevertheless, when I seemed to have the problem under control, suddenly one day the fan began again to make a lot of noise with \"no reason\". Than I decided to try Suse 10.0 and the problem has finally disappeared with the change.

So it\'s not at all a problem of Linspire\'s packages. Try updating to the lastest version... maybe the bug have already been fixed.