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Sound problems

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oblivion:
Playing an mp3 file puts almost no load on the hard disk or cpu.

There is absolutely no reason that you should have any trouble whatsoever playing an mp3 file on that computer with that hard disk, with built in sound on your motherboard or a sound card.

So don't even *think* about upgrading any hardware.-mouser (May 14, 2011, 02:24 PM)
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Oh. Okay!

So it's going to be complicated, then.

I've tried a number of things -- killing various background processes (I shut down my firewall -- Outpost -- and let Windows Firewall take over. I stopped Process Lasso (bought before I knew about Process Tamer, I'm afraid!), Zentimo, WinPatrol... not my AV, though, which is NOD32... and put a few other settings back to default (I was loading the entire Windows core to RAM, for instance)

Still didn't make much difference. Maybe some...

I think it would help to just pick one test case and focus on that.  So take playing an mp3 file, using windows media player.

When you say it doesn't play the sound smoothly, what exactly do you mean?
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Every so often, it stutters slightly. The smallest hesitation, but -- I guess because it's music -- it's very noticeable.

If I do anything else while the music's playing, anything that increases cpu load at all, it'll get much worse instantly.

If I watch the process in task manager, the mp3 will be taking between 2-6% cpu mostly, with an occasional spike for no good reason. Nothing else seems to be occupying cpu time to any extent.

40hz:
What app are you using to play MP3 files?

There's been some recent reports of VLC Media Player 'spiking' and using abnormally large amounts of memory and/or CPU on some machines although what I saw was reported under Windows 7 as opposed to Vista.

Does this happen with every media player on your system, or just a specific one? :huh:

worstje:
I'd say, look into your drivers, your motherboard drivers in particular. In the meanwhile, does it help if you turn down/off hardware acceleration for various devices? Sound most prominently, but also video and the likes. You can generally turn that stuff down somewhere in case of problems. Technically, it means you get less performance, but both software and hardware aren't as demanding/cut-throat in their implementation, meaning it tends to be more dependable.

I occasionally get weird hiccups like that, and it usually happens when something hardware-related struggles a bit. Sticking in or removing USB drives, or my mouse fussing, stuff like that throws it off its rocker for a brief moment sometimes.

oblivion:
Audio drivers are the most likely suspect. There's the possibility that a driver has somehow been updated or changed (without your knowledge) which is causing the problem. A lot of Athlon-based boards use RealTek audio chips and drivers, which can act very flaky. -40hz (May 15, 2011, 07:41 AM)
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Yes, that's what the motherboard has. I saw some issues online with Realtek drivers and tried both updates and rollbacks (before I installed the PCI card) to no obvious effect.

The biggest problems, I should say, occur when video's very busy. Maybe that's just what should be expected.

Check and see if there's a BIOS update available from your PC manufacturer.
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The PC's a (Compaq-badged) HP, and both HP Update and manual searches online don't give me anything newer than I have installed. I generally try to keep my systems as updated as possible, sometimes to the point of paranoia...  ;)

Depending on what hardware is in you machine, you might be experiencing a chipset issue. Diagnosing that can get a little hairy so it would be helpful to know the manufacturer of your PC and what chipset is being used. Piriform's Speccy (or any one of a dozen other freeware sysinfo utilities) can provide that information if it's not listed in the documentation that came with your machine.
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I'll see what I can dig out, but I because the PC's a major oem I'd be surprised if the update program had missed something that it shouldn't. (I never liked HP PCs but Compaq were another story. I had a hard time when the former bought the latter, and I still haven't quite made my mind up. Printers, now... HP can definitely do printers.  :) )

Let us know how you make out. :Thmbsup:

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I'm getting close to deciding I should just live with it. The desktop isn't the machine I use most anyway -- I'm on the netbook now, while my wife surfs on the desktop  ;D

oblivion:
What app are you using to play MP3 files?-40hz (May 15, 2011, 11:52 AM)
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Mostly MediaMonkey if I'm using it to play quantities of music, but whatever comes to hand. Obviously if there's games going on, they do their own thing.

I've been playing with Jaangle on the netbook. I like its fetching of artist and album info -- I can be a bit of a music geek sometimes -- but I haven't tried it on the desktop, figuring that all the network activity can only make things worse.

There's been some recent reports of VLC Media Player 'spiking' and using abnormally large amounts of memory and/or CPU on some machines although what I saw was reported under Windows 7 as opposed to Vista.
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I use VLC Portable when I'm elsewhere, but I don't like it enough to use it as my player of choice.

Does this happen with every media player on your system, or just a specific one? :huh:
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Everything I've tried that produces sound. Oh, unless it's .wavs, which don't seem to need so much processing.

Thanks for everyone's help with this, by the way, even if it's not getting me a solution it's helping me narrow down the possibilities and probably saving me spending money unnecessarily!

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