Thread: MP3 Playback Problem: Audio stutters / skips / choppy

Looks like you have plenty of computing power. Choppy playback should not be any problem. Maybe bad soundcard drivers?

thats whats bothering me, plenty of power, but then this problem like im using a old PII.. This didnt even happen on that.

Bad sounddrivers, well i have the latest onse, but just may be that isnt resolved yet.

There are a lot of variables that could potentially cause this..

just frustrating..

Do you have any Antivirus or Antispyware software that may be doing scans or set to scan the opening of every file?

What software do you use to play your MP3s?

I know I had an issue with WinAmp when I first started that it wasn't set up to take enough of the system resources. I had it set as a low priority so anytime the system would do anythign else I'd get choppy sound from WinAmp.

Originally Posted by Skipjacks

What software do you use to play your MP3s?

I know I had an issue with WinAmp when I first started that it wasn't set up to take enough of the system resources. I had it set as a low priority so anytime the system would do anythign else I'd get choppy sound from WinAmp.

psst, he's not using winAMP

Originally Posted by Enforcer

psst, he's not using winAMP

But the same problem could be present in another software.

RESOLVED !!!
Hi All,
I really appreciate your input and it did give me a lot of possibilities to look into.. Last night i put my knight armour on and told my self, i aint sleepin till its fixed..

So here is how i led my self to the solution..

I first disconnected my PC from the car and took it indoors, There i hooked it up to my Battery Simulator Adapter, I call it the BSA. It is simply a power supply that gives off 13.8 volts at 4-8 amps.

So hooking it up to the BSA clears the argument about power not being sifficient.

Then I started searching the knowldgebase on Microsoft for the problem, and i found a old article on Windows Media 9 series where it talked about stuterring and skipping but not on a MP3 but a CD or Video file. It talked about two possibilities, 1. Not enough processing power. 2. Drivers it self.

Processing power was no doubt humangous for this job so i ruled that out. I started looking at driver issue.

I learned that sometimes if the driver isnt capable or faulty in handling IRQ's sharing, this will happen when the Media player tries to read the next batch of info into cache for playback, and sometimes it fails for a few milliseconds cuz it will try to resolve (fix) the IRQ in those milliseconds and then when it fills the buffer up, it will try to catch up. and you will hear the skip.

Now that made total sense, as to what the root cause of skipping is.

I also noticed that in my car when i checked the WMP performance in the Task Manager, it was pegged half way while playing an mp3 with the "Alchemy" Visualization. I matched it to my desktopp PC which is a old 1.8ghz P4, and even that showed like only 25% proc peged with the same song and viz when its running it at 1600x1200 res.

Now i was totally sure that the driver is the culprit.

RESOLUTION:
I first uninstalled the ALC Microsoft High Def audio driver from Device Manager. Note that i have a Realtek ALC 880 high def audio integrated on my Commell LV-677 which is also the standard Audio chipset that intel uses as part of there mobo chipset.

Since i downloaded the drivers from Commell's website before i took a different route this time..

I went to Realteks website and downloaded both there latest High def and legacy driver set files for there chips.

I installed the Legacy drv's first then i installed the High def drvs. Note that on Realteks website the driver pack update date was Nov 2006 which is very recent. That made the drivers newer than what Commell had on there site. During installation it asked me a couple of files already exist replace? i said yes wak em..

after this i rebooted, and played the same song and looked at the perf graph and what do u know !! it was down to 7% to 10% with Viz !!

After two hours of playing MP3's i installed it back in the car. Drove to work this morning and took the bumpy route. (One hour drive about 25miles.). Not a single skip or chop or stutter !!!

Whohoo !!!

After all this i said to my self, I could have just replaced the drivers.. lol ..

I hope this will help people in this forum resolving this problem.
Thanks for you input that jogged my brain to get here.

Glad it worked.