MP3 Playback Problem: Audio stutters / skips / choppy

Autonator · 11-15-2006, 02:09 PM

While playing MP3's on my carputer, the audio stutters skips or chops. It happens randomly. sometimes it doesnt happen for 10 15 minutes, but sometimes it happens within 3 to 5 minutes apart. Its just random lets just say that.

Can I rule out vibration? cuz it has done it a few times while my car was standing still.

Speakers and amp are factory.

I also tried turning off visualizations it still does that. I also tried playing with some options in the Media Player Tools -> Performance -> Advanced settings but its the same.

One thing left to try is a totally different player like WinAMP. I will try that too, if it still happens, most probably its hardware related.

Anyone had this problem?

durwood · 11-15-2006, 02:47 PM

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

Autonator · 11-15-2006, 10:13 PM

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..

Enforcer · 11-15-2006, 10:23 PM

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

Skipjacks · 11-15-2006, 10:46 PM

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.

Enforcer · 11-15-2006, 11:22 PM

Quote: 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

Skipjacks · 11-16-2006, 08:39 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by Enforcer

psst, he's not using winAMP

But the same problem could be present in another software.

Autonator · 11-16-2006, 03:10 PM

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.

durwood · 11-16-2006, 03:17 PM

Glad it worked.

510SX · 11-19-2006, 03:14 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by Autonator

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 !!!

I don't quite follow, is your problem on the soundcard driver or microsoft driver?
The reason I ask is because I have the same stutter and skipping problem, I am also using factory amp. I am about to rip out the car PC system because of the stutter sound, it drives me nut. I am using a P3 900Mhz Dell laptop with docking station. Sound blaster USB soundcard.

durwood · 11-19-2006, 06:06 PM

Is your problem with music or DVD's or everything audio related? Mine skips/choppy during DVD playback only because of the bandwidth issue on USB. I am using a soundblaster 24bit live USB. The resource usage is just too high a demand.

Autonator · 11-19-2006, 11:50 PM

510SX, The High def audio driver that came in the realtek driver install pak, is a microsoft driver.. or at least the name as it shows up in the device manager is "Microsoft High Definition audio blah blah dirver".

Do you have more ino on your sound drivers? At 900mhz, you should be able to play MP3's with no problems, but you cant run Vizualizations.. that would be very risky. I do not know what otehr apps and processes are on your system, but i would suggest looking for the latest drivers for your onboard audio hardware and try that first.

Autonator · 11-19-2006, 11:52 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by durwood

Is your problem with music or DVD's or everything audio related? Mine skips/choppy during DVD playback only because of the bandwidth issue on USB. I am using a soundblaster 24bit live USB. The resource usage is just too high a demand.

I never tried a DVD on my system except when it was on the test bench indoors.. Your situation seems more of a bottleneck issue. USB2.0 does have enough bandwdth to play a DVD.. what is your proc? i believe its a 1ghz? if you have one of those embedded procs by VIA, then i think that would be not enough to process DVD via USB due to several facts. I had a experience with a VIA 1ghz on a desktop PC at a friend of mine., and it did very hard work when we tried to install PowerDVD and run a DVD. Remeber that the DVD player software itself takes a lot of resources. You might get better performance if you hook teh DVD up via the IDE controller or the Serial ATA if you have one on your mobo. That would free teh system of going through the USB hardware layer and conversion.

do you have more details on your setup?

durwood · 11-20-2006, 07:54 AM

Ya you can check out my worklog by clicking on the Mazdaspeed6. I changed 2 things this year over my previous install. In my previous install I was running an IDE DVD drive directly connected to the IDE bus and I had a PCI soundcard. Now I have a USB DVD drive and a USB soundcard. The soundcard itself while playing MP3's uses about 20-40% CPU. I have two optinos at this point, try out a PCI USB add-on card, or revert back to my PCI soundcard. It shouldn't be the DVD drive because I know plenty of people are using them on a the mini-itx boards. I watch DVD's very rarely, so its not real high on my list of priorities but sooner or later I need to fix it.

510SX · 11-20-2006, 07:28 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by Autonator

Do you have more ino on your sound drivers? At 900mhz, you should be able to play MP3's with no problems, but you cant run Vizualizations.. that would be very risky. I do not know what otehr apps and processes are on your system, but i would suggest looking for the latest drivers for your onboard audio hardware and try that first.

I don't run vizualization. My laptop has winxp sp1, froodoplayer, freedrive, and necessary microsoft component to run the program, that's about it. my CPU usage is around 20% and about 130M of ram used (I have 384M).
I am using audigy NX2 USB sound card. I downloaded the lastest driver and installed yesterday, it seemed got better. I am still hearing the imperfect sound once in awhile. The sound is like playing black plastic album (the static sound). I updated all the firmware and drivers last year, but I will look into the Dell website again tonight.

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