Karaoke Forums

Hi, I have just started Karaoke after saying "yes I will do it" when I should have said "No"...
I am using Winamp with a 500Gb external USB drive (400G used).
When I search the audio glitches. Can stop for 2 sec's.
I know... Too many disco tracks.
You people dont have this problem.
Why do I.
I use Nlite. I use a usb sound card.
I use alchahol moderatly. I use a 1.8Ghz Tosh. 2G mem.
I have the same results on my 2.8 desktop.(Not using Nlite).
My sound is awesome. Big deal... It breaks.
Help... Please...
Regards, Jerry

Using winamp, sometimes I used to get glitches when I ran windows explorer searches.

What I did was create a .txt listing of my master book and leave it on in the background. Do not use your windows search for windows explorer... talk about a windows resource hog! have the filesystem up on the karaoke drive, and just go to the appropriate folder.

Try increasing the size of the winamp output buffer. It's been years since I had this problem, so I do not know where it is in the menus anymore; but I bet it is still an option. Dig through the preferences screens.

_________________
Jeff Wheeler, moonlight DJ/KJ

USB external drive and USB sound card? Doesn't sound like a good combo to me....

Try switching to the internal sound card and seeing if you get the same behavior.

_________________
[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

What OS? Cntrl Alt Del with winamp playing. Tell me what the CPU usage percentage is. Commit charge?? Click on the processes tab How many do you have running.?

Is it a generic box or one with all the manus crap running? You need to get rid of all the crap running in the background.

Go into display properties and set the theme to windows classic.

It is under "Options" "Preferences" Plug-ins" "Output" "Nullsoft DirectSound Output"
Highlight the "Nullsoft DirectSound Output" and click "configure" and then go to the buffering tab.

What are you using for your searches? - Windows explorer or the Winamp search feature?

Start with karyokers suggestions above first.

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Music speaks to the heart in ways words cannot express.

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An old test is this.. ACC System Tools System Info.. Click on tools. Direct X Diag.

Run these tests with Winamp playing over and over At a certain point you will start overloading and have audio drops.

Trying the other sound card is a good troubleshooting suggestion. Maybe there is something wrong with the USB one.

There should be no appreciable USB contention when doing things like file-system searches. The I/O will be seek-heavy and not have a high transfer rate. Your comment does make me curious how USB resources are allocated when the bus is over-subscribed, though. I wouldn't worry about it having anything to do with the combination of USB hard drive and USB sound card.

_________________
Jeff Wheeler, moonlight DJ/KJ

The other option in winamp that I've found helpful in situations like this (when I had an older laptop) was to adjust the process priority. Although WinAmp says it's not recommended, in this case I would say put it at it's highest priority. Normally on a PC you were using for multiple purposes you wouldn't want this, but in this case it's sole purpose is to run that music so jack up the process priority and see how that goes as well as the other suggestions listed here.

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DJ Tony
Let It Rip Karaoke

Also if you are installing a PCI sound card and a video card put the sound card closer to the middle of the motherboard than the video. This will give it a lower IRQ and it will have higher priority than video.

Sometimes you have the option of reassigning IRQ,s but it's been so long I forget how. It might be in the Device Manager.

Jerry,

I have almost the same specs as you list, but hp lappy. I use a external hd, and the usb sound interface, winamp, windows vista, 2gb mem, nothing else running but winamp. I also get the *glitches* when searching. I was going to double the memory and I try not to search too much, but it is a problem. I'm interested in a fix. I always use winamp search and do NOTHING else when using the cpu. I'm am going to explore the buffer option, if can be found and maybe adjusting the priority. If you do find a option that works, please share. I will do the same! Thanks, MrD

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[highlight=midnightblue]MrD - KJ/DJ Specialist
Visit MrD on facebook - mrdsentertainment
& on myspace - larrynance[/highlight]

Thanks for all your ideas.
I will go through them over the next couple of days.
I am running XP pro.
Trouble is it does not often do it.
Gig night it does.

Red face have I.
Must have upset something with the Nlite build.
I loaded a slower Dell D400 with only 512 Mb ram.
Used a straight XP pro install and removed windows components.
Ran perfectly.

I want to stop other windows services but they are so interdependent.

Does anyone know what is safe to disable...

You go to Start, Run, type msconfig, startup and removed everything except antivirus & anything with rundll If you don't need internet, I suggest removing SP3, 512mb of ram is not enough...

I don't think it is that simple.
I am running SP2 with internet services and explorer removed.
After searching on google I have found posts about systems hanging
because certain threads will keep demanding a service that is disabled.
Services is pretty good for showing dependencies, but not always.

For those you are not sure of google them. When making a major overhaul always make a restore point. I dont use the restore discs any more on laptops I put on a clean XP install and lose all the mnaus crap.

Good suggestion, all you need to do is go back to day one

I do this all the time with no problem. Must be something else...