MP3 Playback problems

[maggzy]

I've been having major issues when trying to play MP3's. Sound always stutters like the CPU isn't attributing enough cycles to the player (problem happens when gaming as well).

I've tried closing all applications possible with Taskmanager, and still no dice. Even with CPU usage at only 6% I get stutters. Switching from Windows Media Player to Winamp classic 2.81 (Winamp 3 was a resource hog) helped a bit, but not much. I changed the application priority to high to see if it would help, but no difference.

I also disabled all Win XP goodies such as animation and fade in/out on menus, and still nothing. I also updated all my drivers, BIOS, etc. and still no help...

System Specs:
Windows XP Professional
AMD Athlon 1Ghz
Asus A7M266
1 X 256 Mb Samsung PC2100 DDR RAM
1 X 128 Mb Crucial PC2100 DDR RAM
Hercules Digifire 7.1
GeForce 2 MX 32Mb
80GB Western Digital 7200 RPM
30GB Quantum Fireball 7200 RPM

Any tips or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Maggs.

<font color=blue>Maggzy</font color=blue>

 

[4Ryan6]

Two suggestions:

If you're O/Cing drop back to correct settings and see if it clears up, if not O/Cing disregard.

Pull one of the RAM modules, preferably the Samsung, and test with only one module in DIMM1, sometimes RAM can malfunction when paired, and Samsung is one of them.

<b><font color=purple>Details, Details, Its all in the Details, If you need help, Don't leave out the Details.</font color=purple></b>

 

[r2k]

Fiddle with the buffer settings in the wave playback settings of Winamp. It may help.

 

[david__t]

I think you will find that your problames could be bug related - I have also just upgraded to the latest build of Winamp 2.8 and it "skips" once during most MP3s on playback. but this only happened when I went to XP Pro - it never happened in 98 SE. If you read the software compatibility issues text file on the WinXP CD you will find that there are quite a few apps that are not compatible with XP and this is definitely the case with older games such as Abe's Exoddus. I get Sound distortion in Virtual Pool 2 but my Audigy 2 is fine evrywhere else.

You could try right clicking the Winamp .exe and telling it to use Win98 compatibility mode perhaps.
WMP should be fine though - I never have any problems with that (I am running version 9 together with Direct X 9.

4.77MHz to 4.0GHz in 10 years. Imagine the space year 2020