Re: MD: "Hesitating" sound

[Hannes Rohde]

Hi!

Although this discussion has been taken to private mail, I want to
add two possible solutions to the problem of "stuttering" sound:

1.) Buffering: I don't know about winamp, but all mp3-players I
have allow to set the size of a buffer for decoded audio data.
If this buffer is large enough, playback should continue even
when the cpu is busy (until the buffer is empty, that is).

2.) Busmaster drivers for the HD: Check if your harddisks are set
to busmaster/dma transfer mode. That way, harddisk reads/writes
will cause much less cpu load. These settings can be en-/disabled
for each harddisk in the control panel.

Bye,
  Hannes

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Re: MD: "Hesitating" sound

[Magic]

From: Ralph Smeets <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, October 28, 1999 1:22 PM
Subject: Re: MD: "Hesitating" sound


[snip]

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Re: MD: "Hesitating" sound

[Magic]

From: Shawn M. Pierce <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, October 28, 1999 5:12 PM
Subject: RE: MD: "Hesitating" sound


>
> I dont understand how you can blame software for an obvious hardware
> problem.  Its like blaming engine stuttering on bad gas.  What is bad gas?


[snip]

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Re: MD: "Hesitating" sound

[Magic]

>So your telling me that a video card with 2 megs of ram or whatever is
>getting 2 megs of data per clock cycle, or maybe around 90 times a second
by
>using windows?

No, I'm telling you that the amount of data being sent to the card by the
driver is slightly too much for the input buffer on the card. If a card has
2Mb of RAM it doesn't automatically follow that all of this is the input
buffer. The monitor can hold up the card, but it is not fair to blame the
monitor because it is the drivers which are at fault. There is no other
logical explanation, especially when this stuttering can be observed on a P3
600MHz system. You can't seriously sit there and tell me that a system with
that much CPU power is struggling to decode the MP3! My hard drive occupies
8% of CPU power, and the CD-ROM occupies 18% (44x system - IDE) but as I am
now plwying the file out of a RAM drive anyway, that's now irrelebant. No
ISA cards BTW - I just pulled them out.

>The monitor does not accept frames, they accept lines.  IE
>refresh rates are how many times the monitor redraws a line per second,
>starting from top down.

LOL

If your monitor with a refresh rate of 80Hz (check the monitor manual, it
may be less) has as many lines down as mine does, it will only have drawn
the top portion in one second! The refresh rate (try looking under VSync!)
is the speed at which all the lines can be rendered, and the flyback system
reset ready to start another frame. 80 lines per second indeed!

>  MP3 decoding can take up MASSIVE ammounts of CPU power, older
versions
>of winamp took up more than 30%.  Newer versions around around 12-15%.

Hmmm. 30% (WinAmp) + 40% (hard drive under stress - an MP3 at
5Mbytes/sec?!?!?) = 70%
That leaves 30% free to run the sound card and graphics card - more than
ample. So why stutter unless. wait for it the graphics card drivers
are crap!

>   In Half Life, I had stuttering noises, this was cured by A.
Lowering
>resolution, why?  Not because too much data was going to the video card and
>it had to wait to fill buffers, but because too much info was going to the
>CPU!  That was on my P200, now with my P2-450, I can run the same res, with
>the same vid card, same drivers, same OS...and NO STUTTERING!!!

That is slightly different because Half-Life is a very processor intensive
program. An MP3 can be decoded by a 486 in DOS - I don't think the same
could be said of running Half-Life. I have also seen Half-Life, Quake 2 and
Carmageddon stutter on a P2-450 because the graphics card was at fault -
replacing the drivers fixed it and all games now run very smoothly.


>  Have you ever looked at the bus scematic for BX chipsets?  PCI bus is
>on a different bus, the AGP is pretty much on the PCI bus.  ISA is on a
>different one.  Have you ever looked at benchmarks across CPU's?

Have you ever designed a CPU? Sorry, perhaps that was unfair. Ok, it was
only Z80 equivelent, but it worked! (Pity I never got to build it on
anything other than software).

If card A sends a time-critical request to the CPU, but the CPU can't do
anything because it is waiting for card B to say "finished" and release the
interrupt disable flag, what happens? Card A will miss out on data. It's
really a simple concept, I don't see why you're having such trouble with it.

>Does the
>graphics card scale to the cpu? Or does the CPU scale to the graphics card?

That depends on whether the drivers tell the CPU to ignore interrupts from
other parts of the system, effectively locking up the CPU. A *good* driver
will ont do this.

>Let me ask you this.  If you have a P150 and a GeForce256, will the
computer
>lock up?

That depends what you are doing.

>  HOW CAN IT!?!

Quite easily if you decide to run somelike like Alien vs Predator on it!

>***The CPU has to send so much data to the graphics card, that
>it has no time to get data to the sound card, hence the
>stuttering*.

In Windows at 640x480 resolution? Hmmm. the 480 doesn't seem to bothered
about this with a Trident ISA card. I guess the GeForce256 must be crap
then. On the other hand, it might be that the damn thing just needs
replacement drivers..

>   If you look at benchmarks, Framerates scale to the power of the CPU up
to
>a point.  That point is the polygon or triangle output of a video card, a
>CPU finally is powerfull enough to send enough data to overwhelm a video
>card...BUT it does not start stuttering it only tops out at frame rates.  I
>would say the GEForce256 will top out with a K7-800 or so.

Which is completely irrelevant because we're talking about playing MP3s in
Windows, not watching 3D graphical representations of audio renderes using
as many mip-mapped texels as you can fit into 32Mb!

> Why can a 386 run Unix as a server?  I have one running a small file
>server :).  Because it is not runing a GUI AND it is not running any
>background stuff.

Yeah. No GUI - no drivers needed. Eliminates the whole problem!

>Why

Re: MD: "Hesitating" sound

[Ralph Smeets]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Hmmm. 30% (WinAmp) + 40% (hard drive under stress - an MP3 at
> 5Mbytes/sec?!?!?) = 70%
> That leaves 30% free to run the sound card and graphics card - more than
> ample. So why stutter unless. wait for it the graphics card drivers
> are crap!

Could be 

> >   In Half Life, I had stuttering noises, this was cured by A.
> Lowering
> >resolution, why?  Not because too much data was going to the video card and
> >it had to wait to fill buffers, but because too much info was going to the
> >CPU!  That was on my P200, now with my P2-450, I can run the same res, with
> >the same vid card, same drivers, same OS...and NO STUTTERING!!!
> 
> That is slightly different because Half-Life is a very processor intensive
> program. An MP3 can be decoded by a 486 in DOS - I don't think the same
> could be said of running Half-Life. I have also seen Half-Life, Quake 2 and
> Carmageddon stutter on a P2-450 because the graphics card was at fault -
> replacing the drivers fixed it and all games now run very smoothly.

Hmmm...

> >  Have you ever looked at the bus scematic for BX chipsets?  PCI bus is
> >on a different bus, the AGP is pretty much on the PCI bus.  ISA is on a
> >different one.  Have you ever looked at benchmarks across CPU's?

Rigth.. 
 
> Have you ever designed a CPU? Sorry, perhaps that was unfair. Ok, it was
> only Z80 equivelent, but it worked! (Pity I never got to build it on
> anything other than software).

Yes! Actually my job is to verify CPU's. The PCI bus does more than you think!
And an
on-chip CPU bus is even more complex. Most modern CPU's can server several
busses
at the same time. (There was even a Z80 that had a seperate IO and memory
bus!!!)
 
> If card A sends a time-critical request to the CPU, but the CPU can't do
> anything because it is waiting for card B to say "finished" and release the
> interrupt disable flag, what happens? Card A will miss out on data. It's
> really a simple concept, I don't see why you're having such trouble with it.

Nope. Card A won't miss the data, but will be stalled!

> >Does the
> >graphics card scale to the cpu? Or does the CPU scale to the graphics card?
> 
> That depends on whether the drivers tell the CPU to ignore interrupts from
> other parts of the system, effectively locking up the CPU. A *good* driver
> will ont do this.

Right.

> >Let me ask you this.  If you have a P150 and a GeForce256, will the
> computer
> >lock up?
> 
> That depends what you are doing.
> 
> >  HOW CAN IT!?!
> 
> Quite easily if you decide to run somelike like Alien vs Predator on it!
> 
> >***The CPU has to send so much data to the graphics card, that
> >it has no time to get data to the sound card, hence the
> >stuttering*.
> 
> In Windows at 640x480 resolution? Hmmm. the 480 doesn't seem to bothered
> about this with a Trident ISA card. I guess the GeForce256 must be crap
> then. On the other hand, it might be that the damn thing just needs
> replacement drivers..

To much data will result in a something going wrong. The GeForce256 can handle
more
data than the CPU can deliver. (Between lines, the Riva 128 couldn't be
saturated by
a Pentium II @ 233Mhz.)

Cheers,
Ralph -> Read my signature!

-- 
===
Ralph SmeetsFunctional Verification Centre Of Competence -  CMG
Voice:  (+33) (0)4 76 58 44 46   STMicroelectronics
Fax:(+33) (0)4 76 58 40 11   5, chem de la Dhuy
Mobile: (+33) (0)6 82 66 62 70 38240 MEYLAN
E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]  FRANCE
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   something happened that unleashed the powers of our imagination: 
   We learned to talk."
-- Stephen Hawking, later used by Pink Floyd --
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Re: MD: "Hesitating" sound

[Christopher Spalding]

>I'm going to take a rough shot at it being the graphics card. Unless you're
>running something less than a P150 you should never have skipping in 
>Winamp.
>If you have a P150 or above then even the screensaver should cause much of 
>a
>problem - you only need a P166 to use some screensaver plug-ins for WinAmp
>that synchronise display with the MP3, so just playing back without 
>anything
>else running should be a breeze!
>
> The reason I say the graphics card is simple. In order to squeeze as
>much performance as possible from these cards they send just slightly more
>data to the card than it can take to try and push it. This results in the
>command being left in the data lines until the card is ready for it, 
>meaning
>no other card can use those data lines until the graphics card is ready.
>Ordinarily this isn't too much of a problem - the chances of you noticing
>the printer pausing for a microsecond, or maybe the mouse locking for a 
>very
>brief instant, or even the hard disc taking just that millisecond longer to
>read a file go pretty much unnoticed. With the sound card though it is
>clearly audible when this happens. If you have a WinModem it will be
>effected too - many people blame their ISP when they get disconnected, but
>actually it's the graphics card breaking communication. The solution is to
>nag the b** off your graphics card manufacturer until you get some
>drivers that *don't* lock up the bus - either that or switch graphics 
>cards.

Nope, you're definitely wrong there Magic.  I have a PIII 500, 128 megs of 
RAM, and my graphics card is on the AGP bus, not PCI and when I start an 
application or even when the computer just puts the monitor in power save 
mode, Winamp frequently does what seems to be playing the same fraction of a 
second of music over and over again (if MP3s work on quantisation as well 
then it could easily be one quantised section) or it skips bits.  I assume 
this is the same problem as with which the question originally started.

OK, i just did it then by starting the biggest program i have (3DS Max, but 
i stopped it before the graphics were initialised) and according to the 
system monitor, the only thing that was at 100% was processor useage, but 
allocated memory came close. It's not that hard to use 100% of any processor 
in my experience - that's why you have to wait for things to load.

I would theorise that winamp probably, for some reason, during playing would 
decide that it needs more processing power, but some other program is using 
it all, and there isn't any more.


Christopher Spalding
Genius, generally excellent and gifted person.


__
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RE: MD: "Hesitating" sound

[Shawn M. Pierce]

I dont understand how you can blame software for an obvious hardware
problem.  Its like blaming engine stuttering on bad gas.  What is bad gas?
I personally dont believe there is such a thing.  You are taking an apple
and saying it causes the orange to smell like an orange.
Second of all.  NO IDE hard drive takes up only 8% cpu power.  Go to
www.storagereview.com  and check out all of their benchmarks.
Another thing.  Refresh rates are how many times per second 1 line is
redrawn.  Starting from the top down, a monitor draws a line, as soon as it
gets done, it does it over again.  When you look at a video of a monitor,
you see bars, that is the refresh rate being slowed by the NTSC standard FPS
of only 30.
Ok, with your stupid dos machine.  Lets run Quake at the same time we
are playing MP3's.  I bet it will stutter.  Or how about copying a 1gb file
from hard drive to hard drive, I bet it will skip!
 I CPU feeds data to a card, not the other way around.  If a card takes
more information than a CPU can handle, the CPU maxes out and cannot provide
any more.  However, if a CPU feeds too much data to a card, you do not get a
buffer overrun, you just dont get any more data.  Lets see.  If we try to
put 33 cars parrallel on a 32 lane highway, the last car gets pushed off the
side.  Better yet, the way computers work, is that that data is NOT SENT!
Thats why we have AGP.  If 32 megs of onboard memory is not enough to handle
all of the textures, it uses memory to divert that info.  It does not wait
for it.  Thats why we have buffer memory, it pre-cache information.
 Its TOTALLY stupid to say that drivers cause 1 bit of overrun.  Its
STUPID to say that so much windows information is being sent to the video
card that the video card buffers are becomming full..what does windows send
to a videocard?  NOTHING REALLY!  Its STUPID to say that windows even maxes
out a computer in normal operation.  What is simply happening is that there
is a software conflict.  My guess is that its DirectX.
Yes, I have helped design a processor here at the University of
Minnesota.  I know about piplining, dual execution codes, FPU's, Et Al.  I
work with millions of dollars of equipment per day.  I maintain mainframes,
and massive servers.  I built around 200-300 computers a year.  I know
hardware in and out.

Shawn


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Re: MD: "Hesitating" sound

[peterbarlow]

If you can't get a decent MP3 output from your PC, you can't record your
MP3s to your MD. That's what it has to do with MD.

Peter->following this thread in case his MP3 to MD rig ever fails him.


Peter A Barlow. email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel. +33 1 53 78 66 52
- Message d'origine -
De : <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
À : <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Envoyé : jeudi 28 octobre 1999 10.31
Objet : Re: MD: "Hesitating" sound


>
> Huh??
>
> What has this to do with MD?
>
> Cheers,
> Ralph -> just wondering
>
> --
> ===
> Ralph SmeetsFunctional Verification Centre Of Competence -  CMG
> Voice:  (+33) (0)4 76 58 44 46   STMicroelectronics
> Fax:(+33) (0)4 76 58 40 11   5, chem de la Dhuy
> Mobile: (+33) (0)6 82 66 62 70 38240 MEYLAN
> E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]  FRANCE
> ===
>   "For many years, mankind lived just like the animals. And then
>something happened that unleashed the powers of our imagination:
>We learned to talk."
> -- Stephen Hawking, later used by Pink Floyd --
> ===
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> To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word
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>
>

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Re: MD: "Hesitating" sound

[Magic]

From: Ralph Smeets <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, October 28, 1999 9:31 AM
Subject: Re: MD: "Hesitating" sound


>
> Huh??
>
> What has this to do with MD?
>
> Cheers,
> Ralph -> just wondering
>
> --

It started off because somebody was getting stuttering from the sound
card then things got a little out of hand. My last three words on the
subject are these and these alone.

 -->   PRIVATE EMAILS PLEASE! <-

Magic
--
"Creativity is more a birthright than an acquisition, and the power of sound
is wisdom and understanding applied to the power of vibration."

Location : Portsmouth, England, UK
Homepage : http://www.mattnet.freeserve.co.uk (under construction)
EMail : [EMAIL PROTECTED]


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Re: MD: "Hesitating" sound

[Ralph Smeets]

Huh??

What has this to do with MD?

Cheers,
Ralph -> just wondering

-- 
===
Ralph SmeetsFunctional Verification Centre Of Competence -  CMG
Voice:  (+33) (0)4 76 58 44 46   STMicroelectronics
Fax:(+33) (0)4 76 58 40 11   5, chem de la Dhuy
Mobile: (+33) (0)6 82 66 62 70 38240 MEYLAN
E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]  FRANCE
===
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   something happened that unleashed the powers of our imagination: 
   We learned to talk."
-- Stephen Hawking, later used by Pink Floyd --
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Re: MD: "Hesitating" sound

[Sciamano Nerazzurro]

Shawn M. Pierce <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> If you do not feel you can do that.  i would load Nvidia's reference
> drivers, they can be found at www.nvidia.com  they are usually the best
> drivers around, better than peticular card drivers.  All video cards only
> replace a few files and make entries into the registry.  The only files
that
> they usually touch are specific drivers files nv3.ogl, opengl.dll, things
of
> the DLL nature.  They never replace any OS files or system specific files.
> Again, the OS you are running can be a big part of your problems.  I have
> found certain OS's do not like certain cards.  New OS's do not like old
net
> cards/video cards.  98Se HATES old 3 com cards, and other ISA net cards,
it
> is impossible to get them running sometimes.  The only versions of windows
I
> recommend are OSR2.1 (b, second version), OSR2 (B), win98, win98SE.  B is
> sometimes flakey, C is the worst Win95...its a bastard OS.  A is
marginally
> better.  Both have MANY problems.
>  Again, if you want to be helped, ALL system info is needed.

Well, I've unistalled what I was able to uninstall, and modified slightly
the REGEDIT.
Then I installed the latest NVidia drivers.
Now... WinAmp seems to work fine. BUT the Liquid Player still skips.
Isn't this weird?
What you say about OS's is certainly right, but it does not explain why it's
always worked fine for me before. The problem only showed lately, without
any change in the system, no new cards, no new programs.
Anyway, here is a (short) cut of the MS Sysinfo results for my system (sorry
it's italian, but it's universally understandable anyway):

[Microsoft System Information]

Microsoft Windows 98 4.10.1998
IE 5 5.00.2014.0216
GenuineIntel Pentium(r) II Processor Intel MMX(TM) Technology (P2/350)
64MB RAM
M/B ASUS P2B-F i440BX chipset
Creative Graphic Blaster RIVA TNT video card
Creative Soundblaster Live! Value sound card (+Hoontech optical daughter
board)
External US Robotics 56K Voice FaxModem
Pioneer DVD-ROM A03S drive EIDE
4.3 Gb Quantum Fireball SE IDE UDMA hard disk
4.3 Gb Fujitsu IDE UDMA hard disk (this one sucks)


[Conflitti/Condivisioni]

IRQ 10 Creative SB Live! Value
IRQ 10 Host controller universale 82371AB/EB da PCI a USB
IRQ 10 Gestore IRQ per PCI Steering
IRQ 11 NVIDIA RIVA TNT (English)
IRQ 11 Gestore IRQ per PCI Steering
IRQ 14 Controller primario IDE (FIFO doppia)
IRQ 14 Controller IDE Bus Master Intel 82371AB/EB PCI
IRQ 15 Controller secondario IDE (FIFO doppia)
IRQ 15 Controller IDE Bus Master Intel 82371AB/EB PCI


[DMA]

1 Creative SB Live! SB16 Emulation
2 Controller disco floppy standard
3 Porta stampante ECP (LPT1)
4 Controller di accesso diretto alla memoria (DMA)
5 Creative SB Live! SB16 Emulation
0 (libero)
6 (libero)
7 (libero)


[IRQ]

0 Timer di sistema
1 Tastiera standard 101/102 tasti o Microsoft Natural Keyboard
2 Controller di interrupt programmabile (PIC)
3 Porta di comunicazione (COM2)
4 Porta di comunicazione (COM1)
5 Creative SB Live! SB16 Emulation
6 Controller disco floppy standard
7 Porta stampante ECP (LPT1)
8 Orologio di sistema CMOS a tempo reale
10 Creative SB Live! Value
10 Host controller universale 82371AB/EB da PCI a USB
10 Gestore IRQ per PCI Steering
11 NVIDIA RIVA TNT (English)
11 Gestore IRQ per PCI Steering
12 WheelMouse1 (PS/2)
13 Coprocessore matematico
14 Controller primario IDE (FIFO doppia)
14 Controller IDE Bus Master Intel 82371AB/EB PCI
15 Controller secondario IDE (FIFO doppia)
15 Controller IDE Bus Master Intel 82371AB/EB PCI
9 (libero)


[Memoria]

x - x0009 Estensione scheda di sistema per il BIOS PnP
x000A - x000A NVIDIA RIVA TNT (English)
x000B - x000B NVIDIA RIVA TNT (English)
x000C - x000C7FFF NVIDIA RIVA TNT (English)
x000E8000 - x000E Estensione scheda di sistema per il BIOS PnP
x000F - x000F3FFF Estensione scheda di sistema per il BIOS PnP
x000F4000 - x000F7FFF Estensione scheda di sistema per il BIOS PnP
x000F8000 - x000FBFFF Estensione scheda di sistema per il BIOS PnP
x000FC000 - x000F Estensione scheda di sistema per il BIOS PnP
x0010 - x03FF Estensione scheda di sistema per il BIOS PnP
xE100 - xE1FF NVIDIA RIVA TNT (English)
xE100 - xE2EF Controller Intel 82443BX da processore Pentium(r) II a
AGP
xE200 - xE200 NVIDIA RIVA TNT (English)
xE2F0 - xE3FF Controller Intel 82443BX da processore Pentium(r) II a
AGP
xE300 - xE3FF NVIDIA RIVA TNT (English)
xE400 - xE7FF Adattatore Intel 82443BX da processore Pentium (r) II
a PCI  (con supporto GART)
xFFFE - x Estensione scheda di sistema per il BIOS PnP


[Componenti]

[Multimedia]


Creative SB Live! Value
MEDIA
Chiave di registro:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\enum\PCI\VEN_1102&DEV_0002&SUBSYS_00201102&REV_04\BUS_00&
DEV_09&FUNC_00
Risorse allocate:   Configurazione logica 0
IRQ:10 Mask: x1EB8
Intervallo IO:  

Re: MD: "Hesitating" sound

[J. Coon]

Try turning of anything that isn't needed.  Look in the task manager and
shutdown as many things as you can, one by one.  Once you have
identified which one is causing the problem, either remove it permently
or get an updated version of it.  Also in set up mode, try disabling any
power managment or screen savers.


--
Jim Coon
Not just another pretty mandolin picker
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
If Gibson made cars, would they sound so sweet?


My first web page

http://www.tir.com/~liteways/
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RE: MD: "Hesitating" sound

[Shawn M. Pierce]

Gaz,
 I can tell you right now.  It is NOT the dos mode drivers.  I know it.
The SB emu drivers are ONLY for dos, nothing else.  Everything else accesses
the card directly, not through the emu drivers.  The problem with dos games
is they cannot directly access the pci bus with PCI sound cards.  So an emu
driver needs to be created, since SB16 IS THE STANDARD in drivers for old
dos stuff, that is the one they program it after.  Your program will not
access these drivers, it doesn't even get close.  It accesses probably
DirectSound (the sound part of DirectX).  Thus it does not touch the compat
emu drivers...trust me on this one.  I have had many different PCI cards.
It used to be older cards such as the original Monster Sound wich was the
FIRST PCI sound card, had REALLY sucky dos emu drivers, and it would hardly
ever work.  BUT, it would work BEAUTIFULLY in windows.

 I just thought of another thing.  What version of DirectX do you have?
If you are using new drivers, they can be optimized for DirectX7, and not an
older version.  Download version7 if you do not have it...its 6.8 or so
megs.

 Its all about system hardware compatibility with software.  I have seen
hardware that hated with things close to it.  I had to play card shuffel for
6 days with my current setup, and I FINALLY got it working.  In the 7 years
I have been doing hardware stuff, I have found computers to be more
baffeling than even women :).

 Again, that emu driver is ONLY for dos programs.  If you are running
ANY window based program, it will NOT require it.  It will either directly
address the soundcard.  OR it will use the DirectX system calls.  I love
programming stuff these days, I dont have to write sound card drivers for
games, all I have to write are directx calls.  I write small programs for my
portfolio.  I may only be 21, but I am WAY ahead of the game.
 There is in fact the Athlon 700 out now, it can be had for around 690
bux.  VERY hard to find, but that didn't stop me from finding one, if I
wanted it that is.  The 800 will be out in Jan or so according to my friend.
1ghz+ will be out before second quarter 2000 :).  Some nice stuff comming
out.  Intel has pushed up its new processor, the "whilhemitte" (I cant
remember exact spelling), which is a TOTALLY new core (not P6 3 year old
core which P2,3 is based on).  That will hit 1.1ghz also by second Q 2000.
AMD put the screws to intel, and intel responded by upping the date of the
next gen processor by 8 months :).

Shawn



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On
Behalf Of PrinceGaz
Sent: Thursday, October 28, 1999 12:14 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: MD: "Hesitating" sound



> From: Shawn M. Pierce <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>   The reason why you get stuttering sound can be for a few reasons.
> First, the CPU can be busy because of hard drive activity.  When you run
an
> IDE hdd at full choke, newer ones take up to 40% of the CPU power, older
> ones take up even more, upwards of 70%.  Add into that CD-roms, and such,
> and you get MANY problems.  Thats why I use Scsi stuff, a 40x IDE cd-rom
> utilizes upwards to 40% CD power, whereas my Plextor 40x UltraScsi uses
> around 3%.

Well there is no HDD activity when I'm running the prog (ZX32 - a Spectrum
Emulator).  But the sound stutters-- I'll dig out that ReBirth RB-338 to
check
it's minimum refresh time.  After sleeping on the card, not literally, I'm
now
convinced its the Creative SB16 emulation driver thingy you find in System
-> Creative... area of Control Panel thats the prob.  Its not a direct
access
DirectX device.

> ***The CPU has to send so much data to the graphics card, that
> it has no time to get data to the sound card, hence the
> stuttering*.

But if the same prog ran fine with an old SB16, even a P75 CPU as against
my current K6-3/400 at full framerate, why should it fail now other than the
above reason.  I can guarantee the Spectrum emu I run needs a DirectX direct
link.  I tried playing Doom in DOS mode and it worked like a dream.  Thats
simultaneous MIDI music and sampled sounds thro' the SB16 emulation.

>If you look at benchmarks, Framerates scale to the power of the CPU up
to
> a point.  That point is the polygon or triangle output of a video card, a
> CPU finally is powerfull enough to send enough data to overwhelm a video
> card...BUT it does not start stuttering it only tops out at frame rates.
I
> would say the GEForce256 will top out with a K7-800 or so.

Errm, is anything faster than an Athlon 600 available?  I assume thats the
chip
you mean by a K7, yeah Shawn?

> PS.  Who the hell has a 32k video card?  Considering vid cards have
upwards
> of 64 megs of ram now.  What fills that much ram?  Not windows or winamp
> decoding!?!

Peeps with 15yr old PCs, where the video memory is in th

RE: MD: "Hesitating" sound

[Shawn M. Pierce]

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On
Behalf Of Magic
Sent: Wednesday, October 27, 1999 4:06 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: MD: "Hesitating" sound



From: Shawn M. Pierce <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, October 27, 1999 6:29 PM
Subject: RE: MD: "Hesitating" sound





>Throughput means absolutely sod-all I'm afraid. If I had a 32k input buffer
>on a card, and I stuff 32k and 1 byte across the bus, that one byte will
>lock the bus until the card takes it. THe card could be doing anything -
>most likely waiting for the flyback of the monitor to output the next
frame,
>but that bry brief delay would be enough to throw out a device such as a
>sound card. The program misses picking up the sound card interrupt for
>another 64k of DMA and the result is the sound "skips" or "repeats". PCI
>cards access the memory differently, but the principle is the same. If the
>bus is locked, even for a nanosecond too long, the request for more data
may
>be missed. The throughput of your bus could be way in excess of speeds we
>can even imagine but the situation would still be the same. The point is
>that the graphics card IS what locks up system bus lines.

So your telling me that a video card with 2 megs of ram or whatever is
getting 2 megs of data per clock cycle, or maybe around 90 times a second by
using windows?  Thats totally illogical since windows requires little in the
way of memory for 2d.  Same with soundcards, they too have buffer memory
that can hold prefetch.  Thats stupid to think that a modern video card is
held up by monitor inability to keep up, considering monitor refresh rates
are VERY high.  The monitor does not accept frames, they accept lines.  IE
refresh rates are how many times the monitor redraws a line per second,
starting from top down.  And considering that ISA busses and PCI busses are
on different pathways, a video card would not hold up a soundcard, its the
other way around.  Thats why when you take out all of your ISA cards, you
get a 5-7% speed increase...I know this because I tried it.
  The reason why you get stuttering sound can be for a few reasons.
First, the CPU can be busy because of hard drive activity.  When you run an
IDE hdd at full choke, newer ones take up to 40% of the CPU power, older
ones take up even more, upwards of 70%.  Add into that CD-roms, and such,
and you get MANY problems.  Thats why I use Scsi stuff, a 40x IDE cd-rom
utilizes upwards to 40% CD power, whereas my Plextor 40x UltraScsi uses
around 3%.
  MP3 decoding can take up MASSIVE ammounts of CPU power, older versions
of winamp took up more than 30%.  Newer versions around around 12-15%.
   In Half Life, I had stuttering noises, this was cured by A.  Lowering
resolution, why?  Not because too much data was going to the video card and
it had to wait to fill buffers, but because too much info was going to the
CPU!  That was on my P200, now with my P2-450, I can run the same res, with
the same vid card, same drivers, same OS...and NO STUTTERING!!!
  Have you ever looked at the bus scematic for BX chipsets?  PCI bus is
on a different bus, the AGP is pretty much on the PCI bus.  ISA is on a
different one.  Have you ever looked at benchmarks across CPU's?  Does the
graphics card scale to the cpu? Or does the CPU scale to the graphics card?
Let me ask you this.  If you have a P150 and a GeForce256, will the computer
lock up?  HOW CAN IT!?!  The graphics card is not getting enough info to it
to fill its frame buffers.  However, if you have a p2-600 and a GeForce256,
the CPU STILL cannot feed enough info to the graphics card, because of
polygon throughput...a CPU cannot handle it.  This is why graphics cards are
offloading Transform & Lighting from the CPU to the Video cards
(GEForce256's T&L does this).

***The CPU has to send so much data to the graphics card, that
it has no time to get data to the sound card, hence the
stuttering*.

   If you look at benchmarks, Framerates scale to the power of the CPU up to
a point.  That point is the polygon or triangle output of a video card, a
CPU finally is powerfull enough to send enough data to overwhelm a video
card...BUT it does not start stuttering it only tops out at frame rates.  I
would say the GEForce256 will top out with a K7-800 or so.

 Why can a 386 run Unix as a server?  I have one running a small file
server :).  Because it is not runing a GUI AND it is not running any
background stuff.  Why can ur dos machine decode MP3's?  Because its not
running windows wich takes up 50% of system, resources.

 Shawn

PS.  Who the hell has a 32k video card?  Considering vid cards have upwards
of 64 megs of ram now.  What fills that much ram?  Not windows or winamp
decoding!?!

Shawn M. Pierce
Information and User support specialist
Unive

Re: MD: "Hesitating" sound

[PrinceGaz]

> From: Shawn M. Pierce <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>   The reason why you get stuttering sound can be for a few reasons.
> First, the CPU can be busy because of hard drive activity.  When you run an
> IDE hdd at full choke, newer ones take up to 40% of the CPU power, older
> ones take up even more, upwards of 70%.  Add into that CD-roms, and such,
> and you get MANY problems.  Thats why I use Scsi stuff, a 40x IDE cd-rom
> utilizes upwards to 40% CD power, whereas my Plextor 40x UltraScsi uses
> around 3%.

Well there is no HDD activity when I'm running the prog (ZX32 - a Spectrum
Emulator).  But the sound stutters-- I'll dig out that ReBirth RB-338 to check
it's minimum refresh time.  After sleeping on the card, not literally, I'm now
convinced its the Creative SB16 emulation driver thingy you find in System
-> Creative... area of Control Panel thats the prob.  Its not a direct access
DirectX device.

> ***The CPU has to send so much data to the graphics card, that
> it has no time to get data to the sound card, hence the
> stuttering*.

But if the same prog ran fine with an old SB16, even a P75 CPU as against
my current K6-3/400 at full framerate, why should it fail now other than the
above reason.  I can guarantee the Spectrum emu I run needs a DirectX direct
link.  I tried playing Doom in DOS mode and it worked like a dream.  Thats
simultaneous MIDI music and sampled sounds thro' the SB16 emulation.

>If you look at benchmarks, Framerates scale to the power of the CPU up to
> a point.  That point is the polygon or triangle output of a video card, a
> CPU finally is powerfull enough to send enough data to overwhelm a video
> card...BUT it does not start stuttering it only tops out at frame rates.  I
> would say the GEForce256 will top out with a K7-800 or so.

Errm, is anything faster than an Athlon 600 available?  I assume thats the chip
you mean by a K7, yeah Shawn?

> PS.  Who the hell has a 32k video card?  Considering vid cards have upwards
> of 64 megs of ram now.  What fills that much ram?  Not windows or winamp
> decoding!?!

Peeps with 15yr old PCs, where the video memory is in the B000-B7FF region?
In other words machines that would be worth more selling to the local museum
than a second hand store :-)


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RE: MD: "Hesitating" sound

[Shawn M. Pierce]

I have never heard anything like this.  It is quite interesting though.  I
know there are errors with VIA chipset's that cause problems with AGP cards.
But then again, we ARE talking about ATI.


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Re: MD: "Hesitating" sound

[Magic]

From: Shawn M. Pierce <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, October 27, 1999 6:29 PM
Subject: RE: MD: "Hesitating" sound



>I must admit, after replying to the graphics card, I began to wonder why
>gcards came up...so I looked back.  Not to start a flame war or
>anything...but...

> The current architecture for PCI busses is a throughput of around
>~800mb/ps.  That has been that way for years, even with the first intel
>busses.  The newer 66mhz pci slots have a throughput of 1.6gigs or
somthing.
>AGP is somewhere around 3.2 gigs per sec at 2.x mode.  The only cards that
>are slowing down a system are ISA cards, and that where your problem may
>lay.

Throughput means absolutely sod-all I'm afraid. If I had a 32k input buffer
on a card, and I stuff 32k and 1 byte across the bus, that one byte will
lock the bus until the card takes it. THe card could be doing anything -
most likely waiting for the flyback of the monitor to output the next frame,
but that bry brief delay would be enough to throw out a device such as a
sound card. The program misses picking up the sound card interrupt for
another 64k of DMA and the result is the sound "skips" or "repeats". PCI
cards access the memory differently, but the principle is the same. If the
bus is locked, even for a nanosecond too long, the request for more data may
be missed. The throughput of your bus could be way in excess of speeds we
can even imagine but the situation would still be the same. The point is
that the graphics card IS what locks up system bus lines.

>The only thing limiting computers these days are CPU's.  A 486 with
>32 megs can run Win98SE, I know, because I have one running it.  A Matrox
>2mb card MORE than handles any 2d applications.  As a matter of fact.  The
>Nvidia GEForce256 is too FAST for all processors, even K7-700mhz, the CPU
is
>a BOTTLENECK!

In that case, can you tell me why it is a P3 600MHz system with 128Mb
RAM and the NVidia G-Force256 is currently experiencing stuttering sound.
Should I perhaps write to Intel and ask them for a faster CPU, or should I
maybe just update the graphisc drivers, which on a system this fast are
really the only logical explanation. Also, why can I play an MP3 off of my
ZIP drive (that thing that makes the machine grind to a virtual halt)
flawlessly on a P200 with only a Trident ISA graphics card and ab SB16. Are
you going to tell me that obviously this machine is far superior to the P3?

Just to give you an idea of the processing power involved, a 486DX33 can
play MP3s happily in DOS with the SB16. I think it's safe to say any modern
PC can probably manage that sort of background processing power without even
needing a severe setting up session.

Magic
--
"Creativity is more a birthright than an acquisition, and the power of sound
is wisdom and understanding applied to the power of vibration."

Location : Portsmouth, England, UK
Homepage : http://www.mattnet.freeserve.co.uk (under construction)
EMail : [EMAIL PROTECTED]


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Re: MD: "Hesitating" sound

[Magic]

From: Shawn M. Pierce <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, October 27, 1999 8:16 PM
Subject: RE: MD: "Hesitating" sound


>
> The VMM.DSD/.VXD are never replaced by a video card.  The VMM are only
files
> which control the movement of virual memory in Windows.  They also control
> the flow and allotment of memory for the AGP slot and the PCI/DIMM/SIMM
> bridge.  The VMM would have no affect on speed.

I assume from that you've never encountered an ATI XPert@Work card then. I
know this replaces the VMM system because I have software which monitors
versions of files before and after every installation. I cannot offer
explanation as to why ATI do this, but several of their installation
programs do, and this has caused a few KERNEL32.DLL errors, the solution
simply to restore the file from the WIndows CD. It would not surprise me to
find other cards do this as well.

Magic
--
"Creativity is more a birthright than an acquisition, and the power of sound
is wisdom and understanding applied to the power of vibration."

Location : Portsmouth, England, UK
Homepage : http://www.mattnet.freeserve.co.uk (under construction)
EMail : [EMAIL PROTECTED]


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RE: MD: "Hesitating" sound

[Shawn M. Pierce]

The VMM.DSD/.VXD are never replaced by a video card.  The VMM are only files
which control the movement of virual memory in Windows.  They also control
the flow and allotment of memory for the AGP slot and the PCI/DIMM/SIMM
bridge.  The VMM would have no affect on speed.
   To resolve the problem I would do this.
   TOTALLY uninstall drivers.
   1.  Go into the Add/remove Programs and remove anything creative
might have put there
   2.  Look for nv3.dll or files of this sort in the windows/system/
directory.
   3.  Go into Windows/ and run REGEDIT.exe and find anything that says
Creative Labs, or Nvidia.  Do a fine for any key words.  Remove any
instances.

If you do not feel you can do that.  i would load Nvidia's reference
drivers, they can be found at www.nvidia.com  they are usually the best
drivers around, better than peticular card drivers.  All video cards only
replace a few files and make entries into the registry.  The only files that
they usually touch are specific drivers files nv3.ogl, opengl.dll, things of
the DLL nature.  They never replace any OS files or system specific files.
Again, the OS you are running can be a big part of your problems.  I have
found certain OS's do not like certain cards.  New OS's do not like old net
cards/video cards.  98Se HATES old 3 com cards, and other ISA net cards, it
is impossible to get them running sometimes.  The only versions of windows I
recommend are OSR2.1 (b, second version), OSR2 (B), win98, win98SE.  B is
sometimes flakey, C is the worst Win95...its a bastard OS.  A is marginally
better.  Both have MANY problems.
 Again, if you want to be helped, ALL system info is needed.




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RE: MD: "Hesitating" sound

[Shawn M. Pierce]

I must admit, after replying to the graphics card, I began to wonder why
gcards came up...so I looked back.  Not to start a flame war or
anything...but...

 The current architecture for PCI busses is a throughput of around
~800mb/ps.  That has been that way for years, even with the first intel
busses.  The newer 66mhz pci slots have a throughput of 1.6gigs or somthing.
AGP is somewhere around 3.2 gigs per sec at 2.x mode.  The only cards that
are slowing down a system are ISA cards, and that where your problem may
lay.  However, even SB16 cards can handle it all.  There is only 1 time i
have had problems with full busses.  I had a TNT2 Ultra, a Aureal Superquad
(pci), a Linksys 10bT net card on Ethernet, and the Microsoft MS80 speakers
with are USB (is on PCI bus).  All of that filled up the bandwidth, and
would crash GL quake when I would play with many players.  I simply took USB
off of the speakers, and it went away.  This problem is documented by
Microsoft, and was fixed in SE.
The only thing limiting computers these days are CPU's.  A 486 with
32 megs can run Win98SE, I know, because I have one running it.  A Matrox
2mb card MORE than handles any 2d applications.  As a matter of fact.  The
Nvidia GEForce256 is too FAST for all processors, even K7-700mhz, the CPU is
a BOTTLENECK!
If it were my guess, you can check out a few things.  First off, I
would need to know what kind of sound card you were using.  That can make a
big difference, but even then if you hads a SB16, it should work perfectly.
How much ram do you have?  How much is being taken up by extra programs
running in the background?  What version of windows are you running?  Win95
A and B sometimes loads Dos Compatibility Drivers for hard drives, this can
slow them down by as much as 60%.  How much hard drive space do you have
free?  If you have less than 100-75 megs, windows does not have enough
memory to use as virtual memory.  Why speed is your processor?  If it is
below 200 and you are running secondary programs, they can interfere with
MP3 decoding.  I know because I had a p200 and when I would do other stuff,
it would skip if I ran a program. Lastly, if you have an OLD version of
windows (A, B, Upgrade) that can be 99% of your problems since these
versions are VERY buggy.  You can format and reinstall and I bet you 50 bux
that your problems go away...old windows kernals suck
The only time when you would get pausing is when your hard drive
activity goes into high gear, the hdd is often the weakest point of a
computer.  It takes A LOT of stuff to bog a computer down.  If you have an
ISA sound card, it will get bogged if your doing a lot of stuff, thats why
you get sound stuttering if you run GL quake...because Magic is right to an
extent, but it takes GIGS of info to stop bus info travel.

Shawn

Shawn M. Pierce
Information and User support specialist
University of Minnesota, College of Agriculture Departments of Plant
Pathology and Agronomy
(612)-301-6034 Day phone
(612)-730-7617 All hours number
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]  <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] >
  (Work mail)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  (all other mail)
 


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On
Behalf Of Magic
Sent: Wednesday, October 27, 1999 5:30 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: MD: "Hesitating" sound



From: Sciamano Nerazzurro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, October 26, 1999 4:33 PM
Subject: MD: "Hesitating" sound


[...]
> What's happening is that every now and then the sound coming from WinAmp
> (but it shows in Liquid Audio too) "hesitates" resulting in a strange
sound,
> like if a bit was lost in the reading process, or like it was read twice.
>
> I've tried re-installing both WinAmp and Liquid Audio with no luck. I've
> also defragmented the hard drive, but the problem remains.
> This has been happening for a couple days, and there has been no
changement
> in my PC configuration, nor I had installed any new program.
>
> Any idea what it can be?
[...]

I'm going to take a rough shot at it being the graphics card. Unless you're
running something less than a P150 you should never have skipping in Winamp.
If you have a P150 or above then even the screensaver should cause much of a
problem - you only need a P166 to use some screensaver plug-ins for WinAmp
that synchronise display with the MP3, so just playing back without anything
else running should be a breeze!

The reason I say the graphics card is simple. In order to squeeze as
much performance as possible from these cards they send just slightly more
data to the card than it can take to try and push it. This results in the
command being left in the data lines until the card is ready for it, meaning
no other card can use those data lines until the graphics card is ready.
Ordinarily 

Re: MD: "Hesitating" sound, graphic cards

[Magic]

From: J. Coon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, October 27, 1999 1:11 PM
Subject: Re: MD: "Hesitating" sound, graphic cards


>
> Magic wrote:
> >
> >  The solution is to
> > nag the bajeebers off your graphics card manufacturer until you get some
> > drivers that *don't* lock up the bus - either that or switch graphics
cards.
>
> What cards do you recommend?
>

I can't really make a recommendation on a good card graphics wise as I don't
have much experience of them. I have an AGP card which is a SiS6305, and
that doesn't lock the bus, but it's also not that quick - I don't play games
on my PC much so I'm not that worried about fast graphics. I hear the 3Dfx
Voodoo3 3000 card is supposed to be very stable, but your best bet would be
to ask in a newsgroup about hardware or graphics cards. If you know which
card you have at the moment, see if you can find a newsgroup related to it,
they may be able to advise.

Magic
--
"Creativity is more a birthright than an acquisition, and the power of sound
is wisdom and understanding applied to the power of vibration."

Location : Portsmouth, England, UK
Homepage : http://www.mattnet.freeserve.co.uk (under construction)
EMail : [EMAIL PROTECTED]


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RE: MD: "Hesitating" sound, graphic cards

[Shawn M. Pierce]

Personally I think matrox cards are some of the best in 2d.  They display at
very high resolutions very well, they always have a good RAMDAC and that is
the reason they display well.  However, they are lagging in MANY other
areas.  Their drivers are some of the worst availible, not only does it take
them 6 months to release a viable MSHQ certified driver, but they also
cannot release a viable OpenGL ICD.  For any games, the Matrox cards bite
the big one.  They are slow and ungainly.  U can buy much better card by
going with an NVidia based card such as the TNT, TNT2, TNT2 Ultra and
GeForce256 based cards.  Their drivers are much more mature, and their
OpenGL ICD is one of the best on the market, puting it on the rank of SGI.
I know my stuff.  I install approx 50+ video cards a year, and deal
with computers ranging from old 386's to Sun UltraSparc 10 Creator 3d
systems. I personally have a GeForce 256 (Creative Labs Annihilator).  I
play Quake, Quake3, Unreal Tournament, and many other games.  I also use my
computer for presentations to the faculty of my departments.  I have a tri
boot NT/Linux/98SE system, NT for presentations.  Hooking my vid card up to
a 5000 dollar projector and projecting onto a 18 foot screen, the image
quality is on par with Matrox cards now.

Thats my .02 cents...well maybe .25 ;)



Shawn M. Pierce
Information and User support specialist
University of Minnesota, College of Agriculture Departments of Plant
Pathology and Agronomy
(612)-301-6034 Day phone
(612)-730-7617 All hours number
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]  (Work mail) 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]   (all other mail)
 


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Re: MD: "Hesitating" sound

[Magic]

From: Sciamano Nerazzurro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, October 27, 1999 2:01 PM
Subject: Re: MD: "Hesitating" sound


>
> My graphic card is a Creative Blaster Riva TNT. It has always worked
> perfectly, but since I recently updated its drivers, I thought that you
> might be right and that this could be the problem.
> So I re-installed the old drivers, but the skipping is still there, worse
> than ever.
> It's driving me crazy...
>

If you didn't literally swap the graphics card and manually reverse any
updated files the new drivers installed, you probably now have a driver
setup with mixed files. If it replaced the VMM.VSD file for example,
uninstalling will not put the old version of this file back. THe files which
are replaced / updated depend a lot on your card.

Magic
--
"Creativity is more a birthright than an acquisition, and the power of sound
is wisdom and understanding applied to the power of vibration."

Location : Portsmouth, England, UK
Homepage : http://www.mattnet.freeserve.co.uk (under construction)
EMail : [EMAIL PROTECTED]


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Re: MD: "Hesitating" sound, graphic cards

[Colin Burchall]

"J. Coon" wrote:

> What cards do you recommend?

Matrox ... period.  I have an original Millennium 2MB in this PC, and a
32MB G400 dual-head in my games PC.  Matrox cards have no peers.

-cb

Disclaimer:  The above is my opinion, YMMV.
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Re: MD: "Hesitating" sound

[Sciamano Nerazzurro]

Magic <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> I'm going to take a rough shot at it being the graphics card. Unless
you're
> running something less than a P150 you should never have skipping in
Winamp.

I have a PII/350. Never experienced any skipping before, and I've not
changed anything in my PC.

> The reason I say the graphics card is simple. In order to squeeze as
> much performance as possible from these cards they send just slightly more
> data to the card than it can take to try and push it. This results in the
> command being left in the data lines until the card is ready for it,
meaning
> no other card can use those data lines until the graphics card is ready.
> Ordinarily this isn't too much of a problem - the chances of you noticing
> the printer pausing for a microsecond, or maybe the mouse locking for a
very
> brief instant, or even the hard disc taking just that millisecond longer
to
> read a file go pretty much unnoticed. With the sound card though it is
> clearly audible when this happens. If you have a WinModem it will be
> effected too - many people blame their ISP when they get disconnected, but
> actually it's the graphics card breaking communication. The solution is to
> nag the b** off your graphics card manufacturer until you get some
> drivers that *don't* lock up the bus - either that or switch graphics
cards.

My graphic card is a Creative Blaster Riva TNT. It has always worked
perfectly, but since I recently updated its drivers, I thought that you
might be right and that this could be the problem.
So I re-installed the old drivers, but the skipping is still there, worse
than ever.
It's driving me crazy...

Luca
-> h-h-h-how can any-y-y-one listen t-t-t-o someth-th-thing like this-s-s??

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Re: MD: "Hesitating" sound

[Sciamano Nerazzurro]

Christopher Spalding <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> If it does it on it's own with no corresponding system activity, then i've
> got no idea what's wrong - maybe try shutting down some other stuff that's
> in memory (like in the taskbar)

This is my situation: WinAmp is the only application running, no
screensaver, nothing in the background. And it's always worked perfectly
until a couple days ago.

Luca
-> I can't record my MP3s to MD!!


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Re: MD: "Hesitating" sound, graphic cards

[J. Coon]

Magic wrote:
> 
>  The solution is to
> nag the bajeebers off your graphics card manufacturer until you get some
> drivers that *don't* lock up the bus - either that or switch graphics cards.

What cards do you recommend?


--
Jim Coon
Not just another pretty mandolin picker
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
If Gibson made cars, would they sound so sweet?


My first web page

http://www.tir.com/~liteways/
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Re: MD: "Hesitating" sound

[Magic]

From: Sciamano Nerazzurro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, October 26, 1999 4:33 PM
Subject: MD: "Hesitating" sound


[...]
> What's happening is that every now and then the sound coming from WinAmp
> (but it shows in Liquid Audio too) "hesitates" resulting in a strange
sound,
> like if a bit was lost in the reading process, or like it was read twice.
>
> I've tried re-installing both WinAmp and Liquid Audio with no luck. I've
> also defragmented the hard drive, but the problem remains.
> This has been happening for a couple days, and there has been no
changement
> in my PC configuration, nor I had installed any new program.
>
> Any idea what it can be?
[...]

I'm going to take a rough shot at it being the graphics card. Unless you're
running something less than a P150 you should never have skipping in Winamp.
If you have a P150 or above then even the screensaver should cause much of a
problem - you only need a P166 to use some screensaver plug-ins for WinAmp
that synchronise display with the MP3, so just playing back without anything
else running should be a breeze!

The reason I say the graphics card is simple. In order to squeeze as
much performance as possible from these cards they send just slightly more
data to the card than it can take to try and push it. This results in the
command being left in the data lines until the card is ready for it, meaning
no other card can use those data lines until the graphics card is ready.
Ordinarily this isn't too much of a problem - the chances of you noticing
the printer pausing for a microsecond, or maybe the mouse locking for a very
brief instant, or even the hard disc taking just that millisecond longer to
read a file go pretty much unnoticed. With the sound card though it is
clearly audible when this happens. If you have a WinModem it will be
effected too - many people blame their ISP when they get disconnected, but
actually it's the graphics card breaking communication. The solution is to
nag the b** off your graphics card manufacturer until you get some
drivers that *don't* lock up the bus - either that or switch graphics cards.

Magic
--
"Creativity is more a birthright than an acquisition, and the power of sound
is wisdom and understanding applied to the power of vibration."

Location : Portsmouth, England, UK
Homepage : http://www.mattnet.freeserve.co.uk (under construction)
EMail : [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>

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Re: MD: "Hesitating" sound

[Ralph Smeets]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> 
> From: Sciamano Nerazzurro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > Luca
> > -> who's gonna leave in three weeks to serve his 10-month period under the
> > Italian Army. :-(
> 
> Hi,
> Sounds like fun-- Not!
> I can't help but think compulsary military service is a ridiculous breach of
> your right to free chouce.  It's like being press-ganged into the navy back
> around the 16th century :-)
> 
> I can understand some tinpot banana-republic dictatorship doing so, but
> surely most civilised countries no longer do it, right?  Or do they and is
> Britain unusual in not doing so?
> 
> Cheers,
> PrinceGaz -- "I don't want to start a war about this :-)"

You're not alone PrinceGaz! The Dutch (politicians) are civilised to! Thre is no
military service in the Netherlands.

Cheers,
Ralph
-- 
===
Ralph SmeetsFunctional Verification Centre Of Competence -  CMG
Voice:  (+33) (0)4 76 58 44 46   STMicroelectronics
Fax:(+33) (0)4 76 58 40 11   5, chem de la Dhuy
Mobile: (+33) (0)6 82 66 62 70 38240 MEYLAN
E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]  FRANCE
===
  "For many years, mankind lived just like the animals. And then 
   something happened that unleashed the powers of our imagination: 
   We learned to talk."
-- Stephen Hawking, later used by Pink Floyd --
===
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Re: MD: "Hesitating" sound

[Christopher Spalding]

>Hi all,
>I've got a new problem, maybe you can help me.
>
>It never happened anything like this before, but it's two days that I'm
>trying to record some MP3s to my JE530, using an optical connection from my
>SBLive + Hoontech Optical daughterboard to my MD deck.
>
>What's happening is that every now and then the sound coming from WinAmp
>(but it shows in Liquid Audio too) "hesitates" resulting in a strange 
>sound,
>like if a bit was lost in the reading process, or like it was read twice.
>
>I've tried re-installing both WinAmp and Liquid Audio with no luck. I've
>also defragmented the hard drive, but the problem remains.
>This has been happening for a couple days, and there has been no changement
>in my PC configuration, nor I had installed any new program.
>
>Any idea what it can be?
>
>Thanks in advance

winamp does this to me all the time, it happens when your computer's 
processor is used for something other than MP3 decoding.  what you have to 
do is make sure that your computer does absolutely nothing while you are 
recording (this especially includes screensavers - make sure you turn them 
off).

If it does it on it's own with no corresponding system activity, then i've 
got no idea what's wrong - maybe try shutting down some other stuff that's 
in memory (like in the taskbar)


Christopher Spalding
Genius, generally excellent and gifted person.

__
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
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Re: MD: "Hesitating" sound

[PrinceGaz]

From: Sciamano Nerazzurro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Luca
> -> who's gonna leave in three weeks to serve his 10-month period under the
> Italian Army. :-(

Hi,
Sounds like fun-- Not!
I can't help but think compulsary military service is a ridiculous breach of
your right to free chouce.  It's like being press-ganged into the navy back
around the 16th century :-)

I can understand some tinpot banana-republic dictatorship doing so, but
surely most civilised countries no longer do it, right?  Or do they and is
Britain unusual in not doing so?

Cheers,
PrinceGaz -- "I don't want to start a war about this :-)"


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MD: "Hesitating" sound

[Sciamano Nerazzurro]

Hi all,
I've got a new problem, maybe you can help me.

It never happened anything like this before, but it's two days that I'm
trying to record some MP3s to my JE530, using an optical connection from my
SBLive + Hoontech Optical daughterboard to my MD deck.

What's happening is that every now and then the sound coming from WinAmp
(but it shows in Liquid Audio too) "hesitates" resulting in a strange sound,
like if a bit was lost in the reading process, or like it was read twice.

I've tried re-installing both WinAmp and Liquid Audio with no luck. I've
also defragmented the hard drive, but the problem remains.
This has been happening for a couple days, and there has been no changement
in my PC configuration, nor I had installed any new program.

Any idea what it can be?

Thanks in advance

Luca
-> who's gonna leave in three weeks to serve his 10-month period under the
Italian Army. :-(

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