Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2004 20:19:02 -0700 (PDT)
From: Matt Hanson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [LIB] Win98/70CT audio playback: A lost cause?
--- barnacle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > But yeah... the clicks that develop on my 50 & 70
> > are fairly significant.
> I believe you're right. There's nothing in the
> decoding chain that's likely to
> cause rail-to-rail clicks... and it looks like it's
> thermally related rather
> than softwareish.
>
> One thing you might try - if you can see if you get
> the same effect when
> you're playing from a shared drive over a network.
You know I did do than just a few days back not for
testing purposes, and can’t quite remember what the
result was. I’ll give it another try, but I’m pretty
sure it didn’t solve the problem.
In the past 24-36 hours I’ve seen behavior that almost
nails heat as being the cause, or at least the
dominant cause. It’s been pretty chilly around here,
and the darned thing has played for 3-4 hours in
98Lite, and almost as many hours in the regular Full98
without reaching the point of clicking.
I did re-remember a fix that worked in the car on my
trip last summer. Turning off the DSP ReplayGain
plugin in Winamp managed to stop the clicking back
then. However I did try that here 2-3 days back, and
it had no effect. But the other night when it was
starting to get cool, disabling RG did in fact stop
the clicking.
Something I don’t think I’ve tried yet is >initiating<
audio playback without any MP3 plugins enabled. Until
recently I’ve not gone ‘full test mode’, and have just
tried to stop clicking after the fact. If the CPU is
running harder with RG enabled from the start, it
seems the system is eventually going to get hotter
sooner than if playback was initiated without RG
enabled. It may not ever reach the same CPU
temperature without RG. if the air temp isn’t
unreasonably hot.
I think I’ve always done testing after the clicking
develops, at which point I try different audio
software, different software settings, different OS
settings, rebooting to 98Lite, etc.. If audio on this
system is so sensitive to temperature build up after
hours of play, perhaps I can do without RG as long as
I have a volume control at my fingertips, portable MP3
player style. For playing MP3s for hours at home, I
can use the 100CT.
So as with a lot of computer problems, and probably
more so with computer audio problems from what you
describe Neil, my problem is likely one that involves
a group of variables that contribute to varying
degrees.
Here’s some of the Winamp playback issues I’ve jotted
down testing things the past few days. I’m not sure
whether of not any are related to heat and clicking:
* The TDK sound card and driver require fewer system
resources than the system’s default Yamaha sound chip
and drivers. There are less audio dropouts while
multitasking during MP3 playback.
* The accupoint mouse conflicts with the Yamaha driver
while playing MP3s in Winamp. Right click menus pop
up just moving the mouse. No such problem with the
TDK drivers.
* Something is causing Winamp to just play the right
channel on the first MP3 played.
* When booting 98Lite to the desktop, there’s a very
low-level whining noise that comes through the TDK
sound card. For some reason I can’t detect any such
whine through the TDK when booting into the standard
copy of Windows 98.
* The ReplayGain plugin will definitely cause clicking
at some point under some conditions, heat for sure. I
don’t know how much other plugins like gapless
playback (it may actually use less resources),
WinLyrics & Playlist Copier which I don’t think
require system resources if not used. The 70CT
doesn’t even have the umph to run Shibatch in_mp3 to
read RG values written directly to APE tags in MP3
files, so that’s only one for the 100/110CT. Winamp
Library I can’t do without. Global Hotkeys and
Nullsoft Tray Control may not drain resources, but…??
Shoot! Reviewing the Winamp plugins I have installed
on the 70 at this point, I see Nullsoft Signal
Processing Studio set up as a DSP component for some
reason. I must not have unchecked that during the
last Winamp installation. Its not enabled in it’s
preferences, so I don’t think it’s using resources,
but I’ll check it. It does look like an interesting
plugin to explore through.
It’s been quite a while since I’ve used Windows Media
Player, but I guess it’d be an interesting test to try
initiating playback through it before the click
problem, and see if they develop. But I really don’t
like WMP, and only have the very basic old v6 on my
Libbys.
Matt
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