>I seem to be having a problem playing mp3's over a samba network. I can play >the mp3's just fine when i have them on my hard disk, but when they are on a >shared folder on a windows machine, I get random dropouts throughout the >songs.
I do several things to minimize this on my machine. I use a player that has a settable output buffer (mpg123) which I set high (12MB). I also automatically copy the file that is about to be played to a local disk. And I set priorities using nice and renice: max for artsd and my player, low for piggy non-interactive programs like tape backup. Regarding the copy: some players will read the mp3 file until they hit the end. With these (like plaympeg) you can start the copy and then start the player and let them run in parallel. Other players (like mpg123) seem to stat the file when they start up so even though the file grows while they play they stop playing at the size they saw when they started. So you must wait for the copy to complete before this sort of player is started. HTH Andy
