Music skipping while breakaway is on.

Howdy!

I haven’t seen those particular skipping issues before, but if you can answer a few questions for me, I can try to get to the bottom of it.

Could you tell me a bit more about your computer specs, such as CPU type, RAM, Windows version, Sound Card?

What buffer size are you using in Breakaway? (May be worth trying a larger one if available).

When it’s making skipping noises, does restarting windows media player help? If you start a different player, does that skip also?

What do you currently do to stop the skipping?

We were toying with the idea of a VL discount before, but the problem is that I really don’t have anything to do with VL other than being the inventor and designer (and programmer). I don’t own any rights to it (not a big deal since it has serious flaws which Breakaway fixes), or access to any of the purchaser records. In short, I’m completely out of that loop since many years back, so there’s little I can do, other than to give a sincere thank you for your continued support.

Thank you for your continued support! 🙂

///Leif

Hi Livelike!

Good answers, thanks.

Here’s what I would do to find out if it’s a WM8-related problem, or a Breakaway related problem:

1. Fast forward the song in WM, so that it starts skipping (=gets into failure mode)

2. Leave WM and Breakaway open and playing in failure mode (so that it’s skipping), and start MediaMonkey player, and play something in MediaMonkey at the same time

3. Leave MediaMonkey playing, but stop WM8.

(The key is to have the audio overlap during the switch from WM8 to BA, so that Breakaway has no chance to reset itself or the pipeline).

After having done all this, is the sound still skipping? If so, it’s a BA-related problem. If not, it’s a WM8 related problem.

///Leif

Hi Livelike!

That’s a relief – had me worried there for a while.

These are the players I personally use and recommend:

VLC (for movie files)
Winamp (for music files)
PowerDVD (for DVDs)

You could also try WM9, I have at least one friend that runs it and has no problems. WM8 is *really* old by now, might be worth upgrading.

///Leif

Hi Bernard!

Thank you for the feedback.

Livelike’s WM8 problem isn’t related — that really was a WM8 issue, not a breakaway issue.

However, Breakaway Vista compatibility IS still a problem. I am working on a native vista version (using the new Vista APIs instead of the legacy interfaces which also work on Windows XP and Windows 2000) and when that is done, that will take care of this problem once and for all.

As it is, the audio engine runs with absolute maximum priority – it’s very strange how there are some machines it doesn’t run reliably on, yet it runs fine on others. (And on one of my XP machines, it runs fine with Tiny buffering!)

For now, the best suggestion I have is to open the settings window (the expert mode).

You could try switching the Input device interface to KS (kernel streaming). This should work fine even in Vista, and if the problem was related to Input, this should make it more robust.

If this also doesn’t help, try increasing the buffer size for the Output device. You can increase it well beyond the wizard’s "Huge" size by setting the parameters manually. You might try Buffer size 1024, Buffers 16, or maybe 2048/8, or maybe even 2048/16 (which will cause humongeous delay but good for testing purposes).

You can also try to turn the Audio Realtime Priority switch off. Theoretically, running the audio engine at maximum priority should yield the most robust audio processing, but this theory assumes that every other part of the audio engine also runs at this high priority. I’m not certain this is the case in Vista.

Also, since you’re a Winamp user – the Winamp Output plug-in version of Breakaway will be done before the Vista version, and will be included in the price with the System Wide version.

In fact, once you buy a Breakaway for Windows license, you get to use any or all of the upcoming standard user versions (Winamp Output, Vista Native) on one computer. Licensing-wise, we don’t differentiate between them. So, if you do get Breakaway to run acceptably with a longer buffer size, feel free to purchase it now – the Winamp version will be yours once it’s done, no extra charge. 🙂

The Winamp version will be as robust as Winamp all by itself, because it gets to process the audio *before* Winamp’s long output buffer — it doesn’t have to worry about passing audio through as quickly as possible the way the standalone version has to. Running it in Winamp is a cleaner solution overall – as long as you don’t mind that ONLY the Winamp audio is processed. This notably excludes YouTube videos and watching DVDs.

Please let me know if this helps at all.

///Leif

Ah, you did buy it already! Thank you for the vote of confidence 🙂.

Don’t worry, I won’t leave you hanging – Winamp version as well as Vista version will definitely take care of the issues once and for all.

16 output buffers works, but only if you don’t try to play videos – the buffer is much too long, so the audio would be unsynchronized. This is a shame, because Breakaway really helps the sound when watching movies too.

10 PM? You can’t be too far from me, it’s 9 PM here 😉.

///Leif