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Hey! I’ve been using the breakaway audio plugin for about a week and all i can say is WOW ❗ Great job on a program that does what it says and is extremely user friendly! I just have one question when i use my media center music program i notice alot of static and it just seems to sound really distorted? It works fine with winamp which is what i use for headphones and wmp11 which i use for work but when i use the vista mce (which i use for movies/music/pics) at home on my HD tv i get distortion? I’ve tried adjusting everything i can think of with the program but to no avail. Even with headphones it’s a real difference than even wmp11. Is this just a vista thing that may be fixed with an update in the future or am i doing something wrong? Either way this program ROCKS!
Howdy! 🙂
Very good question. Have you tried running Winamp on the Vista MCE system? Does that work?
This may be a difficult question to answer, but what sort of distortion?
Distorted like "boombox turned up too loud", or distorted like somebody chopped up the audio into little tiny pieces and jumbled them around a bit before playing?
Also, when you installed, what buffer size did you select? Tiny, Medium, Large, Huge?
///Leif
Hey thanx for the quick response! The distortion is boom box up too loud. The mids and highs sound really compressed but the bass is fine. I’ve noticed when i minimize the mce window that the input (source) Oscilloscope meter is about 1/3 higher than the output scope and the db input is maxxed out. When i use winamp or wmp11 it’s the other way around? I’ve tried huge buffer,small,med etc also tried switching the advanced levels around but that also doesn’t seem to help. Even turning down the respective volume’s really doesn’t do anything it just sounds like something is just too loud if that makes sense? I have not tried winamp in the mce, didn’t know that was possible. Is it a plugin or should it work by itself?
My specs in case they may be the issue
Dell Inspiron 1525
4gb ram
Intel core 2 duo 2.0 ghz
Creative Sound Blaster XFI PCI Card (Even tried unplugging this)
Vista Home Premium
DFX for WMP (uninstalled this and demanded my money back when i found the program 😆 )Anyway thanks for your response and i love this gadget! I just hate having to turn it off when i use the MCE..
No problem 🙂
Regarding Winamp in MCE, sorry – just me being confused. For a moment I figured MCE being an operating system, sort of like XP Media Center Edition, but from your description now it sounds like it’s an app that runs on Vista Home Premium.
From your description, it sounds like might be seeing something like this when you’re running BA with WMP11.
Is that reasonably close?
If so, the input is being severely overdriven — no wonder there’s distortion! The question is, how can this be?
I’ve never seen anything like this before, but I can’t rule out that it’s an unfortunate interaction of how Breakaway hijacks the system volume control.
I’ve attached a zip file containing two reg files, to enable or disable Breakaway Pipeline’s volume control. The default is disabled, but with Breakaway Pipeline’s volume control enabled, all volume controls in all applications should work the way they always have. This is usually a bad thing for usability, but in this case it may help to turn down WMP11’s volume control.
If UAC is enabled in your vista, you may have to run the reg files as administator, or even open them with notepad and run regedit as administrator (and do the change manually).
Let me know how it works 🙂.
///Leif
Also in windows media player… make sure your EQ, SRS, and auto-volume stuff is ALL turned off & disabled.
I used to work as Chief Engineer at thee #1 internet-radio channel & network online, and… for windows media player, that was by far our #1 FAQ that our support team directed people towards, when they were having quality issues with windows media player. and more than 9 times out of 10, that was the problem.
Secondly, we also had guides on how to properly adjust the volume levels within the soundcard, and the master output section levels too, if being plugged into an external device, like a "home stereo" receiver.
Anyways… In your case, it sure seems to be something within WMP11, probably the built in fx, that are causing it to overdrive like that. If that is the case, then are you surprised that you hadn’t heard it before? And do you think that it was Breakaway audibly helping you hear how bad it was distorting, and/or do you think it was the "scopes" that helped you tune into the distortion with your hearing? If it’s not WMP11’s fx, then ignore the above. 😛
Hey Guys! Thanxs for the response. After messing around with the reg edits that leif was nice enough to send me i still had distortion ❓ I turned off all enhancments and still nothing. I then found by accident the problem and then felt very stupid 😳 When i used vista mce to play my songs the distortion would start after about a second of playing a track. Then i minimized mce and opened up WMP11 (when you do that the track actually plays on both at the same time) I then turned down the volume on WMP11 about halfway and the distortion stopped!? I then turned off WMP11 and Vista mce sounds perfect! Does this have something to do with Breakaway using both MCE and WMP volume controls at the same time? I LOVE this product and it’s the best thing i’ve used in YEARS!! Awesome!! Thanks for the help guys
Hi guys,
I’m using Vista Media Center and I’m looking for something that will equalize the volume when switching between channels, or between loud car comercials and low volume programing (man those comercials are anoying)
Breakaway seems perfect for the task, realy a good quality program. And as a sw developer myself, let me commend you guys on the quality of this thing, it’s hard to find these days.
Using it with Media Center to watch tv, there’s two concerns I have.
1) Latency – I had to set the buffer settings realy high in WDM mode to get it to work without cutouts on Vista, but reading the forums, I know you don’t fully support Vista yet and this issue will be taken care of with upcoming versions. 😀
2) Volume control – The remote control we use for the Media Center, controls the volume for the Media Center App. This volume seems like it just controls the master volume on the audio card. I don’t think there is a volume for the Media Center App it’self (in contrast to Windows Media Player), but it could just be an illusion that Microsoft is playing.
My concern with this is that when using the breakaway pipeline, the master volume seems to be irrelavent, and has no effect on the output. Not that breakaway is just increasing the gain, it literaly doesn’t do anything. Using Media Player I can change the volume and breakaway will increase the gain as expected.
All this may be irrelavent anyway, as indicated the Vista version may have a new driver model all together. But I just wanted to throw my use case in there for your consideration. Basicaly it would be great if the breakaway master volume was changed when I use my Media Center remote.
Thanks!
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