Home Forums Breakaway Audio Enhancer Stuttering and repeating with Windows Media Player

  • This topic has 13 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 15 years ago by Anonymous.
Viewing 14 posts - 1 through 14 (of 14 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #530
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Hi Leif,
    For years I have been trying to get the sound you would hear on the radio with tracks being at the same volumn. and compression. The nearest I came was when somebody recommended "Sound Solution". Well unless you understand its complex controls a novice like me is lost. Two days ago I came across the BA by accident and could not believe how it levels the sound when linked to my stereo. I was over the moon as I thought that I had at last found the perfect solution. I have tried to play my own compilation CDs in WMP to my stereo but am finding that the files stick and repeat/stutter 🙁 I have tried adjusting the buffer size and buffers, but it still happens. Like a fool I did not note when I installed what the defaults were on the buffers.

    I have a Dell Inspiron 5150 laptop with Windows Media Player. I removed Media Monkey as I thought that it might be conflicting but it made no difference . I am at the moment trying the following: Input Buffer Buffer
    ks BP1 1024 8
    Output
    ks Sigma 1536 12
    No matter what I try in regards to increasing the buffer size it still sticks. PLEASE can you suggest what I could try as I so want to purchase the BAE.

    Kind regards,

    Clive Southampton United Kingdom

    #4918
    timmywa
    Participant

    Clive,

    Can I Assume that the cd’s play smoothly when BA is not loaded or in bypass mode?

    #4919
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Hi Timmy,

    Yes home made and commercial cd’s including jingle personal cut cd’s from Jam Productions Dallas all play fine. When I start to play a disc in BA a few minutes may play then it stutters and continues then stutters again. I so want this to work as the sound is fantastic.

    Clive

    Southampton UK

    #4920
    Leif
    Keymaster

    Hi Clive!

    Man, with those big buffering settings, it really shouldn’t be stuttering.

    Please try the following: Disable "Audio Realtime Priority", and see if it makes a difference.

    If not, I’ll have to think of something else.

    Best,
    ///Leif

    #4921
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Hi Leif,

    Thanks first of all for your very quick reply !!!..superb service. I have disabled ARP as you have suggested but still get the problem. What I have tried:

    Playing commercial cd’s at all levels up to ks 2048 16 44100 2
    ks 2048 16 48000 2
    Playing home made cd’s Sony cd-r 700 mb same settings, same dissappoining result

    Playing on line streaming Spotify same settings same result.

    What I am trying to achieve: I have compiled and burnt 50 out of 100 plus cd discs of favourite "Solid Gold" music tracks in chronological order from 1956 to present day plus personal "Jam" jingles. I have got to 1967 but all the discs sound as you know Leif with different levels, compression. No burner/ mixer/ softwear etc has come close to BA, despite promises of normalising and applying "replay gain". I have a mixing programme called "Mixmeister" which is brilliant for overlapping and mixing my sound files.

    I have a Pioneer cd recorder which I can record the output on. If only I could get one sound file to play all the way through ( Donna Summer I feel love 12" is 15mins long ! ) with BA, I then can record in real time each track. (I will be old and grey !! ) I wish someone could invent a programme that could either burn or equalize the finished discs to the sound quality of BA as I know from various forums that this is a big universal problem.

    BA does effect "Mixmeister" by making it stutter when I am mixing jingles and the only way I can then do any mixing is by uninstalling BA then to reinstall. When I buy the full version will I still be able to do this or will it not be possible and will I have to repurchase?

    Also Leif I shall be updating to a Sony laptop, will I be able to transfer the license across?

    Any help you can give me will be very gratefully received and networked about your wonderful product in forums I belong to which has over 1000 members who would find BA, a very valuable tool for mixing montages etc.

    Kind regards,

    Clive

    From a very mild weather Southampton in Fall … 68 degrees today and sunny !!!

    #4922
    Leif
    Keymaster

    Hi Clive!

    Since the same thing happens with Spotify, at least we can rule out the CDs themselves as the cause.

    What’s the CPU in your machine? Have you checked CPU usage when running?

    I can’t think of any reason why it would stutter with buffers that big, especially not with kernel streaming, unless it’s running out of CPU completely, which is unlikely — even a 5 year old laptop easily handles breakaway using only a fraction of the available cpu power.

    I developed a tool lately which may help us get to the bottom of the problem. Please check this thread: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=728

    That way we should be able to narrow down whether the problem is on the input or output side of breakaway.

    Transferring to a new computer is just a matter of installing and inputting the key on the new one.

    68F is nice for this time of year, although where I’m at (Thailand) it’s 90F as usual. 🙂

    ///Leif

    #4923
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Hi Leif,

    Today I have defragged and performed disc clean up which has freed 7,723,707 kb of disc space on C.

    I learnt today what CPU is! I have Intel at a speed of 0 712 mhz, mobile Intel (R) Pentium ( R )
    4 CPU 2.80 ghz. I hope that is useful and what you are asking. When you say running do you mean when I am playing a sound file? I took my reading with nothing running, so if you would like this info I will try when BA is running…but please bare with me as I’m just a novice, especially compared to your superior knowledge.

    Using your attached thread (thanks for that) I have on pipeline:
    Input 44098.78 Output 44099.17 Ratio 1.0000

    Input jitter 90.9% output jitter 81.8% SRC delay 1630

    The above taken after defrag and disc clean.

    The best result I can obtain is with ks 2048 16 where a sound file of 4.40 mins in time plays perfect up to 2.33. a file of 5.13 plays perfect up to 3.34.

    Hoping this may help. 90F too hot for me… Thanks for all you are doing

    Kind regards,

    Clive

    #4924
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Hi Leif,

    1594 mhz with WMP and BA running. A bit of a difference !!

    Clive

    #4925
    timmywa
    Participant

    Try feeding into BA at 48000, while leaving the input at 44,100. Check also if BA is running the pipeline at 48000 (the output), chances are your card is running natively at 48000 see if that works.

    #4926
    Leif
    Keymaster

    So Clive, what’s the actual CPU usage (percentage) while you’re running WMP + Breakaway? I didn’t find that info in your post.

    However, from the numbers I’ve seen, something isn’t right. 90% block jitter is huge — it means the audio is arriving very irregularly, and I don’t know why that is. With a huge block size like 2048, jitter should be under 10%!

    Power management (running a 2.8 GHz CPU at 0.8 GHz) can definitely cause problems for audio, but I would think that the power management would increase clock speed when necessary to keep up with system load.

    I’m afraid I don’t have an answer at all. Perhaps something running in the background is interfering? This is purely guessing though — the only thing I know for sure is that it works on most systems, but I really don’t know what’s going wrong on yours 🙁.

    Best,
    ///Leif

    #4927
    Dj Buik
    Member
    #4928
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Hi Guys,

    Me again with an update…Well I tried Timmy’s suggestion and I found that with ks 2048 16 44100 2 and ks 2048 16 48000 2 that it worked and I got very excited until a file played up to four mins then stuttered. It was the best yet so I gave up and went to bed.

    Leif your question about % when running +1%.

    BUT then today I think that rebooting and shutting down the laptop last night cleared everything as I did not do this after defragging/disc clean. Today I have just played Disco Inferno 10.59 without a stutter!! THANK YOU TIMMY not just a star on the radio but I think you cracked it with Leif. I now run at 1% 2791 mhz and heres the good news 1024 8 44100 2 and
    1024 8 48000 2 the ARP is off. The sound is out of this world. I shall be turning it up and ripping off the knob…….

    Thanks also to DJ Buik I took a look at what was a very informative thread that you kindly provided which I will use if this doesn’t carry on working ( will be playing a lot of music saturday ) if the wife lets me !!! But I don’t think that I would trust my self altering drivers but hopefully won’t need to consider this.

    So Leif and Timmy can I thank you very much indeed for taking the time and effort to help a novice like myself. I shall be spreading the word.

    In due course over the next few days I will post and let you guys know how I get on. I couldn’t have done it without you.

    Kind regards as always,

    #4929
    Leif
    Keymaster

    Hi Clive!

    I’m glad it’s working! So, what was the problem exactly, and how did you solve it? 🙂

    ///Leif

    #4930
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Lief,

    I think that there was just too much junk on my laptop. You led me to this when you said about something running in the background. So had a spring clean getting rid of sound files and other files not needed. Got rid of a lot of photos and screen saver. Defrag and disc clean. And of course putting in settings as suggested by Timmy. Unfortunately was dragged out shopping today by the wife who wanted to spend my money!!! Hoping to do some jingles and be playing some tracks tonight/Sunday. Will report back and let you know how I got on. Don’t know if it’s a different version that I have downloaded but have just noticed that the one I have loaded at the moment does not have "French Kiss"…..perhaps an earlier version that suits better. BUT there is no way I am changing anything!!!

    Off to play now!!

    Regards,

    Clive

Viewing 14 posts - 1 through 14 (of 14 total)
  • You must be logged in to reply to this topic.