cd audio stuttering..

[Vulcan]

hey all..

i recently bought and installed the soundblaster live!24bit.
i used the driver from the installatin cd.
i can play music on the pc fine but for some reason cd audio stutters !!!
WMP WINAMP Creative's Mediasource - all stutter !!!
the only player that can play the cd audio fine is the Media Player Classic !!

by the way the older soundcard the soundblaster live! Value is still connected and when i select it as the default device, all players play the audio cd fine..

please help !!!..

thanks in advance !!

[Platypus]

Hmm, any particular reason for running the two together?

Some possibilities come to mind: maybe try downloading the latest drivers?

Also try different PCI slots, the one the new card is in may be sharing the interrupts with something demanding like the video card, especially if it is in the slot next to the AGP, but it can still occur in another slot on some motherboards.

If the BIOS has a PCI latency setting, try increasing the value, so each card can have more PCI bus cycles before it has to relinquish time to another request.

If I recall correctly, the Live! Value has a large fixed DMA buffer size (512K?), the 24 may have settings in its control panel to vary this. If it has, and buffer size is set low for low latency, the buffer may be too small for seamless play from CD.

[Vulcan]

the two are together because the live 24 doesn't have a joystick connection and the value does..

i will increase the latency and see what happens..

[Platypus]

The other trick is to simply use analog CD audio.

[Vulcan]

i don't want to use analog connection..why should i..??
the latency didn't help - i increased it to the max in the bios but it didn't help.
i don't understand why the Media Player Classic plays just fine and the other player stutter !!...help

[Vulcan]

one more thing...
i can't seem to find a place to change the buffer in the 24 card...

video card geforce fx 5500 uses irq 16
value uses irq 22
24 uses irq 23
usb controller uses irq 23...could that be the problem ??

[Ferrit]

Sounds to me like a resource conflict
I would begin by removing the old sb and start there

[Vulcan]

well this is what happend...
the original configutation :
pci slot 2 = soundblaster Value
pci slot 3 = soundblaster 24 bit - sharing irq with the usv controller.
pci slot 4 = 56K modem.

i removed the modem and put the 24 in his place and ...cd audio is fine !!!
i than put the 24 in the value's place and again cd plays fine...so i thought..
i than put the modem in slot 3 and tha value in slot 4 rebooted the system and for some reason...STUTTERING again...
i removed the modem,removed the value...put the 24 in slots 2 or 4 but it still stutters !!!!
i than gave up..
restored to the last configuration that worked - put the 24 in slot 4,modem in 3 (sharing irq with usb controller) and value in slot 2.
rebooted the system and in the bios i changed the reset config data to yes ,
to my surprise..after the boot cd audio is fine with no stutter ...

can someone explain to me what happened ???
and why in every situation the MEDIA PLAYER CLASSIC played the cd as smooth as it should ???....
if you could shed some light i would much appreciate it ..!!

thanks !!!

[Platypus]

Sometimes if you shuffle things around enough, Windows just "gets it right". This can depend on just how ACPI and Plug&Play is working on the Windows version you're running, and resetting the BIOS config data may have been what did the trick once the card order was got right.

Just for comparison, I found an old thread that mentions AMD's instructions for card location on one of their motherboards:

http://forums.windrivers.com/showpos...54&postcount=2

And I give a brief description here:

http://forums.windrivers.com/showpos...45&postcount=4

of the reason shuffling PCI cards around can solve some types of conflict based problems.

As for why Media Player Classic worked, well it's stated to be designed as a very lean, lightweight application, so my guess is that it is efficiently coded and light on resources, and got the job done quicker & easier on the I/O subsystem, whereas the others were a bit more demanding.

[Vulcan]

in that case...
many software companies should learn from media player classic..
windows media player...creative mediasource ,winamp...they all DID stutter...