WinXP issue: Sound skipping/slowdown etc. when hard drive r

WarAdvocat · Post by **WarAdvocat** » Tue Jan 27, 2004 6:35 am

This seems to be an issue for a lot of people, I've noticed it in numerous applications. It doesn't seem to be a fragmentation issue, as it happens after a defrag, when playing CD's, when playing MP3's over a network connect etc. It also doesn't seem to be a RAM issue, as I've witnessed similar events or heard complaints about same on machines from 512MB to 1.5GB RAM.

For some reason it seems like the HDD hijacks all processor capacity @ times.

Examples:

Music in BF1942 load screens. Initially this wasn't happening, but somewhere along the line it started, the music slowed down and sped up, crackled, popped and even skipped.

MP3's played during game loads skip and pop.

In-Game Music for Star Wars Galaxies skips and pops during loads.

In-Game Music for Horizons skips and pops during loads, and during game play in areas with a lot to load.

I could come up with a bunch of other examples if needed...So is there a fix or is this a "feature"?

BUBBALOU · Post by **BUBBALOU** » Tue Jan 27, 2004 7:14 am

Just make sure DMA is enabled for your HD in Device Manger before you attempt any other suggestions

(WINKEY-BREAK)
Hardware Tab / Device Manager / IDE/ATA Drive Controllers / Primary Channel / Advanced Settings / Transfer mode should be set to "DMA if Available"
(now if it is greyed out you need to goto your BIOS to fix it)

For me, I checked that as a first response, So I could know if it was HD related or not. But then I checked my Cubase program in which I did not select the Audigy 2 ASIO driver and it was still using the default ASIO Sound Driver

But this problem is always a 2 step process S/C and HD

Now after you fix all the issues, you will still have crappy sound in D3. Not a Hardware Issue...they did not put short fades on their loops and Direct Sound picks that garbage up!

Mobius · Post by **Mobius** » Tue Jan 27, 2004 12:47 pm

Correction: Direct Sound picks this up if you have a crappy BS Live! card.

I doubt a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz card would have the issues you describe.

Direct 3D sound through a TBSC is beautiful, clear, clean 5.1 in D3 (and all other games I have too).

Tyranny · Post by **Tyranny** » Tue Jan 27, 2004 1:27 pm

Open up dxdiag and set the Hardware sound acceleration slider to basic

Make sure you have the latest drivers for your sound card

The issue you described happend to me a lot in Win98se, even when loading a new page in a browser while listening to music it would do this. Never had the problem in Win2kpro or WinXP pro.

Warlock · Post by **Warlock** » Tue Jan 27, 2004 5:04 pm

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by Mobius:
Correction: Direct Sound picks this up if you have a crappy BS Live! card<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

no its called being a dumb ass and not knowing how to set it up right.

all my Creative cards never gave me aney probs at all

BUBBALOU · Post by **BUBBALOU** » Tue Jan 27, 2004 10:09 pm

Mobius??? WHY! would I limit myself to a POS card like that which muffles all sound and is not a direct representation of the audio, and ONLY be able to play Games.. ?! your weird

I have 3 SB cards

AWE64(awsome MIDI)
SBLive Platinum (the orginal not the 5.1)
AUDGIY 2 Platinum (ASIO)

Never had any ficticious issues you describe day in and day out.

Anyone ever notice that everything Mobius describes or recommends; hardware, tweeks, Operating systems, etc etc etc is virtually limited by D3. scary

Come on Man ...it's really time you took your blinders off!

Warlock · Post by **Warlock** » Wed Jan 28, 2004 9:28 am

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by BUBBALOU:
Anyone ever notice that everything Mobius describes or recommends; hardware, tweeks, Operating systems, etc etc etc is virtually limited by D3. scary
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

*walks out of the room LAMO*

MD-2389 · Post by **MD-2389** » Wed Jan 28, 2004 2:49 pm

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by Mobius:
Correction: Direct Sound picks this up if you have a crappy BS Live! card.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Mobius, do I have to remind you again that the issue you describe was only with a certain VIA chipset combo? (KT133A northbridge/686B southbridge) You might want to get hooked on phonics pronto, because apparently you lack the ability to read.

My SB Live (now stuck in a secondary system) ran perfectly on my old Asus A7V, which had a VIA KT133 chipset with the 686A southbridge and it ran perfectly. No skipping, popping, etc. Ran exactly like it was supposed to, and never gave me a minute of trouble.

Ympakt · Post by **Ympakt** » Wed Jan 28, 2004 9:41 pm

I've had the skip problem for a while now. It used to happen at the beginning of loading a game, either D3 or BF1942 or even MOH:AA. It would eventually disappear after 3-5 minutes of gameplay. I recently upgraded my PC from 1.1GHZ/256MBDDR to 1.8GHZ/512. New mobo, bigger/better grafx card. The skip vanished, or so I thought. Incidentally, I have a SBPC512 sound card that was/is running in the systems. Now the skip seems to come back only in a few situations. The most common circumstances leading up to the skip are that my HDD/CD drives have spooled down during long time gameplay in a single level. EG, no HDD/CD access occurred during the game to keep the drives active. ( I have it set to spool down this way because my system is constantly on; no need to wear the HDD drive bearings out any faster than they need. Also a minor energy savings) The skip starts when the level changes, and the drives spool up to load up the data. Then it's a regular blink......blink........blink.....etc. of the HDD activity light and a skip or stop of the (frames? network? dunno...) at exactly the same beat. Oh well, escape, reload, try again. Oh, BTW, I have noticed Mcafee virus scan hogs CPU time every once in a while (not commanded to do anything by me) and that has caused some unrelated slowdowns/skipping for me. Simply disabling your AV software durng gameplay may help....

Tyranny · Post by **Tyranny** » Thu Jan 29, 2004 12:49 am

If you're constantly connected to the net via broadband disabling your AV is not a good idea

WarAdvocat · Post by **WarAdvocat** » Thu Jan 29, 2004 7:46 am

Man I've been busy last few days. Thanks for the responses. I'll jump into my settings and verify that DMA is enabled etc. when I get home this evening.

Note: This is happening on both systems (mine & my GF), both are 1.7ghz + w/ 512mb ram and Audigy2 cards (I have the plain jane, she has the ZS...we swapped because she needed the spdif whereas my POS comp doesn't have front ports).

Anyhow, We'll see what happens, I'll check this out later, thanks for the suggestions.

Ympakt · Post by **Ympakt** » Thu Jan 29, 2004 9:44 am

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by Tyranny:
If you're constantly connected to the net via broadband disabling your AV is not a good idea <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I've got a good firewall setup, no worries. Disable AV only during gameplay, not downloading/working on the web. That would be baaaaaad. Now that I've said that, something's gonna happen!

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Thu Jan 29, 2004 12:05 pm

I have no AV software at all, I only use a free online scanner when I feel the need to check files that I had downloaded before I open them. My computer has been running for 9 solid days without a reboot and I never shut it down anyway, the only thing between my computer and the internet is a linksys NAT router.

A couple days ago I did a complete system scan with a free online scanner on all 200GB/73,000 files and guess what, not a single virus in the whole thing! Very few viruses can get to your computer without you having to run it yourself. Working on computers around here most of the ones that I have found viruses on, also had a antivirus scanner running on them, and about half of those antivirus scanners were even kept up to date when the virus infected the computer.

Anyone who thinks they are automatically protected from all viruses because they have antivirus software running is a complete fool.

Now that we have that cleared up we should probably get back on the orignal subject of sound problems. I can think of a couple reasons for his sound skipping and slowing down when the hard drive runs. 1) the hard drive reading is related to a antivirus scanner or something else that is running in the background hogging CPU time. 2) the hard drive is slow and cannot keep up with the rest of the system, so the computer runs out of data while waiting for the hard drive and this causes the sound to skip/pause/pop (it didnt do it at first because the system had more free memory in the past). First I would try what BUBBALOU suggested, then I would also check the sound acceleration in dxdiag (start ---> run ---> type 'dxdiag').

-Krom

Warlock · Post by **Warlock** » Thu Jan 29, 2004 1:40 pm

*quiet voice* little does krom know we uploaded 4 differnt viruses, let see how log befor his computer get infected and crashes