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[LesC]

Hi ! I have hiccups playing audio (ogg) on my system. Take note this also happened with my previous pc, an a64. Everytime it hiccups i notice the hard disc being accessed pretty much, quite a few seconds. i am not doing anything in the background.. it's very irritating, please help.

Thanks

[KingSparta]

if your using MC 12, this is the MC11 Forum

[LesC]

KingSparta, actually i'm using mc 11.1...

[KingSparta]

I was wondering Because Of The "MC 12 Beta Team"

[LesC]

King, any help ? 

i'd really like to stick with mc 11.. my other player is not good. it lacks the fullness and richness of mc..

[bob]

Check to see if DMA is on for your hard drive (in device manager).

Search for DMA in the forums if you don't know how to check for it.

[LesC]

checked. it's on ultra dma mode 5.

[glynor]

I'd also try disabling any Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware apps you have running (or temporarily uninstalling as some of them refuse to disable properly).  They can cause this too.

[KingSparta]

Norton Internet Security Also Created Problems.

But if he\she is having only problems with Ogg and not other formats i think it would not be anything like AV or firewalls etc...

[glynor]

Unless the OOGs happen to all be in a monitored location and the MP3s aren't.

Could also be some filter that is handling OOG playback.  Any filters or codecs installed on the system could be the culprit.  You may want to try grabbing CCCP Insurgent and telling us what (if any) codecs it finds.  Any it reports could be causing problems:

http://www.cccp-project.net/wiki/index.php?title=CCCP_Insurgent

[LesC]

i only have avast installed as my anti virus.. the reason i said ogg is because it's the format i use to rip my cds to. they're all in ogg aotuv quality 7.

the cccp insurgent reports 0 codec/filter packs, 32 system device classes and 118 registered filters. i looked thru them all and it doesn't say anything about ogg. mc is the only media player i use.

[LesC]

let me say some more. it happens around halfway thru every track. i notice a skip and look at the hdd access light, it's on for a few seconds..

[bob]

I saw something similar to this one time only. The drive was failing and S.M.A.R.T. was turned on in the drive and it glitched because of this.

You might also want to open task manager and see if you can see what is pulling the most CPU when the drive light is on...

[glynor]

A nice shareware hard drive monitoring program is HDDLife Pro.  There is also a freeware version which has a lot of the features disabled, but if you just want to check the drive and then uninstall the app, the Pro version has a 14 day full featured trial.

Download here: http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Hard-Disk-Utils/HDDlife-Pro.shtml

[KingSparta]

In Layman's terms

Bob that could be, because the drive would be reading the drive cluster\sector many times to see if it could recover data from a bad part of the drive.

[LesC]

happened also on my previous drive. 200gb seagate.

[glynor]

That's good info, but I'd still run the Seagate hardware test.  In addition to bad disk hardware it could be:

1. Bad disk controller.
2. bad disk controller drivers
3. bad drive cable
4. faulty (or overloaded) power supply.

I'd check it with the Seagate-provided hardware test tool (if it gives you the option do the thorough test), and then run a test with HDTach and check your sustained speeds.  If you see any spikes or dips in the speed tests you might have a problem.  Just for reference, HDTach on one of my system drives shows:



Your's might not be quite that good but the curve at the top should be relatively smooth like mine is.  If your sequential read speed is "stuttery" then you're going to have problems.  The Seagate test should help to determine if you have any bad hardware (disk controller or cable).  For drivers all I can say is make sure you're running the current drivers from your chipset manufacturer (what chipset is it anyway?).

Another thing that'd be worthwhile to try, assuming you did all of the above, is a defrag!

[jolo]

Hi ! I have hiccups playing audio (ogg) on my system. Take note this also happened with my previous pc, an a64. Everytime it hiccups i notice the hard disc being accessed pretty much, quite a few seconds. i am not doing anything in the background.. it's very irritating, please help.

Thanks

I listen to OGG all of the time and I also use Avant! for my anti-virus (great product), AND, I am also using a Seagate druive (300mb).

In my opinion, lots of potential potential problems are being assumed and looked at. All might be correct, but, I think there are simpler troubleshooting techniques to try. In general, I find, (myself included, immediately assume that problems that I get are "higher tech", then they usually are.

Let's assume nothing. I think the best start is to sort of "swap" software/hardware.

[li]Do you have any other applications that play audio and support Ogg ? It would be an extra bonus is using a different Ogg driver.[/li]
[li]First reboot . Just to make sure that there isn't any residual garbage in RAM[/li]
[li]Play the Ogg encoded music, using a different software device than MC. There are many you can use, as long as the Ogg driver is installed.[/li]
[li]First reboot . Just to make sure that there isn't any residual garbage in RAM[/li]
[li]If the Ogg song gives you the same problems as in MC, I am thinking that I would go to my source file (if I have it), and re-encode to create another Ogg audio file[/li]
[li]Take the newly  encoded Ogg audio file and try to play it in the alternate Audio player. If it plays well, then t ry it again in MC[/li]
[li]If the original Ogg audio file plays perfectly in the alternate Off software, I would be wondering if there might be some problem with the Ogg decoder that MC is using. It potentially could have got corrupted. If I can't just re-install the Off encoder/decoder that MC is using, I might consider, uninstalling, then reinstalling MC. BUT, I would re-boot again before doing so.[/li]
[li]The Seagate Tools sofftware will immediately tell you if you have an issue with your drive. I am suspecting that the odds are greater that there is a software issue (Windows/MC/File corruptuion[/li][/color][/b]
[/list]

Jon

[glynor]

I do just the opposite...  To me, it's pointless trying to solve a problem in software until you've eliminated hardware problems as a possibility.  The problem with the reverse is that so many hardware issues can be transient!

For example, say you are using Jolo's suggestion above, and the alternate media player works fine in your test.  If the problem does happen to be hardware related, then that doesn't mean anything (because it could have been just dumb luck, or the "alternative player" could stress the system differently), but would lead you down a wild goose chase!

Dealing with issues that turn out to be hardware based can quickly become nightmarish if you are convinced it's software related.  You end up spiraling into a hell of uninstalling and reinstalling, changing registry settings, and eventually lose track of what you've done when and how to put things back to the way they were.  The good thing about operating in the reverse is that there are usually simple "benchmark" and "testing" types of applications that you can use to find out for sure if the hardware is good or bad.  After you've eliminated those possibilities, there's no ambiguity, and then you can start on the wild software diagnosis ride!

Plus... issues exactly like what you're experiencing are quite often (in this order):

1. Anti-Virus related.
2. Spyware (or Spyware "Protector" app) related
3. Hardware

It's something that is "slowing down" your computer's access to the files in some way (either in memory or on disk).  The main reason I'd have you check the disk is that it could be a sign that your drive (or drive controller) is failing, which is better to know about than to hide from!

Assuming you've never gone in and messed with MC's preloading and cache settings in the registry anyway...

By the way, one way you could potentially get around this issue (even if it is caused by one of the above reasons) is to increase MC's buffering.  Go to:

Tools --> Options --> Playback --> Audio --> Output Mode Settings and drag the Buffering slider to the left.  That won't really "solve" the problem (and with a modern machine really should not be necessary at all so it could be indicative of other problems), but it could help work around the problem until you get it sorted.