Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[carver188]

Hi Guys,

Been using MC since MC 9 or 10 and love it. 

Now with MC 13.166, I am frequently getting pauses in music playback (flac files are the only ones I have) and "buffering" appears for a split second or 1-2 seconds.  Sometimes it even skips (repeats a tiny section of the music a couple times).  Practically every song.

I have spent hours and days reading the forums under MC 13 and Buffering and nothing is working that I can understand.  I have set buffering to 0.5 seconds (even tried 5 seconds which seems to lessen the frequency of buffering I think), prebuffering to 6 seconds.  Still buffering.  I turned off my AntiVir a/v software and still does it.  All DSP settings are unchecked. Still buffering.

I did not have this problem with any MC, including MC 12. 

I have installed MC 13 on a newly reinstalled Windows XP Pro SP 2 (without any updates per Dell) on a newly formatted 750GB hardrive.  Dell 8400 with 4GB Ram.  3.2 Ghz.   This is my dedicated music computer with only 35GB of flac files.  Antivir a/v, Internet Explorer 8 to download MC updates and album covers, MS Excel for one file, Genie Soft back up software, Streamzap remote control (works well BTW for only $30 - taught my Home Theater Master MX-500 so I can control my HiFi and MC/computer from one remote!!!!)

Please help stop the buffering and skipping via my nice HiFi set up....Music is very important for me.

Thanks
Carver188 (snowboarder)

[Matt]

Hi Guys,

Been using MC since MC 9 or 10 and love it. 

Now with MC 13.166, I am frequently getting pauses in music playback (flac files are the only ones I have) and "buffering" appears for a split second or 1-2 seconds.  Sometimes it even skips (repeats a tiny section of the music a couple times).  Practically every song.

I have spent hours and days reading the forums under MC 13 and Buffering and nothing is working that I can understand.  I have set buffering to 0.5 seconds (even tried 5 seconds which seems to lessen the frequency of buffering I think), prebuffering to 6 seconds.  Still buffering.  I turned off my AntiVir a/v software and still does it.  All DSP settings are unchecked. Still buffering.

I did not have this problem with any MC, including MC 12. 

I have installed MC 13 on a newly reinstalled Windows XP Pro SP 2 (without any updates per Dell) on a newly formatted 750GB hardrive.  Dell 8400 with 4GB Ram.  3.2 Ghz.   This is my dedicated music computer with only 35GB of flac files.  Antivir a/v, Internet Explorer 8 to download MC updates and album covers, MS Excel for one file, Genie Soft back up software, Streamzap remote control (works well BTW for only $30 - taught my Home Theater Master MX-500 so I can control my HiFi and MC/computer from one remote!!!!)

Please help stop the buffering and skipping via my nice HiFi set up....Music is very important for me.

Thanks
Carver188 (snowboarder)

If it switches to buffering, it means there's a shortage of incoming data.  You could switch to more prebuffering (defaults to six seconds) and it would help.  You could disable anything else that's running like visualizations, third-party plugins, etc.

However, it sort of sounds like a hardware problem (PIO mode drive, bad driver, etc.) because a modern computer should just never run short on data unless it's playing over a slow wireless network or similar.  CPU usage should be at 0-1% during audio playback on a good machine and memory usage should be around 15 MB when minimized.

[carver188]

Thanks for the reply Matt.

I am trying the prebuffering at 20 seconds right now.  I will let you know.

I always have the full MC screen up with playing now set to "Noire"...so no visualizations.  (can you guys fix MC 13 so I can set a playing now view, like Noire, to default so I don't have to keep clicking and right clicking to get back to Noire everytime I stop or change smartlists, etc...thx!)

On full screen, Noire, with tag window, playback status, etc.  CPU is 0-5%, and Mem Usage is 95MB.  I am running a decent sound card...Creative SB Audigy 2ZS Audio.

I dont know of any third party plug ins...what would they look like and where would they be?

I have no idea what PIO mode is...I saw that in a prior forum and no explanation.  Can you explain what that is and how to change it to whatever the fix would be?  Is that a big deal and does it affect anything else on the computer?

Thanks so much!!!

[Matt]

For testing, set the visualization to "Cover Art" and close the Tag window.

Media Center aggressively unloads the skin, unused database pieces, etc. on minimize so you might also test with it minimized.

You could also disable auto-import in Options > Library & Folders. (although auto-import should never cause audio hiccups, so this is a stretch)

PIO mode is an old way of talking to IDE hard drives.  Windows sometimes puts a drive in PIO mode and it really bogs the system.  I'm not an expert on the when and why, so Google searching is probably a better way to get more information.

[carver188]

Thanks...I will monitor.   
I can tell you that just changing the buffering to 5.0 seconds and prebuffering to 20 seconds has stopped most buffering and I think all of the skipping.  (full screen, playing now Track info Noire, Tag info up).
But remember, MC 12 did not have this problem....

Please watch this thread as I will keep an eye on my MC 13 buffering with these new settings.

Thank you very much!