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[bc]

I had posted a few days ago about this interference issue. Since then I've been able to more clearly grasp the problem.

Hopefully someone here can help me solve it.

The interference occurs when during playback some action is taken that causes the CPU to max out in such a way that it is more than a single spike on Task Manager's Performance Tab.

If the action is sufficient to cause the spike to extend into a plateau on the graph--that action will cause interference with the audio--a series of clicks that can sound a bit like static.

For example I just downloaded an MC Plug-in via the Plug-in Manager. As the Plug-in downloaded the interference occurred. I checked the graph on the Task Manager. There was the little plateau jammed up against the top of the graph.

The only other application open at the time was Firefox with about six web pages on tabs. I will go through to see if I can find any more Windows junkware that I can turn off.

I'm running Windows XP Home SP2 on a P4 @1.7Ghz with 768MB RAM.

I would prefer not to have to buy a new Mobo/CPU to deal with this.

The HDD has just been defragged. AdAware and Spybot have been run. I do have Avast Anti-Virus running in the background.

I vaguely recall there's some way to assign a priority to an application so it has first call on CPU. Obviously I'd like to do whatever I can to make sure MC has first dibs on system resources. Gotta hear the music before all else. What about shifting some of this surplus RAM over to the CPU. Is that feasible? How do I do this?

Desperate in Brooklyn...

[modelmaker]

It would be helpfull if you would post you system info from the MC help menu.

You might try a utility called Startup Cop, it will show you what running in the background on your machine and allow you to them off. You'd be surprised how much is running in the background using up your CPU reserves.

You seem to have plenty of speed and ram. I have about the same cpu speed and only 512 ram and I rarely experience any artifacts when starting/running other apps.

[escaflo]

You might want to check if you HDD is running on Ultra DMA mode or in PIO mode. I remember that when Windows XP revert your HDD to PIO mode, a lot of interference tends to occur when you are reading or writing to the HDD with multiple programs at the same time.

[paulr]

I would check on what modelmaker and escaflo suggested first.  Another good startup manager is Codestuff Starter (free).

It also could be caused by the encoding of the music files.  Most of my library is in APE and occasionally I run into some files that I had originally encoded in Extra High mode (when I was experimenting with file compression rates).  I do not recommend using High or Extra High compression in APE for this reason - it can cause this type of clicking/skipping issue in some cases.  Especially if something else CPU intensive is running at the same time.  I always convert these Extra High files to Normal when I encounter them.

To increase the CPU priority of Media Center for the current session: hit CTRL-Alt-Del, click on the Processes tab, right click on the "Media Center.exe" process, select "Set Priority" and choose "AboveNormal".  I do not recommend using "High" and you definitely should NOT use "RealTime".

[bc]

Many thanks to all three of you guys.

I think I've got things back under control here.

I have downloaded/installed CodeStuff Starter. Very helpful. I found a few unnecessary items and turned them off.

I also raise the priority of MC as suggested.

I also found deep in my Boookmarks a web site I had visited a while back. This is: musicxp.net/. They have a list of 28 well-explained recommendations for XP settings that enhance all things musical in XP. This unfortunately includes visual changes that make XP look like Windows 98 all over again. But I can deal with that--just close my eyes and listen to the music.

Since making these changes I haven't heard a single pop, click or hiccup in MC playback even taking actions that max out the CPU into a plateau peak at the top of the graph in TM.

I'm a happy listener once again.

BTW--escaflo--I think the musicxp.net suggestion on the PIO/DMA issue is contrary to your advice. They suggest favoring DMA over PIO in that setting. You might want to check it out.

Again, thanks to you all for the helpful responses.

Regards...