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Author Topic: Audio breaks up while converting  (Read 989 times)

lazy

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Audio breaks up while converting
« on: November 17, 2012, 04:43:30 am »

Since build 70, but I think before that also, I've started to experience breakup when I playback an audio track and at the same time do conversion from flac to ape. Matt has suggested that I run out of CPU, disk or some other resource, but I never experienced this in v17 with the same setup, so something must have changed. I attached a sys info dump in the build 70 thread if anyone cares.
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InflatableMouse

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Re: Audio breaks up while converting
« Reply #1 on: November 17, 2012, 05:44:28 am »

I think its very unlikely an i5 would run out of cpu resources. I can run prime on 4 threads without audio breaking up.

Can you run a benchmark from MC? Without stopping any background processes I'm getting 4302 on my i5. There's also a thread with results that you can check your score against, it will give you a good idea how your system performs.

I'm just guessing, but maybe its more likely a bottleneck on the disk you're playing from and/or converting to/from.

Couple of questions (apologies if you gave this info in another post, I scanned them but I could have missed something):
- How many conversions are you running simultaneously?
- Is it exclusively while converting flac to ape, or also ape to flac, to mp3 or wav?
- Is the conversion read/written to/from the same physical disk as the song playing is stored on?

Things you can try (revert changes after testing):
- Enable memory playback
- If you're running 4 conversions or more; try with 1 or 2 conversions simultaneously
- If all operations are done on a single physical disk, try writing the converted files to another disk.

Note that partitions can exist on a single disk. Another drive letter does not necessarily mean another disk. Look in Disk Management to check which drive letters are on different physical disks if you don't know.
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lazy

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Re: Audio breaks up while converting
« Reply #2 on: November 17, 2012, 11:17:11 am »

Thanks for answering.

I agree that it is unlikely that this has something to do with the CPU etc, as I've had no problems with this on earlier versions of MC, and I think also on earlier builds of v18.

I'm running 4 conversions simultaneously
This seems to happen only when converting to _and_ from ape, not wave for instance
It doesn't matter if the conversion is working on the same disk as playback or not

Memory playback has been enabled all the time
When running 3 conversions it is a bit less breakup, when running 2 it is almost gone, and with 1 it is gone

So it seems there is something iffy with ape conversion judging from these test.
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