Audio skipping with P4P800

I posted about this a while ago. The only response I got was "it must be
a driver" and someone else who had the same problem. I'd like to try
again.

Using windows media player all sound playback skips. The sound is broken
for just a second then returns. During this time I see an hourglass.
Task Manager shows System Image "System" at 18% or so during this event.
The problem occurs whether playing music via CD or via mp3 file on disk.
I have installed the latest SoundMax driver from the asus site
(5.12.01.3630WHQL) and before that the newest ASUS bios. Nothing has
helped.

I've posted a help request to asus but don't know if they are very good
at responding.

 

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wheel wrote:

| I posted about this a while ago. The only response I got was "it must be
| a driver" and someone else who had the same problem. I'd like to try
| again.

Okay.

|
| Using windows media player all sound playback skips. The sound is broken
| for just a second then returns. During this time I see an hourglass.
| Task Manager shows System Image "System" at 18% or so during this event.
| The problem occurs whether playing music via CD or via mp3 file on disk.
| I have installed the latest SoundMax driver from the asus site
| (5.12.01.3630WHQL) and before that the newest ASUS bios. Nothing has
| helped.

Okay, here's the clincher, are you using a digital or CD-audio cable
from the BACK of your CD-ROM to your soundcard? If not, all the data is
being routed via the IDE bus.

That would explain a CD-Audio skip, or MP3 from CD, but you also mention
you play mp3 from 'disk' ? HD? and experience this problem?

Philip

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Thanks. Yes I mean mp3 files from hard disk. It's very strange.

Yes there is a bitty little cable from the back of the cd player to the
mobo (the p4p800 has a built in sound chip).

 

Skipping can be caused by a hardware problem or a software problem.

The sound interface has a buffer, and the buffer must be serviced
at regular intervals. Some sound faults are caused by the buffer
running dry, because a data bus on the motherboard is too slow in
delivering data to all the devices that need it. The typical
effect of these kinds of faults is crackling or popping. So, in
this case, that isn't likely to be your problem.

On the software side, your MP3 playing program is an application,
and it has a lower priority than a number of other things in the
system. In a Unix system, for example, if the kernel is doing
a lot of I/O (say, for some other task), an application cannot
tell it to lay off because the application isn't getting enough
cycles. Now, normally the kernel is designed such that it doesn't
tie up the system, but sometimes, under exception conditions,
it might be staying at kernel level when it shouldn't be. For
example, on some systems, if a sector on a disk is marginal,
the system will retry a read operation a large number of times,
during which other software performance could suffer.

Another thing I've heard of, that can affect a system, is
networking. On some computers, a DHCP problem can cause momentary
outages, which means the networking stack is tying up the system.

You might also have a look at what tasks are running on your
system, and see if there is anything running that shouldn't be
there.

The problem could even be a bug in the MP3 application itself.
At least one problem posted on here was solved by upgrading to
a newer versions of the application.

If you can, try to time the period between skips as accurately
as possible. Post back with the period, and how much the
period varies between occurrences, as this may help identify
whether it is a hardware or software problem. If the skips
are very precisely timed, it could be hardware, or the application
itself, whereas if the period has a large variation, the
problem could be in the software domain somewhere.

BTW - What is the name of the MP3 player application ? Is the
data it is playing, on a local disk, or on a networked disk ?

HTH,
Paul

 

Dude no point in posting this over and over.

Your problem is NOT due to hardware or the drivers you have installed. The
SoundMAX works very well on my system and everybody else who's using it.
It's probably due to some third party software or driver.

 

Thanks for all of that.

The skipping occurs at random intervals. It can occur 4 time in a
minute, then wait a minute or two to occur again, then whatever.

The MP3 player is Windows Media Player. The MP3 files are on a local
hard disk. The CD also skips, and those are not MP3 files, they are
commercial CDs.

None of the tasks running are unexpected. I've had the problem since the
first day I've assembled the machine, when it had almost nothing
installed on it.

For certain, it is whatever is behind the "System" Image Name in Task
Manager. There is a 100% correlation to it's spike at 18% and the audio
drops. I have never seen the "System" Image Name spike when the WMP
player is NOT running. If it was a DHCP conflict then I'd expect it to
occur regularly regardless of WMP. I have unconvered a few np posts via
google that link the audio skipping to the "System" Image Name spiking
but no of those thread included resolutions.

Obvious next step for me, now that I've written that out, is to try
another program for the CDs and HDD based MP3 files.

 

It does also skip with winamp.

I noticed that besides the Image Name "System" spike, a second instance
of brmfrsmg.exe appears during the audio drop. brmfrsmg.exe is
associated with a Brother printer I have. Maybe it's the problem. Not
much on it on usenet, so I've posted a question to Brother.