Windows Me (audio / soundcard related)

[316a]

Hello ,
Quick PC type question , and it is actually audio related . I have that POS Windows Me on my pc , and have always had problems with audio playback . Do anything , open any extra applications or even looking at it (it seems that way!) and it skips when playing a CD or listening to internet radio . Is there a fix for this or is the operating system really that crap ? It's doing my coconut in and have left it too long to sort out really , bought an M-audio Sonica (USB soundcard) a few months ago and just using it as a DAC has made a real improvement to the kitchen/office system ! That is when it doesn't fart , stutter or stop that is ! Bill Gates has got a lot to answer for...

316a

[JBL]

Make sure your using the latest driver for your sound card and usb. Generally the problem is their. But some system configuration will always skip wahtever you do with it. (And changing the OS is no garantee to cure the problem.)

Also check if you can have a bios upgrade for you motherboard.

If you want further help you could also post us your complete system configuration.

[fdegrove]

Hi,

Make sure your using the latest driver for your sound card and usb.

Yup.

ME really sux big time in the driver dep.
Check for any updates regurarly on the soundcards' manufacture site and keep ME up to date.

Cheers,

[grimberg]

Originally posted by JBL
changing the OS is no garantee to cure the problem

Partly true. Windows ME is (fortunately) the last version in a lineage of a pretty GUI built on top of a 16 bit OS (yes, the old DOS). That software aberration should have been abandoned years ago, the top limitation being single threaded processing, where only one process runs at a time. A multi-threaded OS can share the CPU time among processes in a manner that it appears that all of them are running at the same time.
In your case, it seems like the problem can be narrowed down to disk I/O. Every time the hard disk needs CPU time, the audio card has to wait. The slower the hard disk and CPU are, the longer the wait. In your case, long enough for you to notice.
Windows XP, 2000 and NT as well as Linux are multi-threaded.

[SHiFTY]

One thing you could try is tweaking your BIOS settings when you first turn on the computer. From memory, there is an option to "enable memory hole at 15-16MB" which cured the skipping problem for some cards.

[fdegrove]

Hi,

One thing you could try is tweaking your BIOS settings when you first turn on the computer. From memory, there is an option to "enable memory hole at 15-16MB" which cured the skipping problem for some cards.

That is a memory adress range normally used by VGA cards.

What could cause the problem though are PCI latency settings in the bios...assuming the soundcard uses the PCI bus.

Cheers,

[Netlist]

I had a lot of problems in the past with VIA-chipsets and soundcards.
I'll never again sell a PC with VIA-chipset to someone who wants to 'work' with music on a PC.
Don't know if VIA corrected the problems on their new chipsets.

Just one of the many possibilities

/Hugo

[fdegrove]

Hi,

Don't know if VIA corrected the problems on their new chipsets.

Yup.

They patched it later on.

For work I always rely on Intel MBs, and since i don't have time to play...

[Netlist]

Originally posted by fdegrove
Hi,

For work I always rely on Intel MBs, and since i don't have time to play...

From the moment I started posting here, I don't have time to play, and no time to work

[sangram]

Chnaging from ME, even to '98, should mostly fix the problem.

ME is a slow resource-hungry POS that I used for about 8 months before I sold off my computer. I regret having installed it at all...

I use 98 and 2000 now, and only 2000 for my audio work.

BTW I have a via KT266a DDR chipset and it works great for audio. They had a problem with KT 133 and KT133A, and have traditionally had a problem with USB.