sound problem pcg-fr415m

[K-tch]

Hi,

I have a tiny problem with my VAIO
when I am playing mp3 songs with winamp (not that i use another prog to play them) sometimes the sound goes somewhat slower for a second or 2 en then returns to normal.

It doens't happen with the sound of dvd's or divx movies, nor with the sound of games, just mp3. It's a little annoying.

It is not caused by processor overload, but it happens more often when I scroll down a page for example. Any tips ?

[K-tch]

It's me again with extra intel

I've been watching performance tab in windows taskmanager, more specifically the cpu-usage graph, and I've noticed that this "sound-hanging-problem" occurs when there are spikes in this graph that go up to about 50% while the rest of the graph more or less appears stable around 10% cpu usage.

Does this rule out hard disk problems?
And what is possible to cause these spikes?

(And did not do a system restore yet)

Thx again,

K-tch

[kee-lo_]

Question: Do you have a second battery installed?

[jammold]

50% peaks are caused by the CPU working on something. The gaps are where Winamp has buffered the audio data into RAM and is playing this back from RAM to stabilse CPU use, then Winamp reads ahead more data and so on until the end of the song.

Try defragmenting your hard disk drive(s), as this will help your computer read the data on your hard disk more effectively and see if this makes a difference.

Here's how to defragment Drive C (easy adapted for other drives)

Windows XP Non-classic mode GUI

1. Click Start > My Computer
2. Right-click the C drive [VAIO]
3. On the properties page, click the Tools tab at the top.
4. Click Defragment
5. Click the Defragment button (analysis will be done anyway)...

[K-tch]

A 2nd battery installed? No. Just one, that came with the notebook, but I'm almost always using the adapter.

I've drefragged my HD already, both partitions, I think I even did it twice.
I also tried playing songs from my external harddrive which was just formatted, didn't help either.

Concerning the cpu spikes. They don't go over 60% processor load. Playong an MP3 isn't that hard for a compuer I guess, so that shouldn't pose a problem.

Someone mentioned something about RAM. I've got this graphics chip (345 igp radeon) which uses shared memory. I've put it on the maximum 128 meg that it uses of my ram. I'll try putting it back to 64 although I seriously doubt this will help.

Thx a lot.

[kee-lo_]

Reset those settings.

[Woody27]

K-tech,

You may be surprised at how much of a difference setting the Radeon IGP back to 64 Mb may have!

This is particularly true if you only have either 256 or 512 Mb RAM installed on your laptop. The computer is probably writing information back and forth to the HDD due to memory shortage and causing the usage spikes!

See if the usage spikes coincide with a flutter of the HDD light!

Adding more RAM is always one of the best performance boosts you can give a modern PC.

Also don't worry that re-setting the Radeon IGP to 64 Mb will necessarily affect it's performance, it will grab the extra memory when it needs to! :smileygrin:

Hope this helps!

CW

[kee-lo_]

Integrated graphics do suck

[mrgame_cat]

I have had the same problem, except my audio speeds up.

It is a sample rate issue. Basically a program you run will play something at a certain sample rate, for instance 44,100 and when you shut it down it should release the sound drivers allowing them to be used by another program... A certain program is NOT releasing the drivers in your system thus any subsequent programs started which use audio will be locked at the previous (and usually incorrect) sample rate.

I don't think you need to send your laptop to sony.

I will describe my problem and how I solved it (for the time being)...

I had installed;

PowerDVD5
Foobar (like Media Player)
Media Player 10
Loads of audio apps.

Sometimes I would play something in Foobar, then shut it down and load Powerdvd. The dvd would act like it was in fast forward.

This problem extended to all other apps when it reared its ugly head, including Quciktime, WMP10, cubase sx (when using audio as opposed to midi)

I am not entirely sure how my fix worked but it did...

I uninstalled Foobar!

It seems a lot of third party programs coded before SP2 are mildly incompatible with said update.

I suggest you remove all unnessecary programs which deal with audio. It may very well solve your problem.

(Vague solution I know, but it won't hurt to try)

[mrgame_cat]

how the hell did my post end up in here? sorry. i will re post it in the correct thread

[mrgame_cat]

hang on it is the correct thread...

lol