topic Re: sound problem pcg-fr415m in PCs & Accessories

sound problem pcg-fr415m

K-tch — Mon, 15 Nov 2004 19:29:33 GMT

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 ?

Re: sound problem pcg-fr415m

kee-lo_ — Mon, 15 Nov 2004 19:31:43 GMT

Does the same happen in Windows Media Player?

Re: sound problem pcg-fr415m

K-tch — Mon, 15 Nov 2004 20:49:06 GMT

Yes it does,

and I just updated media player to the latest version.

Re: sound problem pcg-fr415m

kee-lo_ — Mon, 15 Nov 2004 20:57:19 GMT

Have you tried reinstalling your soundcard?

Re: sound problem pcg-fr415m

K-tch — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 10:02:40 GMT

Ok, have I reinstalled the audio driver. The problem is not gone.

The driver I now installed seems to be another one than I had before; but doesn"t solve the problem.

Thx for your time,

K-tch

Re: sound problem pcg-fr415m

TygerTyger — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 13:55:25 GMT

Are you running lots of programs in the background......or anything taking up lots of processor time? It sounds like Winamp isn't able to read off the hard drive fast enough.

Re: sound problem pcg-fr415m

kee-lo_ — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 15:53:34 GMT

I would send it in to Sony

Re: sound problem pcg-fr415m

K-tch — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 18:55:25 GMT

No, I am not running a lot in the background. Just the stuff that loads ( norton antivirus) at startup, messenger and browsing.

I know that the harddrive is slow, but playing a stupid mp3 ... but it in the ram mem and winamp doesn't need my harddrive.

Sending it in ... *sigh* ... this is the only problem, all the rest works great, I'm really happy with it. ( 0 broken pixels )
I don't think it's worth it.

Could it me my mp3 codec? Although I doubt this.

Re: sound problem pcg-fr415m

kee-lo_ — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 20:19:09 GMT

I doubt it too.

I guess you could try running Spybot S&D and Ad Aware

Re: sound problem pcg-fr415m

K-tch — Sat, 20 Nov 2004 17:32:48 GMT

I've done an ad-aware scan and a virus scan. No help.

I just purchased a Maxtor external Harddrive (dv 5000) and placed mp3's on that drive and played them from there : no help.

So I think it's not the harddrive's problem. I still think it is a software related thing.

I might to a system format and use the restore dvd's ... . That means a load of work, deleting the progs I don't want, reinstalling the ones I want.
If that doesn't work ... no option but sending the laptop to Sony. And I can't miss a working computer.

*sigh*

Thx for all your time guys.

Greetzz.

Re: sound problem pcg-fr415m

K-tch — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 20:16:47 GMT

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

Re: sound problem pcg-fr415m

kee-lo_ — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 20:48:22 GMT

Question: Do you have a second battery installed?

Re: sound problem pcg-fr415m

jammold — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 20:55:31 GMT

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)...

Re: sound problem pcg-fr415m

K-tch — Tue, 23 Nov 2004 10:26:53 GMT

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.

Re: sound problem pcg-fr415m

kee-lo_ — Tue, 23 Nov 2004 14:35:25 GMT

Reset those settings.

Re: sound problem pcg-fr415m

Woody27 — Tue, 23 Nov 2004 16:00:38 GMT

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

Re: sound problem pcg-fr415m

kee-lo_ — Tue, 23 Nov 2004 16:23:58 GMT

Integrated graphics do suck

Re: sound problem pcg-fr415m

mrgame_cat — Tue, 23 Nov 2004 17:03:03 GMT

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)

Re: sound problem pcg-fr415m

mrgame_cat — Tue, 23 Nov 2004 17:06:25 GMT

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

Re: sound problem pcg-fr415m

mrgame_cat — Tue, 23 Nov 2004 17:09:23 GMT

hang on it is the correct thread...

lol