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Topic: HTPC Stuttering Issues (Read 1838 times) previous topic - next topic
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HTPC Stuttering Issues

Hi all,

I have great success on a four year old machine running foobar with the DVD Audio and SACD plug ins.  No problems in playback or conversions at all.

Now I have a new HTPC build.  The SACD plug in works on 2 channel, and stutters on 6 channel. 

The DVD Audio plug in does not work at all.

I have tried a variety of combinations of versions of Foobar and the two plug ins.  Nothing seems to work.

I have increased buffers.  Tried various output modes for the DSD and bit rates.  Turned exclusive modes for the drivers on and off.  Ran the utility that shows system information and nothing seems overloaded.

Any thoughts where to go next?  The system is Windows 8.1 pro, 8 gb, fresh build, Intel HD audio driver is from Dec. 2013 or so.

The kit is:  Intel NUC DN2820FYKH Bay Trail

Thanks for your thoughts.

HTPC Stuttering Issues

Reply #1 –
Quote
The SACD plug in works on 2 channel, and stutters on 6 channel.


This probably means that your CPU is too slow for 6-ch SACD.

HTPC Stuttering Issues

Reply #2 –
Quote from: lvqcl on
Quote
The SACD plug in works on 2 channel, and stutters on 6 channel.


This probably means that your CPU is too slow for 6-ch SACD.


I should mention that the unit did work ok in 6 channel sacd 88 kHz with one sacd which is an ISO of ziggy stardust from a ps3 conversion.

It also plays 6 channel flac files well.  It will not even convert DVD. Audio let alone play it.  So I think something else is going on.  Also I tried a utility recommended elsewhere in these forums which indicated that the CPU was not even at 30%.

Another data point.  The unit can play dots hd ma 5.1 in HD video just fine in mpc-HD.  Imagine that requires more CPU intensity than DVD audio or sacd playback.

HTPC Stuttering Issues

Reply #3 –
Turns out that the first two DVD Audio sources that were tested were somehow corrupted in the process of transferring to the HTPC. All other files were OK.

Also agree that the SACD conversions tax the CPU much more than DVD audio conversions.  Sticking to 44khz seems to work; but for that installation is appears that FLAC conversions are the preferred route. 

Thank you for suggesting I look more carefully at the CPU usage.

HTPC Stuttering Issues

Reply #4 –
It also depends on whether the SACD was compressed. Decompressing the DST format is 90% of the overhead of playing most SACDs. It's so slow, in fact, that the plug-in decompresses blocks of data in parallel using multiple threads. Handy that each block does not depend on the data from the previous blocks, eh?