This problem only appeared in the past week or so, I can't think of anything significant that's changed in that time period.

Out of the blue, I've started getting momentary jumps in audio playback, with a commensurate pause in mouse cursor movement. These interruptions happen only while playback is happening, and only in fb2k (WMP9 does not exhibit this problem), with mp3 or ape files. I've tried fiddling with thread priority, output type, output buffer sizes, and file buffer size, but to no avail. I've tried eliminating all background tasks and programs, and disabled Indexing service. I've also reinstalled foobar, and switched to version 0.8 (from 0.7.4).

Audio drivers have also been reinstalled twice.

So, any other ideas?

Win2k SP4
Via AC97 Audio

Any help is much appreciated, this is really driving me crazy.

anyone? please?



please?

You're not being ignored, it's just that you've already tried most of the stuff that tends to fix skips like that. I'm stumped as well.

Umm.... do you have any third-party plugins installed that might be causing this?

hmm, is this playing from disk or like internet radio?

try virus checkering and scan for spy/adware (lavasoft adaware is one free product) and trojans (moosoft has a nice trojan checker with free demo period). manually looking through running processes like you did probably precludes finding anything but its worth a shot.

in the distant past i remember having similar issues that resolved to an IRQ conflict. perhaps checking your BIOS? Probably has options for APIC or PIC (apic would be the modern choice). also moving cards around might solve it, motherboards with a lot of built in stuff generally share IRQs with specific slots, and just moving a PCI card might clear things up, though why it may have got all mixed up when you have changed nothing, dunno.

Installed any windows updates/hotfixes lately? Sometimes those pesky updates are automated...

Mostly just didn't want you feeling all alone. Write back either way, k?
lena

Well, I just discovered that the disk my audio is on is running in PIO Mode for some reason, and refuses to run in UDMA. I moved some files over to my striped array, and they seem to play fine from there, so I think the slower transfer mode is at least exacerbating the problem, if not outright causing it. Upon listening to WMP's playback again, it does seem to happen there as well. . .it's just much less noticeable <hypothetically> because .mp3's have a smaller disk I/O hit (due to the smaller file size) than the .ape's i heard the really bad skipping with in foobar do </hypothetically>. So, hopefully, if i can fix the disk issue, playback will be all hunky-dory

Soooo. . . looks like it's not a problem with foobar after all. I'm currently accepting suggestions on why my drive is stuck in PIO and how to get it into UDMA, as it should be. . . . . .

BIOS setup screens usually have some options you can set for the built-in IDE. Perhaps you might find an answer there.

Also check into actually moving your PCI card(s) around to different slots. Your raid probably is on a different IRQ from window's drive. Some motherboards will share things they might should not (like network or harddrive traffic and audio data). Checking the physical location of the cards, the IRQ assignments in BIOS (usually ok on auto though), and finally the IRQ Mode, either APIC or PIC, in bios.PIC also is called standard pc in windows and is a mode where there are only 16 IRQs and each is individually assigned. Which can lead to difficult settings requirements. APIC and Auto IRQ assignments are the default. All these settings can affect sound, and system stability/performance.

thanks for the tips, but I *think* it's resolved ::fingerscrossed::.

The whole saga: http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/ubb.x?...&m=279000453631

Thanks for posting that avinator, fixed my prob too