After I upgraded my linux server to software RAID5 - 4x 120 Gb disks, I get a few buffer underruns each day. It happens when I am doing disk intensive stuff to my linux server. It is probably caused by the old ATA33 on-board controller.

Anyway, is there a way to increase the output buffer above 20 secs?

Winamp only use 11 Mb RAM. I wouldn't mind using 100 Mb if I could get a bigger buffer.

I am using DirectSound SSRC output 2.2.3.

2.23 version is not the newest! 2.26 is and you can get it from here:

http://www.blorp.com/~peter/zips/wa2update.exe

or switching the options from that plugin, could help!

Annuka HAS got the newest version, he was talking about the SSRC version, but suprisingly i just got version 2.2.2 and not 2.2.3!

i highly doubt if there's any serious way to help a person having 20+ seconds hdd lag....
might be possible to set higher buffer size by editing winamp.ini, there's possibly another (higher) limit used internally.

[edit] well, out_wave is opensource, you can always make a hacked build allowing insane buffer sizes ..... i'm too lazy to look at out_ds source right now.

Why use SSRC it uses much more resources if enabled...

You could try to use regular DS Output (without SSRC) and increase the priority of winamp.

I think in in_mp3 there is an option to choose what size files are cached...so you just rize that number to let's say for example 6144 (6*1024). The default is 128KB.

yes you can even make the in_mp3 plugin cache entire files if they are less then a given size

The issue is with the server, not the machine running Winamp.

The server cannot deliver the 920 kbs required by my FLAC playback, when it is busy doing other stuff, i.e. running multiple encoding processes that both read and write to the software RAID5 disk-set. When the transfer rate has been too low for some time, a buffer underrun occurs.

There are no problems with mp3/ogg < 320 kbps.

A obvious solution is to minimize the heavy disk operations or replace the IDE disks with SCSI. Last is a little too expensive for me, since we are talking 4x 120 Gb.