i'm not sure if this qualifies as a problem
 

when i play techno music with winamp my system slows down sometimes. i'm not sure why it does that but it only does that with techno music.

wtf?!
smart system

Local file, or stream? MP3 or some other file format? Computer Specs, Winamp version and what plugins are installed would all be useful info.

i'm using a local file. mp3 of course. 400mhz dell w/128 megs of RAM. winamp 5.03a with the wma, cd, mpeg, wav, nsv and directshow. and waveout and directsound outputs.

That makes no sense that a certain genre would act differently.
Is it one song? If multiple songs, did you get them from the same source?

i got a couple of songs that do that at some spots in the songs. i got the songs from winmx. it doesn't slow my system down too much though. i'm just wondering why it would do that.

maybe vbr?

:confused:

Elchevelle NEVER exaggerates.

the files that do slow the system down are vbr. didn't think about that until siebe mentioned it.

Only to the ladies;)

maybe the vbr file/header is corrupt and wa needs more cpu to process those files, but i'm not sure about that
try a search on 'vbr fix'
you know how to use the forum search or google :p
but if you don't care about a bit of slowness, let it be ;)

do vbr files use more cpu to process compared to cbr mp3s?

it uses varying amounts, which would explain the varying machine use.

this is why i like using cbr files.

but as far as i know, a vbr file with an average of for instance 160kbps should not use more cpu (meanly) than a cbr of 160kbps
and the variation in cpu use is that small, that you should not notice it

the song that slows the system down most is a vbr between 256kbps and 128kbps.

I'm betting this is likely the problem. Especially since they came from p2p, and not your personal collection. Try ripping a few cds with a high vbr setting (like lame -alt-preset extreme) and see if any of the files it produces give you similar results.

i used CDEX and ripped one song with the vbr-new method. and it does slow down quite a bit more. the vbr is between 128kbps and 320kbps. the song i used was michelle branch - are you happy now?. it usually slows down more noticably while opening programs like mozilla firefox. sometimes it'll even start skipping a little bit.

my other media programs are slowing down and skipping and whatnot now for some reason. i don't know what's going on but it's getting worse and worse as i play my music. even the microsoft cd player is doing it. any ideas as to what may be going on?

You're getting vague now. Are you telling music playing on your system is slowing down your pc in general?
Tried restarting your pc already?

Maybe spyware?
Run spybot to scan and remove it if you have any:
http://www.spybot.info/

If that doesn't help, you'd better post in the tech forum with all specifications you can give. (ie system specs: os, soundcard, directX version, etc.)

yes music slowing my system down for some reason. it's not just winamp anymore. i think i'm gonna do a format later on. so i can get rid of all the crap i miss and such. i've been wanting to do a format for a while to open up some space on my hard drive.

what do you really need for a format other than the windows cd? or is that it?

the drivers of your hardware (if your hardware is not supported by windows by default)
but you can get those mostly from the internet as well
also, be sure your bios allows booting from a cd
if not make a bootdisk with cd driver support on it
but as far as i know, the bios nowadays mostly allows boot from cd
that's all i can think of atm...

what's your buffersize for directsound in WA?
sorry prolly not much help but that's about all i can think of besides virri possibly

prebuffer is at 500ms and the buffer length is at 2000ms. i reformated my system last night. it freed up almost half of my 2.1gig hard drive.