Winamp keeps cutting out

[Clarey]

I've never had much trouble with Winamp before , however I have the newest version 5.32 and although we are on broadband, it doesn't seem to be able to cope with playing music at the same time as loading another site up and doing things on other sites. Any ideas why? I've adjusted my buffering but that didnt make any difference.

[Clarey]

has anyone got any help for me? im a newbie to all this so i don't know where to start

[JonnyMac]

Try the DirectSound config tweaks. Close & restart Winamp after making the DS tweaks. Although not necessary, you may want to close Winamp, close down Windows and restart. Some users have found, changes don't fully take effect until a reboot.

No luck? Please provide system & Winamp specs. What music are you referring to, from the local hard drive or playing/streaming from the internet?

[Clarey]

Hi thanks for the advice, i'll give that a try later on today, and let you know how it goes. The music I was referring to was streaming from the internet.

[Clarey]

Okay I changed the soundcard options from Primary Sound Driver to the option underneath which was SigmaTel. It seemed to make SOME difference- i could do most things without it skipping, but it hasn't fully solved the skipping, as i found out when i went on a site which had a lot of graphics loading up. I am not sure how to find out the specs- where do i look for these?

[thorntcl]

I am getting the same problem where I am using SpinAmp and ever since upgrading to the newest version the playback is choppy at best.
I will try different drivers, but what happened here WinAmp?
Been working fine for years until this build...

[JonnyMac]

@ Clarey

For the system specifications, Start button > click on the Run icon > type dxdiag.exe click OK or press Enter

In the System tab you will find

Windows Version
Name of the processor/CPU and speed
Memory
DirectX version

Click Display tab for the for the name of the video card

Click the Sound (or Sound 1) tab for the name of the soundcard or soundchip


Also, please include a Hijack This log and an One for Nunz report (my_plugin_list). Instructions for posting the log/report are in the system specs link.

@ thorntcl
SpinAmp, may have to updated by the developer/author for newer versions of Winamp. Try contacting the developer of SpinAmp.

[Clarey]

Here are my specs, hope this helps you to tell what the problem might be?



System Information
------------------
Time of this report: 11/25/2006, 16:47:34
Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_gdr.050301-1519)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: Dell Inc.
System Model: Dell DM051
BIOS: Phoenix ROM BIOS PLUS Version 1.10 A02
Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.40GHz (2 CPUs)
Memory: 1022MB RAM
Page File: 425MB used, 2033MB available
Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
DxDiag Version: 5.03.2600.2180 32bit Unicode

[JonnyMac]

We still need to know what you have for a soundcard and an HijackThis log.

Another way find out what you have for a soundcard...

ComputerHope.com: How to determine what type of sound card I have?

If you don't find the System Information icon in the Accessories folder, it may be in the System Tools sub-folder (inside the Accessories folder). If you are not familiar or uncomfortable with the inside of computer, I would not suggest using "opening the computer" as the other method.

Instructions for posting a HiJackThis log are in the system & Winamp specs link.
It may take awhile for one of us to evaluate the HjT log and make the proper recommendations.

[Clarey]

This is my soundcard info:



Name SigmaTel High Definition Audio CODEC
Manufacturer SigmaTel
Status OK
PNP Device ID HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_8384&DEV_7680&SUBSYS_102801AB&REV_1032\4&B5B2454&0&0001
Driver c:\windows\system32\drivers\sthda.sys (5.10.4548.0 nd84 cp1, 176.50 KB (180,736 bytes), 17/11/2005 01:44)

Name Unimodem Half-Duplex Audio Device
Manufacturer Microsoft
Status OK
PNP Device ID MODEMWAVE\0\{7EF22AA8-E369-45BF-B8E3-D22CCF117A16}
Driver c:\windows\system32\drivers\modemcsa.sys (5.1.2600.0 (xpclient.010817-1148), 15.75 KB (16,128 bytes), 17/11/2005 01:50)

[Clarey]

I have just UNINSTALLED an output plug-in that was listed under Direct sound (think it was called Outwave?) and this seems to have solved my buffering problems! People listen up!! plug ins are the cause!

[thorntcl]

Hi Clarey

What output plug-ins do you have left?

Cheers

[Clarey]

Nullsoft diskwriter output plug in

I've got crystal clear playback now....
only trouble is the song title no longer displays

any idea if there's a specific plug in i may have uninstalled during my uninstalling frenzy that may be for the song titles?

[Clarey]

Okay it appears i have fixed the song title dilemma by selecting options in the "jump to file" section

Yay to working winamp

any other tips to clean up winamp are welcome

[thorntcl]

Well I think it is finally working - I uninstalled DirectSound output and waveOut output.
I was then getting "sorry, can't disk write streams" so I reinstalled WinAmp 5.32 and all is ok now as it reinstalled those plug-ins.
I selected DirectSound in the Output plug-ins so it would use it as my output plug-in choice (another thread mentioned to do that) and all is resolved.
My choppy play is fixed...
thanks for the help

[Clarey]

Yep thats right, out of all the various tweaks you can do (buffering, etc) the selection of Direct Sound and uninstalling of Outwave had the best effect. Found it by accident but it worked a treat! No worries...

[squishy]

I recently upgraded to Vista, and my Sigmatel audio isn't recognized by Winamp 5.34. The result is choppy play when the hard drive hits. I've tried all the suggestions in the five other threads on "choppy playback", but to no avail.

I removed the wave-out plugin but did not have effect. Under directsound output settings, I've chosen SigmaTel High Definition Audio device for my primary device. So Winamp is at least detecting the sound hardware.

I've allowed (and also tried disabling) hardware acceleration, primary buffer, enabled cpu usage, etc. etc. etc.

I believe the problem is between Winamp, Vista, and the sound card drivers. Under Device Info, I get the following:

Certified:no, emulated: no
Supports sample rates from 100Hz to 200000Hz (continuous)
Hardware memory: N/A
Hardware mixing: unsupported
Speaker setup: stereo

I have the latest sigmatel drivers and utilities installed, of course. My system is Vista Home Premium 6, Intel Core 2 Duo T7600 @ 2.33GHz, 2046MB 667MHz RAM, DirectX10.

This will probably be fixed in the next release of Winamp, but I thought I'd mention it here rather than starting a sixth thread. Thanks

[thorntcl]

I stole this info from another thread...

Make sure you installed Winamp with 'Separate settings for each user' in the installer options.

Also which output plug-ins do you have left? I uninstalled my directsound one and then reinstalled winamp to get it back as I think my plug-in was corrupted...

[squishy]

I did the separate settings install too. As for the output- the only one I have is the direct sound. Winamp installed it by default (I didn't have an older version). I did try reinstalling, but no help. I reinstalled Windows XP, however, and now I have no problems.

[thorntcl]

another reason I don't want to go to Vista

btw I installed 5.34 full this morning and loads of problems (plays but no sound), I ended up uninstalling Winamp and removing all files and directories (except for my spinamp dll) and then reinstalling 5.33 lite...
I tried all the tricks too with 5.34 and no luck in getting in going... I will just put up with the notice that a new version is out

[squishy]

If you have a SigmaTel audio HD codec device in your laptop like I do (I have a Dell M1710), and getting choppy playback, this seems to help somewhat:

Go to the sound applet in control panel, click the speakers, then properties, then in the advanced tab, uncheck "allow applications to have exclusive access to this device".

Seems to make a small difference. The choppiness is bearable with this setting, but just barely.

Please, Winamp, please please please release a Vista compatible version soon!!!

[photolarry]

Ok I am posting this here as well since it helped me with buffering problems for internet shoutcast radio stations with winamp. There are two settings that help. First go into preferences. Under Plugins, there is one for input and one for output. First, select MPEG (in_mp3.dll) and click Config. Then under the streaming tab, change the buffer size from 64K to a much larger number. I put mine at 4096 (4MB). Next go into the output settings. Pick the output you use. For me, I use the direct sound output plugin. So click the config button for that. By the way, the option should be similar for the wave output. Change the buffer size under Buffering tab from 2000ms to 20000ms. That is max value in direct sound. Not sure what the max is for wave. That should do it. Now it should buffer a lot more so there is less skipping and problems when you are on a slow or sporadic connection.