Sign In:     

Forum: General Discussion

Topic: Need serious help, I'm at a loss of ideas. - Page: 1

This part of topic is old and might contain outdated or incorrect information

My Music always has to skip whenever I load a new track. I'm running on Vista. This happens with mp3's and music videos(mp4's)
This is the only thing preventing me from using VDJ at a Gig and making me consider getting the TTM57 because I want to do video.

My Specs:
1.5 GHz Intel® Centrino® Duo processor
Microprocessor Cache 2MB L2 Cache
Memory 2GB
Video Graphics NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GS
Video Memory Up to 1023 MB, 256 MB dedicated

I've tried everything on this forums in regards to tweaking this laptop. Thing is, there's nothing to tweak. This laptop is dedicated to music. I have nothing but VirtualDJ, ScratchLIVE, the latest DirectX, latest Nvidia drivers and latest sound drivers loaded on it. I have absolutely no other programs on it. My music is on an external hard drive.

I even get skips once in a while when my buffer is set to 1024ms. What else can I try?
Laptop is a HP dv9535nr.
I've tried different sound cards, the U46DJ, the SL1.

This laptop plays absolutely fine with ScratchLIVE at buffer 2ms. It even played out smooth with the new VSL on a friends TTM57. So I don't think it's below specs.

I simply don't understand what else I can do to fix this issue. if there's anything you guys might wanna throw out there, please let me know.

 
Posted Wed 02 Jan 08 @ 12:32 pm
did you try to disable turbo catche?
 
Thanks Cyder. That's something I'll try this evening. I did a search here on "turbo cache and I got some good results". I had previously done a search on skipping.
 
Hi,

I'm sure you've done this already, but have you turned off windows sidebar and disabled all the windows services you don't need? (I think I've only got about 5 services running on my vista gig laptop)

Also, (you probably already know, but...) have you got the latency in virtual dj set to "auto", so that it's only controllled by the asio sound card drivers?

Have you put the virtual dj sound settings on the lowest quality option to see if it still happens?

Have you set windows performance settings for "best performance" (control panel, system, advanced system settings- advanced tab, performance settings, visual effects tab, adjust for best performance)

Have you set windows to prioritiise background services? (It's better to have it set for programs, but setting for background services can help with skipping problems) (control panel, system, advanced system settings- advanced tab, performance settings, advanced tab, set for background services)


Have you disabled windows firewall, defender and user account control? oh and maybe automatic updating (there's a setting somewhere to turn off all the security warings you'll keep getting as well.

Have you checked that "Intel Speedstep" is enabled in the system bios (maybe dual core don't have this setting, but my centrino does)

Have you turned off all power saving options in windows? (Control panel, Power options, High performance)

Bet you've done most of that already!

Have a look in your graphics card setup, maybe there's a way to turn off the shared video memory and make it just use it's own dedicated ram. That can improve vdj performance i think.

Have you tried setting virtual dj to use just one core of the dual core processor? (some setting in windows task manager)

Failing all that have you tried re-formatting, re-installing windows, re-installing all your drivers, then directx, then virtual dj to see if that makes any difference!?!? lol

oh, and just for a laugh, have you tried some different external hard drives, or maybe do a test with some music/videos on the laptop's internal hard drive? Now I'm just stabbing in the dark though :)
 
is the wireless networking disabled ??

also turn off anti virus when you can or change them ... for instance , i can use Alwil by Avast , but not Trend Micro ....... i have had an external drive or 2 crap out on me , and i don't think you can get skips from that .....

skips are caused by one item stepping on another , when they are trying to use the cpu .....
 
Its wise to be careful what processes you disable in Vista as there can be adverse effects to others that may need them. My Vista setup runs somethin like 30+ processes flawlessly. What I would do however is disable UAC, Sidebar, Defender, WIFI.
 
Good point. I can list the services I've got running if anybody wants to know. I can't believe he's having trouble with a machine with that kind of spec.
 
Yeah that would be great if u could post ur list as I wanna try it:)
 
I've got similar problems, although I suspect it's more subtle. My music has clicks and pops at times, especially when loading large videos in the other deck and such. I've tried a boatload of things to try and fix it (including almost all the things in this list, and many more). I even went all out and bought a MOTU Ultralite, and even that made no difference as to this issue (but provided something of an adventure of its own - but at least now I can run with the quality settings cranked to the max, and it sounds just as bad as max performance). Nothing I've tried has really made a difference, although it does seem that I get the best quality when playing only audio with the video turned off. (Yet it's still not quite perfect). I almost always need to do video though, so that doesn't help much. My home computer has audio problems too in many scenarios :P Both computers are running Vista Ultimate.

I've heard that XP tends to have fewer such problems with audio playback, so Mantahoe, it might be worth a try to set up another partition and dual boot into XP and see if things work any better. That's something I really oughta try myself but haven't gotten around to it.


As an aside, one rather odd thing I tried was to play the audio through the mixer, and have it go back into the soundcard from the mixer's record output. I then streamed the audio over the internet and listened over the internet while connected via remote desktop to my computer.

I think that scenario gave me the cleanest sound I had ever heard, but when I turned on video (or started playing videos, at least) things got much more crackly. This lead me to believe that it could be an issue with my video card - removing the video drivers altogether made no difference, however. I have an ATI Radeon X1950 Pro, FYI. And by the way, mixing video over remote desktop is a wee bit tricky, but it can be done :)
 
perhaps an expensive test, but has anyone tried upgrading their hardrives to 7200rpm spinrate drives? could it also be a problem of having fragmented drives? or a problem with the block size being too low?

for those of you who have dedicated machines towards djing, you should be able to afford trying some of these things out. block size usually improves performance since it governs how much of a file gets read in one go. this is especially useful for lower spinrate drives and when you are always reading large files. the only fallback is that more space is wasted from the drive due to not being able to fill the block entirely. ie using 256k blocks and dropping a 16kb file on the drive means 256k-16k is wasted
 
Supacon this could be a conflict between the video card and something else in your system. Check out your IRQs. I had this same issue with the POS Dell I had issues with last year and I was sharing IRQ between the video card and the soundcard. Never actually got it fixed just built another system.

Also in the new system I am usin the same card as u with no issues in sound.

Paz, great suggestion however I was usin a 7200 drive with the same issues. It all boils down the the system as well as the OS. IRQs are very important and if anything is sharing ie. usb with others u will be screwed.
 
have you tried getting rid of vista?!:)
 
On this system VISTA runs flawless. Vista isnt an issue for all, but some it can be.
 
I'll let you know in few days, I just got a new comp with vista ultimate, so far vista was a big disapoinment.
 
Ya got to turn off UAC, Defender, and the sidebar and have all the current drivers. I know some that are havin issues due to the fact that their sound card isnt supported and that can be an issue.
 
Yes I have UAC turned off. I actually did everything you guys mentioned here last night. Still getting a little skip when the song loads. I noticed yesterday that it mostly skips right when the song I load completes loading. Funny thing is that my CPU usage is not high at all. When playing mp3's, is at less than 10%. When I do video's it never goes above 50%. I also tried the turning off turbo cache using Rivatuner.
All the rest were originally like that i.e things like disabling the wireless card. Like I said before, this is a gig machine so it doesn't have antivirus or Defender running. It only has VDJ, ScratchLIVE and the latest drivers installed.

Anybody else using an HP dv9535nr? Maybe the problem is isolated to this laptop when it comes to VDJ.


And yeah, if you can come up with the list of unnecessary services that can be turned off in Vista, that would be great.
 
So here's the services I've got starting in Vista Home Premium.

By the way, this was only done through trial and error, along with a bit of reading on the internet.

Click on the windows button, all programs, accessories,run, then type services.msc into the box that appears and press enter. The serices window appears, so you just go down the list, right click on each one, go to properties, and change "startup type" to "automatic" for thes ones you want and to either "Manual" or "Disabled" for the ones you don't want. "Manual" is a good option for any that you don't think you'll need, but they can be easily started if it turns out you do need them.

Anyway, these are the ones I've got set to "Automatic"

Cryptographic services

DCOM Server Process Launcher

Group Policy Client (Maybe you can disable this one, but I enabled it on my computer, I just can't remember why)

Human Interface Device Access

Multimedia Class Scheduler

Plug and Play

Remote Procedure Call (RPC)

Software Licensing

Thread Ordering Service

User Profile Service (Again, maybe you don't need this, but it's on mine at the moment)

Windows Audio

Windows Audio Endpoint Builder

And that's it :)

BTW, for anybody else reading, if you get it all wrong and mess it up, you can just start windows in "safe mode" to re-actiate any services that shouldn't hae been stopped.
 
So basically, these are the only ones that you have running? If you say yes, I will disable all the rest I have.
 
Yep, these are the only ones I have running.

BTW, Windows won't let you disable Task Scheduler so that one will be on as well.

So everything apart from those I mentioned above have been set to Disabled in the Services.msc window.
 
Cheers Andy, I will give it a shot later tonight.
 
57%