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A bunch of somewhat n00bish questions

post #1 of 8
1/14/10 at 4:59pm
Thread Starter 
Hey guys,

I have found relevant bits and pieces through searching, but nothing that paints me a complete picture, so I thought I'd come to the computer audio gurus for help.

I'm thinking about upgrading my computer from XP to Windows 7 and wanted to know what the implications would be for my audio experience.

Today, I use Winamp with ASIO4ALL. This works reasonably well, except that I get the occasional dropouts and skips which I was hoping would go away after adding 2 GB of RAM to my computer but continue to be a source of constant annoyance.

My two questions are: will Windows 7 involve less of these annoying dropouts with ASIO? Alternatively, are there higher-performing and more seamlessly integrated bitperfect plugins for use with Windows 7 that I don't have available in XP?

Many thanks in advance for the help, friends!
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post #2 of 8
1/14/10 at 5:33pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by AmanGeorge View Post
Hey guys,

I have found relevant bits and pieces through searching, but nothing that paints me a complete picture, so I thought I'd come to the computer audio gurus for help.

I'm thinking about upgrading my computer from XP to Windows 7 and wanted to know what the implications would be for my audio experience.

Today, I use Winamp with ASIO4ALL. This works reasonably well, except that I get the occasional dropouts and skips which I was hoping would go away after adding 2 GB of RAM to my computer but continue to be a source of constant annoyance.

My two questions are: will Windows 7 involve less of these annoying dropouts with ASIO? Alternatively, are there higher-performing and more seamlessly integrated bitperfect plugins for use with Windows 7 that I don't have available in XP?

Many thanks in advance for the help, friends!
For Windows 7 you will want to look into WASAPI support for your audio player. Not sure about Winamp support for this but i bet such a thing exists.

However about your dropouts and skips, what do you have your buffer and latency settings in ASAPI set for? If you have the buffer and latency set low this can cause that behaviour, for purely audio playback you really do not care about latency and should set that to a pretty high value.
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post #3 of 8
1/14/10 at 5:59pm
Was on XP/Winamp/Asio, am now on Win7/Winamp/Asio and it works just as good as on XP. Drop-outs are usually latency issues. Do you have any wireless cards inside your computer?
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post #4 of 8
1/14/10 at 6:14pm
hey Aman

you could try this app, see if the problem is due to rebel drivers hogging your system: http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f46/vi...1/#post6312862

it's entirely possible to get glitch-free audio on XP...and even fully bit-perfect if you fancy that
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post #5 of 8
1/14/10 at 6:18pm
Dropouts and skips can have many reasons
Use the task manager to check for processes peaking
DPC Latency Checker is a very usefull tool too
The Well Tempered Computer
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post #6 of 8
1/14/10 at 6:52pm
Thread Starter 
Hmm, let's see if fiddling with the latency setting in asio helps things at all (now set at 1024 samples)
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post #7 of 8
1/14/10 at 10:56pm
I am using Windows 7, foobar2000 with ASIO4ALL and don't get any issues. I have the standard amount of ram for these day's gamer's computers: 6GB. Never use WinAMP anymore. Stopped working in XP, just froze on startup, not going to try with Windows 7 yet, will probably do the same thing.
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post #8 of 8
1/14/10 at 11:31pm
I had that issue before I made foobar buffer the files to the memory. I had skips with 1000ms buffer (largest possible with wasapi with my dac) but now I can use 50ms without any problems at all.
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