My sound(music) skips so much!

[Anaconda]

I have a 850 mhz athlon with chaintech 7ata mobo, 256 megs of SDRAM, 30 gig quantum fireball as, soundblaster awe64 and my music skips and the computer seems to be slow when i have only a couple of programs are running e.g. AIM, direct connect, winamp. What is wrong? Is it the soundcard?

 

[Blain]

Is your CD-ROM drive any good?

 

[rbV5]

Make sure you have DMA enabled on your hardrive

 

[Anaconda]

ok, DMA enabling is a big issue for this type of problem. What I need to know is I have WIN ME, and i dont find it in device manager, i have via 4in1 drivers. I cannot find the DMA enabling...

 

[DaveJ]

The VIA drivers don't have the DMA checkbox. Not sure if it's enabled by default. FWIW, I think the original Win98 VIA drivers work much better than the 4in1's do... you might try uninstalling the VIA IDE drivers to see if that'll help.

Dave

 

[Anaconda]

I did, and it reinstalled again after I restarted. I just want my computer to run smoothly. Please help

 

[Anaconda]

I use one program(filesharing prog), and system resources goes down 30% slowing everything down from mouse cursor to skipping sound.

 

[Anaconda]

ANYone know how to enable DMA for WIN ME users? I have VIA 4in1 drivers

 

[rich1er]

Are you sure your ram is recongnized and in place? I used to have a similar problem when i had a bad stick of ram. I think the DMA is enabled by default in WinME. I don't have that check box either.

 

[Anaconda]

What did you do with your bad stick of ram? Mine is Crucial, supposedly the "best" ram there is, and since the DMA is enabled by default, how come it still skips? AH! SO FRUSTRATING PLZ HELP! Should i replace my ram? AH!!
:|

 

[Blain]

Why is the focus on everything BUT the CD-ROM drive itself? I've got a Memorex drive that gets flaky (skips) with some retail CDs. I can slap another drive in it's place and never change the settings, and the CD will play fine.
What brand of drive are you having the problems with?

 

[randomlinh]

i think he's refering to mp3's skipping.... if not, nm then.

 

[rbV5]

<Why is the focus on everything BUT the CD-ROM drive itself> Unless he's playing mp3's from a CD, the CD Rom device is likely not the problem.

How did the 4in1 drivers install themselves? Its still sounds like a DMA problem to me, why not try reinstalling the VIA 4 in 1 drivers, you know the ones from Via.

 

[Anaconda]

I'm just playing mp3's off winamp from my hard drive, and i reinstalled the via 4in1 drivers. Still skipping. When i checked the properties for my computer and checked the properties for Computer. i looked in the Interrupt Request(IRQ) and i saw that something called ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering that was sharing the same IRQ request with my sound controller. The IRQ is set at 5. How can i get rid of that ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering ? It doesn't seem to be in any of the system devices. I think that was causing the skipping because they're all sharing the same IRQ thus causing conflicts and such. what should i do?

 

[virtuamike]

I've been having the same probs with winamp skipping too. Here's my system:

P3700->973, Asus CUSL2, 256MB PC133 CL2, SB Live Value, GF2 GTS 32MB, Quantum KA 18GB 7.2K, Quantum lct15 15GB 5.4K, Adaptec 2940

Running W2K w/ DX8a, had the same prob when I was running DX7. Messed with Winamp buffer settings, defragged drives, cache the entire song and nada. Can't get the skipping to go away. Starting to think it's SB related, read on the Winamp webpage that it's caused by video card and sound card fighting for bus. Possible because W2K assigns IRQ9 to everything.

BTW is DMA auto for W2K? I remember I needed to do a registry hack to enable it in NT4, wonder if it's the same. Can't find the checkbox like in W98. Any help greatly appreciated. Thinking about picking up the Phillips Acoustic Edge this weekend just to see if it makes a difference, any comments?

 

[rbV5]

I think my comp assigns everything to irq10, but I have no problems. Thats how the ACPI Hal works, it just assigns everything to virtual irq's beyond what you would normally have and makes setup with multiple devices(like my comp) MUCH easier. I always had irq conflicts before win2k with half the hardware..now never any problems. Maybe if any of your devices are non-ACPI compliant, they are causing the problem?

 

[randomlinh]

ACPI is no good for me, i my NIC has probs, so it's all good w/o ACPI.

when i have a live, sound was perfect. then i got a vortex 2 for the optical out to MD, i kept getting pops.. usually audiable only when the music was soft. Well, i narrowed it down to my NIC, it can't be set at autodetect (for speed of network). strange. problem still presists, but VERY VERY slightly, and rare.

Hopefully, i can nab a Herc XP and give it a try, looks very nice.

 

[Anaconda]

well i fixed it, i just got a new sound card, SB live!

 

[Anaconda]

oh btw, i just got upgraded my computer a lot and i was wondering which parts i have to update my BIOS for. My system rig is below. If you know where to get them plz tell me, thx