MB stutters when playing 192khz files while Foobar is perfect :(

[thelonius munk]

Over the past couple of months I posted here wondering why my old M-Audio sound card was having a problem with switching to varying sample rates within a playlist.

I decided to abandon the sound card and just installed a Topping D10 USB DAC which has an led that displays the sample rate. With either ASIO or WASAPI exclusive the device switches sample rates transparently so all is good there.

The problem comes when I try to play 24bit 192khz files. Using either ASIO or WASAPI MB stutters frequently, whatever size buffer I choose. It does this on all of my 192Khz files (downloaded from HD Tracks) but there is no problem with files 96khz or lower.

The same 192khz files play in a vanilla version of Foobar without any stutters. I haven't done anything to tweak Foobar, since I dislike its complexity. Anyway, that scenario seems to rule out a problem with the DAC or the files.

I realize that this a first world problem but I am puzzled by why Foobar works and MB doesn't. I can live without playing back the handful of albums I have in MB and just avoid buying more.

Switching to Foobar is not an option!

I'd appreciate any insight. Please let me know if you need more info, but this is an up to date Windows 10 pc with 8GBs of RAM and an i5 cpu.

[sveakul]

Here's some suggestions, after these I'm tapped out!

1.  If you are not using the latest verison of MusicBee (not mentioned), start by updating to the latest 3.2.x version from the last post on the "Latest Version" thread.

2.  Check out this post as a possibility: https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=20892.0

3.  The latest version of basswasapi.dll is already included with the latest version of MusicBee, but try also upating bassasio.dll to version 1.3.1.8 here: https://www.un4seen.com/stuff/bassasio.zip

4.  I assume you have tried experimenting with the "increase buffer size" and "load entire file into memory" settings in Prefs/Player/Sound device?

5.  What file format you don't state, but if they are M4A/AAC files (and hey I admit I don't even know if these can be encoded to 24bit/192kHz,!), try downloading bass_aac.dll from https://www.un4seen.com/download.php?z/2/bass_aac24 and putting it in your MusicBee folder to avoid the Windows codec.

I'm intrigued that you consider Foobar to be "complex", but applause to "Switching to Foobar is not an option!"  

[thelonius munk]

Thank you for the suggestions. The solution appears to be to play the 192khz files from the SSD I use as a boot drive. Attempting to play them from any of my various hard drives doesn't work. Live and learn.

[sveakul]

I'm glad you found a solution, but for curiosity's sake, did you try any or all of the suggestions first and nothing worked?  If it really is a data communication issue between your HD's and the boot SSD, it's still a surprise that loading the files into memory first didn't work, especially as you say the issue does NOT happen with Foobar.

[thelonius munk]

Yes, I tried your suggestions. I also moved the problematic files around between my hard drives. Some of my other fixed conventional hard drives exhibited the same problem while a relatively new USB 3.0 external drive plays them back perfectly in MB. Go figure.

As for Foobar working comparatively better, perhaps it handles i/o differently from MB.

Regarding Foobar's complexity, it requires more configuration to suit purpose than any other program I have and it never looks good to me. I am always discovering new functionality in MB. I just realized that if you right click on a group of files you can move them around your system. Etc. Etc.

[sveakul]

thelonius munk:  thanks for the extra info!  Could even be some BIOS-level deal with the drives that do produce the stutter--then again, it didn't affect Foobar, so maybe it's BASS-related.   I hate "mysteries", but I know we have to live with them sometimes!!