Author Topic: Stuttering/Popping sound  (Read 2792 times)

Beechedwhale8

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Whenever I start playing a song, it works fine, but when I move in the song's timeline (whatever it's called when you use the slider to jump around in the song), I get constant popping/stuttering sounds. This happens when I use an external dac, and I can confirm that it is not the dac causing the problem. The only thing I can think of is that Microsoft just put the Fall Windows 10 update on my computer yesterday. I am not using avast or macafee or any other antivirus that causes problems with Musicbee. I have also updated to the latest version (3.3), and that didn't help (and I disabled my antivirus just to be sure). I saw Steven's post about the antiviruses causing stuttering for people because of the new Windows 10 update, but it may be something more than that. Any ideas?

frankz

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I have this both using my Dragonfly Black DAC and outputting via HDMI.  Sometimes it'll play a second or two and stop, and sometimes it'll play with stuttering and pops.  I don't have Avast and I haven't yet received the October update.  It's always been the case.

I've learned not to move around in songs using the progress bar.  Or, if I absolutely have to, to stop and start and stop and start until it works correctly.  Usually after 4 or 10 tries it works.

Life has lots of annoyances that aren't deal breakers so you learn to live with them.  This is one of those.

Beechedwhale8

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Thank you for the reply, but that doesn't address the problem. I think the issue could be Wasapi related. Anyone else encountering this after the update?

Beechedwhale8

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Switching from Wasapi to ASIO seems to have fixed the problem. Still, it's strange that a Windows update would cause that (assuming that's what did).

frankz

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I've never not had the problem, update or not.  I wasn't trying so much to address it as to put it into context.  Glad ASIO seems to have fixed it for you, though. 

Beechedwhale8

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Yeah that's weird too. Are you using Wasapi, or is the problem something else for you?

Steven

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frankz and Beechedwhale8
were you using WASAPI (Shared) or WASAPI (Exclusive) ?
if WASAPI (Exclusive), did you tick "event mode"?
I would be interested to know which of those work and which dont

re: windows updates, that can definitely cause issues and in my case had the re-install the device driver from the manufacturer
Last Edit: December 24, 2018, 09:19:47 AM by Steven

frankz

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For me, I'm using WASAPI (Exclusive) without event mode on a Dragonfly Black with the latest drivers (verified manufacturer driver is still in place, not replaced by Windows).  I remember turning off event mode for a reason when I got this DAC but I don't remember what that reason was.

Steven

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For me, I'm using WASAPI (Exclusive) without event mode on a Dragonfly Black with the latest drivers (verified manufacturer driver is still in place, not replaced by Windows).  I remember turning off event mode for a reason when I got this DAC but I don't remember what that reason was.
does the issue happen with WASAPI (shared) ?

frankz

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For me, I'm using WASAPI (Exclusive) without event mode on a Dragonfly Black with the latest drivers (verified manufacturer driver is still in place, not replaced by Windows).  I remember turning off event mode for a reason when I got this DAC but I don't remember what that reason was.
does the issue happen with WASAPI (shared) ?
OK, I had a little time to experiment.

I couldn't make the "stops on skipping around in file" problem happen in shared mode, but I'm not sure I understand the purpose of shared mode. I thought the point of WASAPI was to bypass the windows mixer, but shared mode goes right through the windows mixer.  Sounded worse to me, less depth of field in headphones, but I admit it could be a total reverse-placebo effect.  

I tried exclusive with event mode on, but I got a weird talk-back kind of effect which must have been why I turned off event mode in the first place.  My DAC doesn't like event mode.

WASAPI exclusive means I can't jump around in files without playback stopping until I hit "Stop" and retry it several times. I've learned to live with it as I said before and just avoid doing this.  The time I really do that is to compare different masterings of an album to see which I want to add to my library, which is something I admittedly do fairly frequently.  That said, if it's a giant hassle to figure out why this happens or if this is something specific to my setup, it's really not a big deal to let it go.  I've learned to do my comparisons outside MB these days to get around it.  May be more important to the OP, though.  But, for me, I mostly listen to my music straight through without jumping around in files.

Steven

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In exclusive mode, does pressing pause/ then resume without moving the progress bar cause any issues. And also if you pause first, moving the progress bar then resume cause any issues?

hiccup

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OK, I had a little time to experiment.

My dac stopped playing audio completely after I updated my Windows 10 to a version that had the new USB Audio Class 2.0 drivers included.

What finally solved it for me was removing these two new audio driver files:

usbaudio2.sys
usbaudio2.inf

both located in C:\Windows\System32\drivers


(If I recall correctly I first removed all audio controllers I could find through device manager, then removed the two files mentioned above, restarted my pc and then re-installed the audio drivers from my dac manufacturer)

Only try this at your own risk, and only if you are at least a bit tech-savvy.

Yet I don't believe you could do much harm doing this.
You can always put the two files back, and Windows is quite good in automatically finding and installing necessary drivers that where removed through device manager.

frankz

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In exclusive mode, does pressing pause/ then resume without moving the progress bar cause any issues.
Never. 

And also if you pause first, moving the progress bar then resume cause any issues?
I want to say it happens less frequently doing this, but I have no way to really measure it.  I can definitely make it happen even when pausing first, but it feels like it's not as frequent.  I don't know if that helps.

Steven

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In exclusive mode, does pressing pause/ then resume without moving the progress bar cause any issues.
Never.  
I think I will leave this as an unsolved mystery problem as using the seekbar is really exactly the same thing, except of course the stream position is changed but i dont see how setting the new stream position could cause this issue.

frankz

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Thinking about the issue phred had with the wavebar progress and just spitballing here, but these are all VBR MP3s.  Maybe it's related to the approximated seek point issue there?  I'll try the patched version with the fix for that issue and see if it has any effect.

Mainly, like I originally said, I've learned to do my mastering comparisons outside of MB, so if it's a hassle to investigate it's no problem on my end to just let it stand.