Playback stuttering

[bege]

MusicBee v3.4.8033
Windows 10 Professional 64 bit

Today I installed MusicBee, spent some hours with configuring and like it.
Then I wanted to start normal use, play music and do other work on the computer: Playback is constantly stuttering, especially when the CPU load goes up, but also when that is not the case.

I never have and had such issues with any player, e.g. MediaMonkey. So I can definitely say it is not an issue of system or other apps.

I searched this forum and found many threads with that issue. So it obviously is a well known issue for many years.
I tried all suggestions I found:
- all available settings in Player tab
- changing <SystemEncodingPriority> in MusicBee3Settings.ini
- Whitlisting MusicBee in Windows Defender Anti-Virus.

The only thing that helped was to increase the process priority to normal. MusicBee.exe runs with priority lower than normal, MediaMonkey.exe does the same. Anyway, if this is a solution I am fine with it. But I don't want to do that manually every time.
Is there a way to set this priority as default with means of MB?
Why does MB need a higher CPU priority as e.g. MediaMonkey?

[Steven]

if you are using the upnp plugin try disabling it (and perhaps any dsp plugins).
Normal cpu usage should only be 0-2%

[bege]

if you are using the upnp plugin try disabling it (and perhaps any dsp plugins).
Normal cpu usage should only be 0-2%

I have neither a unpnp nor any dsp plugins installed. I tried all output options that come with MB.

[vincent kars]

A simple test would be to check the DPC latency, e.g. https://www.resplendence.com/latencymon



See to it both checkboxes are checked and use WASAPI/Exclusive in Musicbee

[YannigVdW]

I've been using MusicBee for many years now (thanks! ), and I recently started having stutters as well. This happens especially during high cpu loads -- I play music during editing pictures in Lightroom Classic (10.4.1).

I'm using:
- Windows 10 / MusicBee 3.4.8033
- Intel i7 8700K / 32 GB ram

Both WASAPI and DirectSound exhibit the issue. Increase buffer size didn't help, as didn't "load entire file into memory".

CPU Usage for MusicBee is generally 0.1-0.3%.

LatencyMon results:
- Current latency: ~100µs
- Highest interrupt: 732µs
- Highest ISR: 383µs
- Highest DPC: 668µs
- Total hard fault (after 18min): 9899

Any ideas?

[hiccup]

Welcome to the forum YannigVdW

So you have been using this MusicBee version for some six months or so without issues?
And your hardware also has not changed in that period of time?

Something else must have changed then that causes this stuttering for you.
Perhaps some driver/software updates? Or some new software you recently installed?

[YannigVdW]

Hi hiccup,

Thanks for the reply and the welcome.

Yes, some updates have been performed. I guess the most meaningful are these: Lightroom Classic was updated, and my Nvidia driver as well. I've been using the Studio Drivers for a long time.

The glitches are unbearable even with Lightroom Classic set to the lowest priority in task manager. (for the record: I'd rather have Lightroom Classic set to a higher priority since it's what I'm using my computer for ...)

Increasing the priority of MusicBee seems to help a little bit, but doesn't solve the issue.

LatencyMon consistently reports nvlddmkm.sys as the driver with the highest DPC execution time (668µs in this session), so I'm looking at my graphics driver right now.

I'm switching from the Studio Driver to the Game Ready driver, and I'll see what happens. By the way, I'm using an RTX 2060.

Also good to know: my music (mainly MP3's) are on a slowish NAS (~10MB/s transfer speed).
The clicks also occur when I'm streaming (very stable 270Mbps download/19Mbps upload/42ms download latency).

[YannigVdW]

Update: I've been working in Lightroom for a couple of hours now after switching to the Nvidia Game Ready drivers.

I've had no more clicks/stuttering at all  

LatencyMon and hiccup pointed me in the right direction, thanks for that

[hiccup]

Great! Thanks for reporting back.

[YannigVdW]

I've been a bit too quick

For one day everything went fine. The next day, without anything changing to my knowledge, the stutters and rare freezes are back.

I'll see what happens with GPU acceleration in Lightroom Classic turned off.

[hiccup]

Also looking at a bug report from you elsewhere, could it be you have some duplicate MusicBee folders on your system?
Perhaps a secondary install you once did over/in addition to another one?

(for one thing, I would suggest updating to 3.5)

[YannigVdW]

Also looking at a bug report from you elsewhere, could it be you have some duplicate MusicBee folders on your system?
Perhaps a secondary install you once did over/in addition to another one?

(for one thing, I would suggest updating to 3.5)

Yes, I had two versions on my system, the one I always use (3.5.8225 since this morning, recommended by Steven), and 3.4 Store version. I just removed the Store version.

Could two installed versions cause the glitches?

[hiccup]

It would not surprise me one bit if having both the Store version and the Installed version causes problems.

I would suggest using the Portable version.
You can have more than one of those installed (e.g. for different purposes) and they will not interfere, and also have a far lesser chance of experiencing issues with e.g. antivirus software.
(it's better not to run more than one at the same time though)