I have windows XP, when I play songs they play fine if I do nothing else on the computer. As son as I try to work in word or get online the songs slow down and start warbling. The computer itself doesn’t seem to be running noticably slower (but like I mention in another thread, it is a huge fight to get it to even connect to the isp, and it disconnects often).
Anyone have any thoughts? Many thanks in advance.
Need more info… What program are you playing the songs with? What is the source (.mp3, CD, etc.)? What does connecting to the ISP have to do with playing the songs? What are the specs for your machine?
Hi Phage. Different players, winamp usually, but windows media player as well, and occasionally realplayer, it doesn’t seem to make a difference which program. CD’s usually, but mp3s as well. Only reason I thought it might have something to do with the internet connection is because both problems seem to have started recently, and I thought maybe there could be something on the computer doing it. It has a AMD Athlon Processor 1.0 GHz, 128 MB ram.
I think what’s going on is in the buffers. Generally, you are not hearing streaming music live. It comes into your computer and is stored, briefly, in a buffer. Then, the audio is fed from your buffer to the speakers. Normally, there is only a fraction of a second delay.
Now, data from the music stream comes in at a steady pace. If your computer is busy doing something else, it won’t be able to take data out of the buffer as fast as it goes in. After a while, that’s a problem.
If nothing else, you may be hearing the audio up to a minute or so after it comes in.
Many pieces of software, in order to bring that delay time down, will cheat. If they skip one chunk of data out of every ten in the buffer, but keep the timing consistant, they can slowly clear out the buffer without you noticing anything more than a slight degradation of the sound. In extreme cases, where they skip every other bit, it can sound choppy or slowed down.
What you can do about it is to alter the settings in your music player to create a larger buffer size or devote more processing power to your audio player.