Hey techies, I need some advice. I’ve reason to believe my sound card and my network card aren’t playing well together. The network card is a pretty nice Linksys that I’d like to keep, and the sound card is an old generic thing that I wouldn’t mind getting rid of. Being big on brand loyalty, I’d like to get a Creative Labs product, most likely a Sound Blaster. I have no trouble going into my case and messing around, nor with installing drivers and whatnot. However, I have very limited experience optimizing PCs, and, since I’m doing this to try to resolve a stuttering issue with the mp3 playback, I want to make sure I’m going to fix the problem, not exacerbate it. So:
What should I buy? I’m not one of those people who can tell the difference in sound between, say, a $20 sound card and a $350 sound card. I just want something decent, and fairly inexpensive, but Creative makes so many variants of the SB that I have no idea what’s what.
PCI or ISA? The network card is PCI, and I thought I heard something about trying to get all of one’s devices on the same bus, as much as reasonably possible. The current sound card is ISA format, incidentally, and I see ISA SB variants being advertised as new on Pricewatch.
Anything else you can suggest about my mp3s skipping? In brief, it happens when web pages are loading (or other network card activity’s going on, such as searching for something on Limewire), nothing on the Winamp help page fixed it, nor did a RAM upgrade (from 64 to 192Mb). I’ll be getting more RAM, as long as it’s dirt cheap and I’m buying stuff anyway, but I think 192Mb should be plenty to run IE and Winamp with nothing else going.
Thanks in advance for whatever help or advice you can give.
I have two questions for you before I can effectively answer yours:
[list=1]
[li]How fast is your system, and[/li][li]Do you notice the problem when you’re doing any non-network, processor intensive work (starting programs, etc.)?[/li][/list=1]
I’ve noticed that, with no background tasks, it takes about a Pentium 90 to play MP3s without skipping; doing other “stuff” at the same time requires more horsepower; a Pentium II/233 should be sufficient.
I use the Creative Labs SB Live in most of my computers.
It’s a good solid card with a fairly good set of drivers that “play nice with others”.
As in the post above… it depends on your machine and if it can take it.
If it’s fairly current, I wouldn’t forsee a problem with adding a SBlive.
Another note on that card. Don’t bother getting the retail version. Hit up your local computer shop and pic up a OEM Live “value” card. The only difference between the various retail boxed sets of the Live card is software. the cards are all the same. The Value card is the SBLive and basic drivers… and you’ll pay about 60 bucks for it.
I use an ensoniq audio pci. Ensoniq is a pro keyboard company, so they know sound. They also make/made a high end studio system. Creative bought out ensoniq, and market a slightly cheaper version. It isnt quite as clean as the one I have, but it sounds great, its cheap, and I have never had compatability issues, especially since creative started writing the drivers for it. (I have built a dozen or more systems with the newer creative card. It rocks.)
KeithT, it’s an AMD K6-2 500, and I believe it does happen once in a while when I’m opening a program, but not often. Got an idea for me?
Seven and bdgr, thanks for the recommendations. I was actually going to go through Pricewatch, and I usually get the OEM version when available, to save money and because I rarely need the extra garbage the package with whatever I’m buying.
Thanks to all, and if anyone else wants to pitch in, by all means do.
Oh, KeithT, if you’re going to tell me to change settings on my virus checker so it doesn’t scan .exes, it’s been done. In fact, right now the virus checker is uninstalled. I just remembered doing that, and I don’t remember if it’s skipped since then when opening programs. I’d still like to hear whatever you have to say, though.
-There are some problems with Windows 2000 and ISA sound cards. As far as I can tell, not many people have the problems.
-If you run Win 9x, look for something based on the Aureal Vortex 2 chipset. The company went out of business, but the cards were real nice, and can be had for a song. Avoid these, though, if you run Win2K
-SB Live’s are known to give problems with certain Via chipsets for athlon processors.
The main draw of most sound cards these days is 3D positional audio. If you are not a hard core gamer, I highly recommend a cheap card based on the CMI 8738 chip.
-I have heard many good things about the Guillemot Fortissimo 2 (the Fortissimo 1 runs the above mentioned 8738) as an excellent high end all around solution, and it only costs about $50.
For a long time, there were big, huge, gut-wrenching, hair-pulling problems between Soundblaster Live! cards and VIA motherboards built for the AMD Athlon CPUs. I think these problems have been corrected with the VIA 4-in-1 drivers, but you’ll need to be ready for possible fun and games.
I am indeed using a motherboard with a VIA chipset, but it came out well before Athlons were around (It’s a FIC PA-2013, if you’re interested). I’m running Win98SE, so I’m not concerned with Win2k issues. I’m not that big on gaming that I need 3d sound, nor do I have speakers to support it.
I think a question I failed to ask, but should have, is what the difference is between, say a Creative Labs Awe64, a Sound Blaster Live!, A Sound Blaster 32, etc. Any input?
True and true. I have an SB-Live! and an Athlon CPU sitting on a VIA mobo and all is good. No problems whatsoever.
Your soundcard choice depends on what you want to do. If all you care about are the little bleeps and dings of Windows then get the cheapest thing you can buy. This will also serve you just fine if you want audio playback of CD’s and MP3s.
If you want to play games then the SB-Live! is an excellent choice and will serve you well. Games have more requirements than straight audio playback including 3-D positional sound as well as multiple sound tracks playing simultaneously (i.e. one thread is the bang from your gun, another 10 are the bangs from bad guy guns, another thread could be your footsteps running while another is someone talking to you and so on…they add up fast and cheaper soundcards can’t handle all of them simultaneously).
If you are into audio editing you are getting out of what I know. Soundblaster has a new card out called Audigy that has received excellent reviews. It seems to pretty much do everything including the goodies Aureal once had. There are specialized boards for studio quality mixing and that sort of stuff but I am really not knowledgeable enough on that stuff to suggest a product.
As for MP3’s skipping that is the fault of your computer and (probably) not your soundcard. MP3’s are essentially highly compressed audio files. A 3 MB, 3 minute MP3 is closer to 30 MB in uncompressed form (i.e. a WAV file). Your PC needs to decompress the MP3 on the fly as it is playing…similar in effect to decompressing a ZIP file. That takes processing power. As you make your computer do other things you steal processing cycles away from your CPU and this manifests itself as a hiccup in your playback. A faster system can handle the switchoffs quicker and provide uninterrupted playback even while you do other things.
A K6-2 500 should still be plenty of horsepower for MP3 playback however so I’d say something is stealing more than its share of CPU time from the system. Check what background tasks are running and watch your CPU usage as you play an MP3. Also try converting some MP3’s to WAV format and play those and see if the problem continues. Maybe it will help you narrow in on what is flaking out your MP3 playback.
typo mna, you said followed the recommendations on Winamp’s help page. I’m assuming then that you’ve:[ul][li]increased the “Decode thread priority” in MPEG audio decoder settings to “Highest”,[/li][li]increased the “Priority” slider in waveOut plug-in settings to “Time Critical”, and[/li][li]increased the “buffer length” slider on the same screen to 8000ms.[/li][/ul]I would venture a guess that your network card, more so than your sound card, is the cause of your problems. The sound card simply has to play a 150KB/s stream… well within the specs of the ISA bus. Network cards, however, tend to utilize the CPU to a great degree, especially if they conflict with another device.
See if you can change your network card’s settings in Device Manager to use a unique IRQ (this might not be possible through Windows; my (PCI) NIC came with a DOS utility that does this) or, if it’s a 10/100 card, to 10mbps only. That will limit the amount of work the CPU has to do (less data --> less slowdown).
Less, actually. Most stores around here (that still sell the Value) have it listed for about $45 as the normal price. Sometimes they have a sale and it can drop as low as $35.
I would recommend anything greater than the Value (say, a SBLive! 5.1) only if you really want to have some fun playing around with sound settings (I recommend the Mp3+ over the X-Gamer… the software is more amusing). If you just want to listen to music, stick with the Value.