Sound Glitches

[stonemason]

Played some slideshows on my wife's laptop, (Dell Inspirion) and noticed that I was getting a glitch in the sound at random intervals. The shows were created using various versions of PTE, including 5.6. Pictures and transitions were faultless, and I know that all the slideshows play perfectly on my desktop PC. The laptop is about 6 months old has 512mb graphics ram 2gb memory and 250gb hdd. The graphics is ATI whereas mine is nvidea. Suggetions as to what may be causing this would be most welcome. Operating system is XP Pro SP2

regards

Geoff

[Igor]

Geoff,

Including created with previous 5.5?

And same slideshow play sound without problem on another PC/laptop?

[stonemason]

Igor,

The shows were created using 4.8, 5.5 and with 5.6 they all play perfectly on my desktop PC, so I am sure it is a problem on the laptop and not with PTE but I do not know where to start looking.

Geoff

[Igor]

Thanks, Geoff. I think if problem with v4.48 and v5.5 slideshows, it's can be problem of laptop. In these two versions we even use different sound engines.

[stonemason]

Igor any idea where I might start looking?

[Lin Evans]

Hi Geoff,

Laptops are sometimes problematical because anything in the sound circuit chain including drivers and components could affect the proper action. Outside of downloading the latest drivers and testing to see if that helps, the only other logical approach would be to change the sound card. Since sound cards are generally an integral part of a laptop and therefore not replaceable, the next best approach would be to use an external sound card.

A while back, Brian suggested people having issues with sound might look into using this:

http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/imic

This device serves as a USB sound card plus microphone input and has received nothing but rave reviews from users. This "might" be worth purchasing if you don't find another solution...

Best regards,

Lin

Igor any idea where I might start looking?

[stonemason]

Thanks Lin I'll re-install the sound drivers and see if that helps. If not then I'll take a look at the usb device. Thanks for your time.

Regards

Geoff

[Conflow]

Hi Geoff,

You wrote:-..."Played some slideshows on my wife's laptop, (Dell Inspirion) and

noticed that I was getting a glitch in the sound at random intervals"

May I ask how did you Play these Slideshows:-

1) Directly from a CD-Disc using the Dell's internal CD-Drive ?

2) Is this CD-Drive a 'Combo DVD+CD System' ?

or

3) Downloaded the Slideshows and then played them off the Dell Hard-Drive ?

or

4) Played them from a USB Memory Pen ?

5) Was the Slideshow(s) Vision rendering perfect ?

6) And what Model of the Dell Inspirion was used ?

Sorry for the questions but ther're necessary to try and isolate the problem.

Brian.Conflow

[stonemason]

Hi Brian

1) Slideshows copied to hard-drive and played from there

2) Vision was perfect

3) Dell Inspirion 1721

The "glitch" sounded as if there were millisecond breaks in the sound file, and appeared in a random pattern ie no specific time between each glitch. Happened around 10 times in a 4 minute show. These shows all play perfectly on my own computer, so the finger of suspision is pointed firmly at the laptop.

Regards

Geoff

[Igor]

Probably there is a recent program which works in background with high CPU loading.

It deserves to try update the sound drivers.

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Hi Geoff,

Laptops are sometimes problematical because anything in the sound circuit chain including drivers and components could affect the proper action. Outside of downloading the latest drivers and testing to see if that helps, the only other logical approach would be to change the sound card. Since sound cards are generally an integral part of a laptop and therefore not replaceable, the next best approach would be to use an external sound card.

A while back, Brian suggested people having issues with sound might look into using this:

http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/imic

This device serves as a USB sound card plus microphone input and has received nothing but rave reviews from users. This "might" be worth purchasing if you don't find another solution...

Best regards,

Lin

Hi Lin

I don't think the IMIC is a sound card, it's a filter between the external sound source and the PC/Laptop.

Yachtsman1

[Lin Evans]

You may be correct about that, I haven't used it myself. Perhaps Brian can comment. After reading several reviews I got the impression it serves both as an external sound card and a filter, audio input and audio line output but my impression may be a wrong interpretation of what I read so better safe than sorry.

Here's the review which made me think this serves as a sound card as well:

http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/review_imic.html

Brian?

Best regards,

Lin

Hi Lin

I don't think the IMIC is a sound card, it's a filter between the external sound source and the PC/Laptop.

Yachtsman1

[Conflow]

Geoff and Lin,

Having looked at the details given, I have a strong suspition that the fault is in the CD/DVD Drive.

Portable/Laptop CD-DVD Drives are very "iffy" at the best of times and this fault has all the hallmarks

of a 'Cache failure' within the CD/DVD Drive Module.

'Cache Failure' is quite common in Laptops and this means there is no 'pre-loading' from the Drive and

the Main Processor is forced to do that, but it needs a few millesecs to load the Music stream and thats

your 'tiny' glitches. (It doesn't effect Pictures as these have a relatively long exposure measures in Secs)

Try playing an ordinary CD-Music Disc (not of your making) I mean a purchased Music-Disc and if the

'fault' is still there it's definitely Cache failure ~ if it plays O.K then its a program fault elsewhere in the

System and I'm afraid its going to be a hunt to find it !

Brian.Conflow

P.S...

If it's 'cache-failure' you will have to replace the 'DVD/CD Drive Module' ~ they are a Standard Plug-In Unit

(not too expensive less than £40)

[stonemason]

Brian I'm a bit confused. As you will see from the above answers to your questions the slide shows were copied onto the HDD and played from there. I'm at a loss as to how the CD/DVD drive would have any influence on the playing of the shows?

Regards

Geoff

[dpearcePNG]

I recently went on a 4-week trip with a older single-core Dell laptop. In practice before we left all was well. But as things go from our first presentation on the road I'd get a minor audio glitch every minute or so.

Once we got back home I did a little sleuthing. I suspected the week video card as it was only a typical 8 MB video card built on to the motherboard. However, in running Windows' Performance Monitor ("perfmon"), I discovered a different story.

Disk activity was quiet as I expected so it wasn't the hard drive.

Pages/sec (which indicates a lack or system memory (not video memory) was non-existent so I wasn't running our of memory.

CPU utilization however was averaging 90-100%. I saw no correlation to the spikes and the audio loss. I turned off the anti-virus and a few other running programs/services and got a few more CPU cycles freed up. The audio skipping occurred fewer times per minute but never went away.

I tried the same presentation on a newer laptop (dual-core). The CPU utilization was between 10-20% and I never had any audio problems.

In short, close as many apps down as you can, run PerfMon and then your presentation. You just might see the problem.

Unfortunately, PerfMon can't show video card memory usage.

[Conflow]

Brian I'm a bit confused. As you will see from the above answers to your questions the slide shows were copied onto the HDD and played from there. I'm at a loss as to how the CD/DVD drive would have any influence on the playing of the shows?

Regards

Geoff

Geoff,

You wrote..."1) Slideshows copied to hard-drive and played from there"...

That was your answer to my No:1 Question (Post #8 above) you gave no other exact details.

How did you do this ? ~ I had assumed you used existing Pte CD's and had simply replayed

those on the Laptop and transfered the Files from the CD's to the Hard-Drive on the Laptop ?

Did you play a Commercial CD-Music Disc as I had requested ~ this for 'Test purposes' ??

Can you be more accurate and tell me how you made the File transfer process ?

That might close off one avenue of known failure mechanism.

Brian.Conflow.

[stonemason]

Brian I copied the files from my computer onto a usb stick and then from the usb stick to the laptop. Played an audio CD on the laptop and it played OK. Sorry for leaving you a bit short on info.

Regards

Geoff

[Conflow]

Hi Geoff,

Thanks for that - well thats out of the way, so we are down to the following:-

a) A Program effect or defect.

A Vista Driver Problem.

c) A Wireless Card Problem (always on).

Q2) Is it running Vista or XP3 ?

I hate to say this, but the Dell Inspiron 1721 has known Sound and Display and Driver issues

which Dell choose to ignore and simply gloss over ~ but these 'issues' are all over Google?

The "Links" below might be of some help to you, at least they might point you in the right direction.

Sorry I cant be of any more help just right now ~ but this really is a Dell issue...

There is a 'Diagnostic Disc' available specially for the Dell 1721 in UK. from Users.Com

(Third below) So obviously there are some serious issues.

Brian.Conflow.

(Edited)

http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&q=De...tart=0&sa=N

http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.ph...=0&t=666421

http://www.user-guides.co.uk/asp/product.a...20Test%20Repair

[stonemason]

Thanks for all your efforts Brian I appreciated your time. When the laptop was bought it came with vista pre-installed, and was like swimming through treacle to use. I re-formated and after much chasing around the web and Dell forums to get the correct drivers (Dell only support Vista on this laptop) I installed XP Pro sp3 and it is now a nice computer to use. Apart from this small problem it has been error free. The strange thing is that it will play a DVD film with no sound problems. It seems to be just when .mp3 or PTE files are played, which also use .mp3. The laptop is primarily used for course / office work so it's no great probem really, however I'm still curious to know why. My wife's in the middle of a college course at the moment so I don't want to do anything which may make the laptop unstable. When she's finished I will try re-installing the sound drivers.

Regards

Geoff

[Conflow]

Geoff,

Thats your problem ~ I came with Vista pre-installed ~ but typical Dell, that Motherboard was origionally designed

for XP but it would have said "Windows Vista Capable". I bet if you can find the 'Motherboard Manufacturer' they

will confirm what I wrote.

If you carefully examine the "Links" I sent you ~ you will see that Dell simply 'customed designed' a set of Drivers

for that Motherboard so it would run Vista. You also note that they won't supply XP Drivers, I wonder why?

As regards Mp3 Files you will probably find that they use an 'El-chepo' codec not the Lame nor Fraundofer origionals.

Anyway a set of Drivers is available for your XP-Sp3 in one of the 'Links' ~ but as you say it's not the time to do this.

You will probably find that the Sound-Chipset is running on a set of Microsoft (Legacy) Drivers not quite suited to that

particular Chipset.

Nice machine there Geoff, and you are so correct about Vista, but shortly that's being replaced with 'Windows-7' now

in Beta release.....thank god.

Brian.Conflow.

[stonemason]

Thanks Brian we'll sign off on this for now until I have the opportunity to have another go at the drivers.

Best regards

Geoff

[Conflow]

Geoff,

Agreed, and the best of luck with it ~

Should you have a problem you can always send a P.M.

Regards,

Brian.Conflow.