Sound stuttering but not in mame

[juggle50]

Hey everyone,

Sometimes my windows and mala sounds (start-up, shut-down, and menu up and down sounds) start stuttering and sometimes the screen hangs while the stuttering goes on.  However, when I'm playing a game in MAME I have never got any sound stuttering.   Sometimes the Realteck audio driver software phantomly appears as well.  Does this sound familiar?   I'm thinking I may not have enough RAM.  I haven't tried updating my audio drivers yet.  I just wanted to see if anyone has had this problem before I started troubleshooting it.

I'm running

Windows XP
AMD x2 Dual Core 5200
500mb RAM
Sound Card:  On Board Real Tech

[Fozzy The Bear]

Sound Card:  On Board Real Tech

No.... that's your problem.... On board sound cards are never great. High noise levels poor codecs and exactly this sort of stuttering problem. Remember that it's having to use the CPU for some of its tasks and when the CPU and drive buss gets busy, like at start up and shutdown it robs the on board sound card of access, to other hardware, because it's a much lower priority task than dealing with the input output over the on board buss.

A separate sound card is always a better option. That said the quality of sound from an on-board card is usually just about OK for games.

Increasing memory may or may not help. The problem lies with the robbing of access to that memory and CPU by other processes.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[juggle50]

Thanks Fozzy, it happens a lot in MALA too when I'm using sounds exiting out of games and moving up and down through my scrolling list.  It even started happening with my background music.  Does using a front end rob the sound card of access as well.

Thanks again for the help Fozzy, much appreciated.

[Fozzy The Bear]

Thanks Fozzy, it happens a lot in MALA too when I'm using sounds exiting out of games and moving up and down through my scrolling list.  It even started happening with my background music.  Does using a front end rob the sound card of access as well.

Thanks again for the help Fozzy, much appreciated.

Probably.... You'll find that anything where disk access is going on or heavy memory use or heavy processor use will cause it.

To be honest, you'd be better off getting hold of a cheap soundblaster card, I'm working on the prices over here in the UK but we can pick them up here for the equivalent of about $15 USD. It should solve the problem.

You could try new drivers before you do that. Sometimes updating video drivers as well as sound ones can make a difference. Also make sure that if your motherboard came with any drivers that you have them installed. Occasionally buss drivers are a problem and this can be cured by installing the correct ones for the MOBO chipset.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[juggle50]

Cool Fozzy I'll do that.  Is it weird at all that the sound never stutters in MAME?

[Fozzy The Bear]

Cool Fozzy I'll do that.  Is it weird at all that the sound never stutters in MAME?

Not really.... Because there's no heavy disk access going on. So that's possibly where the problem lies. Although the processor and memory bus is getting a thrashing while running Mame.  Still sounds like a buss issue though. Or maybe just that sound card codecs are being robbed of resources. 

It could also be video drivers as I said. Mame isn't a heavy user of video cards. Whereas the other processes you described are. Again the MOBO drivers might cure that one. It's worth trying before you spend money on a sound card.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[juggle50]

Thank you very much Fozzy. I'll update my drivers first and if that doesn't work I'll buy a new sound card.