DWJukebox 3.4.1 skipping?

[JustMichael]

It seems like no matter what I try 3.4.1 skips while playing songs for me.  I have tried setting CPU to 100 (which apparently helped someone else).  I have also set debug to 3 and it tells me:
0:00:22.02,3,SONG_START,"Song Voices Carry started"
0:00:22.02,1,JB_SONG_POLL,"CAUTION: Song buffer not updated for 28 ticks"
(The above is while CPU is at 100)

I am running XP SP3 on a Athlon 64 X2 6400+ with 4GB of ram.  I also have an older Nvidia GTX 275 for my video card.  I am using the motherboard's onboard sound.  All the songs play just fine in WinAmp and Media Player.

[Dermbrian]

My Pentium R T4500 in my MSI all-in-one has a passmark benchmark score of 1575.
Your Athlon 64 X2 6400+ has a passmark benchmark score of 1524.  So they're very similar.

You might try playing with the different settings dealing with the DirectX and graphics settings at the very end of jukebox.ini.

I'm thinking somehow your skipping is related to graphics.  I have nothing really to base that on, other than DWJukebox likes to have full attention of the processor when run in Windows.  As I've been playing with skins and sounds, I notice that some skins are friendly to Alt-Tabbing out of DWJukebox to other windows programs and others aren't. 

What type of monitor?  Widescreen or more standard ratio? 
What type of skin?  Album or single?  Does the behavior occur with both types?

Just some thoughts of areas I'd be looking at. 


Brian

[JustMichael]

The following was tried using the default skin on a 1680x1050 screen (CPUUsage set to 100).

Well I have tried all the sound card options shown in the setupwin.exe:

Allegmix SoundMAX HD Audio - Skips pretty regularly (Autodetect chooses this option)
SoundMAX HD Audio - Skips here and there (best sounding option)
WaveOut 44100hz 16bit stereo - skips almost constantly
WaveOut 22050hz  8bit mono - skips even worse and sounds all scratchy also (the worst sounding option)

I tried the following graphics options and then each sound card option and the sound remained the same as above except where noted:

DXAC - Jukebox starts and sound is as above.
DXSO - Jukebox starts and sound is as above.
DXSA - Jukebox starts and sound is as above.
DXWN - Jukebox failed to start.  It said 1680x1050 wasn't supported. No change with each sound option.
DXOV - Jukebox failed to start.  It said 1680x1050 wasn't supported. No change with each sound option.
GDIB - Jukebox failed to start.  It said 1680x1050 wasn't supported. No change with each sound option.

Honestly this skipping in DWJukebox makes no sense at all to me.  When I play the same mp3's in WinAmp (using no visualizations), WinAmp doesn't leave 0% of the CPU according to Windows Task Manager.  WinAmp with "Advanced Visualization Studio v2.83" (some very cool visualizations) CPU usage varied from 20% going up to 35% but mostly stayed around 25%.  When I play the same mp3's in Windows Media Player 9 (using their lame visualizations), Windows Media Player usually stays at 1% of the CPU and sometimes jumps to 2% according to Windows Task Manager.  I have even tried playing the same mp3 in both WinAmp and Windows Media Player at the same time which resulted in the same cpu usage as above for each player and absolutely no skipping (sounds like some weird echo).  Yet DWJukebox uses almost 50% (almost 100% of 1 of 2 cpu's) according to Windows Task Manager and it still skips when playing the mp3 all by itself.  This system "should" have absolutely no problem playing mp3's skip-free but for some unknown reason DWJukebox skips out on this.  

[Dermbrian]

Have you tried running MSCONFIG and unchecking all the startup programs, at least temporarily, to see if some other program running in the background affects the stuttering/skipping?

I'm interested in seeing your issue resolved.  Sound problems like this clearly affect a lot of people trying to run WinCab on newer hardware that, at first glance, shouldn't be having problems.

I have a little issue of my own I'm trying to fix, where the *.wav sound effects (coin drop, needle landing on the record, etc) go into tight loops when I switch out of the program using ALT-TAB.  The music sounds fine.  I'd like to be able to use my PC for other programs while the music continues to play, but I like using the sound effects in the program. 

So...you might also try running the program without any sound effects that you use such as the Hound Dog sound pack, if you use it.


Brian

[JustMichael]

I had already tried disabling all the startup stuff except for the sound and video cards (no change in jukebox behavior).  I don't use any sound packs and I don't even use the sounds in Windows (I always set it to "No Sounds" because they annoy me after a while).  Sad thing is I really like the look of this program.  I want to use it with my bjrock100N skin (attached, just unzip into the skins directory) for a future dedicated jukebox.  It is screen with up to 100 songs (00-99).  I have tried the dwjukebox with this skin and I get the same results as with the default skin (with regards to the sound problems).  I have also tried dwjukebox with (and without) "recpop.wav" but no change to skipping.  When played before a record it does sound more like a real jukebox.

[Dermbrian]

You might try this program....

http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

FYI, my MSI all-in-one doesn't skip.  The latency check program shows occasional red spikes quite frequently in the 2000usec to 4000usec range.  If I start and stop my wi-fi, the spikes are much bigger during that time.  But just idling:  2000-4000usec.  I wonder what kind of latency yours might show.

Brian

[JustMichael]

I really doubt "latency" is the problem.  Any latency would also effect every other mp3 players as well.  I just went and installed "Arcade Jukebox 8" and I had it, Windows Media Player and WinAmp (all 3 at the same time) play an mp3 file.  All of them played the mp3 file just fine without skipping.  When other mp3 players play the mp3s just fine I get the feeling that the machine isn't the problem but that DWjukebox is the problem.

[Dermbrian]

When other mp3 players play the mp3s just fine I get the feeling that the machine isn't the problem but that DWjukebox is the problem.

I hear you.  Too bad Arcade Jukebox 8, Winamp, and Windows Media player can't do the same job of emulating an electromechanical jukebox that DWJukebox can. When it works well, it's a truly unique program with an incredible level of user customization available. But there does seem to be different performance on various newer processors and peripherals than you'd expect there to be. 

My netbook with its single core Atom processor can't really run it well.  My all-in-one with its slightly faster dual core Atom can.  My newest MSI all-in-one with its Pentium R dual core runs it just fine...just as well as a five year old Pentium would .  Your dual core Athlon 64 apparently can't run it in its current configuration of hardware/software/peripherals/drivers.  Hard to blame the program itself, but not hard to blame the particular Allegro game programming library that underlies it or the hardware manufacturers that apparently aren't all that compatible with the way they run that library.


Brian

[Chris]

It's not Allegro so much as the underlying mpg123 library.  I need to figure out how to write a wrapper so I can use the Windows Media Player functions and not rely on mpg123.

There is no reason why on any modern system the buffer should not get updated for 23 ticks unless I have a bug somewhere, so I am also perfectly willing to blame my own code.  3.4.1 had a lot of optimizations that fixed many skipping issues as I found holes in my code, but obviously there are more to find.

Michael, are you using an album skin or a classic skin?  There are big differences in memory allocation betwen the two systems.  A lot of the bugs I fouund before were specific to one or the other, some even to specific skins.

--Chris

[JustMichael]

A classic type skin I think.  The kind of skin were you see up to 100 songs at once.

[Pann]

Up to 100? I though the number is greater though. Are you sure?

[smalltownguy]

FYI - I have this same issue on my PC. I'm running a Pentium 4 661 @ 3.6ghz with 2gigs of ram. I really don't think it's my machine.

Random stuttering and lockups. Program will lockup with a song in an endless loop, and either lock the machine up requiring a hard shutdown, or the program will crash and Windows Explorer will kill the program for me. In every instance I'm not multi-tasking, and no other programs are being run.

I have a thread open on the General Tech Support Forum on the DWJukebox forums, but I'm interested in hearing what everyone else here has to say.

Thanks!