Strange Goings On! (PerfTunes/Foobar/Ripped FLACs)

[mville]

Re: Strange Goings On! (PerfTunes/Foobar/Ripped FLACs)

I have been playing one of the tracks from Miles Davis's: 'Miles On The Corner' on my PC and this time from the C:drive, as you kindly suggest. It has been looping for around half an hour and so far encountering zero glitches. I will keep it going for another ten mins or so (as it's starting to drive me a bit mad now!).

Yes, this is as I expect, no problem with the flacs or with foobar2000.

However, it does imply an issue with the external-HD, though this is is not absolutely certain here, as there may have been other software/processes (e.g. anti-virus, security, backup software etc.) that interfered, when it last glitched.

[garym]

Re: Strange Goings On! (PerfTunes/Foobar/Ripped FLACs)

OK, so last night listened, for the 4th time now, to Miles Davis's: 'Miles On The Corner' - on my Sony Walkman and new SD-card - and this time there WAS one glitch! It happened on a track it had never occurred on before. I immediately wound back the track, but then it continued playing through without the glitch occurring again.

I was listening, as I was on the previous 3 occasions, via my headphones in 'bluetooth' mode.

I think you’ve clearly proven that your files are good. That’s good!

[mville]

Re: Strange Goings On! (PerfTunes/Foobar/Ripped FLACs)

OK, so last night listened, for the 4th time now, to Miles Davis's: 'Miles On The Corner' - on my Sony Walkman and new SD-card - and this time there WAS one glitch! It happened on a track it had never occurred on before. I immediately wound back the track, but then it continued playing through without the glitch occurring again.

I was listening, as I was on the previous 3 occasions, via my headphones in 'bluetooth' mode.

So, it could be a Bluetooth issue. To rule this out, try with wired headphones.

[monsterjazzlick]

Re: Strange Goings On! (PerfTunes/Foobar/Ripped FLACs)

Yes. If the work-PC plays flac albums from the C: drive without issues, but as stated earlier, you have issues playing from the external-HD, then this implies you have a problem with the external-HD.

Hi mville,

I have been playing one of the tracks from Miles Davis's: 'Miles On The Corner' on my PC and this time from the C:drive, as you kindly suggest. It has been looping for around half an hour and so far encountering zero glitches. I will keep it going for another ten mins or so (as it's starting to drive me a bit mad now!).

Paul

EDIT: suspect track played fine looped for 45 mins.

[monsterjazzlick]

Re: Strange Goings On! (PerfTunes/Foobar/Ripped FLACs)

Last night, I listened, for the 3rd time now, to Miles Davis's: 'Miles On The Corner' - on my Sony Walkman and new SD-card - and there were NO audio glitches. I will listen to the same album, on the dame device, again tonight ...

OK, so last night listened, for the 4th time now, to Miles Davis's: 'Miles On The Corner' - on my Sony Walkman and new SD-card - and this time there WAS one glitch! It happened on a track it had never occurred on before. I immediately wound back the track, but then it continued playing through without the glitch occurring again.

I was listening, as I was on the previous 3 occasions, via my headphones in 'bluetooth' mode.

[monsterjazzlick]

Re: Strange Goings On! (PerfTunes/Foobar/Ripped FLACs)

First a question: is the Amazon Fire playing FLAC files, or compressed (mp3 or AAC or similar files?) (and BTW, I assume the skipping tracks don't skip in the same place on both the Fire and the PC...) Another question: How are you listening to the Fire? Hardwired headphones or some Bluetooth device?

Finally, the reason I asked about Bluetooth is that Bluetooth is a radio signal and subject to all kinds of interference. I've heard hits and dropouts on bluetooth devices fairly regularly. Just part of the terrain, not much you can do about it, other than go hardwire. The same is also true of Wifi, although that seems to typically be more rugged.

Hi schmidj,

I will work through each one of your helpful questions.

ALL of my music files are FLAC; including to couple of box-sets I purchased on Qobuz last year. So no mp3 or WMA etc.

In 'dBpa' I used the 'recommended' compression setting (which I think is 'Level 5') when ripping my hard-copy CDs.

The skips/glitches have happened whilst listening via bluetooth AND via a cable. The problem with bluetooth appears to be that of 'silence' kicking in very occasionally. I think Garym said he experienced this when listening to music whilst out and about. From memory, any suspect CDs sounded, for a second or two, like they could be corrupt-files.

The album I have experienced the problem on is 'Miles On The Corner'; though I have re-ripped it twice. It HAS jumped in the same place on both my PC and my Amazon Fire - but certainly not every time I play it. However, issues of the same nature have occurred on other albums whilst I have had them LOOPED. As I said before, If a track plays (say) 10 times, then I may hear a glitch once or twice. Also, as stated above, for the past 3 nights 'Miles On The Corner' has played perfectly on my new Sony Walkman. So, as Garym says, it could be a playback-device issue.

My neighbor (in the flat below) says that he has problems with taxis and police cars driving past regularly; and that sometimes their signals even trigger his wireless-doorbell to sound! However, my internet connection is very good and I am on Virgin Media's fiber-optic broadband (200 mb/s).

There are still one or two recommended checks I need to make ...

Paul

[monsterjazzlick]

Re: Strange Goings On! (PerfTunes/Foobar/Ripped FLACs)

Last night, I listened, for the 3rd time now, to Miles Davis's: 'Miles On The Corner' - on my Sony Walkman and new SD-card - and there were NO audio glitches. I will listen to the same album, on the dame device, again tonight ...

[monsterjazzlick]

Re: Strange Goings On! (PerfTunes/Foobar/Ripped FLACs)

ok. But this does not test the playback chain. Copy some files to c drive and play via foobar2000.

This is still on my list of to-do's ...

[monsterjazzlick]

Re: Strange Goings On! (PerfTunes/Foobar/Ripped FLACs)

I d/l the Western Digital (external-HD) 'Utilities' s/w tool. I have run a 'quick-scan' and the results came up fine. The 'thorough-scan' can take a few hours, and so I am going to leave it running all night.

I ran the Western Digital (external-HD) 'Utilities' s/w tool FULL SCAN last night. It took nearly 7 hours! Anyway, the report indicated that everything is running 'fine' on the device.

[monsterjazzlick]

Re: Strange Goings On! (PerfTunes/Foobar/Ripped FLACs)

ok. But this does not test the playback chain. Copy some files to c drive and play via foobar2000.

Yes, sure; I can do that tommorow. It's just because the Western Digital 'Utilities' full-scan takes a few hours - plus it's gettin' late here now! - that I thought I would leave it running during these early hours ...

[garym]

Re: Strange Goings On! (PerfTunes/Foobar/Ripped FLACs)

Hi,

I d/l the Western Digital (external-HD) 'Utilities' s/w tool. I have run a 'quick-scan' and the results came up fine. The 'thorough-scan' can take a few hours, and so I am going to leave it running all night.

Thanks.

ok. But this does not test the playback chain. Copy some files to c drive and play via foobar2000.

[monsterjazzlick]

Re: Strange Goings On! (PerfTunes/Foobar/Ripped FLACs)

Yes. If the work-PC plays flac albums from the C: drive without issues, but as stated earlier, you have issues playing from the external-HD, then this implies you have a problem with the external-HD.

Hi,

I d/l the Western Digital (external-HD) 'Utilities' s/w tool. I have run a 'quick-scan' and the results came up fine. The 'thorough-scan' can take a few hours, and so I am going to leave it running all night.

Thanks.

[monsterjazzlick]

Re: Strange Goings On! (PerfTunes/Foobar/Ripped FLACs)

Hi schmidj,

Thanks very much indeed for your lengthy reply.

I will go through your points and reply in full over the weekend.

Much appreciated,

Paul

[schmidj]

Re: Strange Goings On! (PerfTunes/Foobar/Ripped FLACs)

First a question: is the Amazon Fire playing FLAC files, or compressed (mp3 or AAC or similar files?) (and BTW, I assume the skipping tracks don't skip in the same place on both the Fire and the PC...) Another question: How are you listening to the Fire? Hardwired headphones or some Bluetooth device?

Back to the PC: Various software designers load up their software with scheduled tasks which they load onto your computer, usually to "call home" to see if there are any updates (or sometimes promos for new software) at some scheduled time every so often, EVEN WHEN THAT SOFTWARE ISN'T RUNNING. (excuse the shouting, but that is not commonly understood by people who aren't software geeks.) And those calls home can easily end up having enough priority and system demands that they interrupt time sensitive operations like reading a USB drive and playing the music from the drive.

As a similar example, I noticed that sometimes when typing something on the keyboard on this pretty powerful multi-core laptop, the program I was typing into would loose the focus for a couple of seconds, leaving out a word or so of what I was typing. Very annoying! Well, I found if I looked at the Task Scheduler (not the Task Manager, but similar) and looked at what if any task it might have just run in the (supposedly) background, I'd see that a task executing program XYZ or whatever had been run by the task scheduler when I saw the interruption.

Most of those scheduled tasks can simply be removed, (You really don't care about those irritating pop-ups that appear telling you that Itunes has a new version...) or the task schedule can be modified (by you) so it only runs when your machine has been idle for some period of time and stops running if your machine is no longer idle; or can be modified to run at 3:00 AM instead of 8:27 PM.

Another thought, since it is a USB drive: Have you tried using a different USB port on your machine? A different USB cable? I've seen issues where some USB ports on computers were unreliable for playing streams because some other task inside the computer was hogging the hardware interfacing that USP port. Also USB cables, particularly USB3 cables, are notorious for not making good connections with the connectors on the computer. The USB3 connector design is far from rugged.

On the Fire, it is possible that playing high bandwidth FLAC files may be at the edge of the capability of the device (as compared to mp3 or AAC files more commonly used on portables) causing it to hiccup every now and then. And I do remember that my old, no longer used, Ipod Touch player would screw up at times, even playing AAC files.

Finally, the reason I asked about Bluetooth is that Bluetooth is a radio signal and subject to all kinds of interference. I've heard hits and dropouts on bluetooth devices fairly regularly. Just part of the terrain, not much you can do about it, other than go hardwire. The same is also true of Wifi, although that seems to typically be more rugged.

[monsterjazzlick]

Re: Strange Goings On! (PerfTunes/Foobar/Ripped FLACs)

Yes, which should ease your stress levels.

Was this track playing from a local drive or the external HD?

Yes, I feel more relaxed now thanks mville!

The skipping tracks play when using my PC (foobar) with external-HD; and the Amazon Fire (foobar) with a SanDisk SD.