Player was playing CDs fine, but now it isn't

[DJJR]

Hi,

I've been ripping music off my CDs onto my HD and I have been able to preview the music first without any problems. Now I noticed that Windows Media Player plays the CD fine, but none of the dbpowerAmp programs will play the CD.

What I observed is that normally the CD is read continuously as indicated by the flashing green light on the CD player door and that is how it runs with WMP. But it seems to me that dbpoweramp is reading a section and then playing it and then trying to read from the CD again and then play another section. It doesn't seem to be a continuous read. And every time the light flashes or it is reading from the CD, I get a garbled sound.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

DJJR

[LtData]

Re: Player was playing CDs fine, but now it isn't

Check your version of dAP:
Right-click on a blank part of the skin to get the menu. If it just says "dBpowerAMP" then you are using release 2. If it says "dBpowerAMP release 3 beta x" then you are using the release 3 beta. If you are using r2, it is recommended you upgrade to the dAP r3 beta. It is perfectly stable, just not a final release.

[DJJR]

Re: Player was playing CDs fine, but now it isn't

Thanks.

I loaded the latest version of the player release 3 beta 6 but I am still having the same problem. Preview or playback of CD is garbled. Do you have any other suggestions?

The following info is to possibly help you to help me, but it isn't directly related to the player.

I am running version 11.5 of the converter.

I used to be able to rip from CDs to a HD folder, but I have never been able to rip CDs directly to my MP3 player. It would rip the file but not upload it to the player. I can upload files from my HD via my music collection and it will convert them on the fly, but just not directly from CD to MP3 player.

Are there other updates you recommend?

Thanks,

DJJR

[LtData]

Re: Player was playing CDs fine, but now it isn't

Try the following:

Check your DMA settings for the disc drive. Go to Control Panel --> System --> Hardware --> Device Manager. Once there, click "IDE/ATAPI Controllers" and double-click on the one named something like "Secondary Channel" or, if there is just one choice, double-click on it. Go to normally the second or third tab, and make sure your drive is set to "DMA if available" and NOT "PIO Only".

If you cannot set it to DMA, AND the secondary channel is a separate choice, close the properties window, right-click on the secondary channel, and click "uninstall". Click OK on the window, then click Action --> Scan for hardware changes. It should detect the secondary channel, if it does not restart. Make sure the drive is now set to DMA mode.

If this happened, why? Well, WinXP has a "feature" that sets drives to PIO mode if there are a lot of read errors. This results in CPU usage whenever you try to use your CD drive, and I mean HIGH CPU usage. It also makes any audio sound like absolute crap if it is played while the CD drive is in use in any form. You can still rip fine, just not rip and play audio of any sort, even speech software like Ventrilo or Skype sounds horrible.

Even though it is specific to ripping, it should still apply to you trying to playback a CD.

[DJJR]

Re: Player was playing CDs fine, but now it isn't

Thanks for the help. I did as you suggested, but it didn't help. I have 2 devices listed on the secondary controller, device 0 and device 1, I'm guessing my CD drive and my DVD drive. Both are set as you suggested - DMA if availalble. On device zero, it says the current transfer mode is PIO mode even though it is set for DMA if availalble. The other device (1) is set for Ultra DMA mode 2 as its transfer mode.

I don't want to muddy the waters and I appreciate the help and suggestions, but I thought I read somewhere that there may be a conflict with Roxio Easy Media Creator which I do have on my system. I also have winAmp and Napster loaded. Do you think one of these other programs is causing problems. Sometimes when I start switching back and forth from using WMP to Roxio to Napster, part of my Roxio program fails and I have to repair the installation. I don't know what is going on, but I think either Roxio is just buggy or there is some kind of conflict so I was just wondering if anyone else has had a similar problem with running dBpowerAMP with other programs installed on their computer?

When dBpowerAMP is running well, I really like it so I'm hoping I can get this figured out.

Thanks again for all the help.

DJJR

[LtData]

Re: Player was playing CDs fine, but now it isn't

If the transfer mode says "PIO Only" even if DMA is selected, you need to do what my post says about uninstalling the secondary controller.

Also, I would not be surprised to hear that a Roxio program messed something up. You might want to check to see if there is an update for your verson.

What version of Windows are you running?

[DJJR]

Re: Player was playing CDs fine, but now it isn't

That did it. Thanks. When I uninstalled & reinstalled the controller it set my CD player to DMA mode 2 for both drives actually. Anyway, the player is working fine now. I'll check out the rest of the features too, but just wanted to let you know you were right on.

Thanks

Jim

[LtData]

Re: Player was playing CDs fine, but now it isn't

Glad to hear it.