BUG#5947 now I'm getting get a crackle-bang sound

[nohitter151]

where do I find the latest beta build?

At the top of the beta testing forum, in the "Announcements".

[rusty]

The latest build is at:
http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... 29#p227529

You can just subscribe to the thread to always be notified of new beta builds.

Let us know how it works for you.

-Rusty

[theloniouscoltrane]

The problem is still there. 3.1.2.1274

[rusty]

Hi,

Please try build 1275 -- it fixes bug 6053, which might be the issue you're seeing.

Let us know... Thanks!

-Rusty

[theloniouscoltrane]

OK, I've been using 1275 for three days and the problem occurs more often than it did before, about 75% of the time.

[nohitter151]

OK, I've been using 1275 for three days and the problem occurs more often than it did before, about 75% of the time.

How did you resolve this before?

[theloniouscoltrane]

I haven't a clue. It just stopped. I think it was about the time I switched to ASIO. I just tried switching to wavout output and it plays one song and then jams.

[nohitter151]

I haven't a clue. It just stopped. I think it was about the time I switched to ASIO. I just tried switching to wavout output and it plays one song and then jams.

Do you really think this is something caused by MM then, or something local to your system? I think if it just resolved itself (and you didn't change your MM settings or upgrade to a new version) that this is likely a problem localized to your computer, its settings, your environment, etc.

[gjosh]

It's not just theloniouscoltrane. I have the same problem too. I installed several beta releases just to see if they stopped the problem, but none have done it so far. Here is what I've been seeing.

The basic problem is, most of the time when I play a track in MM directly from my hard drive, no matter what the format (WAV, MP3, MP4, etc.), it makes a loud popping noise right at the end before moving to the next track. But not always. Here are the variables:

(1) If I only play the last few seconds or so, the pop does not occur. I have to play all or most of the track for the pop to occur.

(2) If I'm playing the last track in the playlist, no pop occurs at the end. It only seems to make the sound when switching from one track to another. But in those cases, it ALWAYS makes the pop.

(3) If I play these same tracks using another player, such as Windows Media Player, in a similar playlist, no pops occur. From this I conclude that the files do NOT have a popping noise embedded inside them. It's MM which is making the noise during playback. (Just to be sure, I verified this by importing a few of the files into Audacity to see if the pop showed up. It did not.)

(4) When I used MM to copy these files onto my iPod Nano 4G, the Nano plays the popping sound! Somehow, when MM manipulates the file, the popping sound that it generates gets encoded to the Nano -- even though, as I say above, I can play those files directly from my hard disk using other players with no popping sound. Somehow, MM's playback and manipulation of files in a playlist inserts popping noises between tracks.

(5) My OS is Windows XP Professional.

(6) I tried to use the debugger version of 1275 to show you the data, but it won't run for some reason. It doesn't play any of my tracks! Arrgh. Hence this wordy discussion.

This thing may seem like a minor problem, but it's aggravating, especially in classical music or other tracks that are supposed to be seamless. (Try listening to the Beatles' Sgt Pepper with pops crackling between each track!)

Thanks for how hard you are all working on this software. This is an amazing project and a great piece of software.

--Josh

[rusty]

You can download MediaMonkey beta builds from:
http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... 22&start=0

The current build is 3.1.2.1276

-Rusty

[gjosh]

No improvement re: this bug in 1276. Plus, I made a mistake: the popping sound does occur at the end of all songs, even at the end of a playlist. And MM continues to port the popping sound to the Nano. Yet when I play the same track off my hard drive with any other music player, no popping sound occurs.

Is this being paid attention to, or should we somehow try to raise its profile? (Not sure how to do that...)

[rusty]

So far we can't reproduce the problem, so there's not much we can do. Hopefully we'll figure out how to reproduce.

When you sync tracks to your iPod and they pop, are the tracks in question being auto-converted from one format to another?

Other questions re. playback in MediaMonkey:
-Is the equalizer enabled?
-Does it occur with all audio formats?
-Does it occur regardless of which output plugin you use?
-Does it occur if Play > Level Playback volume is disabled?

Thanks.

-Rusty

[gjosh]

Thanks for the reply, Rusty. Per your questions, none of these factors seems to affect the problem.

The pop gets copied to the iPod irrespective of whether I'm auto-converting the format or not. I've copied certain WAV and MP3 files to the iPod without converting them, but other times I've converted WAV files to MP3 and MP4. In every case, the pop gets copied to the iPod.

The pop happens with the equalizer enabled and with it disabled.
It seems to happen with all audio formats.
I switched between the MM DirectSound and the waveOut plugin, and it happens the same with both.
I always use MM with Play > Level Playback disabled. So I tried it with this feature enabled, and the pop occurred anyway.

I never gave you my system configuration - maybe that would be helpful. It's a Dell laptop running Windoiws XP Professional. Maybe this is also significant: I'm using a USB sound card: the Turtle Beach Audio Advantage Micro. Thanks again - here's a bunch of my system info.

OS Name Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Version 5.1.2600 Service Pack 3 Build 2600
System Model Latitude D600
System Type X86-based PC
Processor x86 Family 6 Model 9 Stepping 5 GenuineIntel ~1298 Mhz
BIOS Version/Date Dell Computer Corporation A16, 6/29/2005
SMBIOS Version 2.3
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "5.1.2600.5512 (xpsp.080413-2111)"
Total Physical Memory 1,280.00 MB
Available Physical Memory 530.63 MB
Total Virtual Memory 2.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory 1.96 GB
Page File Space 2.36 GB

[gjosh]

Whoa - correction. I have found a fix...

The problem does NOT occur when I enable Play > Level Playback ! Playback in MM is pop-free now, and I can send files to the iPod without transferring the pop as well.

This is great, I'll keep the feature enabled, but the truth is I don't really want to level the volume on playback... Maybe you guys can take a look at the coding relating to playback levelling as well as how MM handles tracks of different volume levels...?

In any case, thanks for responding and suggesting things for me to try!

[gjosh]

That last post is only true using waveOut. No matter what setting I pick, the MM DirectSound output still makes the popping sound.