Stuttering audio - I'm running out of ideas

Hi, first post.


I have stuttering audio and have tried loads of things to try and track it down but I'm still nowhere near cracking it. Please take a look at what I have already done to try and diagnose/fix the problem, then if anyone has any further suggestions, I'd be very happy to hear them.

System spec:
ASUS A8V Deluxe mobo
Antec Sonata chassis with 380w PSU
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ (not overclocked at all)
Radeon X800 PRO
2x1GB RAM (Corsair)
VIA Raid controller in IDE mode (onboard)
Promise controller in IDE mode (onboard)
Maxtor 80GB SATA
Maxtor 160GB SATA
Hitachi 250GB SATA
ASUS 802.11b/g on-board wireless
Windows XP Pro w/SP2 and fully hotfixed (apart from IE7)

So, the problem is that whenever I launch an audio (WMA or MP3) file it seriously stutters at startup, then periodically while playing the file. This also happens for system sounds, such as the Windows startup sound or the new mail alert. It is the same whether I use Windows Media Player or Winamp to play the file.

These are some of the things I've tried, in no particular order (also note that I have also wiped the OS, reformatted and reinstalled):

Flashed to the latest BIOS for my board (1017.002)
Downloaded latest drivers for sound/video
Disabled the onboard AC97 sound card, and installed a new PCI card with new drivers
Full virus and spyware scan with AVG, Spybot and Adaware
Checked CPU activity under normal conditions, absolutely fine with normal core temps and voltage.
Defragmented all hard drives
Error checked all drives
Removed paging file and set it to use just RAM
Checked that all drives are in DMA mode and not PIO
Disabled all unnecessary devices in device manager
Disabled all unnecessary services
Checked event viewer for anything - nothing there
Enabled my on-board Promise controller and swapped the 160GB disk onto that (in IDE mode)
Installed a new 250GB internal drive and swapped out the 160GB drive altogether
Re-installed Windows with no peripherals other than keyboard/mouse/monitor

All of the above has had no effect on the problem, so I have been trying to diagnose it, and found the following.

Using Process Explorer, the stuttering audio coincides with a spike in hardware interrupts where they take up to 60% CPU. So, I ran Perfmon too and this showed that the CPU spike coincided with a big increase in Disk Writes/Second. So I ran Process Monitor and when playing the audio file for 5 seconds, 28,000 events are produced with a huge amount if disk read, and more interestingly, disk write operations by Winamp or WMP. I have no idea if this is normal.


Please can anyone offer anything else I can check, other than the above? I think (though I'm not sure) that it may be related to the high disk access when launching/playing the files, but if it is, I have no idea how to go about diagnosing that further, and hopefully fixing it.


Many thanks in advance
Paul

 

By this, are we to understand that the problem only happens intermittently, or is it all the time?

If it is all the time, have you checked the speakers? Loose connections can produce the symptoms you describe. This doesn't necessarily mean the jack you plug into the computer either, as I would assume you had checked this when switching sound cards. It could be a loose wire on either end. Do they do the same thing on another device?

 

Believe me, the speakers and cables are fine

Thanks for mentioning though, but that was the first thing I tried before getting trapped into the perfmon / procexp / procmon diagnostic routines

Cheers
Paul

 

Ive seen this too, when i installed a promise 133 pci! and you have on board!!!!! when i removed it and did a system restore the problem went away, also spybot adaware stuff dont always find everything lurking around, try avast home antivirus its free when you install let it do a boot up scan of the hole system and see what it finds!
http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html

 

All, good questions.

Does this happen, while playing an MP3...playing an audio cd, or during a Game?

What hdd is the file located? Has it been defragged?

 

It happens when I play an audio file, or when I play a CD (though it is ever so slightly less apparent when playing a CD). I have also tried playing MP3 files from all across the different HDDs, always the same problem. It's not a problem with defragging for instance, as the problem occurs even when playing audio from a brand new disk.

As for games, it doesn't affect full screen games (e.g. World of Warcraft), but does affect the sound in flash-based online games. I imagine this is because a full screen game "takes over" some of the PC's functions itself.

It's also not virus or spyware related, as it occurs on a fresh (formatted) XP installation on just one disk.

The problem also occurs whether this disk is attached to the Promise or the VIA controller. Similarly it occurs if I do a fresh installation of XP on a different disk.

The only thing I have left to try is either replace the CPU or the PSU, as someone mentioned that PSUs degrade over time - and mine is about 3 years old (Antec Truepower 380w). Seems unlikely though.

Thanks
Paul