Helping people with computers... one answer at a time.
There are a few different reasons why music will not play smoothly on one's computer, depending on your hardware and how you're playing music.
When I play a music CD or try to listen to a wave file off the Internet the music "breaks up" and does not play smoothly. ... Do you have any ideas?
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Several ideas, actually, depending on the situation.
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If "playing a music CD" quite literally means inserting a physical CD into your drive and listening to it directly, then I'll immediately suspect your sound card. Either it's broken or extremely cheap. Most reasonable sound cards take the audio directly from the CD drive and route it to the speakers without your processor getting involved. I'd swap it for another and see if that doesn't resolve the issue. (If this is sound support on your motherboard, then this gets a little tricky, as you can imagine. You can try installing an additional sound card.)
If you're attempting to play an MP3 file across a network, or "live" as it's being downloaded from the internet, don't. Try downloading the file locally first and then playing it directly from your hard drive. If this works, then it may simply be a case of your internet connection not being fast enough to keep up with the data stream required to play the audio you've selected. If you're listening to streaming audio stations on the internet then try choosing one with a lower bandwidth requirement.
If neither of those applies, then things get interesting.
Chances are it's an interrupt or device driver problem. It's even possible that it's not even the sound card's, though it still might be. What could be happening is that a device is hogging the processor long enough to cause your sound card not to be able to push data to the speakers fast enough. Normally that shouldn't happen for two different reasons: a) other devices shouldn't be hogging the processor for that long, and b) your sound card probably shouldn't care if it had a big enough buffer.
Certainly I'd make sure that your system and device drivers were as up-to-date as possible. What means visiting both Windows Update as well as your hardware manufacturer's website to look for updated drivers.
It's possible, believe it or not, that you might be able to at least affect this problem by rearranging the cards plugged into the slots in your computer. Naturally this isn't something to be done lightly, but what can happen is that the devices can be assigned new priorities and the sound card might come out on top.
All that being said, I had exactly this type of problem some time ago, and walked away in frustration. The bottom line is that my machine had come with an incredibly cheap sound card that was in conflict with an equally cheap hard disk controller and there was nothing I could do with it.
Article C2028 - June 12, 2004 « »
Leo A. Notenboom has been playing with computers since he
was required to take a programming class in 1976. An 18 year career as a programmer at Microsoft soon followed.
After "retiring" in 2001, Leo started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place for answers
to common computer and technical questions. More about Leo.
September 10, 2008 9:27 AM
I don;t think this is apure hardware problem. I can hear breakups whenever my browser is doing something meaningful, even as I scroll the content up and down. I think Windows is simply not good at multiprocessing which requires real-time capabilities, even something as simple as a WAV file palyback.
September 25, 2008 12:25 AM
after i burn a cd as a file fron the dead archives it plays on my pc but not my home audio cd player any suggestions
thanks skip
November 8, 2008 2:42 PM
Hello,
I formated my computer packard bell NEC
spirit 550, and lost my audio video drivers, Used the everest software to find what was missing and where to find it, and yet can not find the exact drivers for it, can you help??
cheers!
October 28, 2009 2:35 AM
I unchecked "Enable digital CD audio for this CD-ROM device", and now my cd plays music. Thanks!
April 6, 2010 12:46 PM
I am having a hard time finding a driver for a Dell Inspirion 6000. I visited the website and saved it, and ran it... the driver said it installed but there still isn't sound. When I go to the Start/Control Panel/Sounds and Audio devices it says there isnt a device for this in playback, record, basically every tab and its greyed out. I've tried everything. In device Manager i've uninstalled it, rebooted, it found it but still no volume and greyed out areas. Please help me figure this out! Thank you Leo!