system hangs during playback?

H

Hector Burns

New member
Hello Everybody. Recently I purchased a UA-30 - a USB device that allows you to record on a laptop. It works well for recording, but there is a problem with play back. If I'm using, say, Winamp to play MP3's, it routinely hangs after 4 to 5 songs. If I'm playing a wave file, it hangs about half way though the first song. Since MP3's are about 1/10th the size of wave files (I think), it seems that it must be hanging after a certain # of MB's. If I use the soundcard that came with the laptop, playback is no problem (the UA-30's sound quality is much better, so I'd prefer to use it)

Any ideas on how I can prevent this? My system has 64 RAM. If I increased it would the problem be solved? Is there some adjustment I can make in Windows to prevent the system from hanging?

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Cheers
 
Hanging like that is often the result of a device conflict of some kind.

Are you using Windows 98? If so, try the System Information utility (Accesories -> System Tools -> System Information).
 
can you change IRQ #'s?

Thanks for the advice. I checked it and I noticed that my USB shared an IRQ with something else. This must be causing causing the conflict. I also noticed that a couple of IRQ's are "free." I don't know much about this, but is there any way to change the IRQ's so that the USB has it's own # with no conflict?
 
You can try to manually set the IRQ as follows (this is for Win98):

- Control Panel
- System
- Device Manager
- Locate and highlight your USB device and click the Properties button
- Select the Resource Tab and uncheck the "use automatic settings" box
- Highlight Interrupt Request under the Resource Type area and click the 'change settings" button
- Set the IRQ to the one you want


This won't always work. Some devices need to be on a particular IRQ, while others won't allow you to change the setting.

Generally if the devices are actually in conflict, you will see an exclamation point next to the device.
 
If you don't use a printer, go into your BIOS by hitting delete during bootup - during the memory count. Disable the parallel port. This will free up an otherwise reserved IRQ.

I don't think this is an IRQ problem though, it's not unusual for the the USB to be shared. Sounds like a software/driver issue. I'd check to see your running the latest drivers for the card, and email the manufacturer with your problem. There may be a known workaround/solution.
 
I agree with all the replys. But YES hector you should get more RAM. 64 meg is the minimum if you are playing with audio. 128 would be better and your system would stop swapping so much to disk, so it would run faster.

Memory is cheap right now, unfortunatey laptop memory is always over priced. But trust me, you want it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top