Sound "hiccup" (hesitation for a split second)
 

I FINALLY figured out when I would get a system 'hiccup' that would cause the system to hesitate just for a second - embarrassing for singers who continue to sing and get off tempo because of it. This 'hiccup' occurs when I have imported a singer's song from their CDG. It never happens any other time. I have the latest version, running on dual SATA drives in a PC shuttle. I did all the appropriate Windows business when I upgraded to the latest version of Hoster. This ONLY HAPPENS WHEN I HAVE IMPORTED A SONG FROM A SINGER'S CDG.. I don't have any other programs running in the background. This did not ever occur on my previous version of Hoster.

Any ideas? Is this going to require a re-install?

Try adjusting the quality setting for the import. It is under Tool/CD drives. Set it to a lower setting. If the disk or the drive are dirty or scratched, that will cause this error. If this doesn't work, do you happen to have another drive to import from? The drive may be getting weak or just dirty.

I should clarify - it doesn't happen while I'm playing the person's song that has been imported - it actually happens randomly long after that person's song has been played - this is why it took me so long to figure this out.

What are you doing up at this hour? LOL. I'm on PDT...I see you're in Missouri. Thanks for the quick response....

The imported song is held in a temp file, along with sharing memory space with the program. If the memory gets full and has to swap to the hard drive at some point, you can see errors like this. The higher the quality setting, the more memory the song takes up. That is why my first suggestion was to lower the quality. Also, with a higher quality setting, it bangs on the import drive more rigorously, causing these same kind of issues.

As far as being up, I am just too dumb to sleep when I can:g:g

Hey Karen,
After an imported CD+G song plays, are you keeping it in the playlist? If so try deleting the played song from the playlist once it is done. I never have to import CD+G's at my show so I wouldn't see this.

Jim :g

I wondered if it wasn't related to temporary file. Thanks for the suggestion. I will try that next time. It's getting to the point where I don't even WANT to play singer's discs anymore - singers get a little confused when this happens. Hey, I understand the sleep thing. I put off work I could have done anymore before now, and now it's due at 8 a.m.

I couldn't find any other thread related to this dilemma - I'd be surprised if no one else was having the issue ... it didn't happen before I upgraded to the latest version. Will try reducing the quality on the ripping.

Thanks again for the suggestion ... and so quickly! :)

Hey Madjim, will do that, too. I have to get to the bottom of this...It took me SOOOO long to figure out why it happened in the first place since the offending hiccup occurred long after the imported song was played.

I actually don't. If I have someone who ABSOLUTELY HAS TO HAVE a certain version of a song, and I think they will be a repeat customer, I will find and purchase the disk myself.

This was supposed to be a non-issue for this version. It did come up in 4.3, but hasn't been reported by anyone in 4.8.

And your welcome.

Ditto

Jim :g

I pretty well do just that - get songs for regulars. I'm a pushover for getting songs for people. I guess I'll do that with the two singers who INSIST on singing their own versions (even though I do have their songs). ARGGGG....

Sweet dreams...

I feel your frustrastion Karen, especially if they are poor sounding tracks. :e It is our business though and we must take care of our customers/singers. :w

Have a great day!

Jim :g

I have always done that. In fact, I take every single request, write it down and order it within a week. Usually the person comes back the next week and asks and is surprised (and hooked on my show forever). Is it expensive, you bet. But if I'm going to build up to a 15,000 song collection like some of us have on here, I'm gonna do it ALL based upon request. When I first started, I was spending hundreds of dollars a month, and would promise anyone that their request would be honored within two weeks or their drinks for the night are on me.
Only had to offer that three times; two singers refused, and actually offered to get my drinks. The other guy cost me ten bucks. That same guy has got me three weddings and recommended me to two other places where I now work regularly. I spend less than 100 dollars a year now on requests.

Karen , long ago I had a problem with everything occasionally coming to a complete stop, waiting for about 10 seconds and continue (see the link below). It didn't happen often, but often enough to be annoying. As each version of 4.xx came out the stop time has gotten less. Now it only happens for about 1.5 to 2 seconds. Thanks to you I have found a common thread, it only happens in places where I occasionally play other peoples disk. I play once a month at a particular club and it happened each time i played there. But because I will usually buy the version they prefer and load it, the problem had almost gone away.
Last week I played there and for the first time in a long time I loaded someones disc and it happened a few songs later.
Thanks , now I know its a memory issue and not a hard-drive issue ( as was my first suspicion)
http://forum.mtu.com/showthread.php?...ht=music+stops

Curious as to how you came to this conclusion.
Was it that it never happened on nights you didn't import a singers disk but always on nights when you did? or was there some other troubleshooting involved?
There's no logical reason this should happen because there is absolutely no difference in a singers track and any other cdcdg type kma except that it's in a different folder

Per Madjims comments: Regardless of whether an imported singers song is deleted from the playlist or played through to the end. The song will stay in the temp folder until Hoster is shut down normally at which point Hoster empties the file.

It took me a long time to figure this out - I work a Friday gig that normally doesn't have singers who bring in their own stuff; on occasion there is a singer who does bring in her own CDGs. These songs load fine and she ends up singing ALL her songs off her own tracks. So finally it dawned on me that for weeks there'd be no skipping and then there'd be this skipping, and it was when she was there. We then watched very carefully for the next few weeks and determined that it was happening when other people brought in tracks and we uploaded them, no matter which show (we run 3 a week).

I have contemplated doing a quick reboot in the middle of the show when I know that I won't be uploading anymore to try and stop the problem but it seems I have long rotations that don't allow for it. (If ONLY I had a dance floor!).

One of the main reasons I chose Hoster was for the capability to upload without having extra equipment (a cdg player) - now I feel like i'm asking for trouble by uploading people's music. Kind of defeats the purpose of it if I have to go and spend money on all the tracks that people bring in (especially since they're the ONLY ones who sing those tracks).

Will resort to the reboot - I don't really know how long it would actually take to do that - will have to experiment.

As Sam said this is not a logical conclusion. If you were going to get a problem like that from the importing of singer's disks it would happen at the import time, not later after it is done when the processor use has diminished back to normal. There has to be something else that is causing the program to pause.

You shouldn't need to reboot, just close Hoster and re-open. It'll take ya about 10 or 15 seconds. You'll have to re-skip the things you had skipped.
A couple years ago I had to do this to take care of a crashing problem I was getting after 10 - 15 singer disk imports.

Sam

Sam,
Thanks for the clearing this up.

Jim :g

I can't really come to another conclusion about this: This situation happens ONLY when I have imported someone else's CDG and it happens anytime AFTER the song is played. If I don't upload anyone else's CDG, it DOES NOT HAPPEN. I can go weeks without skipping ever if I don't load someone else's music. As soon as I load someone's music, it will skip. Sometimes only one time, but I can pretty well count on it.

Laptop or desktop type of computer?
Vista or XP?
How much memory on your computer?

PC shuttle with NEW SATA drives, XP. TONS of memory. I don't have it in the house right now so I can't actually tell you how much memory but I have 16,000 songs on dual SATA drives and they're more than adequate.