Problems with newer PHM's/2.209

[gduns - with the Lord]

start the song that skips, then task manager (control-alt-delete) click the tab(on the top) that says "Processes" Hoster should have be almost the only thing using processor time.... now take into consideration, some other things will show 1% of time or so

But SPARKS was saying his would do a sharp spike (processor time being used) as the sound drops. see if something is taking over your processor, and try to identify it.

I had my pagefile set at 512MB. I read in the manual, I believe, that it should be set to TWICE the amount of RAM, of which I have 1024MB. That's why it was set there. I have played with that setting, and it doesn't change the effect.

This was written because most users only were running 64-128 megs of ram. Trust me, you don't even need a pagefile at all with 1 gig of ram. 512 is more than enough. a pagefile writes data to the hard disk while you are trying to read from it. it will slow down performance to have a 2048mg (2 gig) pagefile.

[S. Parks]

Originally posted by MTUSUPPORT
In got the file from Sparks. The file was Pop Hits Monthly Rock PHR 0310 Track 4 Creatures(For a While).

It does indeed give audio drops, at the very begging of the song and the very end of the Song.

Can someone who has this CD, try playing the Disc Under Microstudio and also on a CD+G player. This manufacturer uses our Karaoke Pro software to create all of their Karaoke Songs.

Please let me know what happens with the same disc under Microstudio and the CD+G player. The audio skip sounds like it was from the Original Disc, in my eyes. I don't know this for a fact, but this is what it sounds like to me as of this moment.

Hmmm, admin says it's an audio drop out, I assume played on their system, I think they may know what they're talking about.

[gduns - with the Lord]

S. Parks,
are you using compression and/or equalization when you inport these files, and what are these settings.

Also what compression rate are you using ie: 64, 96, 128 for file size.

Problems like this are a headache to fix because of all the variables that can be set between the group of us.

What I had as a skip on those disks, could have been an entirely different animal than yours.

Bear with us we are all just trying to help find the problem and solve it. Obviously this post is like 6 pages deep by now. Where else can get this much participation on a help forum.

[mikedomi]

it sound like an audio drop to you guys but mabe what you dont under stand is the audio is the last in the list for procsser proity

so if this file is asking the video card to work harder it is going to rob the audio of it procsser time
which in the end means audio drop
i played this song there is no audio drop on 2 units i tried it on

but i am sure it is happing for you and the others
but i am not quick to jump hoster because i know that there are other things it can be
and if it was diff hoster we all would be seeing this problem
and we are not just a small part of hoster onwers

so that would lead most people to belive it is a hard wear problem or config problem not hoster
i am just trying to help people under stand that there are a lot of things it could be not just hoster
windows gives the video card top billing what ever it wants it gets
i know what i am talking about here i only have been building these
thing for the past 15 years


take care mike

[tymzend]

gduns,

I'll switch it back to 512MB tonight, and try the song again, and look at the resources. I'm at work now, so can't debug from here.

Thanks for your efforts.

I'll post my findings later.

Once again, it didn't seem like there was anything else obvious from my dxdiag that anyone could see.

[S. Parks]

no I am not using any equalization when importing. I usally have the compression is usally 128 or higher, every now and then I'll import one at 98, but never lower. All the ones I am having problems with are 128 or higher. Thanks for your help, if there is any other information I get, just let me know. I did try to re-import a few and that had no results either. I have two copies of Hoster running on two different machines with all the recomended settings, with the same drop outs.

[Flipeoke]

My thought is that this is NOT an audio problem, however, a video problem...described by Mindonstrike's comments here:

Originally posted by mindonstrike

I did a little experimenting of my own. I took one of the problem disks (phmn1103) and converted it to mp3g - it plays fine in winamp with the plugin. Then I converted it back to cdg and reburned it to a disk and imported that disk into hoster, and the dropouts occur once again. So what ever it is it seems to be peculiar to kma's and it seems to be related to a code change since 2.014 . Before the upgrade, in 2.014 I would get the large cpu usage spikes and a tiny little crackle, barely noticeable if you weren't trying to hear it, but some change since then has caused the dropouts to be more noticeable

i also combined the music from a CB mp3g with the graphics from a PHM and imported it into hoster and had the same problem in the same location on the track. Combining the music from a PHM track with the graphics of a CB song played flawlessly.
Also when i made a song in kpro using the instrumental from PHM i had no problems there either.

Sam

So by this testing it seems the dropouts originate in the video portion of these PHM CDGs, could it be that the 'flaws' are there on the disc and the CDG players are just not sensitive enough to pick up on them, or maybe they're processing a larger chuck of info at a time, while the computer working faster is getting smaller samples from the disc and hiccups when it gets that small sample with the flaw? just kinda thinking out loud, not really sure how the program or CDG players read/process the info...

I don't personally have any newer PHM discs to try, the only ones I have are from 1996-2001 (after which I have THM discs). I sampled songs from many of the ones I have and I did notice a couple had a VERY slight click in the audio in the beginning of the song. It was so slight that unless you really listen for it you wouldn't hear it... For this to happen a number of things had to be true:

Music had to start prior to the intro graphic being shown, music had to be somewhat constant, (I didn't notice it unless there was a constant note, or sound being played) and the dropout (click) occurred right as the screen switched from black (some were dark green) to the opening title page. I DID notice a very slight spike in the CPU usage up to about 20% or so from 2-4% while a song is playing, and this is running on my somewhat slow laptop, Pentium 3 850MHz w/384Mb RAM. A jump of about 3-4% in the following processes, SYSTEM, services.exe, Hoster.exe and taskmgr.exe

Just some thoughts, perhaps it will help,

Flip

[S. Parks]

I have nearly every one of the newer PHM's and that new yellow screen that fades in and out will produce audio drop outs on every one of them that have music playing while the graphic is going through its cycyle, so I am in agreement, it is a video thing causing the audio thing, and as previously stated, I have created Kpro songs using the music from these, and they play in Hoster perfectly. The newer ones I own are in pristine condition, having never been used in a player in a show, thanks to hoster, so it's deffinitely a condition of the original disc related thing.

[tymzend]

I'm not blaming Hoster at all. Hoster is the coolest program I've ever used. I can't wait to get home to see what's sucking up my system resources when that title page comes in. Maybe I can shed a bit more light at that point.

The frustrating part, is that someone like Bryan could probably fix my problem in 10 minutes, but he's 1000 miles away.

I just know that's it's something like "uncheck this box", or something like that.

At least I'm not the only one, although I wish I were, so some of you others didn't have this issue.

[MTUSUPPORT]

I have contacted Stellar Records. They are the creators of these discs, they are going to FedEx us the two discs that have been mentioned in here: PHR 0310 and PHM 0404.

I have also tried this on 2 different computers and I get the Audio/Static Sound. I have also gone back and Installed Hoster 2.014, which some were claiming worked correctly and it also has the Exact Same Noise, so this has been a problem through all versions of Hoster. This is not a new Problem, I am not sure why it is just now starting to Show up.

I have also found that if you play the same song, over and over it will make the static get louder. What is sounds like is the audio buffers are being distorted somehow by the graphics.

When you play a file in Hoster it decompresses the Audio portion of the .kma file. It then stores that as a out.dat file. This file is located at C:\Documents and Settings\(This will be your Logged on User Name)Administrator\Local Settings\Temp\out.dat.

If you change the out.dat file to out.wma then you can play the Audio portion under Windows Media Player. You will then see that the Audio is clean and the problem indeed does lie within the Graphics playback of Hoster.

The problem is not with the computers, but is indeed with the Hoster Software.

[gduns - with the Lord]

When I was having the problem with phm disks.......


I was also noticing that as windows opens up the begining screen for windows came on the video would flicker on both monitors....... and the sound skipped at the same time. This was playing the windows startup.wav file.

At this time I was using a mx440 nividea card. I changed to a msi geforce 5600 I havent noticed the problem since. I'm not sure if this was a factor, or one of the other tweaks I did.

I understand the mx440 was not direct x 9.0b compliant.


Just a thought to all....

[mindonstrike]

Kudos to MTU for admitting the problem might lie in the software.
In 2.014 I often ran Hoster with the task mgr graph on the screen to figure out if some noises were coming from the computer or my system,so i've noticed the large spikes in cpu usage for quite awhile, but if there was a drop it was just a glitch, barely noticeble, in fact I thought it strange that with a spike that big I didn't get a dropout because usually the only spikes like that came occasionaly from using the "song" tab where I would get a very noticeable dropout. Only since I went to 2.209 did it become a problem. (No song search dropouts in 2.209 I might add)
I have 2 shuttles both set up identicaly, my backup shuttle still has 2.014 so I use it to play the problem pop hit songs and still with out problems.
I am still curious to hear from users not having this problem if they show large cpu spikes on their task mgr. graphs.

Sam

[S. Parks]

Two versions ago, I could play these new disc with none of the popping and crackling, it did the same thing on the last version and other people were complaining about drop outs at the time, so I figured the issue was being addressed, thus why I haven't mentioned this prior to 2.209. So I agree, not a new issue. I'm glad to see the serious attention it is now recieving. This software is still second to none, and is now verging on phenominal! It's a wonderful thing MTU does, allowing its users have a say in the developement of their wonderful products. Keep up the good work, I know you'll find a solution for this.

[tiggallen]

just loaded pop hits monthly 404 my immortal and have played it about 20 times with no prob

[mindonstrike]

tiggallan,
try playing them with your task mgr on and see if it shows any spikes in cpu usage, especially at the beginning of the song.
Thanks.
sam

[tiggallen]

yes it did go to 48% but for a split second but no audio drop out that is while i had tracktor and music book duluxe running

[mindonstrike]

tigallen, Thanks, at least that begins to confirm my suspicions that (possibly) everyone is having the cpu spikes but because of their hardware and/or settings, they are not experiencing any problems with it.

Sam

[S. Parks]

[quote]Originally posted by MTUSUPPORT

The problem is not with the computers, but is indeed with the Hoster Software. [/QUOT

I'm not so sure its the computer settings

[gduns - with the Lord]

S. Parks,
While there may be an issue with the hoster. Hardware, and system variables are the biggest thing that MTU can't control.

If they fix this problem for the ones reporting this, it may not take care of it for someone else with another problem.

Hundreds of users haven't reported this problem, while a small percentage of users have. Most of this reporting has only come to light recently. I reported this problem with Top Hits Monthly Nashville, over 6 months ago. and wrote it off to a setup/hardware problem when I cured it on my computer.

When you change one thing, and it doesn't do a lot to fix the problem most people set back to the prevoius settings. But All in all everything as a package contributes to the problem. for Instance I know the pagefile being set to a definite size does help. disabling direct draw helps. disabling the fade effect helps.

I guess the point is if you have a flat tire, and the transmission slips, and the engine has a miss. The conclusion is car runs like crap. No matter which one you fix, it will still run bad.

I agree that hoster may have a problem, but the setting on the computer that have this problem with some of us and not others is not up to MTU to fix. You must also Have a computer in good tune and up to specs to have it work correctly.

You would be suprised how many people buy a $400.00 x-brand TV special, and expect it to do rocket science. All in all you get what you pay for.

[tymzend]

I am not doubting that there could be some settings on my computer that aren't correct, or that could be tweaked to improve performance. But, my PC was purchased from MTU, so I am probably farther ahead of the game as far as a starting point with things set up the way they should be. I haven't "knowingly" altered anything that I wasn't supposed to. I'm too paranoid, when it comes to hardware settings.

The PC's that run this software are obviously very touchy to changes that might affect the performance of the software. I guess that's why I'm probably afraid to change anything outside what the manual says to look for improvements, for fear that I might end up doing more harm than good.

The search for a solution continues..........