Sound "hiccup" (hesitation for a split second)

[Karen K]

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.

[ddouglass]

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

[Karen K]

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.

[ddouglass]

By memory I am talking about RAM not space on the drives.

[Karen K]

okay, duh me. I'm not sure... I'll check it out when I do the next 'service' on it - the thing lives in a plastic crate in my van. For now I'll just restart Hoster and see if we can avoid the problem.

[ddouglass]

Originally Posted by Karen K

okay, duh me. I'm not sure... I'll check it out when I do the next 'service' on it - the thing lives in a plastic crate in my van. For now I'll just restart Hoster and see if we can avoid the problem.

I hope you don't keep it in your van during the summer months. The excess heat in a closed vehicle is not good for it.

[Karen K]

No, I don't leave it out there in the heat or the extreme cold. We live in the land of 45 degrees for 6 mos of the year - October through April it seems (Seattle area). I do bring it in with weather extremes, and when I have enough new music to load to make it worth the hassle. I JUST did a major music upload so it'll be a while before I set it up again. I type all day and night for a living and host 3 nights a week so I'm not into making extra work for myself most days...

I just thought I'd ask if anyone else had experienced this phenomenon or whether it was something peculiar to my computer or situation somehow. I appreciate your responses. Wish I knew the answer to your question about RAM. BTW, this never occurred with previous releases of Hoster...

[dspins]

Originally Posted by Karen K

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.

Karen, I agree with you 100%. I can echo your problem everytime as well. It only happens right after loading a CD from a customer during a show. The software will either skip, the graphics will get out of sync with the song, or the music will even play off tempo. It ONLY happens right after or while loading a disc. This never used to be an issue for me, but as of the last couple updates on hoster, I am seeing this problem more and more. I tried maxing out the ram in my system with some of the best and fastest ram I could use and saw no improvement in this problem. So simply being a memory issue I find questionable as a reason. I find it more plausable that hoster has become a CPU hog now and since it is too big, people with older XP single core sytems are going to have problems with hoster unless they post a separate version for XP and vista. Don't hold your breath on that happening though.

Like those people above pointed out, closing the software down and re-opening it will correct this problem. But, it causes a host of other problems when doing this during a show. The most note worthy is that any songs from discs that you were brought in from a customer are now gone from your list. If you forget about this, a singer will think you dropped them and get upset. You now have to reload them and go through this all over again. Or drop them in a separate karaoke player on the side which is what I find best until hoster fixes this problem. (it used to work fine a year ago so I don't know what they changed, probably a vista fix to the software screwing up XP users)

[Karen K]

Okay, thanks for that. Not losing my mind. Two shows no guest CDGs, no skips. Last night one guest CDG (tried to convince her to just go with my version to no avail) and it skipped. BTW, I have TONS of RAM on this system.

[Lonman]

Originally Posted by Karen K

Okay, thanks for that. Not losing my mind. Two shows no guest CDGs, no skips. Last night one guest CDG (tried to convince her to just go with my version to no avail) and it skipped. BTW, I have TONS of RAM on this system.

If it's the same version/manu, i'd just use your version anyway. Different manu, you can't get away with as easy.

[Karen K]

Couldn't get away with it - she's a veteran, sings the same songs every time she comes in - she knows what I have and what I don't, unfortunately.

[marklwood]

Originally Posted by Karen K

Couldn't get away with it - she's a veteran, sings the same songs every time she comes in - she knows what I have and what I don't, unfortunately.

Maybe it's time to hit ebay for the CDGs she uses. I do that for my regulars. She might even sell you hers if you ask real nice

[Karen K]

For how many songs she sings, it isn't worth investing in ancient CDGs. I have probably 50% of what she sings. She is a singer in a band occasionally, and she and her SO run a sound biz so she understood when I told her I'd rather NOT load her discs if I don't have to, that it seemed to cause some sort of flicker in the system. She was actually fine with it. She's a reasonable woman, thank goodness.

[laddie]

Originally Posted by Karen K

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.

I have had this problem for a long time, but could not determine what was causing it till I read your post. I found, like you, that it only happens after I load a song from someones disc. It doesn't happen right away, sometimes up to an hour or more before it occurs. For the past 6 weeks it has not happened ( 4 shows a week). This week end I loaded a song from someone else's disk on both Friday and Saturday nights. Both nights I got the momentary pause afterwords.

Sunday I set up my show machine at home, created a playlist and played about 10 songs, then loaded a song from a CDG disc, then continued loading from the playlist. Approximately 30 mins. later i got the momentary pause. After the pause I exited Hoster and restarted. I did the same thing again except I loaded more songs from the playlist before loading from the cd. Same results except it waited almost 45 mins before the pause. Did all the above one more time this time I got the pause at about 40 min. I don't know why it does this, but I do know that I can duplicate it.

[Karen K]

Then I'd say we're not the only ones. I'll reiterate that there is a definite connection between loading a guest's CDG and the skipping. Food for thought for the techies.

[ddouglass]

Does the hiccup occur when you get to the point in the playlist where you are playing the import or does it occur on a KMA file sometime after it has played?

[laddie]

Originally Posted by ddouglass

Does the hiccup occur when you get to the point in the playlist where you are playing the import or does it occur on a KMA file sometime after it has played?

It occurs after the imported file has played, while a kma file is playing.

[Karen K]

I have not been able to pin down exactly, if there is an exact time when it occurs. It can hiccup at any point after I upload a CDG....Seldom right away, more often than not maybe 3-4 songs away or longer, on a .kma file - not on the uploaded file.

[mindonstrike]

What if you import it but never play it?
Also try importing and then deleting from the playlist.

Just trying to narrow down whether it's the kma's existance that is the problem or playing it triggers something.