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Winamp skips and stutters when playing MP3 - what can I do?
Winamp will skip at times on the best of machines, especially when a dialup network connection is established, for example. But if skipping occurs more frequently, the problem is probably caused by one of two things:
a) Your PC is too weak to really handle playing MP3 whilst doing other things - that is the CPU is too slow, there is not enough memory, and / or the disk I/O is too slow... or:
b) Some other driver on your machine, most likely your video driver, is hogging the bus, and interfering with your MP3 player.
If the problem is case b, then MP3 will probably play ok if you do nothing, but will break up as soon as you start moving your mouse, scrolling, etc. About the only solution for this is to either fiddle with the settings in your video driver or to use a different video driver (either download a new one from the vendor of your video card, or use one of the Windows generic ones, which will reduce your video performance but probably fix your MP3 problem).
If the problem is case a, then you'll have to somehow increase Winamp's priority, reduce Winamp's requirements, reduce the load on your machine, or upgrade the machine. Here are some suggestions for dealing with case a:
1) Increase Winamp's execution priorities and buffering. Start Winamp and go to Preferences (Ctrl-P). Select Options at the left, then increase Winamp's overall process priority by moving the slider at the bottom towards the right, setting it to "High" or "Realtime". Still in Winamp Preferences, select Output on the left then press the Configure button - you should see sliders that will allow you to increase both the priority and the buffering of the output plugin. Now, still in Preferences, select Input on the left, and select Nullsoft MPEG Audio Decoder on the right, then press the Configure button - set the priority using the slider on the General tab (this should normally be set to "Highest").
2) Turn off stuff in Winamp that's unnecessary, such as the scrolling title display and the graphic frequency analyser. Go to the Mainmenu (click in top left corner) / Visualization / Visualization Mode and select "Off" - this will turn off the scope / analyzer display in the Winamp window, which will save some CPU. Also right click on the song title on the main menu and uncheck "Autoscroll song title" in the pop-up menu - this will also save a bit of CPU, and every little helps.
3) Get rid of any programs in memory that you don't need. Use Ctl-Alt-Del and then "End task" anything that shouldn't be there. Don't kill Explorer or Systray, or anything you're currently actually using.
4) If you have more than one hard disk, make sure your using the fastest one for Windows virtual memory - this can make a *lot* of difference. Windows will default to using the C: drive usually, but if you've installed a second hard drive later it will probably be faster, and using it for your virtual memory instead will give you better performance. Go to Control Panel / System and select the Performance tab, then press the Virtual Memory button, and do Manual Configuration.
5) If you try all of the above, and Winamp *still* won't play MP3 without skipping on your machine, then your machine is probably too weak to play MP3 at full quality, and you will have to reduce the playback quality in order to get it to play without skipping. Go to Preferences (Ctrl-P) and select Input in the left window and then select Nullsoft MPEG Audio Decoder in the right window and press the Configure button. Try changing "Decoder Mode" (on the Decoder tab) to 486, K5, non-MMX instead of Pentium or Pentium Pro. Also try setting the Quality to Half or Quarter. If you set enough of these options down, Winamp will certainly play MP3 fine even on a weak machine. OTOH setting the options down *will* decrease the quality of the sound, so the trick is not to reduce more than you have to.
