#quality of mpc sound?
16 messages in this thread
I have a problem with my quality of mpc audio. I have the following
configurations:
DTK 486-50, 16mb ram, 200mb ide drive, pro audio spectrum 16 sound board, nec
cdr-74 external 150/300kb/sec cd-rom drive, windows 3.1
clone 386sx-33, 200mb ide drive, standard sound blaster board, chinon 150kb/sec
cd-rom drive off adaptec controller (using corel's newest drivers)
My problem exists with both of the above configurations (I have verified that I
have the latest drivers for all components), I have set buffers of the mscdex
driver to all possible settings, and the buffers in the config.sys file to all
possible settings.
The software that I am using are any of the following:
The Animals! (software tools\works)
white horse child
aesops fables
all of these software titles (running under windows), do not produce the
quality of sound that I feel should be there. The speech quality seems to be
jerky at times, with slight skips and hesitations that detracts from the
quality of the playing.
Both my cd configurations produce the same results. normal cd audio and any
speech programs (dos based) work fine. There are absolutely NO conflicts with
any other boards. I have stripped both pc's to the bone with only the boards
and I have tried nearly every possible dma, irq and other settings for each
cd-rom controller board.
Would tweaking windows be necessary?
should I buy dos based mpc programs instead of windows programs?
is there any windows tweaks that would help?
Am I too picky in wanting normal speech quality from these products?
why do normal speech programs that come with the sound boards work better
than the supposedly mpc-quality programs?
There is no reason with your equipment and drivers that you are getting what
you are getting. Well, there's a reason, but it's not in your hardware. I have
two entirely different setups here on two main computers and don't get the sort
of thing you are indicating.
One question: are you running the NEC off the PAS16 or off CorelSCSI? If the
former, I'd suggest you switch to the latter and Update CorelSCSI to handle it
instead. The PAS16 SCSI connector is not a full-featured one and tends to slow
down the drive.
If sound is the problem, and your drivers are current, the most logical
explanation is either a driver conflict or a DMA or IRQ conflict.
First of all, have you excluded the memory address used by your SCSI
device(s) in both CONFIG.SYS and SYSTEM.INI? Both are necessary. Second, check
out the DMA and IRQ addresses used by various things in your system and compare
them to what the PAS16 is set for. If two things are trying to use the same DMA
or interrupt, you'll get breakups, bizarre results, etc.
The only other possibility is memory. Multimedia chews up memory like mad;
you may be on your system's borderline, not enough to trigger an out of memory
but enough to slow things down in the swapping.
I am running the nec off of the pa16, I tried removing the emm driver to see if
any region needed to be excluded – no luck, I have avout 590k free memory after
loading all of the drivers – so I don't think memory is the problem.
I have really tried every possible interrupt and dma channel. I just don't
know what to do. It seems that the sound if 99% there. I would think that a
dma or int conflict would cause static or lots of problems, not the hesitation
and slight jerkiness that I see. Perhaps a full windows re-installation may
help…
No, no. When I'm talking Windows I mean MEMORY, not how much LOW memory you
have. Total memory in the system. Windows hogs the low memory; it runs programs
in expanded memory blocks, which is why you need so much memory to do so
little. It has been my experience that less than 4 meg is not practical if you
place any demands, let alone multimedia, on WIN31; 8 meg is much better and
should do for the vast majority of people.
Other than a defect in the card (always a possibility) there is simply no
reason other than a conflict or driver problem that you're not getting nice
sound. I assume you have the latest drivers, and that you deleted the old
drivers in Control Panel and reinstalled the latest ones from scratch? Have you
tried another DMA channel or IRQ you are positive is not being used by anything
anywhere anyhow?
I was thinking that there's a statement that can be put in SYSTEM.INI
involving DMA sharing; I know it's in mine. If I think of it, I'll include it
here when I get a chance to peek in my SYSTEM.INI and check. Shared DMA is the
#1 cause of the symptoms you describe. Also, is your sound cord okay? Have you
tried replacing the sound cords in case there's an internal short or break? I
know how frustrating these things can be; we should be able to find the culprit
SOMEWHERE.
thanks – I have never played with the shared dma, although I have tried all
possible working combinations with the board.
I have 20mb in the system (4-4mb simms and 4-1mb simms) on the mb. I had put
all of the possible exclude paramaters that I could think of.
the only program that I think could have affected my windows (that obviously
was uninstalled when I deleted my entire windows config) was a cosession
windows setup that modified the screen, kb, and system lines. I'll have to
make a full backup before trying it again and see if it causes problems with
the cd-rom drives…..hmmmm.
well I tried all of the suggestions, and then said "s____ this" and deleted all
of my windows files and re-installed windows fully. It seems to have solved
the problem. all of the mpc apps work without skips, hops, hesitations, etc.
really weird…
Nope; this sort of thing happens. Windows is basically a klude, not a real
OS, and one of its biggest drawbacks is that it constantly writes to and
rewrites SYSTEM.INI and WIN.INI files as do a lot of other programs, many
without telling you about it. Clearly something stepped on some needed command
or driver; when you reinstalled the defaults were restored.
At least you're going now, and that's all that counts.
really! I was beginning to doubt my system and components – especially since I
do this sort of thing for a living…. kind of makes one wonder how reliable
hardware and software really is with all of the possibilities…..
I hope that windows nt is going to give us something better. I guess os/2 is
always an option…
Well, OS/2 2.1 is certainly a rock solid OS that delivers what it promises.
Alas, it doesn't support my expensive graphics card and handles a vital SCSI
device driver only in a DOS session so I really can't stick with it, and it
would be far more of a knockout if there were more programs taking advantage of
its multithreading. What it does have, though, makes you feel sad that IBM and
MicroSoft went in different directions on it.
MicroSoft has never put out a good version 1 of anything and I don't expect
NT to be any different, even if they are calling it 3.1 instead of 1.0. A rose
is a rose. The question there is twofold: NT is an OS, not a kludge shell,
based on the same Unix mach 3 kernel as OS/2. Driver and video support will be
as much of a question with NT as with OS/2, and, unlike OS/2, which doesn't
hedge about running Windows, NT is only guaranteed to run what MicroSoft
determines is the "top 100" WIN31 apps. That means whole new versions of most
software, and by the time they come out we'll have the WIN32 kernel for Windows
which will run NT apps under DOS Windows on a 486 or better. Indeed, some at
MicroSoft on the latter project think it'll cripple or kill NT except for
extensive networks.
At any rate, anybody who installs NT without the dual boot option and with
its high performance file system rather than the DOS one is going to have real
surprises at what they won't be able to run!
Gregory,
at last, a fellow sufferer!
I did the same thing the first weekend this month when experiencing serious
trouble when trying to install MPC: kill Windows and all INIs and reinstalled
3.1 and W4WG, a real PITA. And then all relevant apps. Took me 16 hours
(200Mb+), but everything works now.
I suspect that various bits and pieces from old and deleted sound progs
(Whoopie, SB 2 Pro-sold that card-, & some other shareware) made the whole
installation unstable. We need a general uninstall watchdog in Win 3.2, so any
application installed can be uninstalled and all changes in the system undone.
Windows beats SF for weirdness sometimes! (with apologies to Jack if he is who
I think he is)
Regards Black Peter
I am definately going to try your suggestion and put the adaptec controller in
the computer and use it rather than the pa16 to see if it speeds up the drive.
Well, although I've always run my own system that way, we have another
MultiMedia system here that uses a PAS16 and NEC83 and was somewhat jerky on
the AVI playback. Playback still isn't 100%, but it's pretty good since I stuck
an ASPI manager and SCSI card in and changed the 83 to that. Credit does not go
to me; I think it was Bob R here who suggested it and I just took his advice,
found he had something there, and so passed it on.
so the pro audio board just doesn't give the full performance like an adaptec
board?
I wonder how much better it would be with cd-speedway? I have purchased it
(waiting for it to arrive) – anyone ever use it? Is it beneficial?
I've never used it, but Speedway is a CDR specific cache buffer. If your CDR
buffer is less than 64K as many earlier and OEM models are, you'll see some
improvement; if it's already 64K you probably won't notice anything but a loss
of the TSR's size in memory. On fully MPC compliant CDRs, Speedway should have
no discernable effect.
do you also write books? I seem to recall your name being rather prominent
around the sf section of major bookstores…
Yes, I write books for a living in between online sessions. This is for my
Junior Pournelle Merit Badge….