Loading a webpage causes choppy sound playback

[molnart]

Hi all!

I have experienced the following issue: after the computer is turned on for a longer time (~5 hours), when loading a webpage the music playback gets choppy. After restarting the computer everything is ok for a time, but then the issue appears again.

I have experienced this both with Firefox (3.6 beta 1 -2) and IE (8) and with music players foobar2000 and Winamp. During the webpage loading, cpu usage gets considerably high (around 80%). According to resource monitor this load is about evenly distributed between 3 processes: the web browser, Avast antivirus web monitor and the "system" process. Disabling avast did not help, sound was still getting choppy. My suspicion is, that the system process is causing the problem, but i am unable to locate the reason for it.

I am using Win7 Ultimate 64-bit. I have also tried disabling Adobe Flash and updating audio drivers (Realtek), but no help. Interestingly i didnt experience choppy sound in other applications (e.g. during games, where cpu load is also considerably high), so it seems it is isolated to webpage loading.

Any idea how to solve this very annoying issue is welcome.

Thanks

 

[TheLaughingMan]

I have no idea why it would be doing this. Your CPU usage for playing music and loading webpages should not be that high.

If we work under the assumption that Firefox beta 1 and 2 are not refined, and IE8 sucks monkey balls. I say try a different browser.

Try either Opera or Firefox 3.5.5 stable release version.

Other possible cause is the sudden divergence of data away from the audio playback which means you are streaming the music with your player with no buffer. Check the option menu for your media players and ensure they have at least a 5 second buffer for playback. If you do not see this option, try VLC to play your music to see if the issue goes away because VLC has a 5 buffer by default for all playback.

These two test should narrow down what the cause is and if the software being used is the cause.

 

[molnart]

Increasing the buffer didnt help, but there is one more very weird behavior i have forgot to mention (as i am mostly restarting the computer before this occurs):
leaving the computer on for an extended time (over 10 hours) causes that both Firefox and IE stop loading pages. To matter if i type something in the URL bar or try opening a bookmark, it jut doesnt load. No "page could be loaded" message appears, the apps are not even "trying" to load the page. Interestingly, torrent downloads continue without any interruption.

I am connected through a TP-Link wifi card with Atheros chipset, using the default drivers Win 7 offered me to install. Before, when I was using Win XP, no such issues occured.

 

[vbx]

Are u using a belkin wireless USB adapter? The BELKIN F5D8051 has ISSUES. Especially when streaming movies. You The video runs fine, but the audio jumps like an old record player and repeats like 3-4 times.

 

[kyle2020]

My system used to do this when I was running an overclock with too little voltage.

 

[molnart]

I havent thought of that possibility. As soon as I get to the computer i will try underclocking. Thanks for the tip.

 

[kyle2020]

just try notching the voltage up, or a slight downclock should fix your problems.

 

[molnart]

just a short feedback in case someone would be interested:
lowering the cpu clocks back to default indeed solved the issue
then i increased the clock as it was before, but i had to increase the voltage by 2 steps for the issue to disappear.

interestingly, this issue did not occur under WinXP before (using same cpu clock and voltage), and also Orthos stress tests were stable. Perhaps Win7 is more sensitive to overclocking ?

 

[TheLaughingMan]

Thanks for the info. We are all here to learn. Will note that for future issues like this.

 

[kyle2020]

Woop, I fixed something