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mp3 construction

My system consists of a 486/100, 32 Mb and 6.4 Gb + 540 Mb. I'm trying to make an mp3 by copying a cd track and compressing it. The track has been copied using WinDAC32 and the resultant .wav file seems ok, although WinDAC reported many buffer underruns. The file, 50 Mb for 5 minutes playtime, sounds excellent in Soundblaster's Wav Player. I've compressed it using MP3 Compressor v0.9 by MP3hC but the resultant 5 Mb file, when played in Winamp 1.92, constantly breaks up. The effect is like an old-fashioned vinyl record deck where the needle is jumping the grooves, one second of playing time is followed by a quarter second of silence, then another second of playing time and another quarter second of silence, etc. etc. I tried another compressor, Mpegencoder by SoloH, but the result is identical.
I am totally new to this field and I would welcome any guidance.

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

spacebrain

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warmcat

Spacy's answer sounds likely. If correct, it means that you have correctly captured and encoded the MP3, it is merely that you cannot play it back in real time due to lack of horsepower. A good test would be to try to play one of your MP3s on a friend's Pentium, where it should work fine.

WinAMP has a priority setting buried away in the properties dialog somewhere... try setting the decode and playback threads to highest priority.

-Andy

warmcat

Corpsicle has made me think of another test. Geoff, post here or email me your email (andy@warmcat.com) and I will email you a known-good MP3 for you to try to play back.

One other thing... after these short lapses in playback, does it pick up where it left off, or is a little section of the music missing?

dankh

Hi,

This is what WinAmps' FAQ had to say:

Q: What are Winamp's system requirements?
A: A fast 486 or (optimally) a Pentium or above, running Windows 95 or NT 4.

Q: Why is Winamp's output jumpy?
A1: Do you have a Pentium? :)
A2: Try increasing the priority in the preferences.
A3: Increase the buffering to ~8 seconds in the preferences.

To correct your Windac problem, go to the Dac tab and select configure drive. Make sure the settings match your CDrom. Also, sometimes it is better to set the speed at Default.

Please reward the points accordingly.

geoff040597

ASKER

Too slow a processor never occurred to me, Winamp comes with a _very_ small sample file which played fine. A 486/100 IS a fast 486 (although not the fastest), but this is obviously the answer. I've downloaded an mp3 from a net site this afternoon and it sounds the same so now I'm off to Mad Jacks' Funeral Parlor and Electronics Emporium for a new motherboard and processor. Thanks to all who contributed.