joessportster Posted January 25, 2014 Share Posted January 25, 2014 i'm using my laptop sony vaio with 750GB hard drive as my source, runs thru a Schiit Modi DAC, and a Valhalla amp, According to the hardrive properties i have about 120 gb of free space. seems everytime i play music at some point on various songs i get a skip its completely random, I've read that if your drive has alot of info on it it could cause a skip / stutter, I can surf the web with good speed, the computer doesn't seem to bog down, I tried uninstalling the server and allowing windows to re-install that (didn't help) Anyone have advice on how to correct this ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jason str Posted January 25, 2014 Share Posted January 25, 2014 More likely than not your hard drive is on its way out. Windows has a program to test its hard drive or there are other programs out there that may be more accurate. Link Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jason str Posted January 25, 2014 Share Posted January 25, 2014 Here are others you may want to check out. Link Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mustang guy Posted January 25, 2014 Share Posted January 25, 2014 Is your hard disk making an occasional clicking noise? If so, don't do a chkdsk. It is an indication the drive is dying. The absolute best thing you can do is make a backup of critical data immediately. After you have verified that you have a good backup of the data, you can do a chkdsk, etc. You should strongly consider investing in a SSD drive as a replacement. You will need to do a full backup of your current drive and restore it to the new SSD. SSD drives are like internal thumb drives. They are very fast, and you don't wait on them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joessportster Posted January 25, 2014 Author Share Posted January 25, 2014 made a backup a couple weeks ago, This computer isn't that old and its somewhat babied (of course i know a hard drive can fail at any time) I will look into a replacement computer maybe move away from the laptop as I read it a desktop has hardier drives Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thaddeus Smith Posted January 25, 2014 Share Posted January 25, 2014 It sounds like the files may be garbage (or bad rips). How much memory does your laptop have? What application are you using for music playback? Are you transcoding or down/up sampling the files? What USB method are you using: ASIO, WASAPI, Direct Sound, Kernel Streaming? A bad hard drive would be on the very bottom of my troubleshooting list. Go grab the J.River Media Center demo and give that a try if you haven't already. Very helpful forums and a solid getting started guide is included. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bracurrie Posted January 25, 2014 Share Posted January 25, 2014 go here and get Spinrite from Gibson Reseach. The instructions are easy and will tell you if your drive is trash and will correct for some flaws that may be causing the problem wthout having to reinstall everything. https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thaddeus Smith Posted January 25, 2014 Share Posted January 25, 2014 I have 13yrs in the IT industry. Stop troubleshooting the hard drive and look at potential software or configuration issues. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bracurrie Posted January 25, 2014 Share Posted January 25, 2014 I have 13yrs in the IT industry. Stop troubleshooting the hard drive and look at potential software or configuration issues. Then you know that eliminating the hard drive as a current or future culprit is a good idea. However to your point the problem is more likely not the hard drive. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joessportster Posted January 25, 2014 Author Share Posted January 25, 2014 My files are Wav lossless, im running an external dac hooked up via usb, playing songs straight from WMP, I Ripped the discs lossless, and i dont think its the files because it doesnt skip / stutter in the same place everytime, (example: if it skips, i often go to the player and start the song again and it wont skip, it has done this every time on different albums) i will look at j-river (i believe this is a music player correct ?) sounds like you are thinking it may be WMP(windows media player) On another note if i did have to change the hard drive would it be best to do so before the current one gives up the ghost ?? I am not opposed to adding some storage space Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mustang guy Posted January 25, 2014 Share Posted January 25, 2014 Yes, but how do you know it is bad? You can do some cleaning and defragging and speed things along if it's not. Piriform makes some good free stuff like crap cleaner. er um ccleaner Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joessportster Posted January 25, 2014 Author Share Posted January 25, 2014 I ran defrag last week, use avast security and run scan a couple times a week, I also only download necessary stuff like J-River (infact i only have that, amazon cloud player, and microsoft silverlight, and avast security downloaded everything else came on the computer new I ripped 99 percent of my music from my Cd's. I think i have a max of 30 or 40 songs off amazon cloud, I try to keep from downloading much as I'm not the most savvy computer person around J-River free trial downloaded and playing now, i will update if im still skipping Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thaddeus Smith Posted January 25, 2014 Share Posted January 25, 2014 Did you install the USB drivers for your bifrost? They're available on the schiit website if you haven't. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joessportster Posted January 25, 2014 Author Share Posted January 25, 2014 Did you install the USB drivers for your bifrost? They're available on the schiit website if you haven't. I wasn't able to get Bifrost right now, I have the Modi this was happening straight out of the headphone jack as well, i was hoping it was the sound card and since the dac bypasses that cards dac i hoped it would resolve the issue, Not yet. I will give river a couple days and see if it solves the skip issue (although it has already skipped once at the end of Yes owner of a lonely heart, although defrag was running at same time so I will attribute that skip to defrag) Listening to SMV Thunder right now so far its good One complaint with River, on various artist albums it shows each song as its own album, (I-tunes did that crap too) Do you know if they can be set as 1 album ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thaddeus Smith Posted January 25, 2014 Share Posted January 25, 2014 Did you install the USB drivers for your bifrost? They're available on the schiit website if you haven't.I wasn't able to get Bifrost right now, I have the Modithis was happening straight out of the headphone jack as well, i was hoping it was the sound card and since the dac bypasses that cards dac i hoped it would resolve the issue, Not yet. I will give river a couple days and see if it solves the skip issue (although it has already skipped once at the end of Yes owner of a lonely heart, although defrag was running at same time so I will attribute that skip to defrag) Listening to SMV Thunder right now so far its good One complaint with River, on various artist albums it shows each song as its own album, (I-tunes did that crap too) Do you know if they can be set as 1 album ? Doh, sorry, for some reason I quickly read your gear and saw bifrost even though you listed the modi. JRiver, iTunes, etc all work off embedded tags for a tidy library presentation and unfortunately wav files have the ability to embed some tags, but by in large they aren't supported in most apps. To answer your specific question, JRiver is looking for the "compilation" tag which doesn't exist in your wav files. It took me about a week and a half with automated help to tag my FLAC library of 25k songs, but it was worth it. Everything presents neatly with proper album art, etc. You might consider converting your files over to FLAC... There's no discernible loss of quality (that's the point), you'll free up some disk space, and have the ability to better OCDify your music. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joessportster Posted January 25, 2014 Author Share Posted January 25, 2014 Ive been kicking that very idea (convert to flac) around for awhile now, if it turns out that WMP is the problem, then there is no reason to keep the files in WAV, I like the format of WMP its pretty simple and keeps my music pretty tidy easy to locate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billybob Posted January 25, 2014 Share Posted January 25, 2014 If you have not, I would try closing all other windows/applications and see if skip dissapears when playing your source material. Try playing the lowest sample rate first. A skip is a definite peever! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallette Posted January 25, 2014 Share Posted January 25, 2014 (edited) You should strongly consider investing in a SSD drive as a replacement. Amen to that! In some cases, this can nearly double boot and operational speed and is now the cheapest and easiest thing one can do to get more mileage out of a machine. I've a six year old machine now running Win8 that is faster than it was out of the box. Plus, if your original system drive is still usable you have a "plug and play" back up if needed. I built my son a mid-power gaming machine for Christmas and from the first Windows logo to login is 9 seconds. Fastest boot since DOS for me. There are several good, cheap, maybe even a free one around, clone system to SSD programs that work nicely. I use Paragon Disk Manager at the moment, about 40.00. Plug the SSD into a USB housing, follow the wizard, and you are good to go. However, it is ALWAYS preferable to source audio off a dedicated drive that isn't doing anything else. Actually, I quit putting ANY files on a Windows system drive years ago as they are doomed eventually anyway. Dave Edited January 25, 2014 by Mallette Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jason str Posted January 25, 2014 Share Posted January 25, 2014 If the hard drive tests out OK you may want to update your sound card driver or revert back to an older one if its available. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billybob Posted January 25, 2014 Share Posted January 25, 2014 If you have not, I would try closing all other windows/applications and see if skip dissapears when playing your source material. Try playing the lowest sample rate first. A skip is a definite peever! When troubleshooting, always eliminate what costs nothing to investigate first. A dedicated PC is always a preferred method, however, this may not be practical. With my USB asynchronous DAC, I first closed all other tasks that the computer was looking at. This turned my PC into a dedicated, albeit not perfect playback tool. Good Fortune Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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