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There may be various causes and some may be difficult to get around (some video drivers conflict with audio output in some circumstances, as do some modem operations, and these problems may be hard to fix, other than by updating your device drivers). Here are a few suggestions...
Turn off stuff in Winamp that's unnecessary, such as the scrolling title display and the graphic frequency analyser (Right click on the corresponding part of the Winamp window to control these options).

Get rid of any programs in memory that you don't need. Use CTRL-ALT-DELT and then "End Task" anything that shouldn't be running. Don't kill Explorer or Systray, or anything you're currently actually using for that matter.

If you have more than one hard disk, make sure you're using the fastest one for Windows virtual memory. This can make a significant amount 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.

Go to Winamp.com and download the Nullsoft Cross-Fading Plug-in (Experimental). I believe it can be found under both "Best Plug-ins" and "Output Plug-ins". Despite its name, cross-fading (bringing a new song up as the previous one dies away, rather than having a gap in between) is only one feature of this plug-in (and oddly enough, despite the name, the cross-fading feature is turned off by default). It seems to do a better job of managing output than the standard Nullsoft Wave Out plug-in, and it gives you more control. If you select it as your output plug-in under Preferences and then press the Configure button, it allows you to set the buffer size, the thread priority, the pre-buffering percentage and the block-size. Actually the default values seem to work well but if you still have skipping problems, tinkering with these parameters should help if you know what you're doing. Also, if you actually want the cross-fading feature, turn it on by checking the "No gaps on stop or next" box in the configuration window.


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by snapcase$ See Profile edited by KeysCapt See Profile
last modified: 2002-12-21 10:48:08