Laptop Playback Glitching

[Pete The Cat]

I'm a hardcore vinyl and CD listener but I've recently dabbled with plumbing an old Dell laptop via an original Audioquest Dragonfly into my main rig to play FLAC files, with decent results. In fact pound for pound it's astonishing and certainly beats the days of starting out with a PL-12D...

Only one hitch - playback has a momentary judder once every three or four minutes. Maybe it's what you'd call jitter, only a quarter of a second glitch. I've stripped the laptop software down to the absolute basics for running Foobar alone (literally, I've deleted or decommissioned every program including not even displaying the clock). The laptop is plugged in via a Tacima mains conditioner and only playing files on its internal hard drive, not an external one.

The simple answer would seem to be the laptop itself, which I bought c. 2006 and so is clearly olde spec, but as I say it's not running any competing programs so I'd expect it to be able to get through a song without a hitch.

Any ideas?

I'm not anticipating a significant shift to digital any time soon but if the diagnosis is the laptop then I'd appreciate a view on a newer Microsoft OS model that's stable for music with no other frills please.

Cheers,

Pete

[Stratmangler]

Have you got ASIO and WASAPI plugins installed in Foobar?
Is either one enabled for the DAC?
Have you loaded Windows drivers for the DAC? If not it may be being seen at a base level.

[Mixc]

Hi have you tried just the laptop without the dac?

[struth]

could it be buffering

[Pete The Cat]

Thank you for your speedy replies - better than any IT Helpdesk!

ASIO and WASAPI aren't installed.

It happens without the Dragonfly too.

Foobar is set to nil buffering.

I'm thinking that it's not recognising the Dragonfly. I'll add the plug-ins and take it from there.

Thanks again in the meantime...

Pete

[struth]

yeah try wasapi. the download page should automattically install it in correct place. then select dragonfly wasapi, same re asio if you wish.

you will need to point the program to the dac and also select it from pc's list of audio outputs. usuall you can select latter from right clicking the speaker icon at bottom right and select open sound settings

[Edward]

Not used Foobar for ages so can't recall how it does things. Give JRiver a try (one month free) and see if that works better. One feature JRiver does is that it buffers a full track into ram and then plays from there. This will often reduce juddering as playing from ram can skip operating system interrupts and similar.

And as already suggested use either asio or wasapi and make sure exclusive mode is on.

E

[Landloper]

Make sure you have the correct bit rate sampling rate etc set for the stuff you are wanting to play too. I have a Dragonfly [Black] as well, & it is the most temperamental DAC I've come across.

[Pete The Cat]

Mission accomplished. Glitching resolved and Dragonfly changing colour as appropriate.

Sound performance has shifted from mid-fi up to a similar league to my CD player. Extra detail immediately apparent.

Thank you everyone.

Pete

[Edward]

What did you do to stop the glitching?

[Pete The Cat]

What did you do to stop the glitching?

Installed WASAPI and selected the Dragonfly which had suddenly appeared in the Preferences/Playback Output dropdown.

Probably as basic as plugging in the mains to many of you but not for a first timer.

This laptop worth nothing and a second hand Dragonly costing £30 are miles better than the first couple of turntables I owned. If I was beginning all over again, who knows...

Pete