music skipping prob...

[Darieus]

ive been having this prob since ive came back to the game...the music in town occasionally skips like a broken record, anyone else get the same prob?
game runs rather smoothly, hardly any lag, except when the town music just skips on occasion, its annoying :P

[little ninja]

Mine does that. It also stops playing mid song. When the song cycle is suppose to happen it doesnt either. Thats why i listen to Cds.

[boblibob]

Is the sound error just in FFXI or in Windows?#

Providing more info is always good, also what OS?

[Darieus]

Is the sound error just in FFXI or in Windows?#
Providing more info is always good, also what OS?

yeah it only happens in ffxi, i have windows xp.
i also play a few other pc games and dont have this prob.

intel pent 4 2.4 ghz
512mb ram
ati radeon 9550
111gb hd

only background programs i have running are fraps and that windows security alerts (only because i have no idea to take it out the task bar)

when i first got this game two years ago i played it for months without this prob, came back a week ago and its the first thing i notice when in town. maybe its the graphics card..i bought it after i stopped playing 2 years ago, or maybe my sound card? i never have updated the drivers, dont know where to go for that

[Darieus]

help mee....

[little ninja]

Windows Xp service pack 2. intel pent 4 3.8ghz, 1024ram, Ati 9600 pro, Sound blaster A2 Z5. 160Hd. No only does the music skips. Sometimes my battle music wouldnt play or it cut out. I playother games online or on the pc itself, work on animation projects, An watch movies, This is the only thing that does it.

Not that i care since i turn on the get ya pumped music.

[Aeni]

Music is fubar'd. I have the same PC as I did a year ago when I left FFXI, did not have this issue. I think something screwed up in a patch or two ago...

[Feba]

It's a problem with the bgws. I'm guessing you're mainly having troubles with TAU areas? You can fix this by getting non-encrypted .bgws (the kind you can play with the old winamp plugin), but I can't help you with that because of the rules here.

[Aeni]

Well, mine is a fresh install. So I have to hack to get it to work? What's the deal with that? I should petition a GM later on and have SE fix it for us.

[Mhurron]

Music is fubar'd. I have the same PC as I did a year ago when I left FFXI, did not have this issue. I think something screwed up in a patch or two ago...
More likely is an error occurred transferring a patch to you. In other words, your installation is corrupt, but not so corrupt that a fatal error occurs.

If it was an issue with a patch, a whole lot of others would be seeing the same thing.

I hate to say it because I know it's not a very good process, but have you tried POL's file check?

[Lunaryn]

I'm also having a problem with this:

ECS NFORCE4M-A motherboard
AMD Athlon64 X2 Dual-core 5600+
nVidia GEForce 8500 GT (PCI-E, EVGA OEM)
SoundBlaster Live! (original) or onboard nVidia sound (Realtek AC'97)
Windows 2000 Professional

The music skips severely in both Vana'diel Bench 3 and POL Viewer (haven't finished installing FFXI proper) when using the SB Live! card. The effect is sort of like there's an output buffer that's being continually written to without checking to see if it's full, so periodically it skips ahead to the next cycle of output. The actual amount skipped varies a bit, but it occurs very frequently and generally skips many seconds at a time.

When using the onboard sound, the effect is much less pronounced, happening only a few times each run through the benchmark. Using the newest (faster) drivers for the video card, I get skipping during the benchmark both on high and low resolution (skips once on high, a couple times on low). Using the supplied drivers, I get skipping during the low resolution benchmark but haven't yet seen it on high.

Has anyone else noticed anything like the more severe SB Live! symptoms (constant skipping), or is anyone aware of compatibility issues with AMD Athlon64 dual-core processors? I've also had some other slightly erratic behavior with regard to the SB Live! in this particular system (it disappeared for a while and had to be moved to a different PCI slot) so I'm still testing things and may try to swap out the board in a few days...

Note for comparison that I've successfully played video files with no sync issues, and that I can play the same bgws from WinAmp/in_ffxi.dll without any skipping. This seems symptomatic of a video/audio sync issue, maybe, but definitely one specific to code in POL/FFXI/Vana'diel Bench, not affecting general playback.

[Feba]

What's the deal with that?

I believe it's a problem with the encryption. I'm not sure why it happens to some people and not others though. I also had this happen once when I hate multiple copies of the same .bgw in the same directory, but unless you screw around with your music files, that's probably not the case.

have SE fix it for us.they've got such a good track record on that.

[Aksannyi]

Mine skips also, but not very often for me to worry about it. I chalk it up to lag. It will skip three to four times and then revert to normal.

[Lunaryn]

An update on this problem, I've since used the same processor on a Via-based Asus board (which I returned for heat issues) and on an ATI-based Biostar board, and had no such issues, so it seems that my own skipping issue is specifically a problem with the ECS NFORCE4M-A board listed above. This board seems to have issues with the APIC as well as I've heard reports that Linux will only work in uniprocessor mode w/ APIC support disabled, and my own experience with a Slackware install (never quite got to customizing) showed that it had trouble recognizing hardware the kernel had support for, and even a known-good RTL8139-based PCI NIC wouldn't see the network under Linux on this system.

So, basically, steer clear of this motherboard.

I don't know how this might relate to others' skipping problems, unfortunately. Perhaps people who know might list their motherboard manufacturer and chipset?

[Lunaryn]

Further update; the skipping problem came back on the aforementioned Biostar board when I installed the driver update for the SB Live! from Creative's site. Forcibly installing the old Microsoft driver fixed the problem (but broke Creative AudioHQ). Since this problem doesn't occur on a friend's system, also using an SB Live!, I can only guess that perhaps the Creative Driver can't handle SMP or something...

I would be interested in anyone else's accounts of whether they had a skipping problem with a Creative driver.

Edit: For reference, both systems are running Win2k SP4. The system w/o the skipping problem is an Athlon XP 1.2GHz processor on an MSI board. The system w/ the skipping problem is an Athlon X2 6000+.

[Lunaryn]

Final update, most likely. This is definitely an SMP issue as setting the POL process affinity to only allow execution on one CPU fixes it. For anyone else seeking to deal with this issue, there are two ways to do this: temporary and permanent.

Temporary: Once POL viewer is running, right-click the taskbar and select Task Manager. Go to the Processes tab and look for pol.exe. Right-click pol.exe and select Set Affinity. Uncheck all but one of the CPUs listed and click OK. The skipping problem should stop.

Permanent: Note that this involves modifying the pol.exe executable. You should back it up first in case of problems, and you will need to repeat this after any POL Viewer updates most likely. This article (http://www.jsifaq.com/SF/tips/Tip.aspx?id=3542) explains how to use the MS tool imagecfg.exe to set the process affinity mask on an executable. I got this executable off of my Windows NT 4.0 Server disc. I unfortunately do not know of a place it can be downloaded from. I'll see if I can make a binary patchfile of some sort for the modified pol.exe.

Edit: Okay, in a somewhat odd development, I've discovered that the problem is not with SMP per se, but with the sound running on CPU1. If it's only allowed to run on CPU1 and not CPU0, it still skips. I am forced to wonder if this is not, in fact, some kind of hardware bug that's only exposed by Creative's drivers combined with the way in which FFXI produces audio...