Stereo Tool

Hi Fellow Stereo-Tool Users!

I decided to buy myself a copy of Stereo Tool, but that was before i encountered this Problem with my growing Collection of FLAC Files.
After i decided to Store my CD Collection as FLAC's i had this one Problem with the Winamp "DirectSound" Output that the Playback was not possible, a few minutes later i´ve read that the Output Plugin "WaveOut" has better Performance with FLAC Files and that solved my problem.

Later i recognized that when i Play/Pause Songs (regardless if Hotkeys on the Keyboard [G110] or Player Buttons itself) the FLAC File somehow gets stuck where it is at the moment.
The only Solution i found is to STOP the Track Playback or Start over new (with PLAY) and skip to the last Minute the Song stopped.

This is a sample screen of the Winamp interface when the Song stucks: Notice that the Spectrum Analyzer and the Beat Visualization are somehow "frozen" too? No Sound, No Movement, totally frozen! (YES i know it´s a screenshot - but in real!)

After searching the web a while i found out that in a previous Stereo Tool Version such an error was known, because of the Clear Buffer Size, but the Creator fixed this with an Default Setting in an Update of Stereo Tool. I even tried to increase the Buffer Size of the WaveOut Plugin in Winamp directly - no Effect, the error still occurs.

It would be very nice if someone could give me some feedback or a solution to this error, if some Tests need to be done i gladly accept to help analyze/solve this problem!
I can reproduce this error without any Problems for further investigation!


A few SysSpecs:

OS: Windows 7 Professional x64
CPU: i5 760
RAM: 8GB
Soundchip: Realtec ALC888
Winamp Version: Winamp Pro 5.63 (x86)
Stereo Tool Version: 6.32



Sorry, my Native Language is German so the spelling here and there may be mixed up

*bump*

No one here with the same Problem or any interest in getting this fixed?
The license costs a lot but with this issue its useless for me

I'm sorry - I somehow missed your first post.

This has indeed been a problem in the past, however I haven't seen this anymore in over 2 years. I do sometimes get some weird behavior when I press pause (it won't resume without restarting).

When I looked into this years ago (it was fixed in version 5.00) the cause was that nothing in the pipeline (input plugin, DSP plugin, output plugin, Winamp itself) offered an opportunity to handle Windows events. So they would stay in the queue and everything would stop to respond. The solution at the time was to insert a SleepEx() which stops processing for a moment and allows events to be processed somewhere in the processing thread. I've just checked my code and this call is still there - so it must be something else now.

The first thing I want to ask you is if you can try if it still occurs with the latest beta version of Stereo Tool. I'm asking because the Windows event handling code is completely rewritten so it might be solved already. You can find the latest version here: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=4334&start=433 .


If that doesn't solve it:
Before I solved it in version 5.00, a similar problem occurred when playing WAVE (.wav) files - can you confirm that you have the same problem with those? If so I know it's not some issue between Stereo Tool and the FLAC decoder.

It also happened when you selected the Nullsoft Disk Writer output plugin - then if you pressed STOP sometimes the process wouldn't respond anymore - until the whole file had been processed (but screen updates were stopped and if you tried to do something with the Winamp or Stereo Tool window Windows would give a 'non responsive' notification). Could you check this to rule out an issue between Stereo Tool and the Wave Output plugin?

Thanks!

Oh, hi there!

I thought that no one is interested in this or has the same issue as me :/

Just installed the Beta Version and tried it with a .wav and a .flac file.
The FLAC file still shows this issue, the WAVE file however has no problems with continuously pressing Play/Pause - nothing gets stuck with it.

I even checked my Event-Log but there is no entry for Winamp.
Does the Beta Version contain a Log-Generator or a Debugger which can be activated to capture what´s going on so that you can analyze the traces?


Greetings!

Hm, now it gets even weirder.

The Stereo Tool Winamp plugin does not know what you're playing - WAV, flac, mp3, aac, it just receives samples and sends out the same number of samples.

So whatever is causing this is not something that happens only in Stereo Tool, it's a combination of different plugins that "bite" each other.

Stereo Tool has no debug logging so that's not going to work. But maybe you can test this to confirm something: Does the problem also occur if you set Stereo Tool to Bypass mode? Earlier when this happened the CPU load had a big impact on the chance that this occurred - I've never seen it happen in Bypass mode (or if you press RESET, so all the settings are off). If this makes no difference it must be a completely different issue than before. If it does make a difference, could you check the CPU load while you're playing a FLAC file through Stereo Tool (with processing enabled)?

Damn, why am i the only one >.<
Thanks for trying to help me out!
Yes, it still occurs - tried Bypass first and then a Reset of all the Settings
I checked the CPU Load and it was around 7% (browser, background processes) over-all and 1-3% on Winamp itself - without the Declipper active

Try to replace those files in winamp/plugins folder..
http://www63.zippyshare.com/v/10086906/file.html

Hi Bojcha,

tested it now and still no change in this behavior.
What´s the ENC DLL good for? I´m not encoding with Winamp (: (if it´s a encoder)

Had you tried this already? So far, if you replace the input plugin (no flac), the problem disappears.
If you remove the DSP plugin, the problem disappears.
Now let's see what happens if you replace the output plugin. (You could also try another playback plugin).

I'm not sure how useful this test it but the first thing to do in situations like this is usually to gather as much info as possible, that's why I'm asking.

Oh sorry, i missed that one, just tested it and it is still the same

I have no problem with testing, maybe in the future it will help others if we get this one fixed!
Just tell me what to do - to help you and others