CPU Usage

[Rah3D]

Well, alright
But you have the nice NIN Soundtrack on the original CD

By the way, it runs smoothly on my Athlon 1800+ /  Radeon 9500 Pro ...  

[ghammer]

From your symptoms I'd suggest looking at IRQ usage. I'll bet one shiny Yuan that your soundcard is sharing the IRQ with the videocard and probably others. Why does this only matter with this app and not others? Hey, I just play with these things...

BTW- When I close XMPlay, it is still listed in Task manager until I do a manual End Process.

Playing 320 CBR MP3s here results in a 2-3% CPU usage with no VIS. Course, that's only 24 bit. P-4 1.6 Ghz. XP Pro 512 Mb RAM.

Thanks for caring I tested with perfmon, and I could see the same thing, though it of course shows the decimals, in the case of Winamp. I'm fully aware of the fact that the Task Manager has a shittier resolution and update time (if you don't fix it that is, you can choose the speed somewhat at least), so this is why I compared with the "CPU Time" counter reported, which I believe is somewhat more correct?
I get stutters in the sound even when rendering a scene in for instance 3dsmax or Maya, or encoding an MP3 with Lame using the "higher" thread priority, things that never happened with Winamp.

Quake3 + XMPlay was totally unplayable on a P3 700 w/Sound Blaster PCI128 (I know, it's not my computer and a GF2MX. Q3 + Winamp is fine. Doesn't matter which output stuff I use in the player.

So, if now Windows reports all this erroneously, what did you do that everyone else always fails to do with their programs to not report a correct usage to Task Manager and perfmon? :
I'm sort of stumped....

[Torkell]

Just an update on the Ye Olde CPU Usage Thread:

After many hours of Quake and XMPlay (that's Quake III Arena and the current release version (2.7) of XMPlay), I have experienced something like what Tsorovan was originally describing. After, say, half an hour or so, the music from XMPlay (doesn't matter what format) will begin to drop out. I also end up ith extreemly lagged (a few seconds) response for the global hotkeys That I use for song changes. This is with XMPlay minimized to tray, after doing a minimize/restore without the info window visible to free up resources. The problem tends to continue intermittently until I exit Quake.
I think it's probably due to Quake eating up processor/memory over time, but I will be interested to know if anyone else has experienced this.

Also, if you are seeing high (~10%) processor usage with XMPlay, check what file format you are playing. It appears to go MOD > MP* > OGG for processor usage (most > least). OGG's tend to use about 1% (with a Duron 800), and don't stutter at all during CD reads. MP3s use a little more CPU, and are more prone to stutter. MODs (especially ones with lots of filters, like Skaven's The Alchemist <edit: it's actually Fourth Symmetriad that uses lots of filters>) will happily eat as much as 20% of the processor power, and are simply unplayable during CD reads (at least, with my experience - I don't know if other systems suffer the same stutter during CD read problem).

[Tsorovan]

ghammer and anyone else who might not have read my "final" response: v2.6 fixed this which makes me think it was due to the UI updates (Ian said he cut down those a bit for v2.6). Also, I'm quite computer savvy enough to not have any IRQ conflicts, as I think I pointed out several times. IRQ conflicts on 3 different systems? I'm not a retard :D

Anyway, I still want to get rid of the IMO stupid 1/10 counter as something as trivial does not warrant a 10x increase in UI updates (if you have a skin without a sound meter). Call me anal or something :) I just wish it would be an option.

Oh, and I'm back now from a convalescence due to no net access. Be prepared to receive lots of annoying constructive criticism :) I also released my skin. Ian was kind enough to put it up on the skin page. If you like minimal, functional skins, check it out. It's made to be run in minimode, always on top, just like I want it (so I can see what I'm listening to).
Cheerio.

[Irrational86]

AWESOME skin dude!!! ...but one thing, you need to distribute with it the font you use, GOTHIC something something, its required, otherwise XMPlay will use one called Small Font, something like that. But apart from that, it looks great and very cool!!

[Brightguy]

Yeah, it's a nice skin, Tsorovan.    I thought you weren't ever going to release it; I mean you actually completed it sometime in January, right?

About the font (Franklin Gothic Medium), it probably should be available with the skin, if possible.  Currently they cannot be included directly in the xmpskin.  Lucky me - I've still got it installed from your first version!  

[Tsorovan]

Brightguy: I was out of touch with the world of Internet for a while there, but now I'm back in full force. And thanks again for your help with it :)

xminionx: Thanks!

Thing is, this font...I actually made two different zips, but after conferring with Ian, only the one without the font made it (after all, it is a copyrighted font). I'm very sad that there's not a simple way to release it without infringing Microsoft's copyright. Try to get it through other channels; it's installed by default in WinXP.

I mentioned some of this in the readme text file in the zip.
There, I also mention that it's made for this particular font as it's the only good-looking font that's smaller than Tahoma whilst still being fully intelligible at size 7. It's too bad Microsoft never hinted (a process for tweaking fonts at smaller sizes) their fonts at sizes <7. It's possible (I've made one, bitmappily :)) to make a Tahoma variant at a size of approx. 5 (7 px; Tahoma 7 = 9 px), but I haven't got the appropriate software for the task.

I want smaller fonts in the world!

(Bitmap font support in XMPlay would be nice, HINT HINT! :D)

[Ralesk]

Merf, now I have to hunt in my virtual pc for that font

I'll upload it somewhere if I find it.