Annoying Choppy Audio

[banders5144]

Running latest release of NPVR on a Windows 7 Ultimate 64Bit. Have a pretty high end system (Core i7, nvidia 460, Creative Labs Xfi sound card) but the audio playback for live TV is so inconsistent. Sometimes it will never skip and other times it makes watching TV unbearable. Any reason why this may be happening?

[BigMoose]

What audio codecs are you using? I have problems when enabling an AC3 decoder but it's fine when I disable it, which is a bummer as we have mpeg and AC3 audio channels here.

[banders5144]

Been using FFDShow. When i watch TV with WMC, there are no problems with either analog or digital channels.

[johnsonx42]

Try ac3filter; make sure you get the 32-bit Lite version - others have reported that the full 32/64-bit version doesn't seem to install the needed 32-bit filter.

[BigMoose]

Ok, so using ffdshow is fine, but do you know what type of audio you have where you are? Are any of the channels AC3? Have you configured an AC3 decoder as well as an mpeg audio decoder? As with both configured I have choppy audio but disabling the AC3 decoder and it's perfect. (except for AC3 channels where it's rather quiet )

[banders5144]

When I watch clear QAM channels all of them are in AC3 and they are fine. When i watch analog channels which I guess are MP2 audio thats when the choppy audio happens sometimes.

[banders5144]

Oh I guess I should also mention that I am using a HVR-2250

[soccerdad]

I have similar issues with analog channels. Changing codecs helped, but it never really totally went away. Does it go away if you pause and play so you build a little buffer? That is what I do and it plays very smoothly then. If I had to guess, I would think it has something to do with the softpvr conversion but have no basis for that.

[BigMoose]

If you disable the AC3 decoder completely, do the analog channels play fine? As I have this issue with mpeg and AC3 digital channels. The AC3 ones are fine but the mpeg ones aren't until I disable the AC3 decoder.

[johnsonx42]

sorry, I ASSumed you were having trouble with AC3 audio, but I had no good basis for that ASSumption. Bigmoose's suggestion is good for testing; also try the Microsoft DTV-DVD Audio Decoder for MP2 audio (it doesn't work for AC3, even though you can select it). That's the combo I use - MS DTV-DVD and AC3Filter.