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Stopping Playback Pauses

Playback pauses may happen on smaller, slower computers and computers with slow disk drives.

Why do playback pauses happen?

On Windows, the anti-virus programs create a large amount of hard disk activity. At the same time, VLC is reading the audio file from the hard disk in order to play it.

Other programs on Windows such as the search indexer and backup utilities may also cause large amounts of hard disk activity.

Since the hard disk is so busy, when VLC reads the audio file from the hard disk, the read can be delayed, the audio playback gets paused and you will hear a momentary pause (a glitch) in the audio.

In addition, anti-virus programs often interfere with files that are being copied or opened. BallroomDJ copies each audio file before it is played.

What is the solution?

a1) Add the folders that contain your audio files to the anti-virus exclusion list. a2) Create an dedicated temporary folder for BallroomDJ, e.g. C:\Users\myaccount\BDJ_Temp . Set the Configuration: Folders / Temporary Files to point to the dedicated folder. Add this folder to the anti-virus exclusion list.

b) Turn on your computer early so that the anti-virus program is finished before you start playing your music. Note that if you plug in a USB stick or external hard drive, the anti-virus program may start checking it.

c) Use a RAM disk and configure BallroomDJ to use it as the temporary folder. A RAM disk is kept entirely in memory and no hard disk access occurs. VLC will read the audio file from the RAM disk. This is extremely fast and the likelihood of audio playback pauses is greatly decreased.

A RAM disk will use up a chunk of memory, and that memory cannot be used for other purposes. For a dedicated DJ computer, this is not a problem.

Your computer should have at least 4GB of memory in order to use a RAM disk. Computers with smaller amounts of memory should not set up a RAM disk.

See: Configuring a Ramdisk for Windows for instructions on how to set up a ramdisk for Windows.