I'm using FC4 2.6.14-1.1637. When I play mp3 songs on realplayer, there are hiccups. Sometimes it even stops the song completely, and I then have to click pause and play to start it again. I have the onboard sound device ALC850. Anybody know how I can fix this?

Try increasing the cache size to be large enough to hold entire clips, and select 'buffer entire clip' in the RealPlayer Preferences to see if that helps.

Thanks, but it doesn't work

One thing I should mention is that even the RealPlayer UI becomes very unresponsive while I play songs. My computer is not at all slow (AMD 64 3200+).

have you tried another player like xmms ?

yeah try xmms or amarok (my player of choice) although you will need extra mp3 support RPMs for them that can be easily yum'd

I have the same problem only this time it's MPD. I also have the same onboard sound ALC850.
Some MP3's stop somewhere in the middle or don't even start! I've tried increasing the buffer size and audio write size, but I got better results decreasing them!

Thanks, I'll try lowering my buffer as well.

I've never tried those other players simply because I've had hell downloading all those other packages. Is this problem common amongst people who have the alc850 onboard sound? Any solutions?

I really don't know how common this problem may be between the users of ALC850. My guess is that it is not the codec, that can't be possible IMO. Rather the driver, alsa, or the player. I've tested with xmms and amarok, there seems to be a problem with them playing 'incorrect' mp3s. I mean mp3s that are broken somehow, like they don't have good headers or they lose index somewhere. That's what I think, MPD might choke or stop because it looses index, where xmms or amarok just assumes index or can fix/bypass this errors. In case you don't know MPD - Music Player Daemon, is a daemon that plays your music, and manages it through a database, ok more like catalogues it, but you still need a client to control it, and you can do it remotely if it's not binded to localhost. Also you can use a system monitorin tool like gkrellm or conky to see status or control it. Anyone know a unix application to correct mp3 errors? I've seen some in gentoo's portage cache but what do you guys use?