I am using a derivative of Puppy Linux and the Alsaplayer media player.

I seem to have a very odd problem. The audio CD and mp3 playback is fine. However, when I'm playing back an audio CD and I use my Firefox web browser, the playback skips every time I access a different web page or reload a web page. This doesn't happen with mp3 playback but only when playing an audio CD.

I have tried increasing the buffer_size in my .asoundrc file and tried turning on dma for the CD/DVD drive, neither of which helped. I also tried setting the Alsaplayer f and g command line options with various amounts, also with no results.

This doesn't happen with other media players (so I know my drive is OK), but these other players are not satisfactory for other reasons (choppy playback at other times, freezing, etc.). Alsaplayer seems to be the one that does the best job with audio CDs, except when using my web browser.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

bdika

What are your hardware specs? Firefox is very cpu intensive on low end hardware. On my PIII 500MHz with 384MB of ram, when I monitor the cpu state, I routinely see firefox peg the cpu at 100% utilization whenever I load a webpage, especially if I use any adblocking extensions. Your cd software may simply be ungracefully responding to being cpu starved for a few moments.

Thanks for the reply kilgoretrout.

I think you are right. The monitor on one of my task bars shows 100% when I startup firefox or reload a web page.

However, I don't have low end hardware. I have a dual core 64 bit computer with 3.5gig of ram, although I'm not sure how Puppy Linux treats the cpu.

In any case, I was wondering why it doesn't happen in (K)Ubuntu and why it doesn't happen in Puppy Linux when I am using the gxine media player (although gxine is prone to crashing in Puppy). I would like to correct my previous post in saying that I did notice a similar problem when using VLC in Puppy Linux.

Is there a configuration option that I can set in Firefox to keep it from maxing out the cpu when it loads or refreshes.

Thanks again kilgoretrout.

bdika

You can start firefox from the command line and use the nice command to lower its scheduleing priority and see if that works. The syntax would be something like this:

$ nice -n +15 mozilla-firefox

Hi kilgoretrout:

Thanks for the suggestion. The nice command wouldn't accept a plus after the number 15. So instead of entering:

as you suggested. I had to enter:

Unfortunately, this did not help.

I've since come to realize that this problem only occurs when I use compiz-fusion. Also, it seems to occur no matter what media player I am using.

If you have any other ideas, I'd be glad to hear them.

Thanks again.

bdika