Sound glitches when I search or do something outside of Traktor

[Sambo]

Hey, so I've been DJing for a while now, recently got a recurring gig in a local bar last week, and though not noticable to the trashed clients, it was noticable to me and more importantly, the manager.

Basically, Traktor runs fine unless I
A) start doing other things outside of Traktor, like looking at facebook (I have a dual monitor set up at home)
B) Search or half the time when I'm loading a song into another deck.

My laptop is running Windows 7 64-bit, AMD Dual Core blah blah, 2.4 or 2.6 GHZ, 4 GB of ram.

Now I know, I could always have more ram and a faster processor, (inb4 get a mac), but there's another DJ at the club on saturdays, he plays cheesey 80's and what not, he also uses Traktor, and another DJ that plays indie on wednesdays who uses Traktor.

Now, Cheese has a crap laptop, a craptop, if you will, his music collection is huge compared to mine (Triple figures in the GB. Blatant pirate, he even admits to people, yet he's still high payed and the manager doesn't realise he's cheaping on the job. Anyways, balls to him), and he runs fine without a hitch. Like, insulting smoothly. Then Indie Boy, he has a collection around 30 GB, but he uses an entry level mac (When I say entry level, I mean like, 3 year old entry level) and I know it's a Mac, but it has lower specs than my laptop and I just refuse to believe these two guys can get away with it when I'm stuck here with a (relatively) beast of a laptop that for some reason is failing.

From other people who have suffered a similar fate, they suggested that it was to do with my graphics chip, and this I could understand, the chip on this laptop is it's only let down, I recall it being an ATI Radeon x1200, and it runs Counter-Strike smooth at just under max settings. So I turned off aero, and this helped SLIGHTLY. Also, there's no way Cheese the Pirate has a better graphics chip than that in his tiny, dirty, illegitimate netbook.

I'm at an end here, I've closed down all background processes, turned off aero, all those streamlining methods, and it's still there. I'm sick of Cheese the Pirate and his craptop advising me on my setup, I need to fix this in the next few weeks or my gig is up and I'm back with no money haha.

Things I think it could be, but have no idea how to fix:
- Graphics Card. Well I do know how to fix, buy a new laptop. However, could the dual monitor settings be affecting it?
- External Hard Drive. it's a 1 TB seagate, my music library is 60 or so GB, since all the jumps are mainly when I'm accessing it, surely thats the problem... But how do I fix that? I've accessed files off my laptops C: and D: (it has two internal HDD's) and it's still done it if I recall.

Also, I'm not sure if this is the right forum, I know if anyone can help it's you guys, and there's no general help section on these forums so... I guess this goes here.

Please help!

Edit: I forgot to mention Cheesebeard's cracktop (can you sense my distaste towards him?) is running vista, 64 bit apparently.

[djrosco]

Usb soundcard? could it be soundcard and HDD on the same USB controller.
I would start looking there before graphics cards.

[derschaich]

well, i'd say dont blame it on the graphics

your external drive seems an issue though.
i have my collection on internal hard-drive and have traktor working like a charm (2 year old dual core, 3gig ram)
think about having a dual boot, maybe too much crap on your system bringing your machine down.

[Sherlock Ohms]

You tried running dpclat and seeing whether it's a driver issue?

[Flash101uk]

Ive got a few suggestions:

1) Turn off your wifi adaptor
2) Dont do 'other stuff' on your lappy while djing
3) Get shot of that external drive.

External drives are much slower than internal, especially if its a budget model. There are 5400 and 7200 rpm drives on the market. I recommend you get the faster and swap out your old drive for something big and fast.
If thats not an option, just do a test: load up some of your tunes on your local HD and see if it still stutters.
Heres some food for thought too; what if someone stole that little external drive youre on, mid gig? It wouldnt take much to wrench it out of its usb port.
In my opinion, external drives are a necessary backup, but shouldnt be used as primary.

Also, kill all your card readers. I had mine crash traktor after every 20 mins randomly the other day.

If all else fails, it could be simply that youre using an AMD chip. I have heard of people having issues with their cpu's before.

[Jester]

Hey mate i run win 7 64 bit also. Best advice i can give is to disable your network adaptors and battery in the device manager, run gamebooster to kill unnecesary processes and process hacker to trim the services even more. Run latency checker and latency monster to isolate cpu spikes etc. For me the battery was the big one, disabling that has worked woners

[Sambo]

... Disable the battery? hmm. The drive is 7200 apparently. I've gotta go to work now, but when I come back I'll try all the suggestions, thanks for the quick reply guys!

[Jester]

either disable it or take it off completely. run latency monitor you will see how it affects things. just dont bump your power cord while playing or its all over ha!

[MrPopinjay]

If your graphics card is shit don't use a dual monitor set up.

[Sherlock Ohms]

... Disable the battery? hmm. The drive is 7200 apparently. I've gotta go to work now, but when I come back I'll try all the suggestions, thanks for the quick reply guys!

I found I only needed to disable the Power Management driver, not pull the battery.