I cannot play a song using a media player application.

In an earlier post I mentioned I was switching my PC music players from Winamp to GOM player. Well, GOM player is not far enough along in its development for me to use it on a daily basis.

I have 3 issues with GOM player today: a bug in mp3 decoding, and a bug in sound-driver-playing, and buffering.

Some of my music (actually, a large portion of it) plays fine in Winamp, but flickers badly in GOM player. What I mean is, a little chunk of audio is skipped (like 1/10th of a second's worth), so the song "speeds up" by 1/10th of a second, which sounds horrible to the ear; it messes up the beat of the music, especially if you're trying to sing to it or follow it in your mind while listening to it.

I know there's a ton of different mp3 encoders that can generate mp3 files in a wide variety of ways, including CBR versus VBR differences; Winamp just seems to handle them all perfectly, today.

There's some bug in how GOM player talks to my sound driver, in a way I've never seen before. Let's say I load up an m3u file (which is a list of many mp3 songs to play, in the order to play them). GOM player plays the first song. Then, it switches to the second song, and begins "playing" it - except no sound is coming out of my speakers! I can see the little thumb/bar moving horizontally, showing that the music is "playing" from GOM's point of view, but I can't hear a thing.

If I grab the little thumb and drag it ANYWHERE (including right to the spot it was just at), the sound immediately resumes playing through the speakers! So, I have to baby-sit every song - grabbing the thumb and dragging it back to the beginning OF EVERY SONG, to get that next song to play. Frustrating.

The last issue is that GOM player isn't buffering up enough decoded music ahead of the play-point. I know this because when I start launching apps and opening windows, even IE windows, the music cuts out for fractions of a second, then resumes. The music gets choppy like that, over and over, until the CPU is back to "idle", then the music plays continuously again. Winamp never did that. I assume it's a buffering issue; perhaps Winamp is multithreaded, with one thread doing playback, and another doing decoding; the decoder must run fast enough to be ahead of the playback by a wide margin, for times when CPU becomes scarce. Then the playback can read its data from the buffered-up audio, play it, and not hiccup.

Really intelligent software will even do internal "low-water-mark" measurements to see how well the buffer size is working; if it ever runs out of buffer entirely between decoding and playback, it tweaks an internal setting so it remembers to keep a larger buffer next time! That way it can prevent hiccups in the future by learning about how this particular machine works.

Yes, I'm running this on a machine with not quite enough memory (512MB Windows XP; it's the max this poor box can have). But if Winamp can do it, I would like to think GOM player can, with the proper programming.

So, I guess I don't have a good music player after all.

Yes I've tried VLC media player, which is awesome for movies, but has a sucky user interface in my opinion. You can't display a playlist of upcoming songs you've queued up, such as when you open a m3u file which VLC player does understand just fine.

I'm going to look around some more.

These songs must have been purchased online. Itunes, or many online MP3 stores do this to prevent piracy. The songs can only be played on the PC that purchased them. Either buy the music from a DRM free site or find a DRM ripper, which maybe illegal in some locations.

1. Use Windows Media Player to put songs on your Coby MP3 player. Download songs in MP3, WMA, or OGG format from a legal downloading website. If the file is not one of the previously mentioned files, you must download a converter to convert the file to one of the correct files that can be played on Windows Media Player. Rip a song from a CD by inserting the CD and then click on the option to "Rip" the song to your library. Some Coby MP3 players do not need Windows Media Player to add songs, so be sure to check your user manual to see if there is an even simpler method.
2. Connect your Coby MP3 player to your computer using the USB connector that came with your MP3 player. The player will show up under the "Devices" option on your Window Media Player application.
3. Click on the "Library" option to view all of the songs stored on your Windows Media Player library. You can drag the song to the MP3 player in the "Devices" section, or you can right-click on the song and choose the option to transfer the song. In the pop-up box choose your MP3 from the drop-down menu and then click on the "Transfer" button.
4. Right-click on the MP3 player in Windows Media Player and choose the "Eject" option. Disconnect your MP3 player from your computer and turn it on. The song will now be available on your MP3 player. Press the bottom button to play or pause the song.
5. Add videos and pictures to your Coby MP3 player if it supports those files. The process is similar to transferring audio files. Plug your MP3 player into your computer. Open the photo file on your computer and drag pictures into the player. You can create folders to organize the pictures.

my phillips gogear mp3 os saying i have no media engine and a drm liecince

it depends on mp3 player. i have several and the rca one i have the only way it will play is if i use windows media player to sync to device. if i try to copy and paste the songs it will give ivalid format error. give that a try u got to have windows media player 10. or higher

in playlist.com there are no bufferings.. yeah there are some but it buffs fast

I have the nwz-a816 and if have had this issue a couple of times... It seems to give me that message on songs I have downloaded from Napster... I just connected it to the computer that the Napster application is on and it corrects this problem... Hope this helps...

Your problem isnt the player. Its not downloading the video fast enough at the play speed. Try pausing the video for a while to let the buffer get ahead then play it again. You can also go into the settings and change the length of the buffer from what I remember. It should be pretty clearly marked. Hope it helps!

if you have a error message license error, it means song is not properly authorized to be shared. is this "downloaded song", are they on mp3 format? if they are, try using windows media player, then synch it with the mp3 player. hope this helps!

Make sure your player is not set on ramdem play