Slow audio files

[Celia L]

We are trying to run MediaLab with attached audio files that “read” the questions to our research participants from netbooks. Here are our specs:

Dell Latitude 2110 netbook, CPU N470, 1.83 GHz, 1.99 GB RAM
Windows XP
MediaLab v2010
Mp3 audio files
Each questionnaire is somewhere between 176KB and 354KB

When a button is pushed to move along to the next question, the audio file for the previous item continues (not necessarily all the way through), and the next question does not appear until about a 10 second blank frame display.

We can run these experiments just fine, with absolutely no delay, on our desktops. However, we have also tried them on a laptop computer:

Dell Latitude E6400, P8700, 2.53 GHz, 4.00 GB RAM: On this one, it runs a little more quickly but there is still a delay.

Total time for the same questionnaire by each computer type is:
Desktop—30 minutes
Laptop--1 hour
Netbook--1 hour, 30 minutes

This seems to be a processing speed issue with the sound files? We have run the samples in MediaLab and they run just fine across all three computer types, but these don’t have sound files attached.

[jarvis24]

Are you using the backsounds option? If so, backsounds normally keep playing until they are done. You can stop them with another audio file on any subsequent item. It may be that there is a problem loading and playing the next mp3 file when one is already in action--at least perhaps on these particular laptops/nettbooks. If it *is* a resource issue, you could test that by converting some of the initial mp3 files into .wav files (using a freeware program like Audacity if you need one). .Wav files are uncompressed (unlike mp3s) and so the work may be lighter for these machines to do it this way. Never heard of an issue like this though. Is the .wav approach something you could try?