I can hardly wait for you to try this too Dave. I'm holding high hopes .....and my breath sick

OK, Good news. I'll call this issue resolved. However, the file editing did not do a thing. The fix was something else. Skip to the end if you cant stand the suspense.

Remember, I had a loud pop at both the start and end of each sound file played (almost the same volume as the sound it's self). Sometimes the starting pop would bleed into the sound it's self.

Just to show my environment; I'm useing an older Dell laptop upgraded to Windows 10. I have a very strong WiFi signal from an access point attached to a new router.

I tried DJ's "fixed" file and had no change. The pop was still there. In fact the audio quality was degraded. I edited a couple files of my own and tried them. No change. I even tried a few generic MP3 sound files and a song in MP3 format. No change. Still had a loud pop at start and end.

I then uploaded my project to a newer and faster computer to see if there were any differences. After attaching to the same network with this newer and faster laptop I found that the pop was now sporadic. The pops would happen at start or end or not at all. However they happened often. I'd say about 75% of the time.

I was a little discouraged. tired

Next I found that the update DJ mentioned was ready to download. After installing it on the older Dell laptop I loaded my project, connected to the EZB and played a sound file. I was not supersized when I heard the pop at the start of the file. However it was now very quiet! Then when the file stopped there was NO POP! Wow! OK, my shaking finger clicked a different file on the control's list. NO POP! The file stopped. NO POP! I tried this again and again with different files and found each has a clean and clear start and finish. In fact I'd go as far as saying that the sound files even sounded better. However that could have been because I was so happy that even a good fart would have sounded wonderful.

OK, Now was this just an anomaly? I shut down both the laptop and robot and rebooted both. I found the same behavior. The very first file played has a faint pop at the start but as long as I remain connected to ARC there are no other pops when I play any of the files. The only time I hear any distortion is when I play several files very fast and sometimes start one before the other ends. Then sometimes I'll hear that faint pop between files but what else could I expect under such torture.

So, My conclusion; I'm not sure why but something with my newer computer improved the popping issue about 25%. Then Something in DJ's ARC update enabled files to be played without the pop at all "After" the first file is played. The first file played after ARC is started and connected always has a faint pop at the start of the file. After that no pops will be heard. If I disconnect ARC, close it, then restart and connect to the robot the first file played will always have that first faint pop. I can live with this and am very happy. I now see this as a non-issue. Fixed. Thanks DJ for the voodoo you do so well.

EUREKA!

Dave, you sir, are da man! We are not worthy. The effort you put into solving a problem is nothing short of remarkable. It seems nothing is too hard or out of the question. Many others would have thrown in the towel long ago. I cant thank you enough for all your work. I cant wait to get a line leveler, update ARC and try this out, and fingers crossed, I should get matched sound volume, no clipping, and especially no pops

And of course, thanks also to DJ and the EZ Robot team for all their tireless work in providing a first class product.

Steve

DJ's sound enhancement is what did the trick I think. Odd how this upgrade popped up just when we really needed it. Just goes to show you how on top of things DJ and ez robot are. Either that or the universe is total sync with our needs. On their own my troubleshooting steps may not have fixed anything. I'm still not really sure about that. In the end, I'm pleased and I also learned something.

Glad it's all sorted Dave. If only the universe WAS in sync with our needs... maybe a lottery win could be on the cards, lol.

Lol Steve. Who's to say. Maybe the universe thinks what we need is "not" to win the lottery. Dam universe.

Update:-

I bought a Line Leveler, installed it, Updated to the latest ARC and all is good. I was able to match the sound from the EZB to the CF sound system, I had no clipping and no pops. Life is wonderful

I then sorted out, after much head scratching, how to monitor ADC ports via contacts in the CF sound system, so I could pause and un-pause the Personality Generator and the Voice Activation controls in my project so when I pulled out the robots "Power Pack" he would "appear" dead. Life is Wonderful Still

Today, Life stopped being so wonderful. I installed a small Audio amplifier in parallel to the main voice amplifier to separately control the level of volume feeding the interface that controls the flashing of the chest neon regardless of the volume of the main Amp. I don't even have the neon connected to the small amp yet. I was just mounting it and wired the 12 volt feed to it and the un-amplified audio to it. later when retesting and tweaking the power pack pull scripts, I had a problem with the audio files played from the EZB Soundboard, for want of a better word, "Stuttering". It would play a file for a bit then jump back a bit replay the word or two or three, jump further up the file and back again and sometimes it would even play a small piece of another file that shouldn't be plying at all. Seems to happen more with the longer files. I cant imagine that it has anything to do with the new amp. Its like the file is sent garbled from my laptop. The files played from the CF sound system play fine, its only the EZB soundboard file that are affected. This is so weird as everything has been working fine. I thought the scripts that loop and watch the ADC ports may be overwhelming the EZB, but I only have two of them and they each have a 1 second sleep before looping back to the start. I made up leads for connection from the EZB to the AUX contacts on the CF sound system with 10k pull down resistors built in and I connected all 8 ADC ports to the normally open contacts on the CF sound. At this point only two of them are in use by the EZB.

Does anyone have any idea what might be causing this "stuttering"

Nothing is easy tired

Steve

Yes, this has happened to me in the past. Same hellish loop. I really don't know what caused it but here are a few things I did and haven't had a problem since:

I found a running ARC ADC port monitoring control I had installed that I had forgotten about. It was hidden behind some other controls on in my cluttered project. It was watching one of the ADC ports I was using in the same way you are (with the same pull down resistors that should be making things more stable). I clicked the pause box and saved the project. I then turned off both the robot and laptop and let it sit for a little and then rebooted the laptop.

After Windows 10 loaded I let everything finish loading and settle down. I then disabled my virus program, checked I had a good strong Wifi signal that was connected to the network I usually use and then started the robot. After the robot and his EZB's were up and running and connected to the network I then started ARC and connected it to the robot's EZB's. Everything was better.

The only causes I can think of could have been any or all of these; a bad wifi connection, cluttered comm channel between the laptop and ezb or something running on the laptop that was chopping up the delivery of the sound file or slowing down it's system. The issue could have also been enhanced by the Aux input of the CF sound system. It has a sensor that opens and closes (for want of a better understanding of how it works) when it scenes a signal coming in. Could be the signal was caught in a buffer and only parts were let through (wild guess).

Anyway, I haven't really had the robot running and using the sound functions a lot since I did the testing and work above. I have not installed the latest ARC upgrade. There has been one more with Audio Enhancements since I did this work and you may be running if you upgraded within the last couple days.

I do not have this extra amp installed in my system for the neon and I don't know if this could be a problem. I do know that sometimes adding extra equipment in a sound system sometimes causes problems. You can introduce polarity, timing, level and signal problems. I'm no expert in that stuff and I always need to study and ask questions when I want to modify my sound systems.

Till now my fix was to make sure nothing was running that would suck down system performance like virus software, unneeded computer software, ARC ADC monitoring, strong and clean Wifi connection, and a fresh reboot of all systems. Good luck and keep me posted.