KVR Audio

szurcio · Post by **szurcio** » Fri Feb 28, 2014 10:43 pm

I'm still using Windows XP. Is there any software that would help me find/isolate the sources of spikes and audio dropouts - I'm trying to find a solution to a problem I'm having with Firewire (and sometimes even USB) audio interfaces: audio dropouts, pops and clicks at lower latencies.
For example, I can't go lower than the 256 buffer with the medium firewire driver latency on my Saffire Pro 24 without frequent audio dropouts. I have a TI FW chip (Firewire PCIe adapter) and no antivirus running (I even disabled Internet altogether). There is something coming from the PC at regular intervals (every 30 or 40 seconds) that causes the audio dropouts (like regular CPU spikes), I just don't know what it is. It doesn't matter If I'm using a sequencer or just watching video - a short audio dropout (or with higher latencies: pops and clicks) always comes every 40 seconds or so. For half a second I don't hear any audio, then it returns... Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

tehlord · Post by **tehlord** » Fri Feb 28, 2014 10:50 pm

Send Focusrite a support request. I had a similar issue with my Liquid Saffire 56 and I was sent a pretty sophisticated DPC latency checker app to run which gave them a report to work with. Turned out it was my SATA controller causing the issue.

metamorphosis · Post by **metamorphosis** » Sat Mar 01, 2014 1:19 am

Hi szurcio,
see the first and fifth tip in the "Additional tips for DAWs" section of my website below, this is particularly relevant for firewire+XP & glitching/dropouts.
Also go through one of the cleanup guides.
Once you've done all that, if you're still getting glitches, download DPC latency check.

ps. Um, 256 samples of latency is pretty f-ing good? I stick to 512 samples for 44khz and 1024 for higher samplerates.

Zombie Queen · Post by **Zombie Queen** » Sat Mar 01, 2014 2:25 am

Yes, start with latency check:
http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml
Ethernet/wireless devices are usual suspects.

256 samples is not very good. On my rig, (XP, 1st gen i7 CPU, Audiofire FW card) I can set 64 samples buffer at 96khz, and work with no problems, besides higher CPU load, normally I use 160 samples at 44khz.
However, I had to disable motherboard's gigabit ethernet card, it was generating huge latency spikes, I filled last remaining PCI slot with some old generic 10/100 ethernet, this solved the problem.

jancivil · Post by **jancivil** » Sat Mar 01, 2014 4:31 am

As per particular numbers, samples in the buffer, as 'good' or 'not very good'. It depends, what are you doing?

I cannot do live input with higher than 128 except rarely 192 depending on particulars in the instrumentation, there is no one-size-fits-all.
Someone saying 'I can get _ at 96k' means nothing to me, I can't use that information at all, for instance. I'm quite sure my modus operandi and requirements is going to be quite different than ZQ's.
That said, if you can never in any situation get it under 256, you have a sluggish computer vis a vis what you want from it. Can it be helped, I couldn't say without a lot of information.

We saw a situation where someone went through the DPC check and found no joy, and I suspect his bottleneck was trying to run samples off the systems drive. It could be a lot of things. Running a DAW is not necessarily like average computer usage. Such as you are better off not using a superpowerful gaming video card. You can't be doing power saving. You have to keep a clean machine. It could be shite drivers on the sound card, it could be a lack of a sound card and relying on ASIO4ALL for some people.

XP runs a LOT of services in the background that people liked to disable, some of which used significant resources up. However I found that it didn't like to have them turned off! But that was the thing in those days, disable services. People put out papers saying 'here are the safe tweaks'. I don't know about it, 'safe' but we did this stuff.
There is the issue of RAM paging out and people liked to force XP to deal with RAM as a fixed thing, setting virtual RAM at half again the physical amount of memory.

You may need to defragment your hard drive. I'm seeing you having trouble with audio watching a video. If you mean a video on your hard drive, I think 'sounds like a fragmented drive' based in experience.

camsr · Post by **camsr** » Sat Mar 01, 2014 6:09 am

Windows services can cause issues but disabling them is mostly about freeing up memory. When Vista came out people bitched and moaned about the RAM usage but I have found to be able to free up over a half of the default RAM use by disabling all services I don't need. I figured out what services were required by trial and error, and it took me a few DAYS of restarts and configurations to figure out what worked. The plus side is you only need to do it once, write it down, then hope the next version isn't as stupid as the previous.

metamorphosis · Post by **metamorphosis** » Sun Mar 02, 2014 1:01 am

There's no need for trial and error, consult BlackViper.

camsr · Post by **camsr** » Sun Mar 02, 2014 11:38 pm

metamorphosis wrote:There's no need for trial and error, consult BlackViper.

Not very useful I found. I had to do some Googling to figure out what he couldn't. And it's not good form to configure a system without SOME idea of what will happen

BertKoor · Post by **BertKoor** » Mon Mar 03, 2014 9:17 am

Sometimes it takes drastic measures... If you have a spare harddisk (costs just a few tenners to buy second hand) you can try a clean install of XP without risking you lose any data.

legendCNCD · Post by **legendCNCD** » Mon Mar 03, 2014 6:58 pm

I'd use http://www.resplendence.com/latencymon over latency check, because you can see straight the driver/service..

szurcio · Post by **szurcio** » Mon Mar 03, 2014 9:11 pm

legendCNCD wrote:I'd use http://www.resplendence.com/latencymon over latency check, because you can see straight the driver/service..

Win XP is not supported.

legendCNCD · Post by **legendCNCD** » Tue Mar 04, 2014 9:44 pm

Oh, sorry. Didn't really notice it was ancient OS

szurcio · Post by **szurcio** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 5:14 pm

legendCNCD wrote:Oh, sorry. Didn't really notice it was ancient OS

Please don't offend my OS - she has feelings too...

fese · Post by **fese** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 5:18 pm

szurcio wrote:
legendCNCD wrote:Oh, sorry. Didn't really notice it was ancient OS
Please don't offend my OS - she has feelings too...

Oh, right, computers are female. You tell them what to do and they ignore it....

Sorry, couldn't resist

szurcio · Post by **szurcio** » Tue Mar 11, 2014 12:25 am

Well, I just experienced a serious computer crash after changing some BIOS settings and had to do a full os restore from a backup I did 2 years ago (I admit, I'm not too responsible as far as regular backups are concerned). And you know what: now I have no audio dropouts whatsoever and my Saffire works like a charm. DPC latency checker doesn't show any problems either (it did before the crash). That gives me hope. Maybe I'll just reinstall everything (with a minimum OS setup, no Lenovo software, basic drivers, no firewire, no virus software - basically, an offline computer) and I'll keep an eye on what is installed (the fewer programs the better). I need to do some music - not worry all the time about pops and clicks that can ruin recordings...

Diagnosing source of audio dropouts?