I got an motherboard with an Core i7 processor. I'm having issues with my EMU 0404 USB driver, and I read on Creative's forum that to get the driver optimized for Windows one has to disable hyperthreading. Has anyone done this on an asus p8z68-v lx motherboard? If so then how did you do it?

you can disable it in the bios.

some software need to be re-activated,though.

i think most driver issues are solved with the x68 chipset and i like my bios to be working with the default values,the cpu can work more effective and at the end this save energy and cost.
the question is, why emu isn't updating this driver.

I've asked myself this same question since 2010. I've got a marginally better performance by restricting the processors, but that's about it. It still stutters wildly when I play music, which is really annoying. Is there any way one can alter the latency for the Windows sound drivers? Not ASIO that is.

within the price range from the emu i would consider the komplete audio 6 from ni and sell the emu on ebay.
native instruments because they know how to write drivers and there is support for discontinued products.
otherwise,i can't say anything about the build quality.

in win 7 you can't utilize the cpu up to 100% anyway,sometimes it is much lower and it can start crackling.
it depends also on the buffer size/latency.

imo,take a look what plugins you are using,they are definitely not performing the same even if the cpu hit is low.

myself currently switching to 64 bit got some problems with bridging x32 plugins and some strange behavior even with x64 plugins,it will take some weeks to sort this out,carefully testing and bug reporting to the developer if possible.

All these problems are due to drivers and possible utils. Have you run DPC latency check? Have you installed power control utils or Codec packs? These can affect things enormously. You can run Windows 7 close to the edge if your drivers and PC are set up ok. USB isnt known for its great low latency performance.

i wonder if that would include tweaking?

Ive never had to tweak Windows 7 or XP for low latency. IMHO it causes more trouble than its worth YMMV.

Indeed they can. Running dpclat is a must in this case.
The point about power control/overclocking utilities is a very good one. I've seen that happen more than once.

ew

I've run dpclat several times, and it ends up on 70 - 169 µs. My computer is able to handle streamed audio, and it does this in my internal soundcard, but still it doesn't do this with my EMU 0404 USB.

And mind you that I'm having this issue when I play music in Winamp, Spotify, Windows media player, VLC. I'm having this bug when playing games like Minecraft, GTA San Andreas, Half Life Source. MSN messenger has this very bug as well. Watching videos on Youtube and Vimeo gives this very problem in my EMU 0404 USB, and they all doesn't run on ASIO drivers.

So I repeat once again: How do I adjust the latency / buffer size within Windows 7?

There is no adjustable buffer within Windows. Its something you have installed thats causing trouble or the EMU/drivers.

What I got installed is the Realtek high definition audio driver. Is it possible that this driver conflicts with the EMU driver?

I would try disable the onboard soundcard if using an external one.
This is done is bios easily.

Nowadays graphics card drivers also have High Definition Audio drivers going.
I disable these in Devices.

It's worth a test.

Well I disabled the drivers first and then disabled the device from the bios. Still the sound stutters when playing in the tools mentioned above. The EMU ASIO driver works. At least for now.

On my i7 I turned off a couple of things in bios to get it working smoother:

1. Turning off core parking
2. Turning off dynamic overclocking.

CPU load went down 20%.