An Overview of Windows Sound and Music "Glitching" Issues

re: An Overview of Windows Sound and Music "Glitching" Issues

eXAKR — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 18:12:23 GMT

(Warning: long rant ahead)

(Developers: if you want to help, skip the rant and scroll on down, past the line)

Well... I'm finally glad now that there's a possible closure (but no solution still) for the audio problems I have been facing here as of late.

The odd thing is, most people around here started experiencing problems soon after they buy their new computer; in my case, it happened a year after that, but very shortly after I bought a pair of Creative speakers to replace the aging 2.1 no-brand speakers that came with my old Acer computer. At first I thought it was the speakers, then the sound chip, then even the entire motherboard. I even bought a new external hard disk to back up my data in order to prepare it for any possible major repairs. Had my computer tugged from my home to the computer store, which was located in a busy, being-renovated shopping mall a 15-minute bus ride away (my computer's warranty has already expired by then), only to have the computer shop draw up a blank. Came home, and the problem was apparently solved until it started acting up again these past few days. I did more digging in Google and, after following a messy path of links, finally brought myself to this page and learn that the problem is with Windows Vista itself, and that I'm not the only one.

It's really unbelievable that there are so many claims of people using Windows XP and not having to suffer this problem, while Vista users have to go through this pain. I demand a lot from my music and audio (though I won't classify myself as an audiophile), and I could have expected the quality of music from my 1-year old computer with an operating system that's 2-years old to be much, much better than what I'm getting now - stutters, pops, drops, and cackles. This is just simply ridiculous - you guys spend 5 long years only to give us a product that breaks something that was working fine in a version that is now eight (!) years old?

And it just grates on my nerves when I try to play some music on my computer while doing other things, only to have it get messed-up like this. At it's worst, it could do this even when it was mostly idling!

I am now starting to see why there was such a big negative movement against Windows Vista - at first I thought the problems are not as bad as what the pundits were making it out to be (and in this day and age of fanboyism, you can't trust anyone's praise or criticism of anything until you use it yourself and see if it's what you need/want/like). Now, one year on, I am finally starting to see their light. Just a few days ago I spend more hair-pulling time trying to find a tweak for another Windows Vista annoyance (p.s. it's related to folder and file thumbnails, if you want to know), only to find that Microsoft has implemented an all-or-nothing solution built dead-in, with absolutely no way to change things around. And that one's at least the second Windows Vista annoyance I have tried to work around in a month!

I could probably not be able to do anything other than to just shake my head if I really need to change my operating system just to get some proper music flowing from my computer. The ridiculousness here is beyond my threshold.

----------------------------------

So here's the technical gist:

Acer Aspire M5630 desktop with Acer EG-31M motherboard

Intel Core2Quad Q6600 processor at 2.4 GHz

2 GB of RAM

NVIDIA GeForce 8600GS

Realtek High-Definition Audio (on-board sound chip)

Realtek 8185 Extensible 802.11b/g Wireless Device (disabled)

Realtek RTL8168B/8111B Family PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet NIC (NDIS 6.0)

Windows Vista SP1 (a given)

I have already ruled out:

• the speakers (have them checked by Creative technicians, and tested them with my own MP3 player)

• drivers (all updated)

• hard drive controller settings (all are using UDMA)

• wireless card interference (it's already disabled, unless I'm missing something)

• something wrong with the Windows Audio and related services (restarted them all, and even tried setting some of them to Realtime base priority in Task Manager)

• speakers' electrical supply (any problems there should also have shown up on my MP3 player)

The problem shows up most when I load or reload something on my web browsers - Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Safari, and Google Chrome (basically, every commonly-used web browser out there). It affects playing music from any application, be it Windows Media Player, Winamp, Songbird, or one of the web browsers I use. Best-case is only some slight popping noise, worst case is a complete slowing-down of the music being played. There seems to be no buffer underrun issues.

I have no idea what else might be causing this other than some kind of processor usage competition going on (which shouldn't happen as I have set the speakers properties settings to allow applications to take exclusive control, and to elevate their priority) or something that has to with the network, as discussed elsewhere. It can't be the wireless card, as I have it disabled - unless I'm doing something wrong.

I am also suspecting possible interference from my router - a 2Wire HGV-2700, but that is low on my list of suspects right now.

Any ideas and solutions short of changing the operating system?

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re: An Overview of Windows Sound and Music "Glitching" Issues

mstout2u — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 11:29:11 GMT

This blog was the first step in solving my latency problem on my brand new Dell vista ultimate home 64 bit windows and in learning how bad the sound situation is on windows.

I read about the multimedia scheduling and thought "great, Microsoft has finally fixed the sound problem"

1) I plug in my m-audio midisport uno midi usb adapter and the driver doesn't install. m-audio says it is class compliant and needs no drivers, yet it doesn't work.

2) I buy a $80 m-audio 2x2 midi-usb adapter and it installs with no problem. I install sonar home studio and give it a shot. The midi events come into sonar but they are all wrong. A trip to m-audio and downloading new drivers fixes that problem.

3) I can't get the latency below 120 milliseconds. I spend two days messing around with disabling processes, tweeks here and there to no avail. (BTW it's funny to think how much computing a modern computer can do in 120 milliseconds...Quad Core 2.3 GHZ software incapable of servicing 44KHZ sound? Phenomenally bad. No excuse)

4) I read that integrated sound chips have problems doing low-latency audio (for some reason) so I go out and buy a $99 PCI m-audio 2496 sound card and apply to be on their beta program for 64 bit drivers.

5) I visit Best Buy and see a setup with Vista, a keyboard, a USB based m-audio sound output and ask to see a demo. The technician claims to be taking classes in this stuff (he has a mac) The demo system has horrible latency too.

6) Just when I'm saying to myself "Perhaps I have to finally buy a mac". I finally find this article from creative labs.

forums.creative.com/.../message

I install AISO4ALL and it seems my latency issues are solved.

Summary.

Hankon Strande (from Microsoft) said "Audio glitching is typically not due to the audio device or the audio driver but more likely caused by other software components you are running on your system". It turns out that the "other software components" he is talking about is all the sound software that Microsoft provides that is not a device driver. Microsoft needs to get it's act together and work with ISVs and solve this latency issue.

I can't believe that ASIO was released in 1997 and became the de-facto standard because Microsoft provided no alternative. Now 11 years later I still have to download ASIO4ALL, some non-logo'ed, library developed by Michael Tippach (whoever he is) to do what a Multi-billion dollar corporation failed to do in 11 years! Microsoft should be ashamed of itself. They should buy ASIO4ALL for $50 million, ship it with Vista, problem solved.

How has 64 bit Vista been released to the unsuspecting public with 64 bit drivers unavailable or still in beta? Microsoft should have an army of ISV reps and programmers helping these companies and writing drivers for them.

Why is there no applet included in windows that allows you to buy a midi-usb adapter, plug it in, and hear sounds? You need to spend at least $100 on some 3'rd party software while macs ship with garage-band. All evidence is that he windows sound system is broken for this use and has been for at least 11 years.

re: An Overview of Windows Sound and Music "Glitching" Issues

Bob Huntley — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 14:50:52 GMT

Is't november 2008 and I'm one week into a new Dell PC with Vista. My Itunes 8 playback of Itunes purchased audio files are jumping consistantly as described in one of the comments in this thread. We're talking 5 or 6 skips per song. I'm not a technical person. I just want to know if there is a solution to this playback problem yet. It really ruins the listening experience. thanks.

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re: An Overview of Windows Sound and Music "Glitching" Issues

amadib — Sun, 18 May 2008 18:24:43 GMT

@Nick

When should we expect an official statement or solution from Microsoft. I'm pretty tired of tweaking my system and running after other vendors. I also am awaiting your follow up post.

Thanks

~madd

re: An Overview of Windows Sound and Music "Glitching" Issues

Elington — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 07:41:04 GMT

Hi all,

I've finally managed to get rid of the audio glitches! Full story:

1. Initial Vista install-> perfect sound

2. Change of GPU to a 8800GT-> popping sound

3. Upgraded to Vista SP1-> no change

What solved the issue for me:

1. disable the "high precision timer" dedicated to Vista in my motherboard bios (ASUS P5N32-E SLI). Yes "disable"!

2. Looking at this page on MSDN msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms684247.aspx

I went to the registry

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\SystemProfile

then Tasks, then Audio, then changed the Clock Rate from decimal 10000 to decimal 9000.

=> no more glitches

By the way, changing the task priority settings didn't help.

I don't know if this is a general solution or if the problem was specific to my hardware but my 2K€ PC is a multimedia machine again ;)

re: An Overview of Windows Sound and Music "Glitching" Issues

guitartrek — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 21:15:28 GMT

maestromosh - Strange that you are seeing this with the m-audio too. My ASIO4ALL settings for the PODxt and UX2 are the defaults that came up. Latency - 32 in and out, Kernal Buffers: 2 (use hardware buffer unchecked) Buffer size 512.

Interesting that the x3 driver works better on Vista. I'm probably going to get one.

I do have better performane on the PODxt than the UX2 with Gearbox, but I'm assuming that is because the xt is doing all the heavy lifting, where-as with the UX2 the computer is doing all the work.

Good luck with ASIO4ALL - I hope it helps.

re: An Overview of Windows Sound and Music "Glitching" Issues

guitartrek — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 21:15:26 GMT

Interesting that the x3 driver works better on Vista. I'm probably going to get one.

I do have better performane on the PODxt than the UX2 with Gearbox, but I'm assuming that is because the xt is doing all the heavy lifting, where-as with the UX2 the computer is doing all the work.

Good luck with ASIO4ALL - I hope it helps.

re: An Overview of Windows Sound and Music "Glitching" Issues

maestromosh — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 11:59:13 GMT

hey guitartrek!

thanks for your reply. there are indeed some good points in your thread. i will try to disable multiprocessing and see whats happening.

ASIO4ALL is my weapon of choice too - i use this, if i want my internal soundcard to play the midiclick in cubase on XP and it works fine.

on vista it doesnt seem to have any effect on the latency and glitches at all. can you please tell me how you configured your asio4all?

but in fact i wonder, if this is a line6 problem, why my m-audio asio driver also fails to work.

PS: i now use the line6 POD x3 live, which appears to be a little better on vista. i guess its because i dont have to use gearbox anymore. but - as soon as i use some plugin for re-amping such as guitar rig 2, the glitches reappear. VST instruments like EZdrummer doesnt play right and the glitches are there too.

thanks!

markus

re: An Overview of Windows Sound and Music "Glitching" Issues

guitartrek — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 05:48:16 GMT

maestromosh - I had the same problem with my UX2 Toneport. Line6 is the culprit - their ASIO vista drivers are not very good yet. They don't officially support Vista (see their forum). But I was able to get it to work:

1) ASIO4ALL seems to work way better than Line6's ASIO driver. Better latency, etc.

2) If you want to use Line6's ASIO driver you must disable multi-processing in your DAW software (if it lets you). For some reason Line6's driver doesn't work well at all with multi-processing is enabled. ASIO4ALL works perfect with multi-processing enabled.

re: An Overview of Windows Sound and Music "Glitching" Issues

maestromosh — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 22:38:29 GMT

oh - and as a workaround i installed XP on a small partition on my laptop. the device manager prompts with some undeclared internal hardware (-> no way to get drivers for XP from sony), but my audio software works fine.

just to get this straight - i hate to have two kinds of OS on my pc, so i'd rather get vista working with no yellow exclamation marks in the device manager than always have to select which way i want to boot.

cheers

markus

re: An Overview of Windows Sound and Music "Glitching" Issues

maestromosh — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 21:33:07 GMT

hey richard!

thanks a lot for your answer! i REALLY appreciate that!

ok. and now on with the issue =)

first off - i cooled down a little... =)

the first 4 steps you listed above were the things i did long long before i posted my "frustration" here.

as for the devices i use the m-audio fasttrack pro and the line6 guitarport with gearbox software. both devices come with an ASIO driver. i use the guitarport more often - so the guitarport ASIO is my driver of choice most of the time.

i have cubase SX3 and Ableton live 7. i have the syncrosoft licence control center for vista. so this works fine with me.

but - no matter what asio driver i use the effect is still the same.

i usually open gearbox to jam a bit - this is where it seems to work more or less ok, as though i have to raise the asio buffer. the latency is around 8-10ms in this stage (3ms-5ms on winXP). but as soon as i open whatever recording software, everything fails. the asio driver seems to have problems sharing what it receives, and the playback, even with gearbox closed and ONLY beeing used for playback, sounds like a broken cellphone in an aquarium.

so with this clear, i would in fact be happy with you explaining to me how to use the tool you mentioned =)

thanks a lot in advance

markus

re: An Overview of Windows Sound and Music "Glitching" Issues

Richard Fricks — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 20:31:03 GMT

Hello Maestro,

Sorry to hear about your frustration with running your audio production software on Windows Vista. Getting the latency down to an acceptable level can be challenging given the wide range of things that can impact the OS’s ability to do this. I wish I could just simply give you a value to type in, or checkbox to click on to resolve the problem but in reality it will require some research on your part to track down through the process of elimination the cause of the problem. Ideally, once the actual cause can be determined it will lead to a solution.

There are 4 areas that generally need to be looked into:

• The audio software package.

• The audio device and driver being used.

• The ASIO driver (if applicable).

• Compatibility issues with other drivers on the system.

Here are my suggestions for checking on the above list of items:

1. Go to the audio hardware vendor’s support site or forum and see if they have recommendations for driver/hardware for running on Windows Vista and if they do, make sure the hardware you are using is on that list. Microsoft does do some ProAudio hardware testing but I believe the hardware vendor’s site would have the most up-to-date information. It’s not clear to me what audio device you are using. If you can provide me with that information I can check as well.

2. As with the hardware, I would also visit the software vendor’s support site or forum and see what they recommend for Vista. You mentioned Cubase in your post. Here is a link to the list of Steinberg software versions that they will support under Vista:

http://knowledgebase.steinberg.de/173_1.html

3. If the above fails to provide information that leads to a solution then I would make a more general request for help through the various pro-audio forums. Finding someone with an audio device and software product similar to what you are using could be key in coming up with a solution.

4. You also mentioned that you were using an ASIO driver. It would be worthwhile to verify you are using an ASIO driver that is capable of providing the latency you need on the Windows Vista platform. I would check with the ASIO driver provider (assuming it did not come with the software) and find out what they indicate can be expected on Windows Vista. Again, their support web-site and forums are the best place to get this type of information.

5. If it is an issue with other device drivers on the system taking too much time servicing their devices then locating that device is important. Microsoft does provide the tracelog tool in the DDK that when used with the "–dpcisr" parameter does allow you to measure DPC and ISR execution times for drivers on the System. If all indications are that the software and hardware combinations you are using should be working at the latency levels you need, then it is possible that driver behavior is the culprit. It takes some interpretive skills to use the reports to pinpoint a likely driver with execution times that could be causing the problem but you could consider this a “when all else fails” option. If you get to this point, let me know and I can provide more details on how to use this tool.

Thanks,

Richard Fricks

Program Manager – Windows Audio

re: An Overview of Windows Sound and Music "Glitching" Issues

maestromosh — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 18:37:51 GMT

oh. my hardware specs are:

- Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Prozessor T5500, supports Enhanced Intel SpeedStep® Technology

- 2GB DDR RAM

- NVIDIA® GeForce® Go 7400

- vista home premium

*all the latest updates and patches to every piece software and drivers are installed