Windows 10: Solution to Audio glitches/How to Ensure General Real-time Performance

Dear Ten Forums, If you've been struggling with audio glitches on a Windows 10 system with an adequately powerful laptop (8Gb of ram, processor N5000 is fast enough), I may have the solution. I take it you've tried the pretty useless audiotroubleshooter - deleting and re-installing drivers, turning off enhancements, going to the manufacturer's website to download the correct drivers to no avail. I suggest doing a deep virus scan first with say Windows Defender and something like Malwarebytes (google it), 1. First identify the problem (You can skip this and go ahead to the solution, if you want.) If you tried all that, google "LatencyMon" and install it. This brilliant tool will let you see what drivers and interrupts are causing sound problems on your system. Mostly likely you'll find ACPI.sys (to do with battery monitoring) or the mysterious "wdf01000.sys". I've seen ACPI.sys take up to 0.2 seconds supposedly doing an interrupt routine (more an "imposition" routine). Microsoft or the manufacturers don't look like they'll get around to fixing these problems, hell, they'll fix it one Windows update and then in two weeks "unfix" it, as happened to me when I did an update for Windows 10 early 2021. If you observe this, I suggest trying the simple fixes below. 2. This solution may be applicable to Windows 10 and Windows 7, even other versions. Some software is broken so my solution is to isolate it onto a particular core. ACPI.sys and wdf01000.sys seem to either run on all cores or default to core 0 or core 0/1 - as do the other processes. You can try typing tasklist /SVC into a cmd prompt and scroll through the list to find the svchost.exe processes, which are a kind of container for all the sys files running. You'll see the process ID number and then a list of the sys files running in that process. Some of the names maybe slightly different, i.e. ACPI.sys might just be called "Power". You can either set the affinity (more on that later) for the services audiosrv and audioendpointbuilder to specific cores or set the affinity for ACPI.sys and wdf01000.sys, I prefer the former. Start up taskmanager (taskmgr.exe) and you'll probably need to be Administrator and go to the services tab: There look for Windows Audio and Windows Audio Endpoint Builder. Right click on one, then the other to "Go to detail". Under Windows 7 that may be called "Go to process". You'll be taken to the running process tabs Where you right click on the process that has been highlighted and chose "Set affinity". There choose the other cores as invariably microsoft puts interrupts on core 0 or 1 (or all cores, we'll come back to this point shortly), thus giving the audio services a fair crack of the whip when it comes to running on time. Now as mentioned you can do the converse and limit ACPI.sys and other errant drivers (or maybe I should say, not well coded drivers) to a particular core but you will need to use tasklist /SVC and sift through the data it provides: There you can see that I have probably located the instance of ACPI.sys running and then I can take note of the process ID and do the same thing in task manager, set the affinity and limit it to a particular core. This may all be fine and dandy but you say, each time I reboot, I have to go through this rigmarole. Well it's not that difficult to do, I tend to leave my computer booted for weeks and just sleep it or hibernate it. If you want a permanent fix, there are alternatives to task manager which can remember your settings for processes, just google it. By this method of just setting the affinity of the audio services to their own cores, I have seen a drastic improvement in sound quality. I could make it even better by limiting the other services to core 0 (they seem to be default to run on all cores) but that is a more complicated variation of what is above - you have to identify the likely process containing the sys file running from the screenload that tasklist /SVC gives you. Hope that helps. - - - Updated - - - Method has general applicability to errant (badly coded) drivers - Isolate them onto one core so that they don't affect the real time performance of the rest of your system with random glitches. If they can potentially run on any core, they might clash with your process, should it be scheduled for the same core. By deterministically setting which core it runs on and putting your other code on to the other cores, there is little chance that a poorly written interrupt routine can de-schedule your code.

:)

 

Solution to Audio glitches/How to Ensure General Real-time Performance

Dear Ten Forums,

If you've been struggling with audio glitches on a Windows 10 system with an adequately powerful laptop (8Gb of ram, processor N5000 is fast enough), I may have the solution. I take it you've tried the pretty useless audiotroubleshooter - deleting and re-installing drivers, turning off enhancements, going to the manufacturer's website to download the correct drivers to no avail. I suggest doing a deep virus scan first with say Windows Defender and something like Malwarebytes (google it),

1. First identify the problem

(You can skip this and go ahead to the solution, if you want.)

If you tried all that, google "LatencyMon" and install it. This brilliant tool will let you see what drivers and interrupts are causing sound problems on your system. Mostly likely you'll find ACPI.sys (to do with battery monitoring) or the mysterious "wdf01000.sys". I've seen ACPI.sys take up to 0.2 seconds supposedly doing an interrupt routine (more an "imposition" routine).









Microsoft or the manufacturers don't look like they'll get around to fixing these problems, hell, they'll fix it one Windows update and then in two weeks "unfix" it, as happened to me when I did an update for Windows 10 early 2021.

If you observe this, I suggest trying the simple fixes below.

2. This solution may be applicable to Windows 10 and Windows 7, even other versions.

Some software is broken so my solution is to isolate it onto a particular core.

ACPI.sys and wdf01000.sys seem to either run on all cores or default to core 0 or core 0/1 - as do the other processes.
You can try typing tasklist /SVC into a cmd prompt and scroll through the list to find the svchost.exe processes, which are a kind of container for all the sys files running. You'll see the process ID number and then a list of the sys files running in that process. Some of the names maybe slightly different, i.e. ACPI.sys might just be called "Power".

You can either set the affinity (more on that later) for the services audiosrv and audioendpointbuilder to specific cores or set the affinity for ACPI.sys and wdf01000.sys, I prefer the former.

Start up taskmanager (taskmgr.exe) and you'll probably need to be Administrator and go to the services tab:





There look for Windows Audio and Windows Audio Endpoint Builder. Right click on one, then the other to "Go to detail". Under Windows 7 that may be called "Go to process".





You'll be taken to the running process tabs





Where you right click on the process that has been highlighted and chose "Set affinity". There choose the other cores as invariably microsoft puts interrupts on core 0 or 1 (or all cores, we'll come back to this point shortly), thus giving the audio services a fair crack of the whip when it comes to running on time.






Now as mentioned you can do the converse and limit ACPI.sys and other errant drivers (or maybe I should say, not well coded drivers) to a particular core but you will need to use tasklist /SVC and sift through the data it provides:





There you can see that I have probably located the instance of ACPI.sys running and then I can take note of the process ID and do the same thing in task manager, set the affinity and limit it to a particular core.

This may all be fine and dandy but you say, each time I reboot, I have to go through this rigmarole. Well it's not that difficult to do, I tend to leave my computer booted for weeks and just sleep it or hibernate it. If you want a permanent fix, there are alternatives to task manager which can remember your settings for processes, just google it.

By this method of just setting the affinity of the audio services to their own cores, I have seen a drastic improvement in sound quality. I could make it even better by limiting the other services to core 0 (they seem to be default to run on all cores) but that is a more complicated variation of what is above - you have to identify the likely process containing the sys file running from the screenload that tasklist /SVC gives you.

Hope that helps.

- - - Updated - - -

Method has general applicability to errant (badly coded) drivers -

Isolate them onto one core so that they don't affect the real time performance of the rest of your system with random glitches. If they can potentially run on any core, they might clash with your process, should it be scheduled for the same core. By deterministically setting which core it runs on and putting your other code on to the other cores, there is little chance that a poorly written interrupt routine can de-schedule your code.

 

Looking for a (convenient) way to increase CPU real time performance

I work in both Audio and Video. Latency in video editing isn't really a problem but with audio editing where changes need to be real time, latency becomes a problem. When editing audio I peak at around 40% CPU usage and can render audio nearly 400% faster than real time but during real time play back while editing I frequently get pops and clicks if I load too many plugins or if I have too many tracks. I already know this is partially in part to my audio interface but the interface can only go as fast as the drivers permit and the drivers are pretty light weight to begin with.

My main concern is coming from how many things I need to have plugged into my computer. Given what I do, I have 3 monitors, 2 graphics cards, 1 external backup drive, 3 internal hard drives and a SSD, as well as the audio interface and all the dongles necessary for different software. The way it was explained to me is that the DAW struggles when it switches between tasks to write to a disk or any thing the CPU needs to process, that it briefly puts a pause on the CPUs power to the audio drivers devices and that leads to the pops, clicks, and driver crashes.

I very much need all my hard drives and dongles and monitors, so I am wondering if there is a way to reduce how much my CPU needs to switch back and forth to them and hopefully thus increase my real time performance.

I have more than sufficient cores and power on my CPU given that the non real time render turns 4 minutes of heavily processed audio into only 1 minute.... so theoretically there needs to be some way to increase real time performance as well.... Im just not sure what that way is that doesn't disturb the rest of my work flow and I am hoping someone here may have an idea.

- - - Updated - - -

I should say I just ran LatencyMon and I am seeing an average latency around 60μs but I regularly see spikes to over 100 and according to the results I have a highest reported DPC routine execution time of 818μs... In general my average isnt that bad. I would hope to see it closer to the 20s-30s but in general not terrible. But this is also when Im not doing anything. If I press a button or change something on screen or really interact with the mouse in any way besides to move it, I see a spikes sometimes over 140μs which is really pushing where I would hope to see it.

I tried disabling my graphics cards and drivers and that had no impact on the performance.

Not 100% sure what the best way to go about disabling my harddisks is to test those but I suspect those arent helping anything. Still hoping someone with more experience may have some suggestions of what I can try. Someone suggested disabling IPV6 in the intel drivers and I dont know if thats really a good call or not so I would want a second opinion before I start playing around with network stuff but I will post a screen shot later from my device manager and maybe someone will spot some things I probably dont need.

 

Windows Defender Real Time Protection

I did all the step and delete the MsMpEng.exe but still it doesn't turn on Real Time Protection any suggestion please??