Win10 Crackles

[binaural]

Hi!

I've switched to Win10 64bit from a perfectly working WIN7 32 system, that never crackled when working in ASIO (the WAV driver did now and then). I've configured everything according to the tips given here, but it crackles quite badly, also on ASIO.

It gets very bad if there are significant graphic changes (scrolling, opening web page, etc.). I'm nowhere near pushing the system, neither in WIN, neither in Live, neither in Scope.

So I made all the bios (there are not many settings in my bios) and in WIN10, but I can't sort it out. I'm kinda desperate, I want to make music...

I'm on a XW4600, 4 Gig Ram, nVidia GPU, SSD, all USB ports except one disabled, no sharing IRQs. Doesn't matter if I'm on a network or not...

Hope you might point me in the right direction. It's nervewrecking to be recording hoping it doesn't mess up...

Thanks a million!

Jasper

[valis]

Check the DPC Latency reporting for your Nvidia driver. Do this at idle and when doing things that cause 'significant graphic changes' as per your above post.

Sweetwater.com: Solving DPC Latency Issues

[garyb]

make sure you have the win10 driver for your card, if your card does not have a win10 driver, get another card.

get on google and search for how to remove OneDrive. it makes crackles.

[guppy]

i got a bat file that will uninstall unnecessary things on win10, included onedrive.
I'm using it for mining altcoins on my rigs, but it works perfectly on music computers.
Try it
http://gcluber.free.fr/Windows10MiningTweaksDmW.zip
You can easily open it and verify what's inside !

[valis]

W10Privacy & O&OShutup10 both will do this for you as well, along with providing descriptions of what you're doing at each point.

[binaural]

Thanks everyone!

I installed the latest GPU drivers directly from nVidia and uninstalled all the unnecessary things like you suggested, including Onedrive.

I did a latency check using the tool and latency did go up significantly as I heard crackles. Also, the program told me the system might not be suitable for realtime audio. It didn't suggest any culprit directly. Just the 'max meter' went halfway and the 'all good text' changed for something worse.

I find a lower ULLI setting gives less crackles, but on the WIN7 system I was using 3 ms @44khz all the time with no problems...

I tried to flash the BIOS, struggled, but then succeeded. As said, there's no hyperthreading (or any of the other to-be-switched-off options) in the current BIOS.

Any suggestions?

Thanks again!!

Jasper

[valis]

OK, FIRST check this thread and give us some idea of what you're running (ie, post the answers to the questions posed therein).

Next, read the article on DPC Latency, and you'll find when you get the latency spike in the graph it will tell you which device driver is causing it. If you don't recognize the device, reference that article and then check google. Network card, wifi card, usb chipset and GPU are frequent & known culprits. Send the posse after those outlaws and track down which one done it, or find out if this is a murder mystery and you're going to have to get all forensic on the crackle's.

[binaural]

Thank you Valis!

Here I go:

Windows 10, 64bit
Scope 7 64bit
2 PCI cards: Pulsar 2 & Scope 15 dsp (both with i/o cards)

I'm on a HP XW4600

Motherboard make, model and revision: HP 786F3
CPU: Core 2 Quad 2,83 mHz
Ram 4 Gig
nVidia Geforce 8500 GT
I have only 1 USB port enabled
No wLAN, just Ethernet connection
I removed all USB perifials except keyboard & mouse

No IRQ conflicts at all:
IRQ 0 System timer OK
IRQ 1 Standard PS/2 Keyboard OK
IRQ 8 System CMOS/real time clock OK
IRQ 12 PS/2 Compatible Mouse OK
IRQ 13 Numeric data processor OK
IRQ 16 NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT OK
IRQ 20 Intel(R) ICH9 Family USB2 Enhanced Host Controller - 293A OK
IRQ 21 Sonic Core Pulsar2 OK
IRQ 22 Sonic Core Scope OK

It's not a scope issue. Changing ULLI settings does make it less prominent. I'm at 13ms @44Khz now and it's much better than at 3ms (that worked perfectly under WIN7.

[valis]

Very old GPU, may not be fully supported under Win10. GaryB knows that machine well, and can help from here forward.

[binaural]

Thanks Valis. I did some more tweaking, it's getting better, but all is still pointing at the dxgkrnl.sys. I made the tweaks I found online, cleaned and reinstalled drivers, etc, but no definite luck...
Any recommendations for a cheap replacement?

Thanks again, much appreciated!

[fidox]

Could be quite tricky to get it right under 64bit.

Probably drivers for hardware or combination, Win10-drivers.

I would try first with other graphic card if you can test it and you'll see.

Win10 are quite RAM hungry. I'm reading here 1.8gb/16gb in Win10 Home 64bit idle.

[valis]

dxgkrnl.sys = DirectX Graphics Kernel

In Win7, Aero was able to be disabled, by turning off the Desktop Window Manager (setting your DAW or an app to a compatibility setting that disabled "Aero Themes" did the same thing on a per-app basis). This was the defacto 'fix' for GPU issues, but it pushes the work back on the CPU. Can't do that now in Win10 anyway, it's all DirectX+GPU all the time, no matter what. You MAY be able to set Win 8.1 compatiblity settings and get some measurable improvement, but your Graphics card is just too old for Win10 imho.

Also, you CAN disable EIST and so on in the BIOS of that machine and in Windows though it's up to the CPU to support it. I'll defer to GaryB again on that, he knows the HP XW4600 better than I do.

[garyb]

that is not how you check for irq sharing. use system information.
you do not need to disable all the usb, just controllers sharing with your Scope cards.

working under win7 is meaningless. win10 is not win7. why do you need to upgrade? otoh, win10 should be solid in that computer and you should be able to use 4ms @44.1k without a problem.

that processor probably does not have EIST, but there still may be a power management(saving) setting in the bios.

the graphics card MUST support win10, or you need another. i never spend more than $100, usually less than $60 and there isn't usually a problem. i use nvidia(usually EVGA) cards without issues.

are you running a bunch of plugins and/or vstis? again win10 is not win7, although i don't have any special problems with the few vstis that i run.

[binaural]

Thank you all! I'll get another GPU before I do any further ventures and also try to acquire some more RAM. Will report after that.

Thanks again!

[binaural]

Here I am again with a small update and a question. I've doubled RAM and disabled the network adapter. Things are getting better, although not at optimal ULLI. At 7 ms crackling is almost gone.

So now it's time to change the GPU. I see cheap passive GPU's (the 710 and 1030) don't have native WIN10 drivers. I'm steered to the more game-compatible boards, like the radeon 570. That seems a bit overkill, to be honest. I don't have huge demands on the GPU side, I only use my PC for Scope, Live and a few side-programs (music-orientated).

Do you have any recommendations for GPU that should work flawless under WIN10 regarding latency?

Thanks!
Jasper

[garyb]

the 710 does have win10 drivers. here is NVidia's list:
https://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/87789

[binaural]

Thanks Gary! But should that be an upgrade over the 8500 GT, that's supposed to have a WIN10 driver too, but renders problems anyway?
https://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/112596

To quote Valis: "Very old GPU, not fully supported under Win10"

thanks a lot!

[valis]

Don't do AMD, they're having some serious driver issues at present. Also no need to use a full blown gaming card, as gary says above.

710 is 'ok', looking it up on wikipedia you can see it dates to 2016. Further digging also shows that it's "GK208-301-A1". This a core that is Kepler based, a GPU architecture which was introduced with the 6xx Nvidia cards, and dates back to 2012.

For the Nvidia GeForce GT 1030 cards, there's 2 versions. GP108-300-A1 from 2017 and GP108-310-A1 from 2018. The second iteration has significantly reduced power consumption, but also slower memory and a few other features cut off. None of that will matter to you, so either would do fine. Both are basically replacing the GT 730, which is a cut above the 710 in terms of performance (and power draw).

Either 710 or 1030 choice would do fine, but it might be safer to get a newer 1030 based card in terms of longevity. Nvidia has dropped most driver updates for everything before the 6xx series now, and that's likely to happen again in the next few years. Microsoft supplied WHQL drivers (from automatic updates in Windows) would likely still provide workable drivers, but only get critical fixes at that point.

The upshot is both are single slot, low power draw cards with low thermals for your system.

[garyb]

Thanks Gary! But should that be an upgrade over the 8500 GT, that's supposed to have a WIN10 driver too, but renders problems anyway?
https://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/112596

To quote Valis: "Very old GPU, not fully supported under Win10"

thanks a lot!

video cards go bad all the time. if you aren't using them for hardcore graphics, you might not notice, since the cpu will take over for the gpu. you'll notice the decrease in resources with something like Scope however...

[binaural]

Thanks a lot guys!

I bought a 1030, the DDR5 version. I had to buy a displayportcable, but made no further changes. removed the old Nvidia drivers with DDU. Then installed the GPU and the new drivers.

Unfortunately, things are extremely worse. Crackling is so bad that audio is slowed down with I open Ableton Live.

I've checked all the nvidia controls and set everything to max performance, but that doesn't help. I've been googling extensively and tried all sorts of things. I've checked latencymon again. It mentions portcls.sys now all the time.

I don't have a clue what to do next other then pop in my old WIN7 drive and start making music again (offline and with the old Ableton Live version)...

Sorry I don't have anything positive to mention, other than that I really appreciated your help!

Cheers.
Jasper