How to optimize windows 10 for Scope to avoid clicks and pops!?

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valis
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Re: How to optimize windows 10 for Scope to avoid clicks and pops!?

Post by valis »

:)
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garyb
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Re: How to optimize windows 10 for Scope to avoid clicks and pops!?

Post by garyb »

yes, Scope was tested and developed on that chipset. it should work.
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Re: How to optimize windows 10 for Scope to avoid clicks and pops!?

Post by petal »

OK Thanks! Good to know.

All items ordered. I'll report back once I'm up and running with the new system.
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Re: How to optimize windows 10 for Scope to avoid clicks and pops!?

Post by Mightychub »

I am going through this issue at mo Gary has been brill but am still head farting over where else I can go. Am getting regular spikes over adat my pulsar is Master sync and everything else is slave and I get spikes randomly and I can not get rid of them. If I hook up my old dat machine vi AES/EBU it records faultless at 2ms with NO spikes at all but the min I try and use the adat I get spikes on all recordings. I have done everything to make a full clean system that has been posted about audio and win10 and am no further forward.
I have took stuff out the system to be left with just one pulsar card and I still get the spikes I have not been able to record any live playing because of it. I bought a new Scarlett 18i20 used that as my audio device and it recorded in without any issue over USB? But I use the pulsars all the time for all my routing to the studio. Has anyone at all got any clues to why this is happening. Is there something am missing or just not seeing? Every tweak has been done to the Bios and win10. My ears are wide open if anyone has anything else they think may work...Cheers
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Re: How to optimize windows 10 for Scope to avoid clicks and pops!?

Post by petal »

Oh dear. Mightyclub I'm really sad to hear that you are still experiencing clicks with that motherboard. And I'm especially sad that I'm first seeing your post now. I received an ASUS H370 PLUS this Tuesday and build a new system around that - If only I had seen your post SUnday, I would have cancelled this build and gotten my money back and saved myself a lot of wasted time and money:

ASUS H370 PLUS
i7 9700k
16GB Ram
500 Samsung 970 EVO Nvme disk
GFX: Nvidia 980ti

I have been finetuning both bios and windows for 3 days now but unfortunately I am simply not able to get this build click free either. The XITE is doing better (or the same as the old build) and I only get the occasional click, the 2 PCI SCOPE install is worse off:
Conflicts 9700k build.png
Conflicts 9700k build.png (47.99 KiB) Viewed 14380 times
Drivers versions on new 9700k-pc.png
Drivers versions on new 9700k-pc.png (53.05 KiB) Viewed 14380 times
Latency Mon 9700k build.png
Latency Mon 9700k build.png (31.13 KiB) Viewed 14380 times

I don't know what to do now - I'm starting to think it's not the different pc build's that is the problem. I'm not saying it loud, but I'm thinking it...

If windows is supposed to be "easy" then I've done it right on both builds, then it must be something in the bios.

Does any of you guys have a good guide that explains, how to set up the bios right to please my special princess here?
The usual guidelines are "not enough". Especially the "overclocking section" is causing me worries, as you are not able to "just disable it". Several entries you have to chose between "Auto" or something else "not disabled".
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Re: How to optimize windows 10 for Scope to avoid clicks and pops!?

Post by valis »

I don't see anything sharing any longer, each device 'shares' with the port it's attached to and no more from what I see in the first screenshot, so no issue there.

DUMo shows all drivers updated, so no issues there.

Is LatencyMon being run with nothing using the system or are you monitoring it under a workload of the kind that generates your clicks? In the timeslice shown there it's clearly not the cause of the clicks but...

Do you get clicks at:
1. Idle
2. Less than 50% CPU usage
3. More than 50% CPU usage
4. All of the Above
5. No idea I threw the damn thing in the trash (kidding)

If LatencyMon reports no issues in all of the first 3 options, the problem clearly lies somewhere other than drivers not being polled quickly enough. However I want to make sure we've ruled out all 3 first.

However, I think GaryB likely said some time ago that your board seems 'broken', it's likely he was correct. Broken? But it plays games fine! Which is what many board testers currently focus on as their primary validation (does it run Crysis, Doom & COD/Battlefield? Check! Can it load Office and the Googles? Check! Ship it!). Broken as in the implementation really doesn't seem to want to play well with realtime audio, sadly...

I'm out of ideas beyond that numerical list above. There really isn't anything special in the BIOS. If you can control your TDP's and disable idle states (used to be called EIST, now it's simply setting your base turbo to keep all cores active and differs wildly depending on the EFI implementation your vendor uses so it's hard to give guidance without having that board on hand.)
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Re: How to optimize windows 10 for Scope to avoid clicks and pops!?

Post by petal »

This is the new system that I just bought, so this is me trying to solve the problem buying new hardware. I find it interesting, that the problem now is very much the same as on the old system!?

New system:
ASUS H370 PLUS
i7 9700k
16GB Ram
500 Samsung 970 EVO Nvme disk
GFX: Nvidia 980ti (GFX from the old system)

So:
AD1) I'm not sure if I get clicks when "idle", I havn't focused any tests for this
AD2) I get clicks with less than 50% usage (5-7%)
AD3) Havn't tried under heavy load

The way i test it, is minimal installation:
1. Windows 10 + drivers fully updated and trimmed with the basic poweroption guidelines etc.
2. BIOS settings set to the per Soniccore guidelines as best as I can do it.
3. Scope 7.0 XITE + Ableton
4. Ableton playing a simple "ambient" wav-loop into a reverb -> ASIO -> Scope mixer in solo mode with a ping delay setup for easier click detection.
5. Listening for clicks while praying

Latency Monitor was running while I was running "my test" above.

(Perhaps we need to device a standard test for these situations?)

I am not getting a lot of clicks, but click free it is not:
XITE: 1-8 clicks an hour
PCI: 10+ clicks an hour

Raising ULLI to 13/41khz seems to make a difference, at least on the PCI cards, but with the system described above I would think that a lower ULLI should be achievable?
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valis
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Re: How to optimize windows 10 for Scope to avoid clicks and pops!?

Post by valis »

The reason I ask about the CPU load, is because when under heavy load the CPU will not be shutting off portions of itself (ostensibly: cores) to stay within the TDP for low usage, and so if the clicks 'go away' under high load then you know the cause. Then the question becomes, how to tune your system to avoid the low power states when working?

Anyway, confirm whether there's any difference between those 3 states and eliminate that cause (or not). You do NOT need to have this load be fed into your Scope mixer, it can go to an ASIO input that's not connected anywhere in Scope so that you don't obscure the clicks.
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Re: How to optimize windows 10 for Scope to avoid clicks and pops!?

Post by BuzzBang »

Hi Petal,

I have found Process Lasso from bitsum helped me

https://bitsum.com

Definitely worth a try.

You can assign CPU cores, power schedules, and scheduling priority etc on a per program basis.

I assign music progs/Ableton/Cubase and Scope to cores that aren't being used by a lot by Windows 10 services ( 0 and 1?) and give them a higher/highest priority. Some experimentation required, it has a bucket load of options.

Away from my machine at moment, can't remember exactly how I've set it up.

FYI my rig at the moment is Ryzen X3700, Xite-1 -> ADAT -> Focusrite Clarett 4Pre USB -> monitors. I only did minimum optimisation for audio, background services, disabled onboard audio. I left hyperthreading on!

Clarett is the "main" audio device that windows sees, but I do have the choice of using the Xite or Clarett ASIO drivers in audio software. And if I use Site, then I'm effective just using the Clarett as a D to A converter (with a handy rotary volume control) to feed my monitors.

Windows did give me some real headaches, especially the 1903 release, and some duff Clarett drivers (now updated and fixed).

I also found that the RAM settings in the bios affected whether I had pops and crackles. The machine was stable and working fine, but unbeknown to me, my bios had glitched and set the RAM timings to much slower settings than the settings that I had set. This could be an AMD / Motherboard thing.

Your LatencyMon readings are better than mine btw, I suspect there's hope.

Hope this helps...
BuzzBang
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Re: How to optimize windows 10 for Scope to avoid clicks and pops!?

Post by BuzzBang »

also an NVidia specific one I wasn't aware of:

https://www.gearslutz.com/board/showpos ... tcount=160

If Process Lasso doesn't help maybe https://www.coderbag.com/product/quickcpu

but I think process lasso does all that and more in a more user friendly way...
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Re: How to optimize windows 10 for Scope to avoid clicks and pops!?

Post by petal »

Valis and BuzzBang. - thank you very much for helping me out. I really appreciate the help!

The reason I've been on this journey to find the land of a "click free DAW"'s for the past three weeks, is because I had a profound feeling of creating music again.

Trying to keep that frame of mind, here's a small random intermezzo from good old Tom - enjoy :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTDNx_iaM6Q
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Re: How to optimize windows 10 for Scope to avoid clicks and pops!?

Post by strctr_k »

Hi!

I followed a similar path. 1x Scope Pro, 2x Pulsar2. I have an xw4600 that I can go back to, but I was curious wether I could get these running on a modern system. I have:

Core i5-8600
Asus TUF H310PLUS Gaming motherboard (LGA1151, 3x PCI slots)
32GB Ram
WD Black SN750 NVMe SSD
ATI Radeon RX580 (The NVidia drivers were too unstable for me)

Jumped through the hoops, updates, BIOS tweaks, Process Lasso, o&o shutup10, almost got there, but still had 3-6 clicks an hour! LatencyMon running perfectly, but still clicks and pops.

Here's how I fixed it:

I installed WD's SSD Dashboard application, which I had completely overlooked, and noticed "Game Mode" was "Deactivated." From the manual: "Turning Gaming Mode on will disable low power mode and keep the SSD running at peak levels [...]" [emphasis mine]

...

So I activated it, and the clicks seem to be gone! It's "feature exclusive" to this particular NVMe SSD model, so if your SSD's software doesn't have the equivalent (or a way to force it out of low power mode), it might be worth re-installing on a non-NVMe SSD or *shudder* angry spinwheel rotating harddrives from last millennium!

I also turned ON caching on the NVMe SSD drive, and deactivated "flush write memory buffer" or whatever it's called, but I'm not sure it matters, turning on caching by itself didn't solve anything.

I'll need further testing to be sure, but I can't find a single click in 1 hour and 30 minutes of test recordings (7 stereo tracks, 20Hz sine wave at -0.5dBfs, latencymon started and running for half of it!) No clicks with casual listening so far either!
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Re: How to optimize windows 10 for Scope to avoid clicks and pops!?

Post by valis »

So your clicks were in the recording not in the live signal path?
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Re: How to optimize windows 10 for Scope to avoid clicks and pops!?

Post by strctr_k »

I'm going to try not to go into full rambly mode, as these have been exceedingly hard to track down.

This is with Scope 7 and Windows 10 1909 with latest updates BTW, I forgot to mention it (there seems to be an uptick of DPC/click problems with Win10 1903 and 1909, but I digress.)

A bit more about my setup: I have an A16U (green Creanw@re branded) with all my outboard stuff, connected via ZLink to the Scope Pro. The Scope Pro's RCA outs power my current monitor setup. I have a NI Komplete Audio 6 on the same system (headphones). I also have a Virus TI2, which I run mostly through analog or digital audio, but has ASIO drivers through USB.

And this is what irked me: I got clicks, once in a while, in most places. Recording outboard stuff through ZLink/ASIO2 driver? clicks. Control room running a sine wave out to ASIO2? Clicks. I also heard the clicks through the monitors, and the headphones. I also had clicks using the KA6's ASIO driver, either listening to music through foobar2000, or listening/playing stuff in Reaper, with other weird behaviour. Just running a clean Scope project with Control Room's test signal or a random synth going to Scope analogue outs? Also clicks. Recording, playback. I thought I had fixed it a few times, alas! And they didn't happen very often, so sometimes I thought I had a clean test recording, but on listening/inspection it had clicks. Focusing on a test signal for like 30+ minutes is really hard!

I didn't test the TI extensively, but it also seemed to click when I used the ASIO driver, monitoring through its analogue headphones plug.

I don't know enough about the internals of Scope, PCI, or PCI bridge over PCIE, so I didn't know if this was symptomatic of a bad chipset on a cheap motherboard, bad drivers, incompatibility, Win10 being randomly broken by an update, etc. I suspected the NVMe drive too but didn't know what to do about it.

What kept me going is the KA6 should have worked fine, but didn't either.

I had excluded the video card as the culprit (both onboard intel graphics and radeon were fine latencymon-wise,) but had noticed more clicks when a lot of NVMe SSD activity was happening (ran a virus scan while I had music going, latencymon said everything was fine, clicks every 5 seconds-ish.)

I figured maybe the NVMe harddrive was too fast and overloading the PCIE bus (since it sits on it as near as I can make out.) Looked at throttling options, couldn't track anything down.

Then I saw a post on the Reaper forums from someone with a similar hardware setup, but with a Focusrite USB interface, who had this exact same situation: a few clicks an hours, all tweaks, almost works, perfect latencymon performance, no conflict/shared irq, i've-been-doing-this-for-20-years, but no old Scope PCI cards in sight. It tingled my spidersense!

I haven't checked the KA6's ASIO performance either very extensively, but the DirectSound driver seem fine after one evening of casual listening!

And it would be logical, if it were the NVMe drive continuously going into low power mode and snapping out of it by Win10 reading or writing something on it (why, I have 32GB of RAM, whyyyy*whimper fades in the distance with a fancy fadeout*), it would screw up all the ASIO drivers, USB or otherwise, not just the PCI-based ones.

Anyway I just put it here so people can try it and report back. I was going to try a non-NVMe SSD install, and maybe horror-rotator-drive install (cloning the NVMe SSD's partition to a rotating drive didn't work sadly, Win10 didn't want to boot,) but there's stuff piled on my computer's case (don't ask,) and Amazon's delivery takes up to a month in the best case here.

I'll try and report back once I've done more extensive tests, because I'm not sure yet!
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Re: How to optimize windows 10 for Scope to avoid clicks and pops!?

Post by garyb »

i have no clicks with win10 and Scope 7.
none.

regular gear, regular drives(including SSDs), plain computer, minimal tweaks. it does what it does. there's nothing cutting edge.
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GordonGekko
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Re: How to optimize windows 10 for Scope to avoid clicks and pops!?

Post by GordonGekko »

Yo, what about the atx psu? Didn’t see it mentionned, sorry if it was
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Re: How to optimize windows 10 for Scope to avoid clicks and pops!?

Post by petal »

garyb wrote: Fri Apr 24, 2020 11:01 pm i have no clicks with win10 and Scope 7.
none.

regular gear, regular drives(including SSDs), plain computer, minimal tweaks. it does what it does. there's nothing cutting edge.
Could you please tell us your system specs?

It might help us less fortunate people spot that small but important detail that seems to evade us.
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Re: How to optimize windows 10 for Scope to avoid clicks and pops!?

Post by garyb »

it's not a system specs thing. i don't spend much time messing with the computer.

this isn't win98 or XP days, almost everything works. i have used 270, 370, z97, z87, as well as older core2 motherboards.

i remove onedrive, which is tricky, because m$ intends for it to be part of win10. i don't use audio computers for anything other than audio, which avoids programs that are always trying to use the cloud(although the computer i'm typing on is my internet tv, and email device). if i have issues, i look for apps that run in the background, and remove them. i make sure that i do not frustrate win10 by allowing it to update, and i don't start working until everything has run through its update sequence.

in do not try to run the machine on the ragged edge. i use it within its abilities. in do not leave vstis running once the part is complete. i record or freeze the vsti and unload it.

really, even with a core2 quad or duo, i am click-free.
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Re: How to optimize windows 10 for Scope to avoid clicks and pops!?

Post by petal »

The reason I ask, is that if you are running your click free system on old and tried hardware, that might be why you are running click free?
So I am considering bringing my old 10 year old i7-875k-system back to life and just forget about ever getting a newer system click free with Scope. Now that I've been at it for 3 weeks and 2 different systems in (and both on paper should work), I feel I have tried.
That said, I'd rather just have one computer and not two in the bedroom. Also, there's the nagging feeling of people reporting that newer systems can be made click free, even without the need to jump through hoops!!!

I have a dedicated ssd-partition for my music-installation: meaning, I don't "mess" with that installation. It's a completely new and clean installation. I don't install anything else than Scope, Daw and plugins, and not even that many. All I want from it, is to be as stable as it can be and click free. I don't try to run it at it's rugged edge. There is no need, there's plenty of computer power.

I follow the guidelines for, how to optimize the BIOS and Windows 10. Still, getting it click free, is no simple task.

Removing Onedrive is a simple "uninstall" from the control panel or am I missing something here?

Also, getting ULLI settings at 4ms/44.1khz to work seems impossible. I'd prefer not to get over 7ms/44.1khz, which I think is a reasonable expectation on a super duper new computer. But no luck so far. What ULLI-settings are people getting to work on newer systems?

@Valis: How would you go about taxing a i9700k CPU over 50% in a test?

@Gordon: My PSU is a Corsair tx650w.
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Re: How to optimize windows 10 for Scope to avoid clicks and pops!?

Post by garyb »

yes, thst does not remove OneDrive. you also have to remove the registry entries. see Google.

yes, new systems work. see my post for hardware i have personally used.

no, a dedicated partition is not the solution. i keep saying that multiple partitions can cause files to be loaded from the wrong partition. your audio apps should be on C: and there really shouldn't be any other OS. the trickier you get with Windows 10, the worse it works.

you would be surprised. there is actually much less power than one would expect. Windows is a pig.

i always use 4ms@ 44.1k.
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