Audio Stutter Solved

[Music Manic]

I've always seemed to have problems when I move effects windows around, or open a window while audio is playing. I seem to get an
audio stutter, almost like it's slowing down.

Today I went through many options to pinpoint it. My CPU was fine and there wasn't much of a load In RAM. Then..... I closed my Scope routing window and BINGO! I could move things around without problems.

Now I know that Scope interferes with thing, graphics-wise. Why? I thought that background services would help this activity.

Could someone say how Scope deals with CPU interrupts etc on a PCI basis?

[Yogimeister]

I have the same behavior here sometimes ...

Closing the daw window also helps - and i noticed that the problem is sometimes more prominant when certain plugins are showing (panel open) .... Like sylenth1 ...


What also helps in terms of scope graphic load (for me) is to turn off the vus in the mixers

Thats why my guess is its a fight for realtime resource control - and i am trying to track down a proggy called "double dawg" or similar as maybe it might help ...

[Music Manic]

Yes definitely graphics.

PCI Latency
http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=951 Can't find one for Windows 7/8.

I think DAWG is quite old. I have it somewhere if you want it.

[garyb]

i never have that problem.
is aero enabled in windows?

[Music Manic]

Aero and all other stuff tweaked Gary.

Saying that, I've just opened another project and the routing window didn't cause any problems. I think it must be certain plugins.
I will overload Scope tomorrow and leave the DAW empty, then do vice versa, then post it.

[garyb]

are you sure that the video card is working?
if the video card is bad, then the cpu will take over it's duties in some circumstances.

i would think that it's video load plus cpu load from the description.

[dawman]

I had the same problem years ago when the management I worked for owned the Scope/Giga machines.
They upgraded their Matrox AGP 3x 8MB card to a Matrox 550 w/ 16MBs. Problem solved.

Saw this again when I had a Matrox 550 w/ 32MBs and upped it to a EVGA card with 256MBs.

Sure sounds familiar to me.

[Music Manic]

Ye it sounds right. I really thought my graphics card was causing problems.

I have the geforce 8400 GS running on the Intel DP35DP Mobo.

Any recommendations on a better pci-e graphics card guys.


btw Dawman are you Jimmy?

[garyb]

any of the current cards should work. for audio alone, i'd get an nvidia card, probably EVGA, and i'd get the best model under $100 with the types of outputs that i needed(vga or dvi or hdmi). the card you had before is better than that. video cards and power supplies are the parts that fail most often.

[Yogimeister]

Is there anyway to check that my video card is "working" ? (Or to up the pci usgae priority to scope over the graphics ?)

[Music Manic]

Thanks Gary. So the 8400gs is old hat now?

Yogi, try this:

http://www.orcsweb.com/blog/rick/what-p ... -your-i-o/

[Yogimeister]

Thanks - though i am not sure how this would help ....

Doubledaeg/what i think the issue is - is about the number of cycles each process receives to access the PCI bus before it must hand the bus over to the next process asking for access to the bus .... And a way to grant more cycles to the audio card before it hands it over ...


Also, is there a process that shows/relevant to the functioning of my video card processing (and whether it works or lets the cpu work ?)

[garyb]

the thing is, if everything is healthy and you just aren't running a sequencer program that is just killing the cpu, you shouldn't need to do anything special. this isn't win98 any more. you don't have an extra vid card in another machine or laying around that you can use for a moment to test the theory?

[garyb]

Thanks Gary. So the 8400gs is old hat now?

not really. it just might not be working correctly.

[Yogimeister]

I dont think i have one (might look for my old pc ...) - but my problem doesnt happen in low cpu mode - but it happens in mid-hi cpu load (before the daw starts stuttering from cpu load) - and it is also sensitive to certain graphics (scope vus for example ...)

[garyb]

well, vus involved a lot of realtime data, so that's not surprising.
this sounds exactly like a bad graphics card...

[dawman]

Ye it sounds right. I really thought my graphics card was causing problems.

I have the geforce 8400 GS running on the Intel DP35DP Mobo.

Any recommendations on a better pci-e graphics card guys.


btw Dawman are you Jimmy?

Doing good brotha' amn MM.
Nothing new other than gear and keeping my nose to the grindstone.
Hope all is well with you and your loved ones...


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[Music Manic]

I'm good Jimmy.

Glad to see you're ok. God bless!

[w_ellis]

Any recommendations on a better pci-e graphics card guys.

My PC has been much more stable in general since I switched to an Nvidia Quadro. See my post here: http://forums.planetz.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=32629

[Yogimeister]

@Gary,

But couldnt it be a resource/priority (e.g. BUS usage) solvable issue ? (I would rather have 1ms of video skips here and there than audio skips ...


(And does noone have DoubleDawg ? really? (It sounds perfect for PCI card users) .... and its freeware/shareware ... :/ )