I know this is isnt lfs related but it is hardware and i could do with someone to explain it to me in English.

as some of you know i use my laptop for dj'ing but recently ive been having drop outs in the sound where the software and mixer keeps going but the music just stops. and cant/wont resume untill resetting the soundcard ( ASIO)
Here is a graph of my latency as you can see i get random spikes ( i know the internet is open and Wifi is on but its the same story with them off aswell just abit less.

Anyone know what else might be the problem?

I use a bcd3000 mixer on either Traktor 2 or vdj7
Laptop specs.
Windows 7 32bit 320gb 3gb RAM
and i have a wireless keyboard + mouse because the original is fxxed

Any ideas?

1. What ASIO driver are you using? ASIO4ALL or your soundcard's native (Creative ASIO / ASUS ASIO / M-Audio ASIO / etc)?]

2. Highest latency you get is 1380 µs, that's 1.38 ms - nothing that you'd ever notice, unless you're a superhuman or a terminator.

3. For the love of god, use PNG for screenshots.

Mine result:

But that's just 1.4 ms less than yours - I doubt those 1.4 ms affect anything.

yeah its ASIO4ALL, atm its not been a problem. but ive had nights where it has just completely stopped on me. not like stop and then start. just stops and then i have to reset it to carry on :S spose im just going to have to hope. anyway any idea what those spikes could be? seeing yours is constantly low

Ps: I will use png in future

Spikes, umm.. Laptop's power management? Antivirus?

Also, you shouldn't use ASIO4ALL (unless your soundcard is crappy realtek or VIA which has no proper ASIO drivers).

power manegment is set to High preformance. Dont have an antivirus

And my mistake the Asio driver is the BCD3000 driver which is the one in the mixer itself.

Anything else i could switch off to help?


Also like to say thanks for being helpful

It's a long shot but it could be your OS clocking down the CPU when it thinks it's not under enough heavy load. If you want as low latency as possible (which you want with ASIO), you'd probably want to disable this feature in BIOS. It's usually called C-States...

Quote from MadCatX :

It's a long shot but it could be your OS clocking down the CPU when it thinks it's not under enough heavy load. If you want as low latency as possible (which you want with ASIO), you'd probably want to disable this feature in BIOS. It's usually called C-States...

As helpful as that might be. I dont have a friggin clue how to do that, but i will pass that onto the guy who repaired my laptop as he seems to know what to do Thank you aswell

Windows can control this too, if you have W7/Vista, take a look at this. You'll want both min and max to be set to 100 %.

ok i just did all of that and both low and high were already set to 100%

Hi Jwardy
I take it you have followed the helpful instructions here and tried turning off devices one by one in device manager?

This should at least narrow it down a bit.

Good luck

SD.

yep ive been through all that, nothing seems to make any diference.

Still the same.

Do u have loads of crap auto-starting when the computer boots/loads of icons next to the clock? Check in msconfig for how many startup apps u have, U only really want antivirus/Firewall to autorun at startup if u need the pc lag free. I use a seperate "lite" windows install for when mixing or streaming...

That looks like a similar problem I've experienced. For me it turned out to be bad drivers for a card that had reverted to old ones when I used a different pci slot.

The problem boiled down to a high number of interrupt requests from the device. I isolated it using Process explorer and windows device manager.

Use PE to monitor cpu usage across all running processes, and check to make sure there are no spikes on the interrupts coincidental with your spikes. You might spot a rogue process that's causing it otherwise. HTH

Edit:
Forgot to add. Process I/O is not displayed by default in PE, so will need turning on. This greatly helps identifying a regular spike like that.

Open PE
Right column bar - select columns
Process I/O tab - history

This will show a nice graph next to every running process. The same can be done for memory usage and CPU which is on by default.

audiodg.exe seems to be the one. right were getting somewhere Thank you so much now then how to clear this one? :P

EDIT: So i ended the process on audiodg.exe to see if that was the problem and turns out it wasnt. :/

Quote from jwardy :

audiodg.exe seems to be the one. right were getting somewhere

Sounds like the candidate. (pun)

Stopping it might not fix things, but that process is the taskbar sound mixer control. Try right clicking the speaker to open properties, drill down to the enhanced effects under advanced tab and disable them. If you are sound editing, you want to do your own, and not let windows take over. You could even disable the windows mixer completely if you like.

Edit:
I just re-read the thread and you don't mention your soundcard make or even the lappy make/model. Are your drivers up to date? I'm surprised no-one has asked this already. Windows updates can sometimes kill what was a perfectly working system unless the system drivers are also updated. Not all manufacturers continue support on slightly older kit (they'd prefer you to buy new) but the reference drivers for most components can be used and are more likely current. Old or poorly performing drivers are a cause of this type of problem. This was exactly the case with my problem, and because my good drivers weren't Microsoft signed. the generic and older drivers were used in preference.

[caveat] Some manufacturers have special enhancements that depart from standard, some even just depart from standard to make you go to them for support. Installing the wrong drivers can make things worse in these cases. In other words check the Laptop manufacturers site first.

Quote from Squelch :

snip

The Laptop is a MSI (Microstar) Cr500
Win 7 (32bit). 320gb hd 3bg RAM Intel celeron and Nvidia GeForce 8200m Gfx.
Sound card is just some random one that came with it. downloading a realtek one now to see if it changes anything.

The soundcard i use for dj'ing though is the BCD3000 Asio.

i have similar issues. but it's not caused my tunes to stop. they just sounded like they were clipping a bit. turning of "Cool and Quiet" in my bios (AMD board)reduced the problem but didn't solve it. also reducing the output quality helped with the clipping too. i think i'll follow this thread to see if any further options appear.

Well ive just installed the latest Service pack from windows. its reduced the normal latency from around 120-150 to 80-110 but i still get the spikes at 1500Ish Exactly every 15 seconds. downloading the Nvidia Chipset that is from the laptops home page (MSI) because ive just been told by the person who installed windows 7 on the new hard drive just left it as standard. that might help. Im playing tonight so i really hope it doesnt let me down and drop out. its a very quick fix if it does but its the 5 -10 seconds of silence i dont want :L

EDIT: PROBLEM SEEMS TO BE SOLVED.

It was the battery reader or something :P
Device manager > Battery > Microsoft ACPI Compliant Control method battery > Disable =

not sure if it's worth anything but my latency goes up when i use my mouse. have you updated any input devices recently? updating my chipset drivers have also reduced the amount of times my latency goes up past the 1000 mark.

great ending to an interesting thread.

EDIT: Logitech setpoint seems to be causing this latency issue for me.

Quote from dadge :

not sure if it's worth anything but my latency goes up when i use my mouse. have you updated any input devices recently? updating my chipset drivers have also reduced the amount of times my latency goes up past the 1000 mark.

great ending to an interesting thread.

3 days of absolute hell. :P playing tonight expecting around 200 people what i didnt need was a 10 second stoppage of all the audio :L

im downloading lfs atm as you can see its a new hardrive :P and latency is nicely below 500

can you put your tunes onto a solid state memory device? my latency still spikes but now it's once every 2 minutes and it's just above 1000 when i does. other than that, it sits quite low.
i don't use midi at the moment so all my audio ir routed from my mixer into the pc (output turned off) and also routed to a stereo amp (booth). so i don't hear the delay and everything is synced when i stream.

it might be an idea for you to invest in a good usb soundcard. if you want the best possible sound from your laptop, you're going to have to use a better device than what's onboard.

If you don't mind losing some features, some performance can be gained by disabling playback effects.

- control panel
- sound
- playback
- [output device here] -> properties
- enchancements
- disable

Quote from jwardy :

EDIT: PROBLEM SEEMS TO BE SOLVED.

It was the battery reader or something :P
Device manager > Battery > Microsoft ACPI Compliant Control method battery > Disable =

Well done, and congrats.

Those sorts of problems are buggers to track down, but the regularity is the signature of a hardware interrupt related issue.

My next suggestion was going to be chipset drivers to rule out USB port drivers. Who'd have thought it would be the battery?

Good luck with your set tonight

Quote from dadge :

it might be an idea for you to invest in a good usb soundcard. if you want the best possible sound from your laptop, you're going to have to use a better device than what's onboard.

The sound is good from the card thats in the mixer itself. i never use the laptops orignal soundcard. and atm all my music is on the C: drive but when i get some money i will invest into some externals and things like that, Driving lisence comes first > car > insurance > sound card > CDJ 1000 ?? djm800 mixer > wakes up from dream :P

EDIT : And thanks Squelch. been very helpful