PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows Can harddrive access cause Audio Stutter?

You're welcome, but please give us feedback of your findings.

So you get stutter with the headphones but not internal speakers.
What if you run Line Out from the headphone jack to a set of speakers, do you get the stutter you get with the headphones ?
Does the RealTek HD Audio Manager pop up and ask what you have plugged in ?

Maybe we need to define ‘audio stutter’ better. Can you record a few seconds of the problem, so we can hear what you hear? Then put that audio file on Dropbox and post a link to it. One of us will surely recognize it.

ok...i will do the recording and post soon

it sounds like you listening to your heart-beat through a stethescope

headphones and line plugged into speakers, and USB audio interface

So it just started doing this last week ?
Has it got a factory reset/recovery partition, so you can backup your files then do a factory reset ?

yes it has a recovery partition..but I'll do a reset as last resort..i only have the machine for 3 weeks

By 'stutter' I assume you mean start/stop abruptly.

Does the song stay in time, or does the 'stutter' cause a break for a short period of time and the song resumes streaming where is was after the last heard sample?

Another way of asking; is the audio signal getting interrupted but otherwise the song plays normal (in time, but just the audio cuts in/out), or is the song getting short pauses in the tempo and flow as a result?

The difference is a clue as to whether the audio signal is getting interrupted before or after the device drivers start handling it.
It could be an unsteady flow of data to the device or it could be a problem with the device drivers, or even resources. Maybe the CPU is hardly working but the hard drive is over taxed (causing the aforementioned unsteady flow of data to the device in the first place).
As mentioned above, a sample recording would help narrow it down.

Exactly. I also asked about other software a long time ago and the DPC Latency Checker (or Process Monitor) would be helpful here to see if an interrupt is causing this. We will know immediately if we can hear a sample.

Here is the Dropbox link to audio problem...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/njxd6i8zageqz3c/GPD%20Audio%20Problem.mp3?dl=0

Wow. I have never heard anything like that.

Anyone?

No, definitely not what I was expecting. I'd be really interested to see what is using CPU cycles when that occurs. The rhythm of the events is unusual, in that it is so regular.

It seems like hardware problem but it does the same with your usb sound device.
You can try Hiren's Boot CD on USB https://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd-on-usb-disk

https://sourceforge.net/projects/hirenscd2bootableusb/

that has RealTek Audio drivers, so it might tell you if it is a Win10 problem or hardware problem before having to do a factory restore.

EDIT: Or a Win7 Live USB
http://www.intowindows.com/two-ways-to-create-windows-7-live-usb-drive/

I'm gonna uninstall all the windows updates since I bought the machine and see if the problem still persists...

Do you have a restore point(s)? Just try going back one at a time of course.

Backup your system with an image to an external HD prior to doing this. It could save you a lot of time and aggravation.

I'm late to the party....

But I have a few questions.... I didn't see these asked or answered ..... or perhaps I missed them in skimming the 4 pages of replies.

1. What is the brand and model of the "external audio interface" being used?

2. What driver mode are you using with it?


Most of the skipping and stuttering I have seen and experienced, was a direct result of the buffers not being large enough or the driver mode mot being totally compatible with the interface.

It is totally possible to use MME and other drivers with a quality interface. However, in doing so, you end up with poor performance and stuttering as well as latency and other issues such as pops and drops.

Check to see first that the external interface is set as the default sound card and then be sure you have selected the external interface as in and out for both audio and midi, and be sure you have selected the ASIO driver mode. Start with the default ASIO settings. Often, they will work just fine with no tweeking.

I have run BB for over a decade using some pretty ancient (by today's standards) computers with very limited speed and memory and they all ran BB as well as my other audio DAW's with relative ease.

3. Is the project a straight up 100% audio project or does it use and include midi tracks as well?

Again, the external interface running anything less than ASIO can and often does have problems when the project has a mixture of audio and midi. It's the midi stuff that causes the audio issues. It has to be rendered to audio and there's a delay in the processing between when it reads the data and gets the audio to the speakers. That delay is called Latency. Every computer and sound card has it. But with the right driver and set up properly, that latency will be negligible to the listener and everything sounds like it's synced up. If the driver mode can't handle the processing, and/or the buffers are not sized correctly, and there's multiple midi tracks to render, this can cause the program to pause for a split second to allow it to "catch up". You hear that as a stutter. If it's bad enough, the music in the tracks can get out of sync or in some cases, the program actually just stops totally resulting in a drop.

On my old duo-core laptop, I could load up a really large project with 15 to 20 tracks, load it with some processing intensive VSTs and get it to stutter and choke even with good drivers. Smaller BB projects with 5 or 6 tracks like BB supports were never an issue.

Have a look at the interface and the driver mode, set them up properly, and see if that doesn't solve the problem.

Herb, this was his comment on that subject, but it is still unclear what equipment he used to cause that crazy sound. He has an underpowered laptop with a realtek sound card.

"I'll give ASIO4ALL a go.
I also have an external ZOOM U44 audio interface which I can use"

hi everyone

well, I've come to the conclusion that the issue is not specific to BB.

Seems to be either hardware or Windows software problem, coz randomly, also occurs when playing audio through other media players or audio via websites..and not related to the onboard or external soundcards...

I noticed today, that besides playing audio, when I launched an application, the same throbbing sound occurred

The Microsoft Surface Pro 3 with Windows 10 had an audio problem with headphones that cause stuttering. It was a Realtek driver issue that Microsoft had fixed. Might be something with your Realtek drivers