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I've been researching online for possible causes why I still suffer from occasional audio/stutter dropouts on my Windows 10 laptop running the 512 Build (I see Build 513 is now out). The more technical savvy Forumites might want to take a read at the following post which I found on the MSDN Forum (Microsoft Developer's Network).

https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums...udiodevelopment

Seems that a software developer may have uncovered a "bug" in the way Microsoft is handling buffers and paging in the current release of Windows 10 (Build 1709, Fall Creator, Release 3) with respect to real-time audio streams. I don't understand all of the discussion, but the essence is that the way memory is being managed tends to result in occasional, random dropouts in the audio stream. This is what I continue to experience, with less than 1 second long dropouts occurring randomly, sometimes no more than once or twice per hour, sometimes after 20 minutes of operation, etc.

I've tried all the "tricks" and "tweaks" mentioned already on the Forum (e.g., buffer size adjustments, high priority setting in the Task Manager for BIAB, DPC Latency checking, power management settings, etc.). I'm using a Steinberg UR22MKii audio interface with the latest Steinberg ASIO driver for this hardware, and I am using an external hardware synth (Roland SC-88) fed thru the MIDI interface on the Steinberg, so if the audio stream starts lagging behind the SC-88 MIDI output, its really noticeable. Surprisingly, however, with the ASIO buffer set at 1024 samples, the combined audio output is OK. It's the occasional dropouts that continues to be a problem. The only other potential cause could be a data loss down the USB interface, which has to carry both the audio and MIDI data down the same link. I'm more inclined to think its a Windows 10 problem, however.

There's good news/bad news here. The MSDN discussion thread indicated that this "problem" may be mitigated or eliminated in the next Windows 10 upgrade (Release 4). Internal Beta tests of R4 suggest this might be the case. The bad news is that Release 4 will probably "break" 100 other things! It was a nightmare for me to get even some of the Microsoft software applications working properly after my Windows 10 systems (a laptop and a desktop) were upgraded to Release 3 a while ago. The MSDN thread mentions that Release 4 will start to be distributed in April (I can't wait!).

I've forward the MSDN discussion thread to PG Support and asked for it to be forwarded to development to see if they think this might be having an impact on the operation of BIAB 2018. I've also sent this info to Steinberg to have their developers see what they think as well.

Meanwhile, I'm heading back to my old XP system hooked to a Roland SD-50 Mobile Studio interface running BIAB 2011.....been working like a champ for the last several years.

P.S. Microsoft told the software developer that he may have found a "bug" in the Windows 10 O/S with respect to the operation of pro audio/DAW applications. They suggested the developer try some additional tests. The developer got pretty irate at that suggestion, replying Microsoft should de-bug their software, not ask the customer to do that.

I posted about this, on various forums, Steinberg, RME and here .....

Had to find out myself that my windows 10 64bit system which ran fine for about a year, all of a sudden developed this occasional stuttering and pulsating audio behavior.

The Fix was first removing all my AMD Radeon graphics drivers and in stalling a basic one windows 10 chose itself, probably older one.

Done all sorts of sometimes expensive experiments first (f.i. bought an USB PCIe Freslogic card with four onboard controllers and a new SSD because someone mentioned 5 years old one could be the cause). With 'standard MS' drivers: no problems any more, but then Microsuck, THEY REALLY DESERVE THIS HONORABLE TITTLE BY NOW, I AM ANGRY, decided to 'update' some driver, and i had to get the latest AMD drivers to fix the occasional lockup hanging of Windows 10, this mostly on closing a program or folder. Spent an awful lot of time first, like removing and reinstalling VC+++, SFC and harddisk checks, running loose spyware and antivirus programs, removing hardware drivers, registry checks, listening to 'experts' blaming certain plugins and jBridge even.

Wavelab 9.5 has graphics issues from DirectX 12, so i still run it in Windows 7 compatibility mode, so that it chooses an older DiriectX; maybe a thing you could try fist.

Both AMD an NVDIA seemed to have put out new drivers about a week ago for this Microsuck originated (MS thank you) bug. TW fall creators i steer and still stay away from, and windows update is (again) switched off in my services.

And now the occasional stutters are back LoL. BTW Going back to Windows XP might cause problems with recent software and drivers, unless you decide to stick with older stuff, as a friend of mine does. Might be that Windows 7 is a better choice today. Or 8.1 ??

I am testing now with a device manager disabled AMD HD audio device chip on my graphics card, doubt if that helps. (One should also disable any audio chip on your mainboards' BIOS IMO).

PS, you mention buffersizes, i WAS able to run USB audio (RME UFX) with 94 samples (before WAS was? LoL), now i don't dare to go below 256 .... counting all the time i spent on fixing windows problems from even Windows 98 on they ow me a healthy pension addon bonus. -F

I have two laptops and a desktop running win10 and I've never, ever had any of the problems you're mentioning.

I wonder why?

The audio stutter/stumble problem is subtle. It only shows up once every 20-30 minutes or so. It lasts for a second or less. You can miss hearing it if you're distracted at the moment it happens. It definitely will ruin things if you're doing any rendering when it occurs. I ran the Jukebox player in BIAB for around 90 minutes, and the system stuttered around 3 times within that period.

Both my Windows 10 systems are the Fall Creator Build 1709 (Release 3). It may or may not be a problem in the earlier versions of Windows 10 (e.g., Build 1704 or earlier). I can't say, since I only installed BIAB 2018 after the Fall Creator version was installed on my PC's.

As I pointed out in my initial post, I think the software development programmer may have identified the problem as one of Windows 10 memory management within Release 3 as discussed in the MSDN thread. I'm hoping that the folks at Steinberg/Yamaha can shed some light on this. They forwarded my inquiry to their developers in Germany for review. Microsoft implied that this problem may be "fixed" in Release 4 for Windows 10.

Dave,

This problems sounds like it might have the potential to be related to an unregistered plugin.

For example, if Amplitube is unregistered (even though it's a free plugin), there are regular, periodic bursts of noise that will be produced when a song that contains the plugin plays. Have you checked this?

Regards,
Noel

Didn’t we just have this same problem? I thought that one was an unregistered plugin, as Noel suggests.

Oh, and that HD audio on the graphics card? Don’t just disable it; go into Device Manager and uninstall it.

I know you said you looked at your drivers but the only time that I get audio dropouts/stutter is when my buffers are too low to handle the load. Have you tried going to higher buffer settings like 2048? What are the Steinberg MIDI buffers settings? Can they be increased? If so do it.

Have you tried using MME or WAS drivers? If you are not recording these might help.

Do you have your external MIDI devices plugged into an USB 3 port? If your external MIDI devices are USB 2 the sometimes plugging them into an USB 3 port can cause problems. Are you using an USB hub? This can be another source of problems, especially if it is a non-powered external powered hub.

Good luck.

My stutters are different; they start, most of the time when using a browser addressing streamed audio like Soundcloud, or Youtube .... When it starts it's like you mentioned, but then it increases: effect after a while is half a second of sound, then half a second silence, pulsating audio as from a dark star far out in space. And NO NOISE THUS as with unregistered plugins. And with all audio programs started or active from then on, any program. Salvation is a reboot. Since i disabled HD audio on my AMD Radeon card, i haven't had any stutters sofar, fingers crossed.

Maybe you (Dave) can install a pre-fallcreators Windows 10? The reason i did not revert to windows 7 yet is that Windows 10 (x64) on my system runs smoothly and boots very fast.


In my case it wasn't an unregistered plugin, extensively sussed that out. And uninstalling it in device manager doesn't work, it pops right back in after booting, active and all. What's the reason? If necessary guess i must remove all the drivers manually, or edit the registry ... F

Just did some more tests to see if the occasional stutter (once every 20-30 minutes on the laptop) changes any:

1 - Moved the Steinberg UR22MKii from a 3.0 USB port to a 2.0 USB port (I'm not using any USB hubs at all).............still stutters the same.
2 - Changed the audio/MIDI setup to use onboard ForteDXI soft synth for both audio and MIDI thru internal Realtek HD Audio board via ASIOFORALL Driver.........still stutters the same. This configuration is actually worse because of the extra processing load the soft synth puts on the laptop (more noise and pops in addition to the stutter).

The normal laptop configuration is the UR22MKii (with latest firmware upgrade) into a USB 3.0 port, using Steinberg's latest ASIO driver for the UR22MKii, with a Roland SC88 hardware synth connected to the MIDI out of UR22MKii, with SC88 mixing UR22MKii audio output with SC88's built-in line mixer, combined output going to powered speakers. Works great except for stutter once every 20-30 minutes.

I also have a Windows 10 Fall Creator desktop loaded with Build 512 of BIAB. That is set up using the ForteDXI soft synth with the ASIOFORALL Driver, routing both audio and MIDI from the synth directly to the onboard Realtek HD Audio board in the desktop. Works perfectly, no audio stutters after at least 1 hour of running the Jukebox player. FYI, I couldn't get the WAS driver to work properly on the desktop after loading Build 512 (tremendous latency problems....I reported this to PG). On this machine, 512 works OK with MME or the ASIOFORALL Driver however.

I still think the laptop is suffering from some sort of Windows 10 related memory management issues, or possibly data loss via the USB interface. Hard to figure out what's going on. Maybe I should put a set of wheels on the desktop system and use that for the portable system!

Hi Dave,

Did you have any other programs open when you got the stuttering on the laptop?

I have a monster of a Win10 machine at home (hex-core i7, 16gb of ram, MOTU interface), and I get the occasional hiccup in my music programs (including Ableton, which is very stable) if I have a web browser open. I find Facebook is the worst offender, causes pops and clicks and I have no idea why. My CPU and memory usage never go above 5% when this happens.

Thanks
Kent
PG Music

Hi Fiddler,

I already had Dave check this on his machine so I know it's not his issue, but I'd check out your power settings in Win10, there's a setting that seems to be the default now on a lot of machines, which slows down the processor to save electricity. It made my new machine almost unusable for music production until I found it.

This article explains where to look:

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/prevent-drops-cpu-speed-70828.html

This has been the culprit for a lot of customers' performance issues lately, so worth checking out if you haven't.

Thanks
Kent
PG Music

Kent,

I have no other programs open when the stutter occurs. I have monitored the Task Manager performance graphs and stats and have not observed any connection between the stutter occurrence and such things as a CPU utilization spike, disk access spike, etc. I have even kept the WiFi connection open while running BIAB, and have seen a spike in data transmission associated with incoming email (MS Mail program running) and that spike in activity DID NOT result in a stutter. I have also increased the ASIO buffer size to 1538 in order to eliminate buffer size as a possible cause of the stutter.

I suspect that there is a memory management problem or the USB bus hiccups when there is a stutter, but there is no easy way that I know of to monitor this in real time. I have also increased the ASIO buffer size to 1538 in order to eliminate buffer size as a possible cause of the stutter.

About ASIO buffer size, and I'm sure you know this, bigger is sometimes better but much bigger can be much worse. There is always a sweet spot for ASIO. In fact, there can be a sweet spot for buffer size during playback, but a larger one for mixing or recording. 1538 sounds well too high, but I don't know your soundcard's performance.

To me this is the major clue. You write like you understand this stuff but someway, somehow you're missing something simple. WAS works absolutely perfect with the vast majority of users. It's a huge improvement in Windows sound. What did Support have to say about using WAS?

On your laptop, I would switch to WAS and if that doesn't work then I would say it's with the laptop itself. FWIW, another user spent weeks (seriously, weeks) messing around with stuff like this and wound up reinstalling Windows and voila everything's perfect. That tells me that somehow he messed up his system with something.

On a clean system, Biab runs perfectly, simple as that. Sure, it's possible now that a recent Win10 update may require a tweak but I haven't seen that yet and I'm on automatic updates.

Bob

Hi Bob,

There actually is a confirmed bug with WAS support in build 512. This isn't related to Dave's issue, we'll be fixing it from our end with a patch.

Dave,

Do you still have the glitches with MME? I'd try with the UR22's MME driver, as well as the driver for your computer's built-in soundcard (this last bit isn't a suggested solution, just a test to see what happens). MME tends to be more stable and easier on system resources.

Thanks
Kent
PG Music

Have a similar system, and occasionally Firefox is loaded in the background, or Palemoon, a stripped version there of. Never noticed that it makes a difference, but it might be related to a loaded browser plugin? I'd rather suspect Edge maybe, and Cortana to be more influential, IMO they behave like spyware, and are always active. Why i take 'em down. OOSU10 and W10Privacy ary a great help, and just discovered one that kills Win10 spying: 'Destroy Windows 10 Spying_2.2.2': download F

PS posted this a while back here on the forum (i think), and system cooling is active: It's a must do indeed .... if you let Windows handle it when installing an 'update' or refresh it, it's set back to 0% for minimal ...

See prior thread regarding Build 512 and WAS driver:

http://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=457835#Post457835

Microsoft is going to start pushing out Release 4 for Windows 10 in April. If you re-load Windows now, it will be overwritten by Release 4 at some point, unless you turn off Updates, in which case you stop getting the monthly Updates, which is not a good idea in this day and age. Microsoft's got the system rigged. I might as well wait and see what happens after Release 4 is installed.

Also, remember that my HP i3 desktop is not stuttering, but my HP i5 laptop is. Both systems have 8 GB RAM. Running the Steinberg AIO buffer up to 1538 samples was a test, which didn't eliminate the stutter, so I can crank it back down to 512 samples or so. The laptop is communicating to the Steinberg via the USB interface, so there is the possibility that something's going on with the laptop hardware configuration that may be problematical. I'm waiting to see if Steinberg has anything to say about this.

One advantage of Windows 7 was that you could pick and choose the Windows Updates, only installing those you wanted. They then killed that ability for users when they started issuing only monthly cumulative rollups for Windows 7 about a year ago.

Where is my post on power settings? Deleted?

I'll try this again.

The graphic shown by Fiddletr2007, and the article posted by Kent, refer to power settings. There are the obvious ones for CPU percentage at minimum 100%, and not turning off the monitor or hard drive after a set time.

But the one fewer people seem to know about that can really fool you is the USB Settings, USB Selective Suspend. This should be set to DISABLE.

A similar one is PCI Express, Link State Power Management. That should be set to OFF.

In general, don't let Microsoft do any 'management' of your power.

And check these settings after each operating system update. They can get flipped.