Anyone who has a computer running digital audio should periodically test for latency caused by non-audio device drivers. If you get dropouts, you need to find out why. Sometimes it's ASIO buffers, but sometimes it's an unrelated program running that you never expected. You can use Latency Monitor, but my favorite utility for almost two decades has been the DPC Latency Checker. It's free, has nice graphics, and gives directions how to fix problems if you have them.
There are two catches now. One, it's no longer featured on the developer's site. Two, DPC Latency Checker was never updated for Windows 10. However, it works fine! It just reads wrong. The 'normal' base reading is 1000, not zero. If you remember that, it works fine.
Oops, wrong link. See next post. If the directions look intimidating, never mind. Just run the program for awhile and see if you get red bars. If you don't, great; nothing to do. If you do get red bars, report it here and perhaps one of us can help you diagnose why.
Last edited by Matt Finley; 12/09/2006:38 AM.
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Fender Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
“Amazing! I’ll be working with Jaco Pastorius, Charlie Parker, Art Tatum, and Buddy Rich, and you’re telling me it’s not that great of a gig? “Well…” Saint Peter, hesitated, “God’s got this girlfriend who thinks she can sing…”
Aren't those 15 second spikes just IRQs cycling, acting on instruction? I'd say tune your interface buffers before you do anything or make any assumptions.
How would you even begin to track something like that down ?
Typically that would be hardware based, so you remove hardware one piece at a time, reboot, test again. If it isn't hardware, then you look at some TSR (terminate and stay resident) piece of software that makes a call at a regular interval.
Great example. Had a user who was having her password locked out every 15 minutes. Nobody could figure out why. Until I looked. Adobe Acrobat was set to look for updates every 15 minutes. I went into prefs and turned off automatic updates and that solved it. It was sending an Adobe supplied default password to the company proxy server and locking her out.
Sometimes it is things you never think to look for.
This is the old machine. I don't have any audio dropouts. There is a unresolved issue with the machine I have been trying to figure out for some time now. The machine has turned itself off and repeatedly tried to reboot
I did finally replace the power supply. This happened again shortly after I replaced the power supply. It has not happen again. The event log clearly shows the Kernel-Power 41 event error. There are many things that can cause this to happen. Bad drivers, power settings and a dozen other things. Power supply failing commonly causes this to happen.
Back when this first happened I installed a new 1TB SSD boot drive and did a fresh install of win 10 pro and redownloaded all the software. I just replaced the power supply and had replaced the CPU cooling heat sink and fan when this first started. This old machine has run without issue for about 40 hours now without issue.
I assume it is possible that there could be some intermittent mother board issue or even some processor issue but more likely some software glitch. There is fifteen to twenty thousand hours of use on the motherboard and processor.
I will rerun the scan.
Billy
This is the one of the reason I built a new computer.
“Amazing! I’ll be working with Jaco Pastorius, Charlie Parker, Art Tatum, and Buddy Rich, and you’re telling me it’s not that great of a gig? “Well…” Saint Peter, hesitated, “God’s got this girlfriend who thinks she can sing…”
In looking at the PDF there were two examples, one with all green lines and the other with the large red lines. Unless I am missing something yellow lines were not described. It would seem logical that could indicate a lessor problem. I am going to run this on the new machine to see what happens.
Billy
EDIT: I disabled and reenabled every audio driver in device manager on the old machine without any change. Also the yellow graph looks about the same on the new machine.
Second EDIT: I have run this program a good bit now. It occasionally shows issues. I have in the process recorded some music and watched some video both of which ran without issue. Everything on this old computer is currently running normally.
Last edited by Planobilly; 12/09/2007:25 PM.
“Amazing! I’ll be working with Jaco Pastorius, Charlie Parker, Art Tatum, and Buddy Rich, and you’re telling me it’s not that great of a gig? “Well…” Saint Peter, hesitated, “God’s got this girlfriend who thinks she can sing…”
Both of you, read my second paragraph. If you are on Windows 10, yellow is normal. There is no green any more because it reads about 1000 too high. But as you say, look for spikes, especially red ones and regular ones.
I have not noticed any effect during testing from being connected to the Internet unless your router driver has a problem. You don’t want to be running or doing anything else but the test, though.
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Fender Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
I read the 1000 comment but it sort went over my head. Now I understand. Thanks for clearing all that up.
Truthfully I have not had a lot of computer problems. The occasional virus that got past the defences and a few updates that failed.
There is a huge amount of complexity with our current computer systems and solutions are frequently extremely difficult to come by.
I have known many people of the sort that muso alluded to "they would spend ages fine tuning various tech". Fortunately, I have never found it necessary to spend countless hours trying to fix every possible issue event viewer displays.
Also I would like to know if the current paid driver update software has any real value.
Thanks,
Billy
“Amazing! I’ll be working with Jaco Pastorius, Charlie Parker, Art Tatum, and Buddy Rich, and you’re telling me it’s not that great of a gig? “Well…” Saint Peter, hesitated, “God’s got this girlfriend who thinks she can sing…”
I have the skills to do fine tuning, and used to in the past when it was necessary, but with Windows 10, it simply is not necessary now. No more Black Viper tweaks. I do set the power properties so everything is on and doesn't turn off, but that's it.
"Current paid driver update software" - which one?
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Fender Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
I have the skills to do fine tuning, and used to in the past when it was necessary, but with Windows 10, it simply is not necessary now. No more Black Viper tweaks. I do set the power properties so everything is on and doesn't turn off, but that's it.
"Current paid driver update software" - which one?
Just a general question Matt. I see lots of advertising for such programs. I don't own any and have had very little driver issues to begin with. I have had some driver issues with the old Pro Fire 2626 interface and an occasional need to delete and replace the driver for my Native Instruments interface. I also set power properties so it stays on.
When I installed Win 10 on the new machine I opted out of everything Microsoft that I could. The pop up info about One Drive continues to be a irritant.
I also looked at task manager to see what is running in the background. One of the noticeable things was the high number of PIDs for Chrome and the resource use when connected to some site. I assume that would cause some effect on the dpclat app.
Billy
“Amazing! I’ll be working with Jaco Pastorius, Charlie Parker, Art Tatum, and Buddy Rich, and you’re telling me it’s not that great of a gig? “Well…” Saint Peter, hesitated, “God’s got this girlfriend who thinks she can sing…”
Yes Steve, but you have a very special machine...lol
As I am no longer using Pro Tools, I think I will delete it. Avid is always running in the background. It may not be causing any issue but getting rid of unneeded software is most likely a good idea.
Happy Holidays,
Billy
“Amazing! I’ll be working with Jaco Pastorius, Charlie Parker, Art Tatum, and Buddy Rich, and you’re telling me it’s not that great of a gig? “Well…” Saint Peter, hesitated, “God’s got this girlfriend who thinks she can sing…”
Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Mac - Special Offers End at 11:59pm PDT on Friday, May 15th, 2026!
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With Band-in-a-Box® 2026, we've released 202 incredible new RealTracks (in sets 468-488) in a variety of genres—featuring your most requested styles!
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Rock & Pop (Sets 476–482):
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Country, & Americana (Sets 483–488):
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And, if you are looking for more, the 2026 49-PAK (for $49) includes an impressive collection of 20 bonus RealTracks, featuring exciting and inspiring additions to add to your RealTracks library. You'll get new country-rhythm guitar styles from PG Music favorites Johnny Hiland and Brent Mason, along with modern-pop grooves that capture today’s radio-ready sound! There are also new indie-folk styles with guitar, bass, 6-string bass used as a high-chording instrument, acoustic guitar, and banjo. Plus, dedicated "cymbal fills" RealDrums provide an added layer that work very well with low-key folky styles with other percussion.
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MIDI Styles Set 92: Look Ma! More MIDI 15: Latin Jazz
MIDI SuperTracks Set 46: Piano & Organ
Instrumental Studies Set 24: Groovin' Blues Soloing
Artist Performance Set 19: Songs with Vocals 9
Playable RealTracks Set 5
RealDrums Stems Set 9: Cool Brushes
SynthMaster Sounds Set 1 (with audio demos)
iOS Android Band-in-a-Box® App
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FLAC Files (lossless audio files) for the 20 Bonus Unreleased RealTracks and RealDrums
MIDI Styles Set 93: Look Ma! More MIDI 16: SynthMaster
MIDI SuperTracks Set 47: More SynthMaster
Instrumental Studies 25 - Soul Jazz Guitar Soloing
Artist Performance Set 20: Songs with Vocals 10
RealDrums Stems Set 10: Groovin' Sticks
SynthMaster Sounds & Styles Set 2 (sounds & styles with audio demos)
XPro & Xtra Styles PAK Sets On Sale Now - Until May 15, 2026!
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With the release of Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Mac, we’re rolling out a collection of brand-new videos on our YouTube channel. We’ll keep this forum post updated so you can easily find all the latest videos in one convenient spot.
Whether you're exploring new features, checking out the latest RealTracks or Style PAKs, this is your go-to guide for Band-in-a-Box® 2026.
Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Mac is here and it is packed with major new features! There’s a new modern look, a GUI redesign to all areas of the program including toolbars, windows, workflow and more. There’s a Multi-view layout for organizing multiple windows. A standout addition is the powerful AI-Notes feature, which uses AI neural-net technology to transcribe polyphonic audio into MIDI—entire mixes or individual instruments—making it easy to study, view, and play parts from any song. And that’s just the beginning—there are over 100 new features in this exciting release.
Along with version 2026, we've released an incredible lineup of new content! There's 202 new RealTracks, brand-new RealStyles, MIDI SuperTracks, Instrumental Studies, “Songs with Vocals” Artist Performance Sets, Playable RealTracks Set 5, two new RealDrums Stems sets, XPro Styles PAK 10, Xtra Styles PAK 21, and much more!
Special Offers
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Our Free Bonus PAK and 49-PAK are loaded with amazing add-ons! The Free Bonus PAK is included with most Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Mac packages, but you can unlock even more—including 20 unreleased RealTracks—by upgrading to the 2026 49-PAK for just $49.
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