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.

You can still get it. For how long, I don't know.

Go here: https://www.thesycon.de/dpclat/dpclat.pdf

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.

Matt

That link is for the manual only but if you copy and paste the link, replacing pdf with exe you will get the utility.

Go here: https://www.thesycon.de/dpclat/dpclat.exe


Kevin

Thanks Kevin!

So what am I looking at?



Billy

Billy, is this your old or new machine?

There's something going on you should track down. Every 15 seconds you can see something kick in.

The overall effect isn't so bad that DPC reports a problem, with noting in the red, yet my computer shows a steady reading of almost the same number.

Did you move your mouse a lot, or load or quit other programs? If you did, try again and let it run with no activity from you.

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.

Maybe. All I know is most of the systems I have built do not have spikes like those, and any regular pattern like that bears examination.

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.

The instructions to help you start are in my first post.

It's generally software, not hardware.

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.

This is the scan I just ran.



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.

Billy, that last chart looks great.

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.

Hi Matt,

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

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?

Same here Matt. All I do is to make sure that all of my USB ports and hubs are always on. Win 10 eliminated all other tweaks.

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

What you don't want to see in Task Manager is something shooting to the top of CPU usage, then subsiding, then shooting back up etc.

The various entries for standard application programs like Chrome pose no problem.

I get some green on my hog.....

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

Getting rid of unneeded software that is running in the background is important.

A word to the wise.

I was using this latency tester quite extensively recently.

I have got myself a Microsoft Surface Pro 7 (i5). It came with version 1909 of Windows 10 Home which I upgraded to Windows 10 Pro. I am using Blue Cats Patchwork to host some VSTi 3 instruments and play via midi live. I was noticing dropouts in the audio periodically. I checked the CPU meters and there is plenty of oomph in the i5 processor and it is not even breaking a sweat. That's when I ran DPClat.exe to check what I was dealing with. Sure enough some red spikes which I think caused the dropouts.

I had been into the power and sleep settings and basically turned everything up to max. Still glitches.

Did some mooching on Google and found out that there is an undocumented Ultimate Mode for power settings which can be called up by running a command prompt. (If you're interested just do a google search on 'Ultimate Mode').

So far so good. Using this Ultimate Mode also alters some settings which are not accessible in the power settings but manage at a micro level some devices and software. Sure enough re-running dpclat now shows a series of yellow (which I now take to be green) bars. More importantly the glitches in the audio have now gone and I can play my instruments nicely.

Fast Forward 3 days ago, the Surface wanted to upgrade to 2004 version of Windows 10. So I let it. Then in due course I played the VSTi instruments and noticed the glitches are back. Sooo... back to Google. It turns out in Windows 10 2004 version the Ultimate Mode has been disabled by Microsoft with no way to re-enable it. I and others presume it is to let Microsoft make all portable devices operate the same with auto-power on/off, sleep mode and disabling unused USB devices (to name a few). So left with no choice I rolled back to Windows 10 version 1909. Glitches gone and Ultimate Mode is back.

So it looks like music generation is very low level on Microsofts sights and their software now limits otherwise perfectly capable hardware.

I wanted to use the Surface Pro with the Korg Triton, M1 and Wavestation VSTi's so as to provide the cheapest way of playing these old keyboards. I still can of course - but now I make sure there are no more updates until Microsoft changes things (if they will).


Kevin

To enable Ultimate Performance mode in Windows 10, follow these steps:
1. Search for Command Prompt in the Start menu.
2. Right-click the Command Prompt result.
3. Choose “Run As Administrator.”
4. In Command Prompt window, type the following command:
powercfg -duplicatescheme e9a42b02-d5df-448d-aa00-03f14749eb61
5. Press Enter.

You now will have an Ultimate Mode in power & sleep settings which you should select.

You can always switch back to Balanced if you don't need 100% horsepower.

Note this only works with Windows 10 versions up to 1909.

You can read more here with an explanation why they disabled it.

What is Ultimate Performance Mode in Windows 10?


Kevin

Fascinating, Kevin. I had not heard of this. Does Ultimate Mode have any effect on graphics, such as turning off Windows Aero, or is it just for power settings?

I've updated to 2004 for awhile now, so I apparently can't try your tip.

Irony: there was another recent thread here about how Microsoft was trying to work better with pro audio!

Matt

I would think it would give a general boost in performance to everything, graphics included as there is not so much background activity.

After reading the link I posted above I want to try to put Ultimate Mode on my desktop if I can (it was upgraded to 2004). If the Uninstall data is still there you can roll back.

P.S. I don't think Microsoft have the first clue about professional audio or graphics.

I have just done the exercise on my desktop studio computer with an i7 processor and I was able to enable Ultimate Power Mode easily. I think it will only be on laptops and tablets you will suffer - unless you stay with ver 1909,

Kevin

I tried it.

I'll see how it works on my older i7 desktop running 2004.

Thanks!

All of the above brings up the question of "what is the root cause of the issues to begin with".

My old machine ran normally for years. So what changed? Corruption in the system software due to use? That can and does happen. If that was the case doing a clean install of windows should solve the issue. In my case it did not solve the issue. Defective hard drive? Changed that. No results. Better heat control? Changed that no results. Defective power supply? Changed that. Shortly after the same issue occurred but has not returned again to date. Spend a good bit of money and build a new computer? So far that has worked without issue, for how long, who knows.

Windows updates that actually caused the problems? Yes, that is entirely possible. Poorly written application software? We have all seen that from time to time.

There is no permanent answer to computer problems. I have been highly successful in keeping my boats and airplanes running over the years, difficult but doable. Computers on the other hand have always been unpredictable both for home use and in the corporate business world.

Computers are wonderful things until they take control of the 737 you are flying and fly it into the ground.

Happy Holidays,

Billy

You gotto get it the way you like it, then pour couple of quarts of crazy glue on it, so it maintains posture.

I had good amount of success with CCleaner. It does a few things very well

1) it cleans most of leftovers from uninstalls and conflicts in registry, letting you make a copy of whole thing before it does it, so if something goes bananas you have a way home.
2)Lets you uninstall bunch of persistent apps that are not easily removable by normal means (add remove programs)
3)Selective service startup

And whole bunch of other useful things, like duplicate finder for example.
---------

The issue with programs like latencymon is that you find your "monster" and it turns out to be a system item and there is no way to stop it. Another approach that some DAWs had for years is called Load Balancing, where it tries to spread the load (of VSTs and such) through available CPU cores, but I hardly noticed difference when using it. Was experimenting with a few setups, monitoring CPU cores and it seems that when working in DAW only one core takes most of the heat and will spike if pushed slightly higher, instead of moving pressure to other cores.

What I think another major factor when it comes to "clicks and pops" is a properly written interface ASIO driver. No matter how well you cut the fat of your PC, if the driver is a booger, you will definitely get your dose of clicks and pops.

I see that a good number of people here use Focusrite. As far as I know, they have one of the best written drivers around... the newer ones. I was an inch from getting one, but than decided on a competitor, specifically because of distortion under load in one of my interfaces, which will go right out of the door when newborn interface arrives.

Strangely, I tested 3 interfaces on the same project/same computer this is what I got with highest buffer on each:

10+ year old Yeti Pro, almost no pops (unfortunately it is not a true interface, but acts as an ASIO sound card)
5+ year old Arturia Audiofuse, my main interface. Excellent mic preamps.... Minor occasional pops.
-1 year old Apogee One - Total nightmare. Would trip on just light VST load. Also has driver issues with BIAB.

my reply turned out to be a lite version of War and Peace

P.S. Kevin, nice find! Too bad Microsoft decided to block it. In general Mr. Nadella is long due for heavy spanking for ignoring music enthusiasts.

I went to the command prompt and installed powercfg -duplicatescheme e9a42b02-d5df-448d-aa00-03f14749eb61.

It came up on my old machine so I will give it a try. I have Norton 360 on the old machine which gives me three other power schemes. Now I have six options...lol

I also have found CCleaner useful especially to remove some programs.

I think Steve has the answer. Get a Mac truck style computer with two Xeon processors and two forty pound aluminum heat sinks and 128 gigs of RAM just for good measure!

Then again if you want extreme...lol...only $45,000


Billy

EDIT: I think I have the latest version of Windows 10 Pro on my old computer. So, the Ultimate power scheme loaded and worked.

Yes, with all that extra power I can have a bunch of leaky applications and not even notice it.

well...we are all just messing around. Until you start talking petaflops you are not really doing much...lol A petaflop is a unit of computing speed equal to one thousand million million floating-point operations per second.

The Summit at OAK RIDGE NATIONAL LABORATORY achieves an impressive 148.6 petaflops thanks to its 2.41 million cores. Got that? Over two million cores...lol

If you think in petaflops your brain will definitely self ignite and catch on fire...lol

IBM designed Summit. IBM stand for I Be Mad...Mad I tell you...and you though Frankensteins monster was scary...lol You ain't seen nothing yet...lol

Billy

Still a very cool computer Steve

i dont know how hard core the pg users in this thread like to get, re tweaking // performance.
but the following might be of interest.
https://www.dawbench.com/index.html
https://www.resplendence.com/latencymon
a different latency mon.
https://oblique-audio.com/rtl-utility.php
measures round trip latency.
and there are others.
(YMMV).
frankly i cant complain bout win 10. no probs.
reaps boots up in couple of secs, and biab is fast.
but i keep my refurb i5/ssd off the net.

also gearslutz.com has a ton of hard core tweakers on that site. lots of pros/cons of amd and intel etc etc.
and pros/cons of various daw software and OS's.
i was just reading one guy saying with an i9 700 traks. wow.
in addition to GSlutz reaper.fm seems to have more than a few i9 users. v interesting threads etc.
merry xmas to all.
muso

@Billy - At least your machine looks nicer. Dell doesn't tend to manufacture machines that look cool since they are mass produced. Their Alienware stuff does look cool though. If I recall, I think they may have purchased them in an acquisition.

Hi Steve, I guess these cases with tented glass doors are pretty common now days. I just received the video card today and installed it. It also came with LEDs as did the motherboard.

My main reason for buying this case was the material, steel and aluminum and the large size. It turned out to be a little bigger than I really needed but better bigger than to small.

I was not actually looking for "cool" and I guess all that is pretty subjective in any event. It is a pretty slick looking piece of gear I think. Your machine has its own "cool" look. The exterior look of a commercial server is probably not very important to most buyers.

Because of reflection it is difficult to take a good photo of the machine through the glass door. I will see if I can do that after dark tonight.

Billy

Thanks again. I found this one interesting. It told me I could reduce my buffer size lower than I thought. It also gave me something quite unexpected: a reading about my noise floor. This is my backup machine, not my fastest one, but it tested well. I did get this curious Information message:

RTL Utility - Oblique Audio
Suspect Result
The measured figure is more than 50% different than what the driver reports.
This may be a legitimate result due to the driver incorrectly reporting latency figures. Some devices appear to have extra buffering which is omitted from the reported latency.
On the other hand, it might be due to a glitch in the buffer size when changing sample rates. In this case, try restarting the device and repeating the measurement.

My best reading: 190 samples (4.3 ms) at 44.1KHz, 128 Buffer Samples
Noise floor: -100.2 dB

I get a runtime error during install for RTL

During the install? I got one after the install, until I selected my audio interface.

Matt.
glad you found it usefull. dawbench is interesting also..
ultimate tweakers really dig dawbench apparently.
(see gearslutz and dawbench site. lots of tweakers /deep tech info.)
Rharv.
if you NOTE on the rtl site it mentions you need certain win dll's to run rtl.
if you dont want to install them, on gearslutz and reapers sites are lots of posts about the rtl utility and display results.
so youll probably find your info you need amongst those posts. lots of tweakers.
heres what the rtl utility looks like. page down.
https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=228787
now go deep into above thread. might be usefull.
just one of many tweaker threads.
at the gs or reaps forums just enter RTL and your sound interface in the search. youll get info back.
this is how i chose to test the new audient evo.
i searched GS for info.

i ran the resplendence test on one of my refurbs today before disassembly for xmas.
looked real real nice , so i was pleased.
low greens.

merry xmas.
muso.