Poor I/O causing sound to stutter?

Prophet

Prophet

Prophet

Soldato
Joined
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If I'm downloading to one HD and playing MP3's from another the MP3's have a slight stutter/crackle.

It happens more with Vista 64 than Windows 7.

Spec is:

AMD X2 4400
4GB RAM
Gigabyte 780G MoBo
3 X HDD's alll SATA
IDE DVD R/W

Is this more likely to be a hardware problem or software issue?
 
Speakers are Cambridge Audio - Work fine when the PC's not multitasking.

No headphones.

Sound card is onboard jobbie. Again, works fine when not multitasking.
 
most likley a vista 64 bit driver issue, check for an update of the driver and soundcard control panel,

make sure the playback settings are set to values consistent with the source
 
If that doesn't work then get a Sound Card. Modern day onboard sound is... liveable, but on older stuff it's not even worth bothering with.
 
I've ran the DPC latency checker. The system had been running all day downloading a large file. The Latency was off the chart! I disabled the download and it settled down a lot.

I then fired up winamp and the system crashed with the following event log:

The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk3\DR3


After rebooting the PC ran fine. I started the download, copied files from and too all my hard drives (to excessively load them) and the latency hardy moved from the green!

So, the problem seems to be there after the PC has been running for several hours and points at a controller problem?
 
Are you sure it's a controller error, and not one of the hard disks failing? Try some diagnostic software perhaps. Apart from that check your cables, drivers, and perhaps update to latest BIOS if nothing helps.
 
hohum said:
Are you sure it's a controller error, and not one of the hard disks failing? Try some diagnostic software perhaps. Apart from that check your cables, drivers, and perhaps update to latest BIOS if nothing helps.
Click to expand...

The disk error was from my Readyboost USB stick. I've removed it and the error has gone.

Left the latency checker running all night. When I can back this morning it was nearly all high reds. I closed uTorrent and it went down to low greens with the odd spike into a med yellow.

Start uTorrent back up and we're in the reds again.

So, if I reboot and have everything running (uTorrent, WinAmp, Copying files etc) it's fine for about 30 minutes before reds start to appear, then it get's worse.

Any ideas?
 
Try removing all USB devices one at a time perhaps? One of them might be the culprit. What motherboard model do you have?
 
Bar the Readyboost USB stick I've removed I've only got the Keyboard and Mouse.

The Motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H.
 
Try removing those aswell when the problem is occuring, rule out any external device playing up.

One thing you can try is disabling the Cool N Quiet feature for the processor in the BIOS, as that can cause a latency spike when switching between clockspeeds.
 
hohum said:
Try removing those aswell when the problem is occuring, rule out any external device playing up.

One thing you can try is disabling the Cool N Quiet feature for the processor in the BIOS, as that can cause a latency spike when switching between clockspeeds.
Click to expand...

Will give that a go.

Didn't think about C&C! Good idea :)
 
Did you ever resolve your problem?

I'm running the exact same motherboard and an Athlon X2 4200 and having very similar problems (though only with blu-ray playback).

I eventually tried disabling Cool N Quiet in the BIOS and bam! All the massive lantencies disappeared and sound is now stutter free.

I hope that helps you or anyone else who finds this thread with the same problem.

Is it necessary to have a Cool N Quiet driver installed? What difference does it make?
 
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