New
#1
Infrequent momentary audio dropouts - Windows 7 64-bit
Hello friends!
It's time for yet another audio dropouts thread. I've been trying to troubleshoot this issue myself for weeks and now I turn to you good people for assistance.
Issue
I experience momentary (<0.5s) audio dropouts which occur very infrequently, maybe every 30 minutes or so. This occurs across different media playback applications (Winamp, VLC Player, Chrome (YouTube - Flash?) and Cubase Pro 8 (my music production software).
My specs
Hardware
(edit: As per my profile?)
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-Z97X-Gaming 7 (Rev 1.0)
CPU: Intel i7-4790k
GFX: NVidia GTX 980 (355.98 drivers)
RAM: G.Skill Trident-X 16GB (8Gx2) DDR3-2133
OS: Windows 7 64-bit SP1 (fully updated bar Microsoft Silverlight)
HDDs:
- OS installed on a Samsung 840 Series SSD (250gb).
- WD Black SATA 4TB (storage, applications)
- WD Green SATA 3TB (storage)
- Samsung 840 EVO Series (500gb) (games)
Sound: Steinberg UR44 USB audio interface
Mouse: Razer Deathadder Chroma
KB: Razer Blackwidow Ultimate 2013
Drivers etc.
I have installed all* the latest drivers for my hardware from the Gigabyte site, as well as for my peripherals and audio interface.
*Except Realtek HD Audio driver, Creative SB X-Fi driver, Intel SATA Preinstall driver, Marvell SATA Controller driver, Marvell Storage Utility, Marvell Preinstall driver, Intel VGA Driver.
(It is my understanding I do not need the audio drivers as I use my dedicated USB audio interface, likewise with the Intel VGA drivers viz-a-viz the GTX 980. As to the Marvell drivers, all my internal drives are plugged into the SATA ports which are managed by the Intel z97 chipset.)
What I've tried so far
After months of nasty problems with Cubase (excessive disk cache usage, frequent dropouts, pops/clicks etc.) and many failed attempts at different drivers and BIOS settings, I bit the bullet and reinstalled Windows. The majority of the problems disappeared but now I have this infrequent dropout problem.
I should note that I have disabled all 'C states' from the BIOS, as well as disabling Intel SpeedStep. I turned off the automatic turbo setting and am not using any Xtreme (!) Memory Profiles with my RAM. Hyper threading is enabled.
I suspect it could be the Steinberg hardware but I would like to be sure before I RMA it.
I've been trying to determine the cause of the problem using DPC Latency Checker, LatencyMon and xperf traces (I don't think I know enough to interpret the data from these).
Attachments
I've attached a few things that I hope will help determine this issue:
- dxdiag
- 2 x LatencyMon 'stats' extracts
- xperf trace file.
Note on LatencyMon stats - they both capture periods where I experienced one of these dropouts. Funnily (?) enough, LatencyMon gives me the 'Your system appears to be having trouble handling real-time audio and other tasks' message even when I don't get the dropouts. The converse is also true: I'll get dropouts but LatencyMon says everything is fine.
edit: The xperf trace file was 2gb but compressed down to 220mb and is too big to include as an attachment. What's the preferred method for uploading files of that size?
(At any rate, when it is finally available: the dropout occurred sometime after 1060s (in the last 25 seconds of the trace). It's hard to be more specific without knowing what I'm looking for, sorry!)
Please let me know if there's any other information I have omitted or I could provide to assist you further. Thank you!