Sounds Skips Every 35-40 minutes

Hello, I've been having a problem with my audio skipping. This might be complicated so try to follow me.

I play audio through Winamp and feed it to an Orban Optimod PC-1101 card. The Optimod card is an audio processor and it shows up as a soundcard in Windows. So to feed the Optimod card, I have it selected as the output in Winamp (instead of speakers).

To hear the output from the Optimod card, it shows up as a recording device. In the properties menu I have selected "Listen to this device" and selected speakers as the playback device.

This works great most of the time but every 35-40 minutes the audio that I hear starts skipping for 3-4 minutes, then clears up. This will repeat 35-40 minutes later. I do not have anything I know of that runs every 35-40 minutes. There are no CPU, hard drive, or memory spikes when the skips start to occur. The audiodg.exe program on my computer does not have a memory leak or give me any problems (or so it seems).

I am sure the input is not skipping. I am also sure the Optimod card itself is not causing the skipping. The skipping is taking place somewhere between the Optimod output driver and the computer. This skipping happens when I stream the audio to another computer as well so it's not the main soundcard that's the problem.

I don't think it is the Optimod driver, but I could be wrong. I've been going back and forth with their support department and they insist their driver is fine and the problem is something on my end that doesn't have anything to do with the card itself. It could be the Optimod driver because this problem only happens when I use the Optimod card. I have not tried the "Listen to this Device" on other recording devices though because I have nothing to hook up to the microphone and line-in ports and the Stereo Mix is all fuzzy and messed up.

I have tried the following to fix this:
- Tried Kernel streaming the output from the Optimod card to the speakers using AudioRepeater (a program included in the Virtual Audio Cables package.. After this didn't work, I uninstalled VAC) Skipping is the same as when using the "Listen To This Device" method.
- Updated BIOS (this made the skipping worse, but not more frequent)
- Updated Optimod driver
- Updated main soundcard driver
- Uninstalled main soundcard drivers and Optimod drivers and reinstalled both.
- Tried older driver versions
- Tried disabling a device called "AMD High Definition Audio Device" but reenabled when it did not help clear up the problem.
- Tried an entirely different soundcard to feed the speakers incase it was a soundcard problem. Did not work.
- Updated video card drivers.
- Tried changing power settings from Balanced to High performance
- Made sure hard drives are running on DMA mode.
- Went through Black Viper's Website site and disabled a bunch of services (I used the "Tweaked" version)
- Tried feeding the Optimod input with other sources other than Winamp to make sure Winamp wasn't the problem. It wasn't.
- Tried disabling the On-Board LAN.
- Made sure Windows Update is all up to date (just installed Service Pack 1 yesterday)
- Tried disabling Norton Internet Security, both the anti-virus and firewall.
- Scanned the computer completely for viruses and spyware with Norton and Spybot Search and Destroy.
- Checked the latency using DPC Latency Checker. No spikes showed up when skipping started. The lines were always in the green.
- Started the computer in safe mode to try but apparently all sound devices are disabled in safe mode.
- Tried turning the priority of audiodg.exe from normal to realtime.

My computer:
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (Service Pack 1)
On-Board Sound: VIA® VT1828S (main soundcard that feeds speakers)
Orban Optimod PC-1101 audio processor (sounds passes through this card before going to main soundcard)
Intel i7 860 Lynnfield 2.8GHz Quad-Core
CORSAIR XMS3 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3 memory
ASUS P7P55D PRO motherboard
ATI Radeon HD 4830
Seagate ES.2 750gb
Seagate ST3250820AS
Western Digital WDC WD2500JD-22HBC0
Turtle Beach Montego DDL (Drivers installed but disabled through Device Manager)
CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX 650W Power supply

Does anyone have any suggestions? I've tried every suggestion I've found on the internet and I feel I'm stuck. I really want this fixed, the skipping is annoying.

Since it ONLY happens with the Optimod card, consider that your PC does not have to be compatible with the card, the card must be compatible with the PC. The response from Optimod that "it's not my problem" is typical vendor finger pointing and then the customer is stuck trying to find out what is really wrong.

One thing to try, uninstall the Optimod in the Device Manger (DO NOT check the box to uninstall the drivers) then restart the PC and when Windows starts it will detect and reinstall the device. Many times this will put the device on a different sharted IRQ and MAY fix the problem.

What are you doing or listening to that requires that much audio processing? I work with audio as I have a computer based recording studio (with Sonar) but I do whatever I need either with VST's or with external devices, not some internal hardware processor.

Ok, I just tried your suggestion. After I restarted, I started some music and about 20 minutes later it started skipping again. It's skipping like crazy now as I type.

I've been an audio processing enthusiast for a long time. I've always enjoyed the "radio sound," so to speak. So when I play my music, I always pipe it through some sort of processor to even out the volume levels. Before I bought this Orban processor, I used Winamp plugins. Many tried to imitate the Orban sound. It's been great moving up to the real thing, the only problem is this skipping.

Thanks for the help though. Do you have any other suggestions I could try? I really don't want to return or resell this card because I like the sound so much. I wish I had another computer for this card but I don't.

Hello and welcome to the club, i am not only a radio sound enthusiast, but a technician at a radio station and i am using the same card, because the old versions were out of stock. Unfortunately i have the same problem with 2 of the soundcards and i don't know what else to do, i think i will send them back to Orban. Only one card is working without spikes, one out of three. But the spikes generated by the main card are continuous, not a few minutes once at 30-45, every song is played with spikes. Too bad for Orban. I tried to write them in the radio board (radio info dot com) but my country is banned from posting, i can only register. Unfortunately, i don't have any older versions of the Optimod cards to replace, because v1 and v2 worked fine, without a problem. If you find a solution, please tell us how to solve this monumental error. Tomorrow i will write to them and also i will send them a link to this forum. And by the way, this is the reason i downgraded the pc from 7 to XP. It's a hardware problem and they will not publicly accept it. Shame on Orban.

ghiooo, thanks for the confirmation of what I suspected.

ickymay said:

have a look in device manager and see if the card uses a com port assignment ?

If so try moving it to another port to work around any conflicts, COM 4 seems to work best ?

This works for the same problem when using a decklink card for the same purpose

There is no com port assignment. In the device manager, for the device properties, the location says: PCI bus 5, device 0, function 0

ghiooo said:

Hello and welcome to the club, i am not only a radio sound enthusiast, but a technician at a radio station and i am using the same card, because the old versions were out of stock. Unfortunately i have the same problem with 2 of the soundcards and i don't know what else to do, i think i will send them back to Orban. Only one card is working without spikes, one out of three. But the spikes generated by the main card are continuous, not a few minutes once at 30-45, every song is played with spikes. Too bad for Orban. I tried to write them in the radio board (radio info dot com) but my country is banned from posting, i can only register. Unfortunately, i don't have any older versions of the Optimod cards to replace, because v1 and v2 worked fine, without a problem. If you find a solution, please tell us how to solve this monumental error. Tomorrow i will write to them and also i will send them a link to this forum. And by the way, this is the reason i downgraded the pc from 7 to XP. It's a hardware problem and they will not publicly accept it. Shame on Orban.

After looking through older emails from Orban support, they suggested that this may just be a problem with Windows 7 64 bit. Did you happen to load Windows 7 64 bit or 32 bit?

After reading your post through, I am pretty sure now that this is a driver problem and I hope Orban fixes it soon.

It was 32 bits with Windows 7, now it is XP 32 bit. I thought it was a driver problem, too. The other bad soundcard is installed in a 64bit Windows XP, the behavior is the same. I still didn't send the email to Orban Europe support. Keep in touch.

I have been experiencing this audio skipping problem since getting a new computer with Windows 7 Professional, 64-bit. What's different in my case is that I am using a USB Digital Analog Converter. I have been pulling my hair out for 4 months, trying everything that you did. My DPC latency is in the green 99% of the time (it hits just over 1000 every once in a while, but it's not skipping when it does!)

I still haven't come up with a solution. From what I can tell through my research is that this is a Windows 7 issue.

ESP said:

ickymay said:

have a look in device manager and see if the card uses a com port assignment ?

If so try moving it to another port to work around any conflicts, COM 4 seems to work best ?

This works for the same problem when using a decklink card for the same purpose

There is no com port assignment. In the device manager, for the device properties, the location says: PCI bus 5, device 0, function 0

ghiooo said:

Hello and welcome to the club, i am not only a radio sound enthusiast, but a technician at a radio station and i am using the same card, because the old versions were out of stock. Unfortunately i have the same problem with 2 of the soundcards and i don't know what else to do, i think i will send them back to Orban. Only one card is working without spikes, one out of three. But the spikes generated by the main card are continuous, not a few minutes once at 30-45, every song is played with spikes. Too bad for Orban. I tried to write them in the radio board (radio info dot com) but my country is banned from posting, i can only register. Unfortunately, i don't have any older versions of the Optimod cards to replace, because v1 and v2 worked fine, without a problem. If you find a solution, please tell us how to solve this monumental error. Tomorrow i will write to them and also i will send them a link to this forum. And by the way, this is the reason i downgraded the pc from 7 to XP. It's a hardware problem and they will not publicly accept it. Shame on Orban.

After looking through older emails from Orban support, they suggested that this may just be a problem with Windows 7 64 bit. Did you happen to load Windows 7 64 bit or 32 bit?

After reading your post through, I am pretty sure now that this is a driver problem and I hope Orban fixes it soon.

Hi, i saw you already posted on the radio board, please tell them about my windows xp and also tell them i listened the digital outputs and the analog outputs of the optimod and the result is the same. They can listen to the skiping/spikes on the internet, just tell them to search for One FM in Romania. Unfortunately i can't post on their board, my country is not aloud.