• WANTED: Happy members who like to discuss audio and other topics related to our interest. Desire to learn and share knowledge of science required. There are many reviews of audio hardware and expert members to help answer your questions. Click here to have your audio equipment measured for free!

Who is at fault?

tvrgeek

Major Contributor
Joined
Aug 8, 2020
Messages
1,017
Likes
566
Location
North Carolinia
Environment: All of my CDs are ripped onto an SSD. PC is dedicated, not even online so very few background processes. All the security and update stuff turned off. ( I think) Windows media server. USB to my DAC.

Fault: Twice, I have heard a "studder" like a miss-tracking CD. I naturally thought it was an error in ripping but going back, they played fine.

Question: Wondering of this is a fault of Windows? Likely a process with higher priority stepping on the real time stream, or if it is possible to be a fault of the buffering in the DAC? It is so rare, it is hard to experiment. If it was UNIX, I could ensure who has run-time priority, but Windows makes that a lot harder. Can't imagine it was an interruption reading the SSD.
 

StefaanE

Addicted to Fun and Learning
Forum Donor
Joined
May 12, 2020
Messages
528
Likes
929
Location
Harlange, Luxembourg
It could be a glitch in reading the SSD, requiring a retry, or a glitch in the memory leading to data corruption. I suppose your PC doesn't have ECC memory, so a stray cosmic ray can cause memory corruption.
Neither Windows nor Linux are Real-time OSes, so you can't expect real-time behaviour all the time anyway.
 

voodooless

Grand Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Jun 16, 2020
Messages
10,227
Likes
17,807
Location
Netherlands
It could be a glitch in reading the SSD, requiring a retry, or a glitch in the memory leading to data corruption. I suppose your PC doesn't have ECC memory, so a stray cosmic ray can cause memory corruption.

That would be extremely unlikely. We can play CD quality audio on PC's since the mid 90's without studdering.. no way any of these things are to blame.

Neither Windows nor Linux are Real-time OSes, so you can't expect real-time behaviour all the time anyway.

There is no need for that. If you can play blazing fast 3D games at 100+ fps, then you should be able to play a stupid audio file.

Best bet would be the ASIO buffer size (in case you use that), or some audio buffer in your player application. What's your player software?
 

Staki

Member
Forum Donor
Joined
Jul 17, 2020
Messages
48
Likes
39
Location
Belgium
Assuming that the problem is caused by the PC, in my experience it is less likely to be caused by a high priority process stepping on the stream. I really don't know much about Windows, but in a media server, I would assume that the real time stream has a high priority itself anyway. But, there could always have been an interrupt storm. This could sometimes be caused by the ethernet driver, but since you say that your PC is not online, I'm assuming it's not even connected to the network. Another option is a hardware issue on the PC. In that case, it may become progressively worse, together with the studder. In Linux I would tell you to 'cat /proc/interrupts', but I don't know how to do that in Windows.
 

MakeMineVinyl

Major Contributor
Joined
Jun 5, 2020
Messages
3,558
Likes
5,871
Location
Santa Fe, NM
I've had dropout problems in the past because of low quality USB cables going to the DAC. If your DAC has a driver, increase the buffer size. Also select exclusive mode in the Windows sound panel.
 

Pluto

Addicted to Fun and Learning
Forum Donor
Joined
Sep 2, 2018
Messages
990
Likes
1,631
Location
Harrow, UK
Neither Windows nor Linux are Real-time OSes, so you can't expect real-time behaviour all the time anyway
Playing music properly has little to do with the OS's ability to do "real-time" things as decent player software runs a considerable buffer so the OS can go and do whatever it wants for several seconds without interfering with playback.

Things to consider –
  • What player software is being used? I have plentiful experience of JRiver and Foobar. Both are exemplary.
  • Is the disk drive playing up? Even if so, the playback software should be requesting the data well before it's actually needed so even if the data delivery is tardy, it nonetheless arrives in a timely manner.
  • Check the system latency which, if excessive, can cause audio issues.
  • Make sure the buffer size (as set within the player application) is well above the bare minimum.
 

threni

Major Contributor
Joined
Oct 18, 2019
Messages
1,277
Likes
1,519
Location
/dev/null
It could be a glitch in reading the SSD, requiring a retry, or a glitch in the memory leading to data corruption. I suppose your PC doesn't have ECC memory, so a stray cosmic ray can cause memory corruption.
Neither Windows nor Linux are Real-time OSes, so you can't expect real-time behaviour all the time anyway.

Well, there is a real-time variety of linux, but you don't need it to listen to music. A £35 Raspberry Pi can play music just fine; I'm using two at the mo, one of which was streaming video to my tv - also without issue for many years - before I repurposed it as a portable music player. Sounds like Windows being Windows to me. Maybe you need to reboot it a few times, make sure the dodgy and intrusive third party malware checkers are up to date, and then reboot it one more time.

If you wanted to rule out Windows as a possible cause of your problems, consider booting from a Linux live-usb key and seeing if the problem reoccurs.
 
OP
tvrgeek

tvrgeek

Major Contributor
Joined
Aug 8, 2020
Messages
1,017
Likes
566
Location
North Carolinia
Alas, OSF-1 is OBE.
Yes, I understand cosmic rays, though the fillers in the plastic do a pretty good job shielding them. We pretty much solved that when going from 16K to 64K RAM. Not being a server class, you are right it in not having ECC ram, but off the SSD, there are three levels of buffering with software error correction. Maybe a prefetch page miss. But why the result is a stutter, not a dropout, does not make sense to me. A segment of data is being replayed. Hmmm. USB retransmit?
 

wwenze

Major Contributor
Joined
May 22, 2018
Messages
1,284
Likes
1,827
With USB and Windows the first suspect is usually DPC Latency i.e. post #6
 

threni

Major Contributor
Joined
Oct 18, 2019
Messages
1,277
Likes
1,519
Location
/dev/null
Alas, OSF-1 is OBE.
Yes, I understand cosmic rays, though the fillers in the plastic do a pretty good job shielding them. We pretty much solved that when going from 16K to 64K RAM. Not being a server class, you are right it in not having ECC ram, but off the SSD, there are three levels of buffering with software error correction. Maybe a prefetch page miss. But why the result is a stutter, not a dropout, does not make sense to me. A segment of data is being replayed. Hmmm. USB retransmit?

You could check the event log, see if anything got reported. Keep an eye on task manager in case ram/cpu/network is unusual. Run a SMART check on your drives. Try playing music from a different drive. Try a different music player.

You say twice; today? ever?
 

ZolaIII

Major Contributor
Joined
Jul 28, 2019
Messages
4,069
Likes
2,409
Alas, OSF-1 is OBE.
Yes, I understand cosmic rays, though the fillers in the plastic do a pretty good job shielding them. We pretty much solved that when going from 16K to 64K RAM. Not being a server class, you are right it in not having ECC ram, but off the SSD, there are three levels of buffering with software error correction. Maybe a prefetch page miss. But why the result is a stutter, not a dropout, does not make sense to me. A segment of data is being replayed. Hmmm. USB retransmit?
Might just be a dirty USB line (a fragment stayed on it stuck after playback and whose heard when new one came).
 

PierreV

Major Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Nov 6, 2018
Messages
1,437
Likes
4,686
If it was UNIX, I could ensure who has run-time priority, but Windows makes that a lot harder. Can't imagine it was an interruption reading the SSD.

I would still run a full SSD check with whatever utility your manufacturer provide and check the SMART status in terms of retries, remapped data.
I may be a bit biased because I recently had an Intel SSD fail on me, and the symptoms were music stuttering (with the custom SMART status still OK in that case).

Compare to USB or process priority issues, the (possibly unlikely) SSD failure is the only one that could have major and sudden consequences. In terms of risk analysis, it is the one that should be excluded first.
 

daftcombo

Major Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Feb 5, 2019
Messages
3,687
Likes
4,068
You should run DPC Latency to check if all is normal.
And increase the buffer to 1024 ms minimum.
 

MetalDaze

Member
Joined
Aug 13, 2020
Messages
94
Likes
65
Latency could be an issue but since your PC is dedicated that hopefully shouldn't be an issue. Is your SSD an Internal or External? If the latter I would suggest as others have said trying a different USB cable, perhaps shorter. Also try setting the drive from "quick remove" to "high performance" but you'll have to be sure to eject the drive before ever disconnecting it to prevent data corruption. Also check to see if you have a paging file enabled. This may help as well increasing your buffer size in your audio player.

Possibly, depending on the age of the SSD you may also be encountering bad sectors which now have dead cells. I'm not exactly sure how to confirm this but if you think this could be a possibility it may be time to create a backup on a secondary drive.
 
Last edited:
OP
tvrgeek

tvrgeek

Major Contributor
Joined
Aug 8, 2020
Messages
1,017
Likes
566
Location
North Carolinia
I do need to get around to doing a Linux boot. Been a few years.

I do not like the UI for Foobar at all which is why I still use Windows Media. I am considering buying J-River. As I mentioned, testing is difficult as it has happened twice is a month.

Sneaker-neted the latency checker. Well suited, as in almost nothing is running. Low end of everything.
Good tip is the why so slow and who crashed may help with my desktop and the intermittent BSOD which I think is Avast and MalewareBytes fighting.
 

kkeretic

Active Member
Joined
Jan 29, 2020
Messages
212
Likes
161
Location
Croatia
Environment: All of my CDs are ripped onto an SSD. PC is dedicated, not even online so very few background processes. All the security and update stuff turned off. ( I think) Windows media server. USB to my DAC.
Fault: Twice, I have heard a "studder" like a miss-tracking CD. I naturally thought it was an error in ripping but going back, they played fine.

Player? Windows version and build? Output driver (ASIO/WASAPI/DS)? For example, Foobar2000 had such problems with playback via the ASIO driver under Windows 8/8.1/10 for years whenever some process in the background used the CPU intensively. Because of that, I even wrote a small program that would give the ASIOHost process a realtime priority whenever it found it running. I still use it nowdays just to stay on the safe side. Over time, Foobar2000 got some options to set ASIO/WASAPI host process higher priorities, however not realtime. I bet some background system process goes wild for a moment and causes playback issues.

ASIOprc.jpg
 
Last edited:

threni

Major Contributor
Joined
Oct 18, 2019
Messages
1,277
Likes
1,519
Location
/dev/null
I do need to get around to doing a Linux boot. Been a few years.

I do not like the UI for Foobar at all which is why I still use Windows Media. I am considering buying J-River. As I mentioned, testing is difficult as it has happened twice is a month.

Sneaker-neted the latency checker. Well suited, as in almost nothing is running. Low end of everything.
Good tip is the why so slow and who crashed may help with my desktop and the intermittent BSOD which I think is Avast and MalewareBytes fighting.

Linux is great because you're in control. There's no "something is running at the background at the wrong time and it caused a problem". No malware checkers, dodgy encrypted telemetry being sent "to keep you safe and improve the services we offer you". There's just whatever processes you want running. You can always run Windows in a VM if you want to set the virus checkers off against other; see who wins.
 

voodooless

Grand Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Jun 16, 2020
Messages
10,227
Likes
17,807
Location
Netherlands
I do not like the UI for Foobar at all which is why I still use Windows Media.

You should listen to music, not look at a UI ;) ( but I tend to agree on this with you) also: do you use ASIO output with windows media player.

It’s really staggering to read how many issues people seem to have with playing audio with Windows. I haven’t used Windows as a primary OS for about 20 years now, and have never had any issues.. not using Linux, not using MacOS.
 
Last edited:
OP
tvrgeek

tvrgeek

Major Contributor
Joined
Aug 8, 2020
Messages
1,017
Likes
566
Location
North Carolinia
Good tips.
Everything is less than a year old. External Samsung 1/2 TB SSD, uses it's own pigtail which is 6 inches into dedicated USB 3 port.
Schiit DAC uses Windows drivers.
Exclusive mode set.
WMS has no buffer settings.
Error is never the same track.
OOPS, Drive was not in high performance mode. It is now.
Avast is still running in manual mode as it won't let you stop in in startup. I thought about taking it off and relying on Malwarebytes. They catch different things.
Windows DAC driver was in 32 bit mode, No need, so set back to 16.

Will listen a few more days. I can't see how it could be the DAC itself, but it did not happen on my old crude Muse. Shudder is at least half a second.
 
Top Bottom