Glitchy playback and FR - Focusrite Scarlett Solo 3rd Gen

[yewneek]

Got the Scarlett 3rd Gen and mated with JBL 104 monitors, and I'm quite pleased with it the combination.

Been playing music while editing content I produce, and I noticed there's random playback glitches. Not cracks, or pops, or birdies, but glitches in playback. Sources can be mp3 or FLAC, but still the glitches persist.
Not sure if I have to run the Scarlett direct from a dedicated USB on the motherboard, or if it's OK sharing inputs on a monitor hub. The latter enables me to share the audio interface across two computers when they're using the screen, as it's USB-C and Displayport with a USB hub. Anyway, it works when each computer has use of th screen then they control the Scarlett Solo. Very neat.

There's a shared ground across both the computers, I tested the continuity wth a multimeter between exposed grounds, and USB shield and HDMI ground. This doesn't realy worry me as I know this is quite a common thing with interconnected systems, and the Neutral mains wire often being the shared ground on a SMPS for laptops too.

So, do I need a dedicated USB on the motherboard, even with enough bandwidth on a USB gen3 hub? Do I need specific ASIO drivers?

Image attached is a test FR loopback graph I generated in REW. Looks OK, but I'm still learning the software.

TIA


GB

 

[RickNRoll]

Sometimes you need to run Windows power settings on high performance. It helps get rid of latency.

 

[yewneek]

Ok I did that, and a little more troubleshooting:

LatencyMon was showing horrendous latency!

Swapped USB ports - no change. USB3.1 port, no change. Swapped USB cable. It's NOT the USB port or cable.
Uninstalled ASIO4all. No change. It's NOT the ASIO4all, but I will leave it without
Removed USB HDD. No change. It's NOT the HDD demands on USB bandwidth.
Updated Windows. No change. It's NOT Windows updates.
Switched off one screen of two. No change. It's NOT GPU demands on output/CPU demands.
It's also NOT a Rode VideoMic GO II connected/drivers/mixer on USB.


Reinstalled Focusrite drivers AND Nvidia latest GPU drivers EXCLUDING Nvidia HD Audio drivers: Problem solved. Cause was identified as DRIVERS.
Nvidia HD Audio drivers are only necessary when using HDMI to output audio to TV or ARC/eARC

LatencyMon now is SUPERGREEN.

Thanks for the help!

GB

 

[RickNRoll]

Windows power saving will agressively reduce the CPU clock speed. That is fine for most applications but not real time HD audio. I was running a backup using Acronis and although the audio is usually OK the added overhead of the high IO load appeared to be responsible. Switching windows to high performance made the crackles disappear.

 

[yewneek]

Now on Ultra Performance.W11-64bit, i5-12600k, 64GB ram, RTX3080 Suprim. I could upgrade to a 13600k but that's next month!

 

[RickNRoll]

The CPU and RAM is fine. It's just the real time management of the clock speed that can be a problem. With the power management active the CPU fan is nearly silent, when it is on high performance I can hear to fan speeding up regularly. When my backup is finished it should all be good again. That is doing a lot of disk IO that also causes problems.