Troubleshooting audio issues in PC

[SilenceoftheSamz]

doing more re

I'm going to guess it's multitasking and buffering...

You operating system is ALWAYS multitasking even if you are only running one application.

The audio is written to a buffer (like a long pipe or storage tank) whenever the operating system gets around to it. Then the audio flows-out to the DAC at a smooth-constant rate. If the buffer doesn't get refilled in time you get buffer underflow and a glitch or gap in the audio. So a bigger buffer, or a faster computer can help. Or, usually you can minimize the interruptions. (When you record there is a buffer that works the opposite way... Filled at a smooth-constant rate and read in a quick burst. In this case the danger is buffer overflow.)

The tricky thing is that some application/process/driver doesn't have to be using a lot of total CPU time... It just has to hog the system for a few milliseconds too long and you get a glitch.

I don't know if you can adjust the buffer size with regular Windows or drivers/applications. With ASIO you can, but your player application has to support ASIO. Your hardware should have ASIO drivers although ASIO4ALL can "fake" the hardware-side to work with regular Windows drivers.

There is a FREE online book about optimizing your (Windows) computer for audio called Glitch Free. It's mostly for recording-production but there is useful information for playback.

Thanks for the book reference.
ill read it and see what I learn.
also, I've done more research and found this thread on reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/el8odk I will also try that and update this thread if that solves it.

 

[AnalogSteph]

I am using AMD. your question concerns me greatly. 5800x3d
I also get these audio issues in games too. Tomb raider and MCC.
I just played a flac file straight through VLC - crackling and stuttering. It pauses every 0.5-1 second or so and crackles in between.

That's bad.

Which board and BIOS version are you using? With a 5800X3D it couldn't be too old, so I imagine the fTPM issue would already be sorted, but still. And what kind of GPU? I would also check what the tool LatencyMon has to say on the matter... occasional peaks slightly above 1000 µs are fine, >2000 µs is not. There are several avenues I'd pursue from there, from type of interrupts used for devices, network card settings, up to ASPM and C-States.

This is the kind of fun stuff that had me sticking with "Team Blue" (aside from idle / low-load power consumption being of greater concern than efficiency under load).

 

[SilenceoftheSamz]

That's bad.

Which board and BIOS version are you using? With a 5800X3D it couldn't be too old, so I imagine the fTPM issue would already be sorted, but still. And what kind of GPU? I would also check what the tool LatencyMon has to say on the matter... occasional peaks slightly above 1000 µs are fine, >2000 µs is not. There are several avenues I'd pursue from there, from type of interrupts used for devices, network card settings, up to ASPM and C-States.

This is the kind of fun stuff that had me sticking with "Team Blue" (aside from idle / low-load power consumption being of greater concern than efficiency under load).

You concern the hell out of me.

So i tried something off the wall, and ran the audio out of my gaming monitor speakers. Path is from my
Ssd 970 1tb through the
Mobo ( Asus x570 ROG CROSSHAIR VIII IMPACT ) , to the
CPU 5800x3d
Through my nvidia 4090 via displayport, direct to the monitor.

Still getting the issues.

Therefore it's gotta be a pc based issue.
It can't be the dac or amp or headphones because I bypassed all of em.
Ill download latency monitor now.

 

[SilenceoftheSamz]

That's bad.

Which board and BIOS version are you using? With a 5800X3D it couldn't be too old, so I imagine the fTPM issue would already be sorted, but still. And what kind of GPU? I would also check what the tool LatencyMon has to say on the matter... occasional peaks slightly above 1000 µs are fine, >2000 µs is not. There are several avenues I'd pursue from there, from type of interrupts used for devices, network card settings, up to ASPM and C-States.

This is the kind of fun stuff that had me sticking with "Team Blue" (aside from idle / low-load power consumption being of greater concern than efficiency under load).

I forgot to include bios version : 4304

 

[twsecrest]

Plug the THX 789 headphone amplifier directly to the PC's line-output jack (removing the DAC for the audio chain), see if you still get noise issues.

 

[SilenceoftheSamz]

That's bad.

Which board and BIOS version are you using? With a 5800X3D it couldn't be too old, so I imagine the fTPM issue would already be sorted, but still. And what kind of GPU? I would also check what the tool LatencyMon has to say on the matter... occasional peaks slightly above 1000 µs are fine, >2000 µs is not. There are several avenues I'd pursue from there, from type of interrupts used for devices, network card settings, up to ASPM and C-States.

This is the kind of fun stuff that had me sticking with "Team Blue" (aside from idle / low-load power consumption being of greater concern than efficiency under load).

so you hit it right on the nose. this obviously isnt a new issue. do you know of a troubleshooting guide i can use? or if not, can you give me a few pointers for going about resolving this?

im glad to see that i dont need to replace my stack at least!

Thank you so much!

 

[ThatM1key]

With AMD these days, some of the USB ports are connected to the CPU directly. You could try that.

Driver updates (pc said nah dawg you good)

I would not trust Windows Update with drivers unless its Wifi. You should download the drivers directly from your motherboard maker just like your video card drivers. Also make sure you have the latest BIOS installed.

I STILL GET CRACKLING.
The point of the high end audio is to reduce issues.

I have the same CPU as you and I know what you mean. The crackling happens when your multi-tasking even when LatencyMon say your systems fine.

I was just using VLC. I could get something different, but I'm getting issues in games too, so I don't think it's related to the software so much.
Thanks for the input, please let me know if you have any follow up suggestions!

I would only use VLC for videos and Foobar2000. Foobar200 has a lot more audio control.

With a 5800X3D it couldn't be too old, so I imagine the fTPM issue would already be sorted, but still

A little old but gold, that CPU can handle a RTX 4090.

 

[ThatM1key]

View attachment 280880
so you hit it right on the nose. this obviously isnt a new issue. do you know of a troubleshooting guide i can use? or if not, can you give me a few pointers for going about resolving this?

im glad to see that i dont need to replace my stack at least!

Thank you so much!

I mean the only way to stop the latency is to have nothing running in the background.

 

[RandomEar]

Could it be helpful to disable HPET?

 

[AnalogSteph]

I forgot to include bios version : 4304

Huh. They don't even list that version any more. There's 4006, and the latest one is 4402 from February. I suggest you upgrade to that first and see whether it does anything for you.

The literal only other thing that I've read about causing this is some memory subtimings like read-write turnaround time (t_rdwr) being set way too aggressively.
Speaking of memory, read up on the interdependencies of RAM clock, SoC voltage and IF clock (as well as other associated voltages and settings) in Ryzen. Apparently it's not uncommon for boards to jack up the SoC voltage once you go past 3200 MHz of RAM clock, and then your idle power draw is up by 10 watts just from that.

Also, if memory serves nVidia GPUs in general and the 40 series in particulat aren't especially fond of PCIe ASPM, but knowing Asus gaming boards I sort of doubt that would be enabled by default anyway...

 

[Keith_W]

Try reducing your sample rate from 96kHz to 44.1kHz. Less CPU overhead, no audible difference, and less data to transmit (hence less likelihood of buffer over-runs).

 

[andyc56]

View attachment 280899
so you hit it right on the nose. this obviously isnt a new issue. do you know of a troubleshooting guide i can use?

There's a couple of guides available on the Focusrite site: here and here.

There's also a youtube video that's worth checking out.

 

[wwenze]

At this point I will go into BIOS and manually disable stuff. Also update BIOS to newest.

Also your board is known to set CPU voltage abnormally high by default so manually control that too.

Spoiler

First to disable is turbo / Precision Boost Overdrive. BTW what is your CPU temperature?

Then the rest is hard to say because the setting may or may not appear depending on CPU motherboard... C-States is usually a common suspect too.

In your case, the V-Cache is also a suspect.

Power saving features / auto downclocking is another one that can cause issues

 

[ThatM1key]

At this point, I don't think its power related, its mostly likely probably Windows. Before you flip knobs, I would just do a clean install of Windows, reinstall your drivers and see if the latency goes down.

 

[Dunring]

I've built systems for decades and ran two PC repair shops, here's what I'd do first:
Create a restore point.
Display Driver Uninstaller also removes old sound drivers completely. Reboot to safe mode and run it to really clean them out.
Autoruns by Microsoft is another free tool to show everything that's loading, uncheck anything you know you don't use anymore.
Go to device manager, click on your USB ports and hubs, and uncheck the power management box on all of them.

 

[andyc56]

There's a couple of guides available on the Focusrite site: here and here.

There's also a youtube video that's worth checking out.

Sorry to be talking to myself here, but just a few hours after posting this, after having troubleshot some intermittent audio glitches for several days, I found what I think is the best online guide on this subject. It is written by Pete Brown, a Microsoft employee and DAW enthusiast with the job title "Principal Software Engineer, Windows + Devices (APS)". The name of the article is The Unofficial Windows 10 Audio Workstation Build and Tweak Guide. It's well worth a read.

Another thing to consider, in case you missed it, is the AMD fTPM bug, which I also encountered and had to fix with a BIOS upgrade. I did a short thread on it here.

Do check out Pete Brown's article though. One recommendation of his, which runs counter to almost every online tweaking guide I've read, is to optimize system performance for programs, not background processes, in the Performance Options, Advanced dialog. He gives some solid arguments for this choice.

 

[SilenceoftheSamz]

I'm still troubleshooting.
I updated the bios per above, it didn't help.

I installed windows on a portable drive, and even from that, I'm still getting crackling.

I think the only thing left is mobo defect or cpu defect of some variety.

I'm going to go into the bios per above and disable stuff too.
But i should not be needing to do that.

I'm fairly close to saying screw it, New mobo time.

I learned more about troubleshooting on amd, but I never had these issues with intel...

Ill keep playing with it for a week, maybe bring it to microcenter, and see what they say.

Thank you all for your suggestions and support. It really was beneficial. I'm still open to more suggestions. Especially if bios related.

Thank you all again.

 

[Berwhale]

I updated the bios per above, it didn't help.

Did you load Optimized Default settings after flashing the BIOS?

I have a Ryzen 7 1700X on an B350M motherboard and don't get any issues like this at all. I have new Ryzen 9 7900 sitting next to me and a B650M motherboard on the way and I really hope I don't get anything like you're experiencing right now...

 

[khensu]

I’m not a Windoze expert by any means (UNIX kernel developer), but if it were me, that screenshot would have me looking at the video card first. I’m not suggesting the card is bad, and I don’t know what options there may be for driver settings, but the first thing I’d try (as a datapoint, not a solution) would be to drop your screen resolution a good amount and see if that makes any difference. Another option, if you have video built-in, would be to remove the nvidia card use the built-in video. If either of those help, at least you know you’re looking in the right area.

 

[twsecrest]

It's a long shot, but try turning off the on-board audio, in the BIOS.
And connect the DAC using USB.