• From: Central Switzerland
  • Registered: 2022-02-23
  • Posts: 29

Topic: madifaceusb - Priority and Affinity reset to default after reboot

When I enter Task Manager in Windows 10 > click on the Details tab > scroll down to madifaceusb.exe > point to and right click on madifaceusb.exe, a pop-up window appears with a number of settings, of which two settings are relevant to me:

Set Priority
Set Affinity

Subsequently I change Priority from Normal to High
and when I click on Affinity, I disable All processors and enable CPU 2 only.

These settings prioritize the processing of the madifaceusb driver above all drivers and allocate the madifaceusb driver to be processed exclusively by the physical CPU 2.

These settings reduce latency and avoid hiccups.

However, when I reboot my Windows 10 systems, these settings are reset again to default and I have to manually set them again as mentioned above.

Interestingly when I apply the same settings to audiodg.exe and I reboot Windows 10, the settings are the same as set before the rebooting.

Is there any way to make the settings sticky i.e. permanent?

2 Reply by ramses (edited by ramses 2023-04-23 18:25:44)

  • ramses
  • DAW Mastermind
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  • From: UTC+1
  • Registered: 2012-10-14
  • Posts: 13,229

Re: madifaceusb - Priority and Affinity reset to default after reboot

I think you are misled, see this comment from RME: https://forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.ph … 85#p201185
madifaceusb.exe is not the driver, it is most likely only the driver settings dialog.

Drivers are usually loaded into the kernel, you won't see them as executables in the process table. As user/admin, you have no possibility to change the priority of drivers. I, personally, would wish that I could parametrize the runtime of a driver to optimize certain drivers not to block a core for too long (to get lesser DPC latencies). But also such (more useful) things are not possible.

If you need this for the one or other reason, "Process Lasso Pro" from Bitsum is the tool that supports you with such tasks.
It's also useful to automatically enter energy saving mode if certain programs (like DAW) are not running anymore and if you are not active on the console (no keyboard activity or mouse movement).
The devs behind Bitsum are very friendly and customer oriented, they implemented some of my wishes.

I recommend you to get the lifetime license because they are actively developing this product, and you save money every year.  Lifetime= $39.95 vs. 2x $24.95 (year 1 + 2)=$49.90 and then you save $24.95 per year.

Which CPU do you have? In which power mode are you running and what ASIO buffersize is in use?
Maybe you have an advantage by pinning madifaceusb.exe to one core (CPU2), so that other audio related processes
have a better chance to get enough CPU time on other cores.

How high is the DPC latency on your system when the system is IDLE? Do you have enough reserves for tasks with real-time demands like audio? Or are CPU cores blocked for too long by bad drivers (high DPC latency)?

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub14

3 Reply by MC

  • MC
  • MC
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  • From: Germany/Thailand
  • Registered: 2007-04-06
  • Posts: 25,615

Re: madifaceusb - Priority and Affinity reset to default after reboot

Correct. The driver is a sys or dll.

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

MC's Website

4 Reply by switch6343 (edited by switch6343 2023-04-29 22:44:44)

  • From: Central Switzerland
  • Registered: 2022-02-23
  • Posts: 29

Re: madifaceusb - Priority and Affinity reset to default after reboot

ramses, thanks for your feedback. Sorry for the misunderstanding, I now understand the difference between a driver and the madifaceuse.exe app. Thanks.
In the meantime I purchased Process Lasso Pro, lifetime license, entire home (max 5 PCs), excellent software.

I implemented a plethora of tweaks on my NUC11, both in BIOS as well as in Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC to reduce jitter, elimiate electro smog to the maximum, reduce idle times, allocate CPU (Affinity) and prioritze madeifaceusb.exe, etc. etc. The improved sound quality is stellar. I only now realise how extremely bad Windows (10) is as OS to run any Media Software to play and reproduce music albums. I don't know how it compares to Linux or macOS, but to what I listened until applying all those tweaks. It is almost unthinkable that I was listening to absolute crap, garbage music reproduction for many years. It's a waste of money to try to improve music reproduction by investing in expensive hardware e.g. DACs, amplifiers, expensive speakersystems, expensive headphones. The root of all evil is Windows. I just found out. Glad I found out that a few very good tweaks makes a difference between day and night.

5 Reply by ramses (edited by ramses 2024-10-01 07:24:32)

  • ramses
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  • From: UTC+1
  • Registered: 2012-10-14
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Re: madifaceusb - Priority and Affinity reset to default after reboot

switch6343 wrote:

ramses, thanks for your feedback. Sorry for the misunderstanding, I now understand the difference between a driver and the madifaceuse.exe app. Thanks.
In the meantime I purchased Process Lasso Pro, lifetime license, entire home (max 5 PCs), excellent software.

I implemented a plethora of tweaks on my NUC11, both in BIOS as well as in Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC to reduce jitter, elimiate electro smog to the maximum, reduce idle times, allocate CPU (Affinity) and prioritze madeifaceusb.exe, etc. etc. The improved sound quality is stellar. I only now realise how extremely bad Windows (10) is as OS to run any Media Software to play and reproduce music albums. I don't know how it compares to Linux or macOS, but to what I listened until applying all those tweaks. It is almost unthinkable that I was listening to absolute crap, garbage music reproduction for many years. It's a waste of money to try to improve music reproduction by investing in expensive hardware e.g. DACs, amplifiers, expensive speakersystems, expensive headphones. The root of all evil is Windows. I just found out. Glad I found out that a few very good tweaks makes a difference between day and night.

I came across an older post of yours because you highly praised an (overpriced) USB cable last recently and claimed sound differences by better USB cable (which is completely impossible).

Here you mentioned significant sound differences due to Windows optimization, optimizing driver processes, and similar tweaks.

To put it plainly: also this is simply incorrect.

Windows is typically optimized for audio production with DAWs to prevent audio dropouts—if they occur at all. In rare cases, this can happen during audio playback, but often it’s enough to adjust the power settings in Windows.

However, in none of these cases does it result in improved sound quality. It is to avoid clear audio drops that happen because the CPU was not fast enough processing.

If you believe you're hearing sound quality differences, it's most likely due to perception (psychoacoustics).

Regarding jitter reduction, every RME device already handles this automatically with SteadyClock FS. There's nothing left to optimize. Especially in this setup, jitter suppression has nothing to do with process prioritization or similar tweaks.

Windows is not that bad as you claim. Typically, only a little has to be changed for DAW work, in even rarer cases for pure listening to audio. Process Prioritization, Windows Tuning and perceptible audio quality (sound) are two different things.

Windows tuning is for solving issues if the CPU was e.g., blocked for too long by bad drivers. The effect of such issues is even higher when the CPU runs with reduced power in energy saving modes. But this is not about sound.

Audio gaps on Windows can also be solved by making the ASIO buffer size bigger. For pure music listening, this has no impact. Only people who are doing DAW work this can disturb in certain use cases in terms of monitoring (RTL).

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub14