1 Topic by matrixmodulator (edited by matrixmodulator 2022-01-20 02:33:42)

  • Registered: 2022-01-19
  • Posts: 12

Topic: UFX+ dropouts with usb, why latency mon software removes the dropouts?

Hello!
I just got a brand new UFX+
It works fine but i would really like to understand and fix one issue i have with it.
I can not use 32 and 64 sample buffer size because there is 1 audio dropout each second.
So i use 128 samples and up but still there is audio dropouts sometimes, like 1 per hour or so, it's annoying because this issue i have probably affect how much vst plugins i can use before having audio dropouts in a DAW while i mix... Or even if it doesnt matter, i'd like to make it work like it's expected.

My main question is why all dropouts goes away when i start latency mon software?...
For example i set 32 samples size in the UFX+ and then i start latency mon, i press the green play button in latency mon and all dropouts goes away, then they come back when i stop latency mon.
That means my computer specs and setup is able to playback a simple wav file at 32 samples but only when latency mon is running, so i concluded the USB cable is good and i have a good usb chipset type and connexion right?

I attached a few printscreens of tests i did, maybe it can give a clue to find the issue, because now the only option i see is getting a new motherboard and cpu. By the way if you have some recommendations don't hesitate.

- Win 10
- I7 7700k with 32gb memory and EVGA 1070 GPU
- Asus motherboard with intel usb chipset

Usualy i don't have problems with this computer.

I tried on another computer with an asus prime motherboard and a less performant cpu I5, it behaves the same but when i tried on a laptop that's about 1 year old, also made from asus and not optimized at all for audio recording, it was perfect, no audio dropouts at all even at 32 samples and even while opening a ton of youtube videos and apps in the background, i was not able to make it dropout.


Here's other stuff i tried to resolve it:
- updated my motherboard bios
There is no overclocking settings done on this computer
- updated the chipset drivers
- deactivated everything i could in the device manager except the ufx+
- removed completely the GPU 1070 from the computer
- removed all usb cables from the computer except the UFX+ and one mouse.
- 3 different usb3 cables
- switched to manual usb3 mode in the ufx+ hardware options itself instead of auto mode
- I tried the UFX+ in all the different ports that are managed by the intel usb chipset
- I tried two USB2 port
- I disabled C States in the Bios then enabled it because it doesnt help
- Disabled lan and bluetooth in the bios.
- tried the sonnet allegro usb 4 ports pcie usb3 card, same issue
- When i removed my pci-e card that gives me 4 additional sata ports for hard drives, i saw the latency drop a lot in DPC latency checker v.1.4.0. It went from red 2000us to 500-1000us but the dropouts were still there, maybe just a little less, about 20% less but still a lot of dropouts.

All of this is with nothing else connected on the UFX+ except the usb cable and a pair of speakers.

CPU and GPU are not overheating, it's 16 celcius in the room right now.

I was using a focusrite saffire liquid 56 before getting this UFX+. I was using 64 samples or 128 samples with the focusrite with firewire and i never had audio dropouts while listening to a simple wav file in windows. I had to use the "long" setting under the firewire driver latency in the saffire mix control for that though. When i got my logitech keyboard i installed logitech ghub for it and i had a few BSOD, then it was fine but i had to use "long" setting since then. So i bought a UFX+ and now this.

Thanks!



https://uc384fc6a8d3392291b7cb8929fc.previews.dropboxusercontent.com/p/thumb/ABaqLJ7McK3ndxXKR66-5ZBZ-Ftwogho6lPWucT5Ri4Nssg5YhGesDXjSACvIf8nijfe8gbnWLxeF2BSrbvdQ6SaY3ao53BOaTxTjivC02G9w0Rm4g0ZKaFXQ8S6kAtCOSqrCBRMoMRBxRn8Ol8qdVNtVpPKJmseZHjuIXKplsvxa4Q599Ji4azutAFdpEvA58GjyssCjkRJtO-ymwO-njBuUn0RyuE9rSgGEBOaxl9z29ytUhPfz3iXJSmENtv2KWiDRnOSdb_Bek_E3-WcxE0HUUtuZVCarnYWEWyy33vnwTjE1_nedyq30W8dMuIGRmK2e3XfNIOOnA4y8ifbcE_twUZFsG_pW1yOnchf-At6ug/p.jpeg

https://uc535a47063fb63d6c95c52cfd03.previews.dropboxusercontent.com/p/thumb/ABaJEotFfZmDRxO-tG7Epp2rJIxnt-MVdWbo-w7AePb6Twv2nVkArHDkCzMEHPCif6_6M0I1luYVn63ocaa1uhNIqNjBow4_XPOxA-5fmqhDiGDI1I5tz-mXAHht5gl7Z5Gz_xkSZV2Tqx3onN8-QyXYTtaZdTgQqxYWPhh4J0MRJk5tdGX56XcVna5yOcWdpmFc0SsQGWVqBBSf6Z_eAWARqD_vaHbvi_-RMNpBatjC_dspmKI89eX3vbWvxNsLWBK-Lo5BtL0_CeL4OHfcusX6v5IiRZ4ULAoVBk_Gn89Pm9I4ScRM7bXUlJO7FDMlTqIz2TSd-U7krtLABJd64-k6utiYBEzXwC1znvWfY9WAy3bi5UNYiN_zjtjK8qsNLMIcRyuf0trW7xq1t6ABmNoK/p.jpeg?size=1600x1200&size_mode=3

https://uc2d02cbea0a98d1dee61e7f47b6.previews.dropboxusercontent.com/p/thumb/ABYoia3QOGrVAIGPnnZUXFQocuHe_iTl5nSvj9g3hR29pE4nOnTusyydfINCfx-I7puVBKdgtN-EF_xq7O_6igtVKjj0AwHQWUECnPHj-6CoAmIO41MjyclaLdCTHwITEh1x9Tah_wh3nY8I2EHnIxvHeDEGFf7-Y6-GssDnx1xDHF-67BcQbCYo7B645rvhE_lFDuZE3ScXONyJXLaKobsFodVCXpV4qzXZO_HplqS0WkfnZukJvsOckLKL7rCoQ5zqcIKYLsjPZNYUcRfdXxGrFqvPv9uNpgg4pAqBDZrjdIRZ1ijuFd3A-exgkigoCxUQ_rFGE-vN2mOPgqlZvFqwEeHurWaNvGeHU_Pd7ipNFuYJ1JCJ6puAp5BIRo4YB0abV1_sLl3AoHUeZovtgySP/p.jpeg?size=1600x1200&size_mode=3

2 Reply by ramses (edited by ramses 2022-08-21 21:19:30)

  • ramses
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Re: UFX+ dropouts with usb, why latency mon software removes the dropouts?

You can exclude USB transport errors (e.g., due to USB cable issues) by using the USB diagnosis in the RME driver settings.
Keep the driver setting window open, wait until you get audio drops and then watch whether you get CRC errors as well,
see manual ch 7.1, 40.3.

If you have no USB transport errors, then you should continue to use LatencyMon to find out, whether your system's DPC latencies are too high. This could be, e.g., caused by a bad driver which runs for too long on a CPU core and might block audio by this.
We had several threads here about this topic, use the extended search function of the forum and search for “LatencyMon” and my username or see, e.g., here:
https://forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.ph … 52#p178752
https://forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?pid=178481

Besides some tuning tips that you find on the internet, a not so well-known one is to disable energy saving also on nVidia graphic cards. This can be done with a tool called “powermizer” and some settings that somebody recommended on Cubase forum, I put this information together in this post: https://forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.ph … 18#p178618

This helped in my case to get my system 100% reliably working without any audio drops under Windows 10 21H2 as it was the case with Windows 7 using the lowest ASIO buffer sizes of 32 samples (MADIface driver) under normal and higher system load. See my test project: https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … cks-de-en/

It can also be beneficial to prioritize Windows for background tasks, see my blog: https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … es-or-not/
This leads to a higher and constant time quantum, where the CPU can work longer / more efficient on a job before it has to perform a context switch to work on another task.

If you have issues when having network activity, check for your internet security / antivirus solution.
Kaspersky Internet Security and Norton cause very high DPC latencies when accessing the network.
I found out that these problems are gone when using Microsoft's Windows Defender.

Regarding the comparison with your Focusrite LS 56. It has significant less I/O ports: 34 vs 188 (UFX+).
Note: all audio channels need to be transferred no matter whether being used or not.
Only exceptions: RME HDSPe MADI FX and MADIface XT card and Firewire driver to exclude e.g. digital ports.

> I attached a few printscreens of tests i did
The links do not work, from the URL you took it from a preview .. well thats not the correct way it seems.
See here how I do it: https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … rum-EN-DE/

> - Win 10
> - I7 7700k with 32gb memory and EVGA 1070 GPU
> - Asus motherboard with intel usb chipset

Some information missing:
— Which version of Windows 10? I am using 21H2 for example, and you?
— Which nVidia driver version do you use? Game ready driver or studio driver?
— Which Asus mainboard / chipset exactly?

> I tried on another computer with an asus prime motherboard and a less performant cpu I5, it behaves the same
> but when i tried on a laptop that's about 1 year old, also made from asus and not optimized at all for audio recording,
> it was perfect, no audio dropouts at all even at 32 samples and even while opening a ton of youtube videos and
> apps in the background, i was not able to make it dropout.

I had a mainboard in the past which was simply crap by design, the successor (the same board only upgraded with Sata6 and USB3 at that time) had with the same Windows installation and BIOS settings significantly less DPC. Sometimes it can even be a mainboard / BIOS problem.

> I disabled C States in the Bios then enabled it because it doesnt help

You should disable C-States, as energy saving causes a higher DPC latency of over 250 microseconds, which is quite a lot.
See the table with C-states and to be expected latencies from my blog:
https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … -X10SRi-F/

You should also use the most performant energy profile in Windows and disable power saving for USB.
I would also disable Windows CPU core parking using Bitsums tool Parkcontrol.

> tried the sonnet allegro usb 4 ports pcie usb3 card, same issue

Normally, a good card, you have that one with the FL1100 chip? Fully supported in Windows 10 with an efficient working driver using MSI (Message Signalled Interrupts) which is a more efficient working interrupt model.

> When i removed my pci-e card that gives me 4 additional sata ports for hard drives, i saw the latency drop
> a lot in DPC latency checker v.1.4.0. It went from red 2000us to 500-1000us but the dropouts were still there,
> maybe just a little less, about 20% less but still a lot of dropouts.

500-1000us is still a lot, on an IDLE system I reach values between 2,5 and 80 microseconds.
And then my system (see https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … ponenten/) performs like this: https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … cks-de-en/

Another question is how the PCIe lanes of your mainboard (again, which one?!) are distributed across your mainboard.
Some PCIe slots might have PCIe lanes coming directly from the CPU, which is preferred compared to PCIe sockets coming from the chipset. And you need to check the mainboard manual or other sources of information, whether the PCIe socket uses PCIe lanes that might be used by other components, which means that it's likely that the bandwidth will be shared.
Or if you use e.g., another PCIe x16 socket, that the amount of PCIe lanes of your main graphic card might be reduced from 16 to 8 which reduces bandwidth and performance for e.g., games. For recording, still tolerable IMHO.

As you noticed already … Some systems, like your laptop, have no issues, some other systems need more care.
And even the best audio driver can not “save the world”.

Windows and Mac systems are both no real-time operating systems. The process scheduler can schedule jobs and prioritize them. But to ensure data integrity when performing I/O, the so-called “low-level routines” (in fact the drivers) may not be interrupted by the process scheduler, They need to run as long until the driver detaches itself from a CPU core. It's beyond the scope and ability of the process scheduler to assign an audio related job to another CPU core to be processed faster.

Maybe you recognize that an audio driver can be written as good as can be, if the system or the drivers have some issues, then the best driver cannot solve the issue. All you can do is perhaps to increase ASIO buffer size because then the system can work more efficient on audio which reduces CPU and interrupt load and thus reduces also the amount of context switches.

The safest way is to get a turnkey system for audio where all components and settings have been tested / validated, that you get a system which is well suited for audio processing.

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub14
  • vinark
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Re: UFX+ dropouts with usb, why latency mon software removes the dropouts?

Well said Ramses!
Latency monitor is heavy on the CPU. It will apparently activate all cores at full speed. So I guess the dropouts are from throttling, core parking or dropping in and out of turbo etc.
I use throttlestop and parkcontrol on my laptop. Most thing are also fixable from energie settings and the bios, but not on most laptops. My laptop now runs at a fixed 4.2ghz instead of constantly changing from 2.8 to 4.5 it's max 1 core turbo.

Vincent, Amsterdam
https://soundcloud.com/thesecretworld
BFpro fs, 2X HDSP9652 ADI-8AE, 2X HDSP9632

4 Reply by ramses (edited by ramses 2022-01-19 10:53:44)

  • ramses
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Re: UFX+ dropouts with usb, why latency mon software removes the dropouts?

vinark wrote:

Well said Ramses!
Latency monitor is heavy on the CPU. It will apparently activate all cores at full speed. So I guess the dropouts are from throttling, core parking or dropping in and out of turbo etc.
I use throttlestop and parkcontrol on my laptop. Most thing are also fixable from energie settings and the bios, but not on most laptops. My laptop now runs at a fixed 4.2ghz instead of constantly changing from 2.8 to 4.5 it's max 1 core turbo.

Brilliant vinark, this is a reasonable explanation, why he doesn't get audio drops when LatencyMon runs ;-)

But that also means that with proper BIOS/Windows Settings his system should run fine.

Explanation: if a system has energy saving enabled, then under a lower processing load cpu cores are being deactivated, run at a lower clock speed and so on and so on.
The deeper the energy saving mode is (-> C-States) the longer it takes for sleeping CPU cores to wake up and become useable again. This increases DPC latency a lot.

If LatencyMon creates it's "typical DAW load" for measuring, the load could be high enough to bring the system so much "to speed", that most if not all cores are constantly running, in a good case of luck also at highest possible clock speed.

Side note: that he disabled C-State and re-enabled it because he thought it wouldn't bring anything shows again (not meant as a critique), how difficult such troubleshooting and the optimization process is for getting optimum performance for the near-realtime demands of audio processing, if you do not know how a computer works and for what purpose these settings are.

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

5 Reply by matrixmodulator (edited by matrixmodulator 2022-01-20 03:19:56)

  • Registered: 2022-01-19
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Re: UFX+ dropouts with usb, why latency mon software removes the dropouts?

ramses wrote:

You can exclude USB transport errors (e.g. due to USB cable issues) by using the USB diagnosis in the RME driver settings.
Keep the driver setting window open, wait until you get audio drops and then watch whether you get CRC errors as well,
see  manual ch 7.1, 40.3.


Hello Ramses,
this is for sure the best and most helpful reply i ever got online, thanks so much!

>You can exclude USB transport errors...
-Yes i saw that feature and i read that page on the manual but unfortunately i don't really understand what means each of the numbers in the 0|0|0 formatting. What is each number? When running at 128 samples it can be 30 minutes or more before i hear a dropout so i tested again at 32 and 64. There is a LOT of audio dropouts, like i said 1 each second at 32 and 64 samples but it stays at 0|0|0  0 crc5/16 0crc32err
Is it written in the manual what each of theses exactly mean? I asked about it to rme by email but i think they ignored that question, i asked them twice without answer.
Had a ton of audio dropouts at 32 samples right now since 3 minutes and it's still at 0|0|0... But last week i had something like 0|6|0. What means the middle digit?


https://uca58f26a3bdb82bebf97eef7542.previews.dropboxusercontent.com/p/thumb/ABYLiKXdWMSyUPJv1vKtDTqveF5X2e0Xgkw6phMxHPtGqWWm-s4tn1AIgLakVz2o83YKvRPS1UeIFQJMdDimYxvpCLZ82fkMlyH3Hwm218Qb5YZvmgAsYS2ot8ysWY6evO2992M4mrNcYV9rZnqEEydRGZyiSd69KT7tAF39QC3zo95IwMqEXhtb_2xVflDUm-EZEhWGRPQsJzDJxb56MMKxAuN9UrQ3Yku9K34NK2FVjLpY3I7qW13Za1hvybpt060fNz2OaFRiR8x8FfqfmEQsFZsY8ypv5JqcisIP5d3tYQrkGM4eGvv37R04wAQpAB_vlMtOEiy_pCHkiv4ITgCRyTdV7cPUgGBiUWoSnBz7SISfDydgUGUYpDAw6ODtYw044ePeiUDX-H0_xKaWM8h-/p.jpeg?size=1600x1200&size_mode=3


>If you have no USB transport errors then you should continue to use LatencyMon
-Yeah at this point i tested so many usb3 cables and combinaisons that it makes sense it's more of a driver or configuration conflict. I will read all i can with your name on an advanced search but for now i'd like to finish to reply to your questions.
It's hard to remove more hardware than what i tried, i mean at this point there was just a monitor, a mouse and the barebone motherboard+cpu+ram and the UFX+

> Besides some tuning tips that you find in the internet a not so well known one is to disable energy saving also on nVidia graphic cards with a tool called "powermizer"
- ok i will try that for sure and report back here.

>It can also be beneficial to priotize Windows for background tasks,
Ok seems good i'll try that too!

>If you have issues when having network activity check for your internet security / antivirus solution.
-I already removed all antivirus i had and i also tried to disable the LAN through the BIOS and the device manager.

> all audio channels need to be transferred no matter whether being used or not.
- Ah i see, i didnt know that!
Is it possible to disable the MADI completely from the UFX+ until i need to use it?

- I updated the printscreen links, sorry about that.

- Here's the complete win version:

Édition    Windows 10 Professionnel
Version    20H2
Installé le    2022-01-09
Build du système d’exploitation    19042.1466
Expérience    Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.3920.0

I was previously using the studio drivers for NVIDIA, i uninstalled them, tried without the GPU removed from the motherboard, did not help, i reinstalled the gpu and reinstalled the drivers but using the game ready version and it's currently running the latest 511.23 version

I added a link to the motherboard but there is a maximum of 3 link per post here so i forgot to add it in another comment... It's this model:
https://rog.asus.com/motherboards/rog-m … ero-model/

It has the Z270 intel chipset for usb ports. I tried all theses usb ports that's connected to the intel chipset, i saw it in usb tree viewer. I also tried all other usb ports just in case lol

From the tech specs of this motherboard:
2 x USB 3.1 port(s) (2 at back panel, , Type-A + USB Type-CTM)
6 x USB 3.0 port(s) (4 at back panel, blue, 2 at mid-board)
Intel® Z270 Chipset : *7
Intel® Z270 Chipset :
1 x USB 3.1 Gen 2 front panel connector port(s)
ASMedia® USB 3.1 Gen 2 controller :
6 x USB 2.0 port(s) (4 at back panel, black, 2 at mid-board)

> You should disable C-States as energy saving causes a higher DPC latency of over 250 microseconds which is quite a lot.
- Ok i will disable it again. I didnt want to have BSOD again, i'm not super familiar with the BIOS.

>You should also use the most performant energy profile in Windows and disable power saving for USB.
- This is the usual windows power configs i see online for audio recording?
I set it at performance mode
Are you talking about the setting "usb selective suspend?
Or is it something else you refer to?
I tried the usb selective suspend, it doesnt help the issue.


>I would also disable Windows CPU core parking using Bitsums tool Parkcontrol.
- ok thanks i'll try !

> Normally a good card, you have that one with the FL1100 chip ?
- Yes it says this in usb tree viewer software:
Fresco Logic xHCI (USB3) Controller FL1100 Series

>500-1000us is still a lot, on an IDLE system I reach values between 2,5 and 80 microseconds.
- That's great i wish i could do the same. On the asus laptop i tried that worked fine it was still around 500-1000us but had no dropouts at all.

>Some PCIe slots might have PCIe lanes coming directly from the CPU
Yeah absolutely, i realised this and here's a printscreen of my chipset config.
I tried all usb ports just in case... Nothing helps lol

https://uc676de30cd5842d74112bad0391.previews.dropboxusercontent.com/p/thumb/ABZXrdLOm6lAvvw8Jx6jDyoKMXvX7Ii82YVlGdXmJsyHe_wSvPPojz7EYvBzz1l9NFRnvKrJ1egpfFHOjBqzPLFRohLOSK4F8whUicJNaDXipJe2wjdYJMC233e8yK2DotiqyAwpZ3VM0ZFJb7ySGovdssHf5TfazhJFLpVY8FHnEx43-ElsGE1JCCYded65o8i-gwT1DjRtn8FXBhcpufo6zeM3aLSfRC-r2SV9SfcS6Ja5u5k6NUApCKsw_vPpX8Lguk5NuoUQj7o4U43UwytYcgHx_pIB9DpGzx3V_siRzwbHVIr8juAz4HclI_XSF5OFW_3Gw3lnw2Lj48uZlUwRftqoLgzWfbQj3ztAOITMOOO0aqA_jngAdXpxB5QU8we3YyVs1MgYKI-RMyeeeoHP/p.png?size=1600x1200&size_mode=3


- I think i will try to put the sonnet pcie card in the first slot at the top near the CPU, this is direct on the cpu i think

- I'm not sure where to look in the motherboard manual to see which of the pci-e slots is directly on the CPU instead of the chipset... You know? Probably the first one at the top nearest to the CPU right?


>The safest way is to get a turnkey system for audio
You know a very good company that offers this?


Again, thanks so much !!!

  • Registered: 2022-01-19
  • Posts: 12

Re: UFX+ dropouts with usb, why latency mon software removes the dropouts?

vinark wrote:

Well said Ramses!
Latency monitor is heavy on the CPU. It will apparently activate all cores at full speed. So I guess the dropouts are from throttling, core parking or dropping in and out of turbo etc.
I use throttlestop and parkcontrol on my laptop. Most thing are also fixable from energie settings and the bios, but not on most laptops. My laptop now runs at a fixed 4.2ghz instead of constantly changing from 2.8 to 4.5 it's max 1 core turbo.

Hello vinark!
That makes sense!
I will try theses 2 softwares.
Where do i see the real time CPU clock speed to make sure it's steady instead of going down and up all the time?

7 Reply by ramses (edited by ramses 2022-08-21 21:21:47)

  • ramses
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Re: UFX+ dropouts with usb, why latency mon software removes the dropouts?

According to your mainboard diagram, all PCIe sockets seem to get PCIe lanes from the CPU, see upper left.

You can use tools like CPU-Z and HWMonitor (both need to be run as Administrator) to check for
— TAB CPU: CPU clock
— TAB Mainboard: Graphic Interface: whether your GPU works still with x16 Link Width

First, little information about BIOS settings to disabling energy saving to get constant clock / sustained performance:

In the BIOS, to disable energy saving, you need to:
— Disable all C-, T-, P- States (depends on BIOS, usually only C-States in modern BIOS)
— Some BIOS need C-States OFF, some need to set it to C0/1
— C1E, extended halt state: Disable
For getting the highest clock, you might have to keep:
— Turbo Mode: Enable (by this I get a 200MHz higher clock than base clock, something between base and turbo)
For a constant CPU clock, you might need to disable
— EIST: Disable
And this might also be beneficial to keep internal clock constant
— Spread Spectrum: Disable (https://www.quora.com/What-is-clock-spr … S-settings)

Let's disable EIST here, to see quicker whether a fix clock solves issues.
Check with CPU-Z/HW-Monitor whether the clocks are stable and at or slightly over base speed and stay constant independent of system load.
Not 100% sure, but if EIST is turned off, then it should IMHO not be possible anymore to change/control the CPUs clock speed by Energy Profiles. This is my understanding, but who knows how systems really works, needs to be checked.
Of course for 1st tests it is easier to control this through BIOS to get the highest constant clock and least energy saving lag.

To be continued later when I have more time.

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub14
  • vinark
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Re: UFX+ dropouts with usb, why latency mon software removes the dropouts?

matrixmodulator wrote:
vinark wrote:

Well said Ramses!
Latency monitor is heavy on the CPU. It will apparently activate all cores at full speed. So I guess the dropouts are from throttling, core parking or dropping in and out of turbo etc.
I use throttlestop and parkcontrol on my laptop. Most thing are also fixable from energy settings and the bios, but not on most laptops. My laptop now runs at a fixed 4.2ghz instead of constantly changing from 2.8 to 4.5 it's max 1 core turbo.

Hello vinark!
That makes sense!
I will try theses 2 softwares.
Where do i see the real time CPU clock speed to make sure it's steady instead of going down and up all the time?

You can see it in throttlestop itself.
You can have a look at the cpu speeds when doing normal audio and when running latency monitor.

Vincent, Amsterdam
https://soundcloud.com/thesecretworld
BFpro fs, 2X HDSP9652 ADI-8AE, 2X HDSP9632

9 Reply by ramses (edited by ramses 2022-08-21 21:24:14)

  • ramses
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Re: UFX+ dropouts with usb, why latency mon software removes the dropouts?

After you performed the changes in the BIOS:
— Are the audio drops gone?
— Do you still see spikes in LatencyMon?

See screenshot in post #1: Highest measured interrupt to process latency
You had spikes up to 4300us = 4,3ms that's far too much.
Needs to stay under 1000us, otherwise LatencyMon alerts that your computer is not well suited for real-time audio.
Would be good to stay below 150us here on an IDLE system and if you have good drivers.

Your current measured Interrupt to process latency will show different values.
You need to watch yourself in what range they are most often.
At least you can see that your system can reach much lower values if 44us here at this particular measuring interval.

After the BIOS changes, you might need to further optimize the system, as you said the additional SATA PCIe card caused issues. You could again remove the PCIe card and check, whether you get much better LatencyMon results with much lower DPC latency spikes. Based on the results we might need to look for another PCIe slot for this card or to check which drivers are being used for this card, from Win10 or whether there are better drivers available from the card's vendor.
It might also be the case that we might have to leave this card out of the system.
Do you simply connect other SSDs or HDs to the system, or do you use any RAID level with this card?
Why do you need so many SATA ports?
Can you get disks with higher capacity to solve it this way and entirely remove the card from your system?
If it is for backup purposes, you could also get an external USB 3.2 case for that purpose.
I do this as well to save cost for getting (a loud) NAS.
You should take care then, that
— the USB port/controller on your computer and
— the USB communication chip in the external case
support UASP (USB attached SCSI protocol), this speeds up transfers for many and small files significantly.
And depending on the speed of your disks, you have also a speed advantage compared to using a NAS through 1Gbit network links. I am using a Seagate Enterprise disk with 8 TB capacity which has a throughput up to 240 MB/sec peak throughput and which turns off if it's not being used, very practical.
See also here under internal and external storage: https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … mponenten/
It's this disk: https://www.heise.de/preisvergleich/sea … 18879.html
And this external housing: https://www.heise.de/preisvergleich/sta … 29902.html
As USB card I used this, which is not available anymore. I assume that your more modern mainboard might have USB ports which support UASP. Maybe not in the Intel Chipset but if you should have 3rd party USB3.2 controller on it.

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub14
  • Registered: 2022-01-19
  • Posts: 12

Re: UFX+ dropouts with usb, why latency mon software removes the dropouts?

Hello,
quick update here.
I appreciate so much all the help i got here, i saved this info in a note pad just in case.
I tried so many things, i learned stuff etc.
But the problem was really less complicated than i thought...
I installed HWINFO and noticed there was some high temps on the motherboard sensor, i was not aware of the sensors in the other programs i use to monitor temps, but this one has many info and so i added fans at the front, top, and boosted the gpu fans, theres a lot more air flow now, temps are lower and i can use 32 samples without any issues now. I also get high FPS in games.
Problem was probably the chipset for usb on the motherboard was getting too hot and i didnt see this temp until i installed HWINFO.
Hope that helps someone else.
Thanks again!

11 Reply by ramses (edited by ramses 2022-08-21 21:25:28)

  • ramses
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Re: UFX+ dropouts with usb, why latency mon software removes the dropouts?

Well done :-) Yes, heat can also become an issue, when it throttles the clock of components.
For that reason, I prefer desktops and big tower cases like this:

https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … mponenten/

https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/index.php/Attachment/2679-2020-11-22-Air-Flow-jpg/

https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/index.php/Attachment/2676-Supermicro-11-2020-045-JPG/

This is an excellent pre-dampened XL case: https://www.heise.de/preisvergleich/fra … 83667.html

I didn't think much about it because my system has components that do not run so hot. It has enough room and very silent / selected blowers, where you also need to take care that the airflow do not hinder each other.
Usually best with standard cases is, to implement an airflow from front to back.

But if you have a long graphic card, you can also mount a blower at the bottom so that the GPU blower get a little more air
without interrupting the airflow front to back, see above in the drawing, where I made some comments about airflow.

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

12 Reply by matrixmodulator (edited by matrixmodulator 2022-02-07 01:27:46)

  • Registered: 2022-01-19
  • Posts: 12

Re: UFX+ dropouts with usb, why latency mon software removes the dropouts?

and it's back again... many dropouts, it was perfect yesterday and i didnt change anything... did not even rebooted...

13 Reply by soundslikejoe (edited by soundslikejoe 2022-02-16 17:15:51)

  • Registered: 2012-11-26
  • Posts: 31

Re: UFX+ dropouts with usb, why latency mon software removes the dropouts?

matrixmodulator wrote:

and it's back again... many dropouts, it was perfect yesterday and i didnt change anything... did not even rebooted...


I suffered from this for some time, and did all of the troubleshooting steps possible. In the end, the only solution I found was to run the UFX+ on Thunderbolt.  Recently my Thunderbolt ports began to cause problems, and UFX stopped working completely on TB.  Switched back to USB and these same problems remain.

During my troubleshooting days,  I replaced Video cards (NVIDA to AMD to other NVIDA), configured video card drivers, tweaked motherboard, etc.  From my experience...   If you have this problem (my assumption is incompatible USB chipset)...  Nothing will fix it, except running the unit on TB.

  • Registered: 2012-11-26
  • Posts: 31

Re: UFX+ dropouts with usb, why latency mon software removes the dropouts?

Since I've been forced back into USB...   I've had dropouts on playback and errors while recording. The latter is ABSOLUTELY A PROFESSION KILLER from a studio owner perspective. Here's a sample of the errors created via UFX+ on USB recordings.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/x3ehu9vn7u00o … s.mp3?dl=0

  • Registered: 2020-11-09
  • Posts: 6

Re: UFX+ dropouts with usb, why latency mon software removes the dropouts?

soundslikejoe wrote:

Since I've been forced back into USB...

Did you try a cheap dedicated usb card with a “friendly chipset” (eg Fresco Logic)?

  • ramses
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Re: UFX+ dropouts with usb, why latency mon software removes the dropouts?

HerbertWest wrote:
soundslikejoe wrote:

Since I've been forced back into USB...

Did you try a cheap dedicated usb card with a “friendly chipset” (eg Fresco Logic)?

Good idea. By this you isolate the recording interface to a dedicated USB bus.

Benefits:
1) you avoid any potential overload situation of the chipset based USB infrastructure. Also side effect when connecting other USB components.
2) you have a supported chipset (FL1100) see RME manual
3) Windows 10 has a good working driver for FL1100
4) The driver for FL1100 use the more efficient MSI (message signalled interrupts)

This Sonnet card should work well
https://www.sonnettech.com/product/alle … 4port.html

Also comes with (IMHO more robust) USB Type-A connectors.

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