1 Topic by allenconstantine (edited by allenconstantine 2022-04-01 11:33:49)

  • Registered: 2022-03-21
  • Posts: 15

Topic: FIREFACE UFX II - Can someone reproduce this?

I get a popping/clicking noise whenever I'm on 256 buffer or 128.

To reproduce this on Windows, right click on the speaker icon located bottom right of the screen, choose Sounds, Playback, and on the Speakers RME UFX II, right click on it and click test.

What I've found is that on 512 buffer size, the issue goes away.

Can someone tune in on this?

Issue found on Windows 10 Pro, Version 21H2, OS Build 19044.1620.


Here is a screenshot, to make it easier to finding what I just wrote.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aDBVgr … sp=sharing


I highly appreciate the help!

2 Reply by ramses (edited by ramses 2022-04-05 12:04:41)

  • ramses
  • DAW Mastermind
  • Offline
  • From: UTC+1
  • Registered: 2012-10-14
  • Posts: 13,183

Re: FIREFACE UFX II - Can someone reproduce this?

Can have different reasons, usually DPC latencies. We had already many threads about this in the forum.

[ some background information see here:
    https://forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.ph … 94#p185494
    https://forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.ph … 10#p185510
  LatencyMon values of my system, energy saving also disabled on nVidia card using power mizer
    https://forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.ph … 38#p178638 ]

Use extended forum search by e.g. using my nick ramses and LatencyMon
or perform google search to search this forum using this syntax: LatencyMon site:forum.rme-audio.de

Recommended steps:

*** Check cabling 1st
Is your UFX II connected to an USB hub ? If yes: although supported I would recommend - in case of any issues - to connect it directly to the PC and to an USB port, so that the UFX II has a USB bus of it's own, see manual ch 40.3.
Do you have any CRC transport errors? See manual ch 40.3. You need to have the driver settings windows opened and keep it opened so that the CRC check is being performed. Do you see any CRC counters increase.

*** Most likely you have too high DPC latencies
Then your CPU cores are not working efficient and bad drivers might block your PC cores for too long.
Did you check your PC already with LatencyMon to find out DPC latency and whether you have bad drivers?
Deactivate HW of your mainboard that you do not need to reduce the amount of installed drivers and to reduce unnecessary interrupt load and context switches. WLAN can cause issues, for networking better use LAN / cabled setup.
Bluetooh can also cause issues, disable if not needed.
Same for internal sound card on mainboard, only keep it on if you need it for a PC headset.

*** The usual and most important tuning steps for BIOS and Windows for a recording PC .. did you already perform them?

1. BIOS:
    Note: this is for Intel BIOS, AMD BIOS uses slightly different names here and there (for energy saving, ...)
    - disabling of: C-/P-/T-States, C1E (enhanced halt state), spread spectrum (everywhere)
    - disable not needed hardware
    - enable TURBO
    EIST (speed step) I would keep enabled to have control about clock through Windows energy profiles,
    where you can fine tune the amount of cores being used and the CPU clock by using Bitsums tool parkcontrol.

    [ See also the tuning that I performed for my Intel based supermicro server board.
    It contains also an interesting table, which add-on latencies you get with energy saving / C-States.
       https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … -X10SRi-F/
    It shows you also how I tweak the usual Windows Energy profiles using Bitsums tool "park control".
    This you do not have to perform, simply use the new / hidden energy profile Ultimate Performance, see below ]

2.1 Windows:
   - enabling / using the energy profile ultimate performance (see: https://www.makeuseof.com/how-to-enable … wer-plan/)
   - modify the power plan settings to deactivate energy saving for PCIe and USB (selective power saving)
   - check whether CPU core parking is disabled (using e.g. tool parkcontrol: https://bitsum.com/parkcontrol/ or by https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads … .1395061/)
   - prioritize background services (https://www.isunshare.com/windows-10/2- … -apps.html),
     see also https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … es-or-not/
   - disable Windows sound schema to "no sound"

2.2 If you have a nVidia GPU, then this might also be required:
    Although my PC was tuned fine I had occasionally spontaneous audio glitches which could only be fixed by turning off powersaving in the nVidia graphic card. Energy consumption was not that much higher afterwards. But GPU temperature has increased a little from around 50°C to 58°C. If you have a small case with bad airflow check temperatures afterwards. But at the end it was useful for me and entirely solved my audio issues:
    - disabling energy saving in nVidia graphic card using powermizer switch from a russian developer
      https://nvworld.ru/utilities/pmswitch/
      See also this article on Steinberg forum:  https://forums.steinberg.net/t/8-18-cor … tup/103725
      Contains also some recommendations for nVidia control panel (driver settings):
        - Energieverwaltungsmodus: Maximale Leistung bevorzugen
        - Threaded Optimierung: Ein
        - V-Sync: Aus

If everything is fine then you can achieve a similar performance like with this "artificial" Cubase project that I use to benchmark my system, whether all is still fine in terms of settings: 400 audio tracks with 2 VSTs in each track. So in total 400 tracks and around 800 VSTs (plus a few in the stereo sum). If you want to create a similar test for you, number of tracks depends on your CPU / HW: https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … cks-de-en/

My PC / setup just for reference, Xeon 6-core (E5-1650v4), see also: https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … mponenten/

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub14
  • Registered: 2022-03-21
  • Posts: 15

Re: FIREFACE UFX II - Can someone reproduce this?

ramses wrote:

Can have different reasons, usually DPC latencies. We had already many threads about this in the forum.

[ some background information see here:
    https://forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.ph … 94#p185494
    https://forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.ph … 10#p185510
  LatencyMon values of my system, energy saving also disabled on nVidia card using power mizer
    https://forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.ph … 38#p178638 ]

Use extended forum search by e.g. using my nick ramses and LatencyMon
or perform google search to search this forum using this syntax: LatencyMon site:forum.rme-audio.de

Recommended steps:

*** Check cabling 1st
Is your UFX II connected to an USB hub ? If yes: although supported I would recommend - in case of any issues - to connect it directly to the PC and to an USB port, so that the UFX II has a USB bus of it's own, see manual ch 40.3.
Do you have any CRC transport errors? See manual ch 40.3. You need to have the driver settings windows opened and keep it opened so that the CRC check is being performed. Do you see any CRC counters increase.

*** Most likely you have too high DPC latencies
Then your CPU cores are not working efficient and bad drivers might block your PC cores for too long.
Did you check your PC already with LatencyMon to find out DPC latency and whether you have bad drivers?
Deactivate HW of your mainboard that you do not need to reduce the amount of installed drivers and to reduce unnecessary interrupt load and context switches. WLAN can cause issues, for networking better use LAN / cabled setup.
Bluetooh can also cause issues, disable if not needed.
Same for internal sound card on mainboard, only keep it on if you need it for a PC headset.

*** The usual and most important tuning steps for BIOS and Windows for a recording PC .. did you already perform them?

1. BIOS:
    Note: this is for Intel BIOS, AMD BIOS uses slightly different names here and there (for energy saving, ...)
    - disabling of: C-/P-/T-States, C1E (enhanced halt state), spread spectrum (everywhere)
    - disable not needed hardware
    - enable TURBO
    EIST (speed step) I would keep enabled to have control about clock through Windows energy profiles,
    where you can fine tune the amount of cores being used and the CPU clock by using Bitsums tool parkcontrol.

    [ See also the tuning that I performed for my Intel based supermicro server board.
    It contains also an interesting table, which add-on latencies you get with energy saving / C-States.
       https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … -X10SRi-F/
    It shows you also how I tweak the usual Windows Energy profiles using Bitsums tool "park control".
    This you do not have to perform, simply use the new / hidden energy profile Ultimate Performance, see below ]

2.1 Windows:
   - enabling / using the energy profile ultimate performance (see: https://www.makeuseof.com/how-to-enable … wer-plan/)
   - modify the power plan settings to deactivate energy saving for PCIe and USB (selective power saving)
   - check whether CPU core parking is disabled (using e.g. tool parkcontrol: https://bitsum.com/parkcontrol/ or by https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads … .1395061/)
   - prioritize background services (https://www.isunshare.com/windows-10/2- … -apps.html),
     see also https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … es-or-not/
   - disable Windows sound schema to "no sound"

2.2 If you have a nVidia GPU, then this might also be required:
    Although my PC was tuned fine I had occasionally spontaneous audio glitches which could only be fixed by turning off powersaving in the nVidia graphic card. Energy consumption was not that much higher afterwards. But GPU temperature has increased a little from around 50°C to 58°C. If you have a small case with bad airflow check temperatures afterwards. But at the end it was useful for me and entirely solved my audio issues:
    - disabling energy saving in nVidia graphic card using powermizer switch from a russian developer
      https://nvworld.ru/utilities/pmswitch/
      See also this article on Steinberg forum:  https://forums.steinberg.net/t/8-18-cor … tup/103725
      Contains also some recommendations for nVidia control panel (driver settings):
        - Energieverwaltungsmodus: Maximale Leistung bevorzugen
        - Threaded Optimierung: Ein
        - V-Sync: Aus

If everything is fine then you can achieve a similar performance like with this "artificial" Cubase project that I use to benchmark my system, whether all is still fine in terms of settings: 400 audio tracks with 2 VSTs in each track. So in total 400 tracks and around 800 VSTs (plus a few in the stereo sum). If you want to create a similar test for you, number of tracks depends on your CPU / HW: https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … cks-de-en/

My PC / setup just for reference, Xeon 6-core (E5-1650v4), see also: https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … mponenten/

Thank you for all these tips and tricks. I will follow up if things are better smile

Much appreciate it!

Allen

  • Registered: 2023-01-12
  • Posts: 1

Re: FIREFACE UFX II - Can someone reproduce this?

I found the issue. My CPU and RAM were overclocked in BIOS. That caused problems with stutter and squeeking of sound. I restored BIOS to defaults and everything became normal again! smile I will now overclock only CPU to see if the problem was with RAM being overclocked...

5 Reply by synthRodriguez (edited by synthRodriguez 2024-04-07 00:30:36)

  • Registered: 2024-03-30
  • Posts: 5

Re: FIREFACE UFX II - Can someone reproduce this?

Thanks ramses, your list corrected my Intel PC Win11 FIFO errors. I think it was the BIOS stuff.

6 Reply by ramses (edited by ramses 2024-04-07 08:29:41)

  • ramses
  • DAW Mastermind
  • Offline
  • From: UTC+1
  • Registered: 2012-10-14
  • Posts: 13,183

Re: FIREFACE UFX II - Can someone reproduce this?

synthRodriguez wrote:

Thanks ramses, your list corrected my Intel PC Win11 FIFO errors. I think it was the BIOS stuff.

Nice to hear. BTW, as you run Win11, it might also help to re-gain performance by deactivating VBS and HVCI.
As it is a security feature I have to warn you to disable it. On the other hand, it is the key reason, why older CPUs are not supported in Windows 11 anymore due to performance issues, they are not powerful enough for these "security features".

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