1 Topic by unodos (edited by unodos 2022-04-10 10:57:39)

  • Registered: 2022-02-20
  • Posts: 36

Topic: [Solved] Tons of USB Diagnosis errors (UFX+)

Hello, I've been doing some work online and have noticed a correlation between internet activity and brief dropouts, which have caused a big spike in USB Diagnosis errors in MADIface settings. I can replicate this easily using the tests below.

It's a Sunday, and I'm doing my utmost to stay awake with coffee to debug this! I'd very much appreciate any input from people. Even as a techie this has me a bit stumped.

Here are some specs, environment and test information:

Specs:
Windows 11 64-bit
Intel i7 12700k
ASUS Prime Z690-P WiFi D4
Corsair 32GB DDR4 3200MHz
Sonnet Allegro PCIe USB 3.0 (Fresco Logic)

Environment:
-UFX+ with latest driver version 0.9747, ESS chip (latest firmware version 67) running over USB 3.0
-Latest Windows 11 build
-High performance power plan enabled
-UFX+ connected to Sonnet USB 3.0 port
-44.1 KHz sample rate
-Ethernet: Realtek Gaming 2.5GbE Family Controller


Testing:
I opened Firefox, and began streaming audio from a random YouTube video. I then opened the MADIface settings dialog, and in approx 10 minutes it reported USB errors, gradually increasing. The audio stopped briefly and errors were reported in the first and second brackets of USB Diagnosis, i.e. x | y | 0. I have easily replicated this across different browsers.

Another thing to mention is it reports 'USB FIFO error' frequently when starting the audio stream or during dropouts

To directly compare, a heavy session in Ableton at 32 samples produced no errors in the settings dialog after leaving the track running for over 30 minutes.

My first thoughts are some network devices interfering. I know how sensitive Windows is with real-time audio and networking.

Short of hunting down alternative network drivers, does anyone have any suggestions? This is pretty annoying, and I can't put direct blame on the Fresco USB card or cables given I've tried various ports and cables.

Error image examples (from settings dialog):
https://i3.lensdump.com/i/t295YT.png
https://i2.lensdump.com/i/t29yqz.png

Troubleshooting I’ve done (with no effect):
-Debugging with LatencyMon - no high latency reported or direct correlation with USB errors/dropouts
-Set to highest buffer size
-Uninstalled Realtek Audio drivers
-Disabled and uninstalled Intel Bluetooth & WiFi drivers
-Tried different USB ports and cables
-Tried different internet browsers
-Made sure Windows is fully updated
-Made sure chipset/motherboard drivers are fully updated
-Reinstalled UFX drivers

2 Reply by unodos (edited by unodos 2022-04-10 11:19:58)

  • Registered: 2022-02-20
  • Posts: 36

Re: [Solved] Tons of USB Diagnosis errors (UFX+)

Update: I disabled & uninstalled Realtek audio and the ethernet controller, but errors still remain sad

  • ramses
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Re: [Solved] Tons of USB Diagnosis errors (UFX+)

As you say yourself this seems to be network related.

Regarding LatencyMon and no correlating DPC latencies to USB CRC errors. Maybe you see something when you run LatencyMon while the CRC issues occurr when streaming audio from internet and using small ASIO buffers.

I also had issues in the past playing back audio (MusicBee) while accessing the network.

A couple of things helped at least on my system

1. removing 3rd party internet security solution (KIS, Norton), using Microsoft defender again. This reduced high DPCs when accessing the Internet. My Benchmark to see any difference in load is opening all 60+ Bookmarks which are camera/photo related with much content/pictures. The system and DPC load was reduced dramatically by this.

2. solved last remaining / occasional audio glitches by deactivatiion of energy saving on my nVidia graphic card using the tool "powermizer switch" from a russian developer plus a few extra settings in the "nVidia driver settings", see the 1st post in this thread on Steinberg Forum. https://forums.steinberg.net/t/8-18-cor … /103725/19
Link to the tool "powermizer switch": https://nvworld.ru/utilities/pmswitch/. Use it on your own risk.

You didn't mention whether you are accessing the network through LAN or WLAN (cabled or wireless). Wireless works most inefficient. As an additional tuning recommendation: use a cabled Ethernet LAN connection instead.

3. It still has advantages to configure Windows to "Adjust Optimal Performance for : (x) background services". An explanation you find in my blog: https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … es-or-not/

4. I recommend you to activate and use Windows "Ultimative Power" energy settings which automatically disables CPU core parking: https://www.windowslatest.com/2018/04/2 … indows-10/

5. The usual performance tuning in BIOS, see my recommendations in this thread:
https://forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.ph … 79#p185879

My system runs now very performant and I can even have higher network activity by browing the internet while playing music with MusicBee using lowest ASIO buffer sizes of 32 samples (@44.1) using USB3 and MADIface driver 0.9747.

Also in my personal artificial DAW benchmark to check whether all is still ok on my system. Playback of this huge project with 400 tracks (wave files) and 2 VSTs per track, if no audio outage at lowest ASIO buffersizes then no issue ...
Up to 96 kHz at lowest ASIO buffersize of 64 samples (@96 kHz!) is possible, same well performance as with my RayDAT PCIe card.

BTW, I am also using a Sonnet Card with FL1100 USB chipset, works very nice with the drivers included in Windows.

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

4 Reply by ramses (edited by ramses 2022-04-10 11:38:56)

  • ramses
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Re: [Solved] Tons of USB Diagnosis errors (UFX+)

unodos wrote:

Update: I disabled & uninstalled Realtek audio and the ethernet controller, but errors still remain sad

You said you have only issues when streaming audio over Internet / network.
With the DAW - even under heavier load - all would be fine.

I assume you repeated the DAW test in the same way and multiple times.

It makes no sense to me, that this particular test, which always worked to your satisfaction, of all sudden does not work anymore after "only" deactivating the network entirely by deinstalling network drivers.

Or does your DAW try to access the internet for something like a license check and now starts to misbehave, because the servers on the internet are not accessible ? Or are background services active from time to time, that cause these issues ?

The complete deinstallation of network drivers is IMHO unnecessary. It is fully sufficient to not access the internet to keep the interrupt load / DPCs from that driver very low.

[ The little background traffic should not be a show stopper, if you do not have a huge broadcast load in your network, by e.g. having more than 50+, 100+ or even more devices in one huge LAN. A too high network load by Broadcasts is a pain for every system in the network, because the CPU has to look at every received broadcast packet, whether it is of interest or not, increasing CPU / interrupt load, amount of context switches, that your system needs to perform. ]

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub14
  • Registered: 2022-02-20
  • Posts: 36

Re: [Solved] Tons of USB Diagnosis errors (UFX+)

ramses wrote:
unodos wrote:

Update: I disabled & uninstalled Realtek audio and the ethernet controller, but errors still remain sad

You said you have only issues when streaming audio over Internet / network.
With the DAW - even under heavier load - all would be fine.

I assume you repeated the DAW test in the same way and multiple times.

It makes no sense to me, that this particular test, which always worked to your satisfaction, of all sudden does not work anymore after "only" deactivating the network entirely by deinstalling network drivers.

Or does your DAW try to access the internet for something like a license check and now starts to misbehave, because the servers on the internet are not accessible ? Or are background services active from time to time, that cause these issues ?

The complete deinstallation of network drivers is IMHO unnecessary. It is fully sufficient to not access the internet to keep the interrupt load / DPCs from that driver very low.

[ The little background traffic should not be a show stopper, if you do not have a huge broadcast load in your network, by e.g. having more than 50+, 100+ or even more devices in one huge LAN. A too high network load by Broadcasts is a pain for every system in the network, because the CPU has to look at every received broadcast packet, whether it is of interest or not, increasing CPU / interrupt load, amount of context switches, that your system needs to perform. ]

Thank you for the recommendations above! I might not have been clear - I meant I ran the browser test again (independant of the DAW test) and still encountered the same issue.

I agree that the network load is very little and should have no impact, but something must be interfering.

I will run some tests later and get back to you

6 Reply by ramses (edited by ramses 2022-04-10 13:40:08)

  • ramses
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Re: [Solved] Tons of USB Diagnosis errors (UFX+)

Ok thanks for letting me know, so you are still at the status of your initial post.

As I mentioned in my 1st post: you know your machine and performance is fine, but there is something misbehaving as soon as you access the network.

In my case the key issues for audio drops were 2 (actually three)
a) issues in my USB infrastructure which I solved by getting a dedicated USB3 card with supported USB3 chipset (Sonnet card with FL1100 chipset)
b) issues with 3rd party Internet Security Solutions
c) rest issues / random audio glitches, solved by disabling energy saving of the graphic card
[my system was already very well fine tuned in terms of the "usual/known" BIOS and Windows tuning ]

So my questions to you are whether

- you also have a 3rd party antivirus / internet security solution ?
- if yes: whether you deinstalled it and reinstalled Windows Defender ?

- what graphic card you are using
- if nVidia: whether you tried to use powermizer switch to turn energy saving on the card off
- or are you using Intel UHD graphic of your CPU ?

- whether you enabled and activated the Windows 10 Ultimate Power Profile
  which disables CPU core parking and also reduces a little latency by this

- whether you have optimized already your BIOS settings, see the URL to my other posting here

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

7 Reply by MC

  • MC
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Re: [Solved] Tons of USB Diagnosis errors (UFX+)

Not sure this is related, but check the performance with Buffer Size set to 128 or 256 samples. Higher values not work good with WDM.

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

MC's Website

  • Registered: 2022-02-20
  • Posts: 36

Re: [Solved] Tons of USB Diagnosis errors (UFX+)

I think you might have just cracked it, ramses! I've seemingly narrowed it down to C-States. Many thanks.

@MC: I tried tests without disabling C-States on buffer sizes 128 and 256 and it had the same issue.


I applied a few things:

-Disabled C-States
-Enabled background scheduling
-Enabled the Ultimate Power Plan

After doing so, I ran the browser test again with zero issues. I then reverted all the changes and enabled one by one up to disabling C-States (the suspect one), and it only worked when I disabled C-States.


I took a backup of my Windows drive and BIOS following this too big_smile


To help people in future, see the below manual page 53 as to where it hides in BIOS menus. Change from 'Auto' to 'Disabled'

https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/1 … WEB_EN.pdf

  • ramses
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Re: [Solved] Tons of USB Diagnosis errors (UFX+)

Cool, nice to hear that you solved it.

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