Topic: Strange DPC Latency in Windows
Hello Forum,
I have a silent but powerful Windows pc connected via USB to an RME ADI2 DAC and to a Cambridge Audio DAC.
The machine is very "clean", there is basically nothing installed except the audio drivers.
Both USB cables are connected to ports on the motherboard rear plate, so the "electrical path" is the same.
While investigating an unrelated hardware problem, I found this "strange" pattern:
* I'm using Thesycon's DPC Latency Checker to take measurements.
1) when both DACS are on, but the machine is idle, average PDC latency is ~ 90 micros, max is ~ 250 (very stable, over a long interval, say 10 minutes).
2) when playing to CambridgeAudio a flac (playing in loop a single 44100/16bit file using foobar => ASIO. the file is copied to a RAM disk first), latency pattern is still flat but average goes up to 120. occasionally, there are spikes.
3) when playing to ADI2 the same flac, latency has a periodic "ladder" pattern, e.g.
500-400-300-200-100-100-...-100-500-400-300-200-100-100-...-100...[repeat]
a latency measurement is taken every second, and the period length might be 16-17 seconds.
(sorry for the ascii art. I have screenshots but I'm not exactly sure how to post them here...)
again, there are occasional spikes that are pretty high. however audio does not seem to suffer.
also, RME driver does not report any crc error.
the only difference, as far as I see is that CA ASIO uses 512 samples by default and RME is set to 1024, but that should not be a problem.
I'm using the latest RME driver, but I'm not using the latest CA driver (I had some issues and I reverted to a slightly older version).
Is this pattern normal?
thanks,
MH