1 Topic by coachz (edited by coachz 2009-12-15 23:42:48)

  • Registered: 2007-05-06
  • Posts: 51

Topic: audio tearing at 3ms

9652 card

I'm having constant audio glitches when i pan the screen with middle button left / right drag.  Interacting with cubase or even firefox scrolling causes audio to tear and make lots of glitches even with NOTHING playing back.

Changing latency to 6ms from 3ms helps but is still not good plus i need to run at 3ms. I also turned antivirus off to test

Any ideas how to fix this please? I"m running Windows 7 64 bit with cubase 5.1 32 bit. Really at my wits end. Thanks

  • isaac
  • isaac
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  • From: Auckland New Zealand
  • Registered: 2007-05-01
  • Posts: 339

Re: audio tearing at 3ms

coachz wrote:

9652 card

I'm having constant audio glitches when i pan the screen with middle button left / right drag.  Interacting with cubase or even firefox scrolling causes audio to tear and make lots of glitches even with NOTHING playing back.

Changing latency to 6ms from 3ms helps but is still not good plus i need to run at 3ms. I also turned antivirus off to test

Any ideas how to fix this please? I"m running Windows 7 64 bit with cubase 5.1 32 bit. Really at my wits end. Thanks

Afternoon coachz,

It sounds like a graphics issue. Can you post more detail about your system please? MB, graphics card, driver revision etc.

Isaac.

  • Registered: 2007-05-06
  • Posts: 51

Re: audio tearing at 3ms

Windows 7 64 bit, Cubase 5.10 32 bit (also tried 5.11), 2.6 e6700 core2 duo, intel D975xbx2kr MB, 4gb mushkin ram, Windows 7 64 bit, 24"  westinghouse LCD
RME 9652, 3 Presonus Digimax FS, Rane HC6 headphone amp, 3ms latency

The graphics card is an nvidia geforce 7300 GT and is rated an upper mid level card at passmark charts site.    I'm using the latest nvidia driver from the site as of yesterday.   The only thing I can think of is that I had turned off write behind caching on the hard drives so I'll try turning that back on.  I have a drive image of a fresh install so maybe I'll load that to try also.   Really wierd.  Thanks for any tips.

4 Reply by coachz (edited by coachz 2009-12-16 23:22:50)

  • Registered: 2007-05-06
  • Posts: 51

Re: audio tearing at 3ms

I just did a fresh install and it still makes tons of audio glitches when moving the playing field in cubase or even resizing windows. HELP The easiest way to reproduce it here is to play back a midi track and middle mouse drag the playing field left or right. Then I get tons of glitches / noise. All my other audio apps play back fine, Only cubase is doing this.

  • Registered: 2007-05-06
  • Posts: 51

Re: audio tearing at 3ms

just figured out that in 16 bit video mode my problem is gone.  wtf ?  is windows 7 the new fat pig that along with cubase brings my midrange hardware to halt ?

  • isaac
  • isaac
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  • Registered: 2007-05-01
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Re: audio tearing at 3ms

coachz wrote:

just figured out that in 16 bit video mode my problem is gone.  wtf ?  is windows 7 the new fat pig that along with cubase brings my midrange hardware to halt ?

Hey Coachz,

You should search the forum for Timur posts about this. He's done extensive research to getting the best performance out of his hardware. I think it is an Aero thing. But check with his posts!

Isaac.

7 Reply by Timur Born (edited by Timur 2009-12-17 12:15:27)

  • Registered: 2008-01-01
  • Posts: 3,025

Re: audio tearing at 3ms

Three things you can try:

1. Use Windows' own "Standard VGA Driver" instead of the NVidia one, but that will leave you without 3D.

2. Force the NVidia card into a fixed "Performance Mode" to both turn off dynamic clock-rate changes and keep it from using its 2D mode. You do that via the utility "Rivatuner". I suggest using "Low Power 3D" unless you need high 3D performance for gaming or whatever.

Look for my thread on how to get low DPCs on bootcamped Mac in the "Tips & Tricks" board section for a step by step guide (don't care for the "Mac" centric part of the thread).

3. Try to force Cubase into "Realtime" priority via Task-Manager. To do that you either have to start Task-Manager as Administrator or turn off UAC (User Account Control in Windows).

It was reported that Cubase doesn't allow to do that though. In that case turn off Aero (DWM aka Desktop Windows Manager), becauses the very same "Highest" (non-realtime) priority as most DAWs use for their audio/midi threads (blame the DAW developers!).

  • Registered: 2007-05-06
  • Posts: 51

Re: audio tearing at 3ms

Tried standard vga too without nvidia driver.  In 16 bit graphics the tearing / glitching stops but then my Adat1 In sync starts blinking again.  Same thing if I turn off Aero and go to Windows 7 basic theme.   I do have a 20 foot HDMI cable that I bought from newegg that connects the pc to the 27.5" display (19200x1200) because the computer is in the other room.   

I ran the DPC checker and it was all green with tiny bars.  I set to performance mode and no change.

Right now my system is completely unusable as a cubase daw.

  • Registered: 2008-01-01
  • Posts: 3,025

Re: audio tearing at 3ms

Try tunning Prime95 Torture test (one of the first two that don't use much RAM) while scrolling. Try disconnecting your monitor and just drag the mouse "blindly" to see if there is a connection to your long HDMI cable (shouldn't, but many of the problems I have to solve "shouldn't" happen as they do).

Use "ProcessExplorer" and add a column for "CSwitch Delta" and "Cycles Delta" and and look which processes/threads are possibly hogging your CPU with context switches and CPU cycles when the glitches happen.

Check if there is any BIOS update for your mainboard.

Have a look at any Speedstep option in BIOS.

Are you using an IDE or a SATA drive? Which driver are you using for the HD controller, NVidia or Microsoft Standard One?

Try the Standard VGA Driver again and turn down accelleration via the "Troubleshooting" tab of the display properties (usually greyed out when using NVidia driver, but you can have a look at it still).

  • Registered: 2007-05-06
  • Posts: 51

Re: audio tearing at 3ms

I went to best buy and bought a 9800 GT nvidia card and it fixed my problem,  32bit at 1920x1200 with no glitches.  $170 after tax.  Thanks Windows 7 and Nvidia for making me spend more money !!!

Thanks RME guys for the help.  What a nutty problem.  Looks like Win7 64 bit doesn't like nvidia 7300 cards so much.   Oh well, 7300 going on ebay.  Thanks again for the helpful tips guys !!!  Now can I go make music ?  :-)  Next time i'm buying a mac.

  • Registered: 2007-05-06
  • Posts: 51

Re: audio tearing at 3ms

after much testing and still more audio glitches (though much less after buying a faster video card)  i found the DPC latency checker was showing major red bars.  by removing the nvidia driver for the geforce 9800 gt and using the win 7 driver for the 9800 all the bars went away and the glitches are gone.  Just thought you guys might like to know.

http://img85.imageshack.us/i/41230024.png/

12 Reply by MC

  • MC
  • MC
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  • Registered: 2007-04-06
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Re: audio tearing at 3ms

A regular spike every 60 seconds points to some stupid (and most probably redundant) background routine within the driver set. It might even be that this one can be disabled via options/settings of the graphics card. Like checking for monitor changes and power states (example about Nvidia Powermizer:

http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic … 91&p=1

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

MC's Website

  • Grag38
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  • Registered: 2009-06-18
  • Posts: 117

Re: audio tearing at 3ms

is windows well configured to works with cubase ? We had to select background process in the control pannel insted of programs to get the best performances from steinberg products.