Pops and crackles

[Bill S]

I am running a powerful purpose built Windows 11 PC built for me by Chillblast here in the UK. I bought it just over two years ago, and until about 6 months ago it was faultless. My audio interface is a 3rd gen Focusrite 8i6.

Over the past 6 months, I have experienced occasional and very intermittent pops and crackles when the PC is under almost no strain - e.g., when my DAW is playing back one or two audio tracks and nothing else is loaded in the project. At other times, I can experience days of trouble free use. Yesterday I ran a “test” and loaded up dozens of heavy weight VSTs into a project and it ran perfectly with the CPU meter still running very low.

I have been in touch with Chillblast tech support who’ve been great and we have tried various things, but unfortunately the occasional pops and crackles still happen. The only other “clue” I have is that the PC also struggles sometimes to play a track on SoundCloud without glitches, which I think is very strange, as my internet connection is very fast and stable.

Anyway, Chillblast are now recommending that I do a complete Windows reinstall which I am very reluctant to attempt.

I appreciate this is a long shot, and I’ve not given much detail, but…any ides?

[Drew Stephenson]

First thing I'd do is reinstall the drivers for your 8i6. Even if you're running the latest ones.
I assume you've checked things like any anti-virus or other security programme?
What buffer size are you running?

[ajay_m]

Firstly I would run the dpc latency test for a decent period of time and see if it finds any issues. My Lenovo laptop returns approx 160us worst case latency though anything under 1ms should be ok.
If you are running wireless networking, disable the network adaptor in control panel and run like that for a while. Channel clashes can cause issues with some drivers and this depends on your neighbours, not you.
It never hurts to run diagnostics for a while. Memtest86 from a usb stick run overnight and possibly diagnostics on your disk subsystem or at least run crystal and atto and compare with expected performance from internet benchmarks.
Run CPU stress tests and verify your CPU and GPU temperatures are not getting high enough to cause throttling. You may not think your system is under load when doing audio tests but what does windows task manager say?
You can never rule out marginal usb cables, swapping them out is never a bad idea. Are you sure your mains power is clean, the pops might be radiated transients not audio glitches.
Disable any AV software of course.
Anyway that's a start. Good luck and keep us posted.

[alexis]

Wow, what amazing advice - bookmarked!

One other thing to maybe consider is potential problems at the DAW end. Is there a DAW user's forum you can check? Or if you've recently updated a plug in, VSTi, etc., maybe that's related to the problem.

Oh, and maybe check to be sure your backup program isn't choosing to save your files to some other location at exactly the wrong time.

[adrian_k]

Long shot, but wasn’t it about 6 months ago that MS started rolling out Copilot? Do you have it enabled, if so maybe disable it. The fact that you get problems playing stuff from Soundcloud points away from it being a DAW problem I would have thought.

[alexis]

... The fact that you get problems playing stuff from Soundcloud points away from it being a DAW problem I would have thought.

Good point! Esp. if DAW isn't open in the background at those times.

[Drew Stephenson]

I thought I'd mentioned it in my post above but I appear to have missed it (my bad!), but this is a very similar set of symptoms to those I had last year and a complete driver reinstall sorted it - hence my first suggestion.

[Bill S]

Long shot, but wasn’t it about 6 months ago that MS started rolling out Copilot? Do you have it enabled, if so maybe disable it. The fact that you get problems playing stuff from Soundcloud points away from it being a DAW problem I would have thought.

Thanks all for your suggestions so far, really appreciated.

I agree regarding Soundcloud- same happens with YouTube videos. The audio glitches when playing these are more frequent and more severe than when I’m in my DAW.

I would like to disable copilot, but with W11 Home edition, it looks like I have to start messing with the registry and that makes me nervous.

[tea for two]

Long shot, but wasn’t it about 6 months ago that MS started rolling out Copilot? Do you have it enabled, if so maybe disable it. The fact that you get problems playing stuff from Soundcloud points away from it being a DAW problem I would have thought.

Thanks all for your suggestions so far, really appreciated.

I agree regarding Soundcloud- same happens with YouTube videos. The audio glitches when playing these are more frequent and more severe than when I’m in my DAW.

I would like to disable copilot, but with W11 Home edition, it looks like I have to start messing with the registry and that makes me nervous.

Although it's a minor thing turning oorrff copilot in registry, still I'd say backing up your current Windows before going into registry.
After backing up.

To disable copilot :
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/win ... ccfac8ea86

"To do so, launch Registry Editor, then go to

HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows

On the left, right click on the Windows folder, go to New > Key, name it "WindowsCopilot"

Then select WindowsCopilot, on the right, right click and create a DWORD value, name it "TurnOffWindowsCopilot" and set its value at 1.

Restart the computer to have the change take effect."

Although apparently when using Edge, Copilot turns on automatically even after this registry edit.

[darlobill]

I had a similar problem and tracked it down to a duff usb cable. I twiddled the wire and it would lose connection to the daw. I bought a new usb cable and I have had no problems since. I was losing faith in finding a solution , I had already installed windows again , new drivers and everything the good people here have recommended but in the end it came down to a dodgy usb wire. If you have a spare wire give it a try.

Bill

[adrian_k]

...

I would like to disable copilot, but with W11 Home edition, it looks like I have to start messing with the registry and that makes me nervous.

Although it's a minor thing turning oorrff copilot in registry, still I'd say backing up your current Windows before going into registry.
After backing up.

To disable copilot :
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/win ... ccfac8ea86

"To do so, launch Registry Editor, then go to

HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows

On the left, right click on the Windows folder, go to New > Key, name it "WindowsCopilot"

Then select WindowsCopilot, on the right, right click and create a DWORD value, name it "TurnOffWindowsCopilot" and set its value at 1.

Restart the computer to have the change take effect."

Although apparently when using Edge, Copilot turns on automatically even after this registry edit.

You can turn off Copilot by right clicking the task bar, selecting "settings" and turning it off there. That's what I have done (W11 Home). I don't use Edge and have not seen Copilot reappear. I also don't understand the difference between turning it off and disabling it through the registry - is there one?

[tea for two]

You can turn off Copilot by right clicking the task bar, selecting "settings" and turning it off there. That's what I have done (W11 Home). I also don't understand the difference between turning it off and disabling it through the registry - is there one?

I think thru registry it's supposed be a hard turn oorrff.
I haven't got copilot on my wind11 home as I turned oorrff update.

[Bill S]

Thanks again all. I installed the latest Focusrite driver in my 8i6 but it had no effect. Copilot is switched off but not disabled completely.

The thing I keep coming back to is that my PC struggles the most with:

* playing back a file on SoundCloud, or Youtube more than it does with a big Studio One project running a dozen or more heavy duty VSTs. My internet connection is fast and reliable as far as I know - it whizzes along in general use. Also, would this not rule out a dodgy USB cable being the issue?

* playing back a Studio One project with a few simple audio tracks only. It is far less likely to glitch if I am working on a project using solely those heavyweight VSTs and sound libraries, rather than a far simpler project containing a couple of audio tracks and no MIDI at all.

In summary, the PC performs worst when seemingly under almost no strain, and audio files seem to be its undoing! Frustratingly, there is no consistency- a simple audio file Studio One project can glitch one day, then the next the same project plays back faultlessly.

[Wonks]

https://www.soundonsound.com/forum/view ... hp?t=89487

^^This was the reason my new PC had trouble running at low buffer counts.

Whilst your issue may be something different, the fact you have more issues when the PC is lightly loaded would correspond to some cores subsequently doing nothing and being parked. It may be something a Windows update re-activated

[Bill S]

https://www.soundonsound.com/forum/view ... hp?t=89487

^^This was the reason my new PC had trouble running at low buffer counts.

Whilst your issue may be something different, the fact you have more issues when the PC is lightly loaded would correspond to some cores subsequently doing nothing and being parked. It may be something a Windows update re-activated

This sounds logical. How I wish it was a simple setting adjustment within Windows. Does the utility you downloaded make the process idiot proof? In my case, it needs to.

[Wonks]

Yes. It just deals with the single issue so it’s basically a simple on/off switch.

[ajay_m]

I learn something new every day (and this is my day job, too!). I certainly knew about core parking but was unaware resource monitor showed the core parking status, probably never scrolled down past the first page on the CPU tab, to be honest, since normally I'm using either taskmgr or perfmon for CPU and resource monitor for disk usage, where it has more detailed monitoring.

[ajay_m]

I should also have mentioned that power schemes can be problematic too. A lot of machines have 'locked down' power schemes where you have very little control of several Windows options, and this can even include controlling min/max CPU clock. Ideally you want min and max CPU at 100% when you're on mains power and then verify in task manager that the clock speed isn't jinking around all over the place.
There are registry options that can unlock 'hidden' power options if for some reason you can't get at these (usually from the 'advanced settings' link in power management). Just do a bit of googling.

You also want to go through any USB devices and disable the power saving option 'allow this computer to turn off the device' or whatever it's called.

I can't stress enough that AV software can have serious side-effects on audio performance. Even Windows Defender can be problematic although if you preclude it scanning folders which contain your sample libraries, it generally seems to stay reasonably out of the way. Some other AV software, McAfee in particular, is fairly dreadfully designed and will cause issues by installing 'filter drivers' which can impact disk performance and other system activity.

[Bill S]

https://www.soundonsound.com/forum/view ... hp?t=89487

^^This was the reason my new PC had trouble running at low buffer counts.

Whilst your issue may be something different, the fact you have more issues when the PC is lightly loaded would correspond to some cores subsequently doing nothing and being parked. It may be something a Windows update re-activated

Fingers crossed, this has solved the issue. I downloaded the utility and before using it, discovered that maybe 18 out of 20 cores were parked. Now none are, and having been testing everything on and off all afternoon, the PC is running smoothly. Hope I’m not speaking too soon, but as soon as I read your post, I thought it sounded promising.

I honestly can’t thank you enough - and everyone else who has taken the time to try to help me. I don’t come to this forum very often, but it has always been brilliant.

[Wonks]

That should be it then. Every time a core is unparked it takes up enough time to cause an audio glitch. It is energy saving, but the few watts it saves is nothing compared to the grief it causes to audio processes.

[alexis]

Yayy, Wonks!

[sonics]

Steinberg Cubase users were struggling with similar issues (E-cores, affinity) last year. Some info HERE.

[alexis]

I am running a powerful purpose built Windows 11 PC built for me by Chillblast ...

The thought occurred to me that I'd expect the one who put the rig together to know about this fix, and you shouldn't have to look around for it yourself

[Wonks]

My PC came from Scan, and I had to fix it myself. It must be about 6 months old now, so it could be a Windows update change that occurred about new year time. Mine had the Scan Latencymon test results supplied with it, which were fine, but it was probably a month after the time I’d initially got it, loaded it with software, sent the interface back (unnecessarily it turned out) and then got it back after a while and got it all working again, that it started glitching.

[alexis]

Right, sorry I meant I'd think the computer maker would be aware of problems like this that arose after delivery.

Maybe that's an unreasonable expectation. ADK, who made my computer, offered such high- level support I feel they would have done the same in this situation.

Unfortunately they went out of business ...