Scott Reams Posted January 11, 2020 Share Posted January 11, 2020 (edited) This is an odd one. I have a Lenovo Core i7 laptop that I use to play software instruments for live performances. It seems that the more I load the CPU up, the more stable playback becomes. As an example... if I load a single instance of Lounge Lizard 4 or VB3, audio is severely glitchy to the point of sounding like a comb-filter is on it. If I load more plugins and instruments, playback improves with each one I add. After adding one or two more instruments, I hear the occasional click/pop. Add a few more... and playback is rock solid. I have made the habit of loading up extra instruments just to make playback glitch-free during a performance. My initial though is that this is related to Intel's Speed-step technology, and that increasing the CPU load prevents the CPU from constantly down-clocking. I've been through the BIOS settings and don't see any way to disable it. I have the power plan set to "High Performance" in Windows Power Options, and I have Processor State set to 100% for both Min and Max. Any thoughts? Edited January 11, 2020 by Scott Reams Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
azslow3 Posted January 11, 2020 Share Posted January 11, 2020 You can start by checking USB (and other devices) power options, but to get general picture check latency. There are many guides, my own is http://www.azslow.com/index.php/topic,395.0.html Search Latency Monitor spoiler. Here you will find names/links to some utilities. F.e. throttlestop will show you current frequencies and C states distribution. Also check what is working in background, Windows is "smart" and can start some activity when it think the system is "idle". I have bad luck, APM staff on DELL notebooks can hang for several ms. But disabling all extra activity and disconnecting from the net allow using it with relatively low buffers. You can also find guides how to enable "Ultimate Performance" plan. Note that in the standard "High Performance" plan many power saving options are still on (not only for CPU). And standard windows configuration does not show you all options in power plans (see the link toward the end of my list). 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chuckebaby Posted January 11, 2020 Share Posted January 11, 2020 You can try turning off Load balancing in preferences to see if that makes a difference. Preferences >Playback and Recording > Load balancing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Reams Posted January 14, 2020 Author Share Posted January 14, 2020 (edited) LatencyMon shows excellent results and Load Balancing is off. I'll give the "Ultimate Performance" plan a try. Edited January 14, 2020 by Scott Reams Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ricardo Belled Posted January 14, 2020 Share Posted January 14, 2020 On my mobile devices I can't get the best low latency performance unless I disable the ACPI Battery Control Method driver in Device Manager. Once I do that, my XPS18s and my Surface Pro 3s behave perfectly, running at 64 sample buffer sizes all day long. R Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noel Borthwick Posted January 14, 2020 Share Posted January 14, 2020 Wow thats bizarre. The Windows scheduler continues to confound me when it comes to real time performance Could this somehow be related to hyper threading - perhaps threads are being assigned to virtual cores that have lower performance. Just hypothesizing I have no idea if that is true. Just for comparison do you see the same behavior in SONAR (in case you have it) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bitman Posted January 14, 2020 Share Posted January 14, 2020 (edited) Check to see if speedstep is set to on in the bios setup. How to get there varies from manufacture to manufacture. This slows down the cpu when it thinks you don't need the performance. Mostly to save on battery. Bad for DAW and happiness. ? Edited January 14, 2020 by bitman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Reams Posted January 15, 2020 Author Share Posted January 15, 2020 (edited) On 1/14/2020 at 12:18 PM, Noel Borthwick said: Wow thats bizarre. The Windows scheduler continues to confound me when it comes to real time performance Could this somehow be related to hyper threading - perhaps threads are being assigned to virtual cores that have lower performance. Just hypothesizing I have no idea if that is true. Just for comparison do you see the same behavior in SONAR (in case you have it) Yes. Same performance in Sonar Platinum Edited January 15, 2020 by Scott Reams Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Reams Posted January 15, 2020 Author Share Posted January 15, 2020 On 1/14/2020 at 1:06 PM, bitman said: Check to see if speedstep is set to on in the bios setup. How to get there varies from manufacture to manufacture. This slows down the cpu when it thinks you don't need the performance. Mostly to save on battery. Bad for DAW and happiness. ? I mentioned in my original post that I suspected SpeedStep, but that there are no settings in the BIOS for it on this machine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noel Borthwick Posted January 15, 2020 Share Posted January 15, 2020 It should be called speed step-down Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HIBI Posted January 16, 2020 Share Posted January 16, 2020 8 hours ago, Scott Reams said: I mentioned in my original post that I suspected SpeedStep, but that there are no settings in the BIOS for it on this machine. The notation name of SpeedStep differs depending on the BIOS, it's sometimes called EIST (Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology). Other things to try, also set C1E (Enhanced HALT State, C-STATE Tech, etc.) disabled. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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