Latency, LatencyMon and Audio Engine dropout

[Harley Dear]

Hi all.

I had a couple of backing tracks tracks at our gig have an Audio engine dropout' last night - extremely embarrassing to say the least. These were tracks that have not given trouble before. They're all MIDI ( no audio ) and we hook up to a Soundcraft Ui24R Mixer. Nothing has changed in our set-up apart from the venue. So this has me flummoxed.

So, trying to track down the problem, I have tried LatencyMon on several of our tracks. The instant observation is that every time I run a CWP file and LatencyMon at the same time, I seem to get a different result, sometimes it swings from "Ok" to "Your system seems to be having difficulty...etc" 

My Laptop specs are below. I'm running Windows 10. I'm using all Cakewalk supplied VSTs except for SSD5 Drums ( which give us the ability to split out the various drum set components to individual outputs ). We get a really nice sound from our set-up, I am loathe to change it.

I have changed the power management system to that recommended many times here and by Mike at Creative Sauce.

I have several questions.

1) Which is the stat I should worry about most - 'Highest measured interrupt to process latency' or 'Highest reported DPC routine execution time', or both?

2) The main offender seems to be 'wdf0100.sys' - what can be done about it to fix it?

3) Why do I get varying reports from the same track?

4) If my laptop is using just battery only ( i.e. not plugged into mains via the adaptor ), would that be more likely to cause 'audio engine dropouts', even though the battery still has ( say ) 50% charge left?

Any help welcome. - Thanks - Harley

 

Pepa-jaK Latency report.txt

Edited January 8, 2023 by Harley Dear

[Byron Dickens]

Mix down your backing tracks to a .wav and play them back with your favorite media player and this won't be an issue.

[Harley Dear]

Thanks for the suggestion Byron. That would be such an easy solution BUT

There are two reasons we have set up like we do;

1) I can visually see queues on my screen.  We have drums on all tracks ( no drummer ) plus other instruments  and I queue my bandmates as need be. We have hundreds of songs and at my age (70's), remembering every little thing isn't an option, and ( more importantly )

2) Our interface with the Soundcraft Ui24R allows us ( or our sound guy ) to mix nearly all the back track instruments on the fly if need be.

So, we're looking for a solution that would allow us to keep our modus operandi if at all possible,

It may be that we have to go with what you suggest in the long run, but hope not.

[msmcleod]

Wdf0100.sys is the Windows Driver Framework - which means some driver is taking up most of your CPU time.

Try disabling your WiFi drivers.  This makes a huge difference on one of my old Dell Laptops.

Battery life in itself shouldn't affect performance, however a lot of laptops will default to slowing the machine down when running on batteries in order to preserve battery life. This will definitely lead to dropouts.

You can change the profile used for on-battery/plugged-in in your Windows power options. The laptop should always be running in "High Performance" mode when you're using it for audio.  Of course, this will mean a drastically reduced battery life - probably less than an hour on most laptops. 

If you really need the battery life, you might get away with it on a reduced power mode but with your ASIO buffer size set to maximum.
 

[Mike Z]

11 hours ago, Harley Dear said:

4) If my laptop is using just battery only ( i.e. not plugged into mains via the adaptor ), would that be more likely to cause 'audio engine dropouts', even though the battery still has ( say ) 50% charge left?

I'm pretty sure that's your problem. As @msmcleod stated, many laptops reduce performance when running on battery power. I had some hair-pulling-out moments when I was trying to do some mixing on my laptop without the power cord plugged in.  Problems disappeared once power cord was plugged in.

[Starship Krupa]

Yes, as @msmcleod suggests, go into your advanced power settings and you will see that your notebook is configured to throttle CPU performance when on battery. Choices: either bring your power adaptor to the gig (my favorite solution), or set the minimum processor performance while on battery to 99% and expect much reduced battery life.

Other things to mess with to see if you get any change in performance are Cakewalk's Thread Scheduling Model (I use model 2, you may get even smoother performance with 3). Also turn off the 64-bit Double Precision Engine if you have it on, it's not necessary for your scenario.

I also disable C states in my BIOS. C states is another power-saving-at-the-expense-of-performance feature.

My favorite freeware utility for monitoring such things as processor clock is HWINFO. That will show you if your clock is bouncing around.

[Glenn Stanton]

and if you're bringing your laptop to a gig with power adapter - bring a small UPS to filter to AC noise ? 

Edited January 8, 2023 by Glenn Stanton

[Harley Dear]

6 hours ago, Glenn Stanton said:

and if you're bringing your laptop to a gig with power adapter - bring a small UPS to filter to AC noise ? 

Thanks and yes, already have one which I use 

[Harley Dear]

9 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

Other things to mess with to see if you get any change in performance are Cakewalk's Thread Scheduling Model (I use model 2, you may get even smoother performance with 3). Also turn off the 64-bit Double Precision Engine if you have it on, it's not necessary for your scenario.

I also disable C states in my BIOS. C states is another power-saving-at-the-expense-of-performance feature.

My favorite freeware utility for monitoring such things as processor clock is HWINFO. That will show you if your clock is bouncing around.

Thanks Starship Krupa. Wow, that's way OVER my head. Are there any videos or written instructions on how I achieve all of that which you suggest? Many thanks.

[Starship Krupa]

36 minutes ago, Harley Dear said:

Are there any videos or written instructions on how I achieve all of that which you suggest?

 

https://www.hwinfo.com/ (the best view for ongoing system monitoring is had by checking "sensors only" in the start dialog)

Google "how do I disable C states in BIOS on my <make and model of your laptop here>"

[Harley Dear]

Thanks a lot Erik. Much appreciated

[Noel Borthwick]

If you are using a laptop definitely make sure windows is set to high performance mode and preferably use it plugged in to AC power.

4) If my laptop is using just battery only ( i.e. not plugged into mains via the adaptor ), would that be more likely to cause 'audio engine dropouts', even though the battery still has ( say ) 50% charge left?

When running on battery Windows is very aggressive about conserving power to the detriment of realtime performance. Its not surprising that your system is prone to dropouts. If you must run on battery then you MUST ensure that Windows is set to never sleep and always run in high performance mode. Also run with MMCSS enabled in Cakewalk.

 

Additionally you may turn off dropout detection in Cakewalk by setting MaskDropoutDetection to True. When that is set, the audio engine will not stop even if a dropout is detected. You may hear a momentary glitch bug it will keep running.

[bitflipper]

Sheesh, I can't imagine relying on batteries for anything at a gig.

Well, we do have one wireless microphone that takes a 9V, but worst-case scenario we jam awhile while the singer replaces the battery. Or hook up a corded mic if she forgot to bring a spare battery. It wouldn't stop the show.

As Mark and Noel said you can disable the battery-saving mechanisms to prevent poor CPU performance, but that's also going to greatly accelerate the drain on the battery. I doubt my laptop's battery wouldn't last a 4-hour gig.

I'd also suggest making a profile specifically for gigging which has no unnecessary processes running. Definitely disable wi-fi. 

[Harley Dear]

5 hours ago, bitflipper said:

Sheesh, I can't imagine relying on batteries for anything at a gig.

 

Thanks for taking the time to respond

I think you've misunderstood due to my poor explanation of events.  At a recent gig, the charger ( which I always have ) had become disconnected and it went un-noticed. We had two dropouts and it was after that I went trouble-shooting and found that I was at 50% battery already. I immediately plugged the charger back in and the rest of the night went smoothly without any glitches.

In order to eliminate all the things that could go wrong and cause a dropout, I asked the question about "would the laptop working purely on battery be a culprit?", before looking at any other culprits. To this end everyone has been very helpful and I've picked up some really hand stuff I can apply.

[Harley Dear]

7 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

If you are using a laptop definitely make sure windows is set to high performance mode and preferably use it plugged in to AC power.

4) If my laptop is using just battery only ( i.e. not plugged into mains via the adaptor ), would that be more likely to cause 'audio engine dropouts', even though the battery still has ( say ) 50% charge left?

When running on battery Windows is very aggressive about conserving power to the detriment of realtime performance. Its not surprising that your system is prone to dropouts. If you must run on battery then you MUST ensure that Windows is set to never sleep and always run in high performance mode. Also run with MMCSS enabled in Cakewalk.

 

Additionally you may turn off dropout detection in Cakewalk by setting MaskDropoutDetection to True. When that is set, the audio engine will not stop even if a dropout is detected. You may hear a momentary glitch bug it will keep running.

Thanks Noel, that's extremely helpful.

[Michael Richards]

I've become a minor dpc latency internet legend. I have been hit hard by this annoyance. Every couple of weeks I make a change or 2 and have not had any stutters this new year. I've had a motherboard change and have used every NVIDIA graphics driver that was made for the 3060ti card. I've settled on the scenario that LatencyMon may detect a dpc latency but it does not seem to cause a stutter in recording and playback. That is great progress. I don't need Cakewalk running to experience my problems.

The most recent discovery was to go into Device Manager and go to USB controllers and then into Properties and Power Management. Uncheck Allow this computer to turn off this device to save power. I did this for all the USB items listed. It was a small help, but it did help. I wish there was a universal check box to completely turn off all power management and throttling. I'm still dealing with an issue concerning nvlddmkm.sys, thanks to the NVIDIA card problem. Sad to say I have contacted NVIDIA support several times and they never answered.

Michael

[Harley Dear]

Thanks Michael. I think I tried that before last year (  Uncheck Allow this computer to turn off this device to save power. I did this for all the USB items listed.), but this is a timely reminder to check again.

[Harley Dear]

OK< one of the things I did not realise until now ( and several people here and on the Ui24R users group have alerted me  ), was that whilst a MIDI file might look small in total, it's the actual processing with the various VSTs that can tax the system. It's sort of like they're the bottom part of the iceburg under the water. Compared to audio, these could well outweigh the amount of processing power required.

So, I now have a mission to bounce down all the MIDI tracks to audio. I've never done this before. Is it a simple process?

[57Gregy]

As easy as clicking a few buttons.
You can Bounce to Track each MIDI/VST track creating an all-audio project, archiving each track you don't want to use, or Bounce the entire project to a single audio track, which I think would be simplest. That way you can archive all the other tracks, but still have them available for change in the same project.

[Glenn Stanton]

i do an export of the tracks into WAV files (you don't need to record them as audio first). then create a new mix template project and import those files. this way all the overhead is gone (from the VST). basically i treat it the same as if i got files from a client.

Edited January 11, 2023 by Glenn Stanton