Stuttering in non-CW audio

[jkoseattle]

I should probably understand why this is inherently, but, well, I don't. Shame hereby acknowledged.

Whenever I have CW open, (which is almost always), any other application playing audio stutters annoyingly about twice per second. This includes Audacity, Spotify, WMP, etc. , although things like Prime Video are fine.  My audio is going to the Focusrite 2+2 via ASIO drivers. Why is this happening?

[Giorgio Gabriel]

Maybe it's not the right answer, but is it possible that you are running Sonar at particular sampling rate (for example 44.1 khz) while the other applications are running at different one (maybe at 48khz)?

In this scenario the audio card must change it's sampling rate every time and this could cause some problems.

Regards,

Giorgio

[John Vere]

This is why I switched to setting everything at 48 a few years ago. No issues since. 
 

Edited May 24 by John Vere

[jkoseattle]

Thanks for the suggestion. But well, that's not it. Everything matched at 44.1K, but I switched both CW and Audacity to 48K and restarted them both. CW still plays fine, Audacity stutters. It's a very regular stutter, about 120bpm, not random like when audio playback cuts out in CW. And I can tell the audio is actually pausing, and not merely going mute, because the tempo sounds a tad slower when it stutters.

[Promidi]

Please list everything you have checked/tried?

I am assuming you are using the latest drivers for your Focusrite,

I am also assuming you have disabled all power saving options and set CPU min and max to 100%.

Try disabling c-states, intel Speedstep (done in BIOS)

[John Vere]

It's not clear but are you saying that it is only Audacity? 

There's lots of things involved in sharing the audio system on a PC. 

First go to windows sound settings, this is W10. Set your sample rate here. And uncheck the exclusive control box. This is important.

 

This is W11 - It's a terribly configured system I do not like.

-Focusrite Control panel  set your rate here as well. 

Open a Cakewalk project. What shows in the transport? 

Open Preferences and make sure this is unchecked

 

Export the project as a  Wave file at your default sample rate. and play in Media Player. In the lower right is  3 dots and you'll find "properties" This will confirm that your file is indeed the correct sample rate, 2304 = 48/24 wave file. ( my default) 

- open the file in Audacity . Check does it show that the file you are playing is the correct sample rate?  Take note Audacity doesn’t use ASIO drivers. This is why I don't use it. I use Wave Lab or Gold Wave. 

Edited May 25 by John Vere

[jkoseattle]

Thank you for all that! I tried a lot of things, but nothing worked until you mentioned that Audacity doesn't use ASIO drivers, so I installed Gold Wave and the stuttering is gone. Spotify still stutters, but less of a problem. Thanks again!

[Promidi]

1 hour ago, jkoseattle said:

so I installed Gold Wave and the stuttering is gone.

Goldwave does not use ASIO drivers either.......  Might have been a setting in Audacity that caused the stuttering in Audacity.  

Is everything set to the same bit depth? (24bit seems to be the one most people use)

[jkoseattle]

Well, the stuttering seemed to clear itself up for a week or so, but it's back again big time. At this point I just don't have anything else I can think of to try. 

And the thing is, I DON'T CARE! I am willing to just pay someone to make my setup work as well as I'd like it to. I don't want to waste any more time or anxiety trying to figure this thing out, because in reality, once it's fixed, I'm going to forget all about what caused and remedied the problem. Then next year it will crop up again and I'm back to square one. 

How on Earth can I find someone to just "take care of this" for me? PC repair places don't deal with Midi setups, and music equipment people don't go in and mess with Windows. Out there somewhere there must be someone who can just sit down and fix it.