Excessive Latency Problem: Solved

[Deville]

Hi all:

I don't normally post here, but I do a little amateur PC-based recording, and I encountered an interesting latency problem that I thought I should share with you all.

 

I have a pretty nice PC. One that should be able to record seamlessly, in real time:

Windows 7 x64

AMD 940 Quad Core Phenom 2

8gB DDR2 1066 memory

M-Audio Audiophile Delta 1010lt sound card

 

One thing I also had that I didn't count on interfering was a Netgear wireless N ethernet adapter WN311B.

 

I tried recording a few tracks, only to hear ridiculous amounts of noise, pops, and crackles. After doing all the usual stuff (tweaking the latency, re-installing the recording software, audio driver, etc...), I did some net research and found a program called DPC Latency Checker. It checks your PC's ability to handle audio and video streams in real time. My latency measurement was horrible... off the charts.

 

I went in to Device Manager and began disabling one thing at a time, until I got to my wireless card. When I killed that, all went green and everything was fine. I scoured the net and found a new driver for it, and now all is well.

 

I used to think Winamp was screwing up on me, just trying to play silly FLAC files, and it turns out that the latency issue was causing my Winamp audio performance problems too. My online video streaming is better, as is my online gaming. Everything came down to this stupid driver.

 

 

Hope this helps someone. By the way, I love that Netgear ethernet adapter. It is freakin' fast... You just need the right driver.

[UstadKhanAli]

Cool, thanks! Someone will be helped by this I am sure, even if they are searching around the internet for a fix to stop this very thing.

[ames]

However, in a non-trivial network, a typical packet will be forwarded over many links via many gateways, each of which will not begin to forward the packet until it has been completely received. In such a network,350-018 the minimal latency is the sum of the minimum latency of each link, plus the transmission delay of each link except the final one, plus the forwarding latency of each gateway. In practice, this minimal latency is further augmented by queuing and processing delays.640-801 Queuing delay occurs when a gateway receives multiple packets from different sources heading towards the same destination. Since typically only one packet can be transmitted at a time, some of the packets must queue for transmission, incurring additional delay. Processing delays are incurred while a gateway determines what to do with a newly received packet. The combination of propagation,000-071 serialization, queuing, and processing delays often produces a complex and variable network latency profile .

[BushmasterM4]

Network cards are notorious for pops and other noise in DAW's. My wireless card caused problems also. Mine is disabled by default, until I need online, then I just enable it through a shortcut I created.

[WRGKMC]

I have two 1010LTs and disableing the network card was the first thing after checking the IRC settings in Bios. If you boot into bios it tells you what the cards are are ganged up with. By moving the boards to different PCI slots you can get the boards on a, independant IRQ sometimes. The lower numbers between 2 and 10 are what you want to try for. If they're on busses above 12 they are likely virtual IRQs and will be running on a bus with another resource hog as you have found out. Video cards, and network cards are the biggest culprets. If you can get them free of them then you're usually in good shape and can get good recording results.

 

After getting them on a separate IRQ you can go to System information under windows systems tools and see how much other junk gets thrown in on the sound card. If its independant and has no hardware or software conflicts then you should get the best performance possible. After that setting the latency under the M-Audio control panel AND the latency settings in the recording program will get you the best results.

 

I recently upgraded to win 7 and found if the latency is too high it can make the recording studder and crackle. Set too low and you have dropouts. I adjusted the M-Audio Control panel latency so there was no noise or studdering then adjusted the recording program latency settings so I had minimum dropout with multtiple plugs while having maximum resources running.

[3arabsoft]

i got only one thing to say , nice .............................. PC

[AluminumNeck]

i got only one thing to say , nice .............................. PC

 

I've got the big brother version of the CPU. It is a freaking rockstar

[tacdryver]

I want to give a big hand clap to Deville, I am now running the latency checker and found all sorts of issues...in my case it was evidently a Raid controller..latency was worst as start up, a million programs were updating and trying to start up...after some time, everything settled down..

 

I tried to run it in Safe mode without networking,...figuring the least amount of programs running in the background would provide the least interference, didn't start up..

 

This latency checkers seems to be a good tool, hand in hand with the process and performance displays to see what crap is soaking up resources in the background...

 

Thanks Deville..Nice Job!

[nomzz333]

You maybe surprise to know that I didn

[dogbitey]

great post.

it's true. my wireless card would freeze my computer. once I got rid of it all is smooth sailing.