Audio 8 CPU Spikes
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  1. #1
    Tech Guru squidot's Avatar
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    Default Audio 8 CPU Spikes

    hey everyone,

    i recently started digital djing again with tsp 2.5 and i'm having some issues with my audio 8 and cpu/latency spikes. it's like clockwork. when i have the audio 8 plugged in and traktor running (even just idle), i get cpu spikes to 25% every 10 seconds or so (all other times cpu is at 0-1%). when running the latency test within traktor i get the same results with latency usually hitting around 400 every 10 secs. it still stays in the green mostly, but it seems like these semi-quick spikes are causing some minor audio issues...almost like a slight pop in kick sounds, which is driving me nuts. this issue only happens when traktor is running and the audio 8 is plugged in. i'm currently running in external mixing mode with an x1 and an old 2 channel numark mixer. here's my laptop specs:

    hp dv6: i5 processor with 8 gigs of ram running windows 7 64 bit. brand new laptop, less than 1 month old that i am ONLY using for traktor. i have followed most of the pc tune up steps and have some backround services disabled, wifi disabled, virus software disabled, etc.

    i have tried uninstalling the audio 8 driver (which was loaded during the tsp 2.5 install) and installed the newest driver from the ni site (which ended up being the same one). i have tried a different usb cable and every port on my laptop with no luck. i have also tried every latency setting in traktor and it's the same result. i tried unchecking multi-core support but that ended up making the issue worse and generally spiking to about 40% cpu load.

    do you guys think it may be an issue with the audio 8 itself? i'm about to pick up an s4 in the near future and really hope that this issue will not continue with that hardware. what do you guys think?

    thanks for taking the time to read this and any insight would be helpful.
    tsp 2.5 | vci-400 ege | mfspectra | kontrol x1s | rokit 8s (ferrari grey) | krk 10 sub | audio 8
    hp dv6 - i5 - 8gb | maschine | mpk49 | apc40 | rokit 5s | technics sl-1200mk3ds | cdj100s
    thread of free music

  2. #2
    Tech Mentor Scaper7's Avatar
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    Similar problems have been reported by S4 users.

  3. #3
    Tech Guru bumtsch's Avatar
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    I've seen this regular spiking pattern in my task manager ever since I got an audio 8 in august 2010 on both vista x86 and 7 x64 with a variety of driver releases and even after installing the usually suggested KB patches from Microsoft. I think it might also have been happening with XP SP3... now that would have been interesting to remember.
    You should even see this as long as you have a program running which is using it as its audio interface. If you monitor the interrupts/dpcs you'll see it's usbport.sys that's going nuts. And this is a part of Windows... which also behaves fine in many setups.
    Since switching to TSP 2.x which increased the load somewhat, I've bumped my usb buffer from 1ms to 2ms (256 samples of audio buffer for a total latency of about 10/11ms @ 44k), the load still plays the yo-yo but no audio glitches to report.

  4. #4
    Tech Guru squidot's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by bumtsch View Post
    I've seen this regular spiking pattern in my task manager ever since I got an audio 8 in august 2010 on both vista x86 and 7 x64 with a variety of driver releases and even after installing the usually suggested KB patches from Microsoft.
    i'm going to try the only other audio 8 driver from the ni website but it doesn't sound too promising since it didn't work for you. i haven't tried any of the microsoft kb patches though...do you happen to know which ones to install?

    Quote Originally Posted by bumtsch View Post
    You should even see this as long as you have a program running which is using it as its audio interface. If you monitor the interrupts/dpcs you'll see it's usbport.sys that's going nuts. And this is a part of Windows... which also behaves fine in many setups.
    i'm going to try setting the audio 8 as my windows sound card and see if it happens with itunes open. i suspect what you say is going to be true.

    Quote Originally Posted by bumtsch View Post
    I've bumped my usb buffer from 1ms to 2ms (256 samples of audio buffer for a total latency of about 10/11ms @ 44k), the load still plays the yo-yo but no audio glitches to report.
    in traktor i currently have it set to 128 samples and i'm getting a total latency of 6.8ms if i remember correctly. i dont recall what the usb buffer is at that setting. i did try other latency settings which didn't get rid of the spikes but i didn't really listen at the other settings to see if the pops went away. i just figured, if there are spikes...it's probably still occuring.
    tsp 2.5 | vci-400 ege | mfspectra | kontrol x1s | rokit 8s (ferrari grey) | krk 10 sub | audio 8
    hp dv6 - i5 - 8gb | maschine | mpk49 | apc40 | rokit 5s | technics sl-1200mk3ds | cdj100s
    thread of free music

  5. #5
    Tech Guru bumtsch's Avatar
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    That was the first one I bumped into : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/981214
    There's also this, but again the results are hit or miss (mostly miss!) http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2529073 (you can pre-check by running this http://code.kliu.org/.etc/7601usbfix/)

  6. #6
    Tech Mentor Scaper7's Avatar
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    I've only experienced this cyclic CPU spiking with NI interfaces. Does your CPU still spike using another interface?

  7. #7
    Tech Guru squidot's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by bumtsch View Post
    That was the first one I bumped into : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/981214
    There's also this, but again the results are hit or miss (mostly miss!) http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2529073 (you can pre-check by running this http://code.kliu.org/.etc/7601usbfix/)
    thanks for this. i tried some stuff last night and ended up getting the dpc tester. i found that i was getting dpc spikes generally around ~450 at the same 15 second intervals even without the audio 8 plugged in, but no cpu spikes. occasionally those dpc spikes would hit the yellow around 600-700. i looked in the resource manager when the audio 8 was plugged (with traktor running) in and my cpu 0 was hitting 100% at the 15 sec intervals with cpu 2 hitting about 30% for a total of the 25% cpu.

    i ended up adjusting some power management settings i missed and disabled usb selective suspend. those didn't really seem to help. disabling the acpi battery gave me the most dpc improvement. without the audio 8 the highest dpc i get is around 150. with the audio 8 and traktor running a couple of tracks and effects it's peak was 300, maybe 350...so it's much better now, though i still do get the cpu spikes. that's okay with me as long as the audio doesn't suffer. from my research it seems as no one has really found a way to stop the cpu spikes.

    i think i was still hearing some slight pops at a 128 buffer so i changed it to 256 and i didn't seem to hear any audio issues after that. if they spring up again i will try to run that ms hotfix.
    tsp 2.5 | vci-400 ege | mfspectra | kontrol x1s | rokit 8s (ferrari grey) | krk 10 sub | audio 8
    hp dv6 - i5 - 8gb | maschine | mpk49 | apc40 | rokit 5s | technics sl-1200mk3ds | cdj100s
    thread of free music

  8. #8
    Tech Guru squidot's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Scaper7 View Post
    I've only experienced this cyclic CPU spiking with NI interfaces. Does your CPU still spike using another interface?
    yeah, my research is kind of telling me the same thing about ni cards on some windows machines. i don't really have another interface to test...well, if i can find my old bcd3000 i can try that out and see. i can also test with my laptop's built in card, but i don't think that will make the cpu spike.

    so what other interfaces have you used with no cpu spike issues?
    tsp 2.5 | vci-400 ege | mfspectra | kontrol x1s | rokit 8s (ferrari grey) | krk 10 sub | audio 8
    hp dv6 - i5 - 8gb | maschine | mpk49 | apc40 | rokit 5s | technics sl-1200mk3ds | cdj100s
    thread of free music

  9. #9
    Tech Guru bumtsch's Avatar
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    I had no such issues with my ESI Gigaport HD. It also had no inputs and no timecode support whatsoever, so using it is out of the question now :P

  10. #10
    Tech Guru squidot's Avatar
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    i just ended up ordering the vci-400 ege so it will be interesting to see if the cpu still spikes.
    tsp 2.5 | vci-400 ege | mfspectra | kontrol x1s | rokit 8s (ferrari grey) | krk 10 sub | audio 8
    hp dv6 - i5 - 8gb | maschine | mpk49 | apc40 | rokit 5s | technics sl-1200mk3ds | cdj100s
    thread of free music

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