SAW and SAC buffer glitching in Windows 10 pc

[UpTilDawn]

After recently giving up on my old Win7 studio pc, which had begun randomly crashing, I found a newer Dell Precision t1700 with Win10 Pro installed and proceeded to spend the next week or two trimming it and tweaking it best as I could. I got it to the point where everything seemed to be in order, hooked it up in the studio and spent a few more hours updating and tweaking it further. However, the performance of my most trusted SAW and SAC programs is suffering big time for reasons I haven't been able to track down yet.

Both SAC and SAW - both with link activated and SAW running independently - come grinding to a halt after a few minutes buffer overruns (or is it underruns?.... I don't recall at the moment). Neither program shows any appreciable MT or CPU load. In fact, SAW displays a maximum of 2% MT load in the fairly simple session I was trying to work with the other day. Initial tracking of acoustic guitar using the SAC/SAW link, with 4 mics and the jms metronome plugin showed no signs of stress. The problems showed up while preparing for a vocal overdub and have continued ever since.

Initially, during the session, I played around with buffers in the RME panel and discovered that I couldn't even run 4x64 without this glitching, grinding to a halt thing. To make troubleshooting a bit easier, I am now only testing in SAW. I haven't timed the occurrence of the problem, but it appears to be pretty regular - within a couple of minutes of hitting play. So I've got that to go on this morning - and that's where I'm at.

I've done all or most all of Bob's tweaks, except for the couple of force this and that options in SAW that Bob usually recommends when there's issues (and which I have never ever had to engage before). I've also gone into BIOS and disabled things like hyperthreading and speedstep (or whatever that feature is called) and anything else I could think of that might help performance.

I'm about to head down to troubleshoot some more now, but I could sure use some suggestions. Please throw some ideas at me, if you can. I know there are folk here that know computers a whole lot more than I do (with my hard knocks schooling) and I could sure benefit from your unique combination of SAC/SAW/PC knowledgebase smarts!

Thanks in advance......

[UpTilDawn]

After some more testing, I have some additional info to add.
This happens whether or not SAC is open and linked and it happens no matter how buffers are set in the RME and SAW, or how CPU priorities are set in SAW:
SAW sound grinds down to a halt at around 2:15-2:20 - or I should say, every 2:15 seconds or so.
But, SAW continues to play, without audio
Stopping SAW playback and then starting again resumes audio.

SAC:
If SAC link is on and enabled, I get over 50 slipped buffers as the grinding sound stops.
SAC has to then be stopped (turning off the green light) and then started again before I can start SAW and hear audio again. It makes no difference how CPU priorities are set in SAC either.

I seem to recall some scenario like this happening ages ago - before SAC existed and on an XP PIV pc - but I don't remember what the issue was and I have no clue as to what is causing this now.

I'm sure it doesn't help any that at any given moment there are over 110 processes showing in task manager (or process explorer, which I just installed today, but haven't gotten much out of yet) - that's almost 3 times what was typical in the Win7 32 bit system I used to use (I don't recall what the 64 bit system was doing, because I used it for less than a year). I installed a 3rd party antivirus, just so I could stop Defender and have sort of a one button method to disable antivirus for awhile. I haven't tried disabling the network yet, because Windows 10 design has made finding the quick LAN settings I used to use in Win7 so convoluted, I can't remember where to do so at the moment.

What else can I try to do to tame this pc so SAW can do its job? I'm at a loss..

By the way, both SAW and SAC are 32 bit, running in xp sp3 compatibility mode and run as administrator.

[cgrafx]

1. If you haven't explicitly set real-time priority in a program like lasso or process explorer, SAC and SAW will not run at that priority.
2. you'll want to also make sure you have set the CPU affinity to separate SAC/SAW from Windows processes (move SAC/SAW to CPU 1 or 2 or 3, just not running at 0)

There are a number of forum threads explicitly on windows 10 settings, including a number that I posted. You'll have to do a search to find them.

[Ian Alexander]

It's not much, but...

Do you use this computer for web, email, or anything where it could catch a virus? If not, why have antivirus software. Of course, I have it on my office machine, but have never used antivirus on an audio computer.

It might be worth looking at task manager or process explorer (gonna have to look that up myself), choose processes, and sort (click the column headings) by memory use, disk, cpu, etc., after SAW has started playing to see if you can spot misbehaving processes. If you see unexpected resource use, google the process and see what it is. You might be able to uninstall it.

Does the machine run okay for long periods of time when SS isn't playing?

Have you tried any other audio software?

Are there any built-in hardware diagnostics?

Hope you get it sorted out quickly.

[Dale B]

Where is the Black Viper when you need him!

He hasn't updated his stuff in while but his site still gives you a list of processes you can turn off to improve performance.

Google blackviper.com

[UpTilDawn]

Hey! Both problems resolved (fingers crossed)!

Thanks so much for your suggestions. This really helped me get past my mind blocks and also made it possible to find a few more tweaks that helped trim Win10 a little bit better.

The big issue, the regularly timed grinding to a halt, turned out to be clock related. Evidently, the last time I rearranged the RME Multiface interfaces, I failed to secure the word clock cables (they're situated so tight and close together!). This fix, together with the Win10 settings (and another bios setting) I changed, based on your helpful suggestions, has got the system able to run SAW alone at 32 buffers - I haven't even tried with SAC yet, which should be a breeze. I've never had the capability to run the studio at less than 2x64 and I fully anticipated that I should be able to do so with this new/old pc - and now I can, finally!

Hopefully, that's the last of that - if I can just get Windows from resetting some of my settings with its updates..... I found all my notifications turned back on today... ugh.

[UpTilDawn]

Where is the Black Viper when you need him!

He hasn't updated his stuff in while but his site still gives you a list of processes you can turn off to improve performance.

Google blackviper.com

Yeah - I miss being able to use the viper's checklist...

[mr_es335]

Hello,

Have a look-see: Optimize Windows 10 for LIVE SOUND

[UpTilDawn]

Hello,

Have a look-see: Optimize Windows 10 for LIVE SOUND

Yeah - thanks Dell. I've been collecting those vids. Very helpful.

[jmh]

I had a little issue probably unrelated but on topic, so a footnote for reference.

I decided to mirror the display on the other side of the wall. I also had a wireless keyboard & mouse which I put with the 2nd display. A couple of days later I was getting glitchyness & then underruns. I turned on the switch on the mouse and things returned to normal (almost - but I think the keyboard is not quite as smooth with the 2 plugged in). I have a usb audio interface I don't think it was sharing a channel with the dongle - nevertheless, it introduced chaos.