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#1
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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Optimizing XP laptop for FireWire, a useful trick!
Soundhaspriority wrote:
This utility, DPC Latency Checker, http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml , graphically displays the maximum amount of time it takes for a "Deferred Procedure Call" to execute. Thanks, Bob!!! It's things like this that make r.a.p. worth paying attention to every day. Using the DPC Latency Checker, I was able to determine what was causing the problems on a 5 year old laptop that I'd assumed wasn't going to be useful for audio apps. Like practically every other laptop, the wifi adapter is a software driven device. The WPA/TKIP security is handled in software. It is known to be CPU intensive. The word on the street is that turning off the wifi driver, and turning off graphics acceleration, and possibly sound card acceleration, are the keys to reducing latency. Friends, it is not. Graphics and sound acceleration are no problem here, but the Wi-Fi adapter definitely was! I was seeing a whopping 22,000 microseconds (usec) of delays, every minute, like clockwork. That ruined it for any serious audio application. Disabling the Wi-Fi driver (in ... - Device Manager - Network Adapters) fixed it. On my laptop, the WiFi device driver was BY FAR the biggest problem. It just varies from model to model, and the design of the device driver for the particular WiFi adapter hardware in the system is what matters. Maybe there are laptops with problematic graphics acceleration and sound acceleration, too. (?) Disabling the "Microsoft ACPI Compliant Battery Method", which is the simple voltmeter that reports the state of charge of the battery, reduces the maximum latency to less than 500 us with the wifi adapter turned on. So there we have it: In a rather generic laptop, disabling the Battery Method in the System--Hardware tab, That's Start - Settings - Control Panel - System - Hardware - Device Manager - HOSTNAME - Battery then right-click on "Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Control Method Battery", and click on Disable. (Simple. And it got rid of the rest of my latency issues. DPC now reports 130 usec latency with the audio running. This old laptop is useful for audio after all! Jay Ts -- To contact me, use this web page: http://www.jayts.com/contact.php |
#2
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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Optimizing XP laptop for FireWire, a useful trick!
Jay Ts wrote:
Disabling the "Microsoft ACPI Compliant Battery Method", which is the simple voltmeter that reports the state of charge of the battery, reduces the maximum latency to less than 500 us with the wifi adapter turned on. That's Start - Settings - Control Panel - System - Hardware - Device Manager - HOSTNAME - Battery then right-click on "Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Control Method Battery", and click on Disable. (Simple. And it got rid of the rest of my latency issues. DPC now reports 130 usec latency with the audio running. This old laptop is useful for audio after all! Computers are all different. Althought I don't have any problems recording as many tracks as I want on my laptop (never more than 8), I thought this might be interesting to look at as I've heard of several instances where battery monitoring has affected audio performance. DPC shows less than 100 us with the computer idling, but it jumps to 16,000 us when playing an on-line audio stream with Winamp. Disabling the APCI battery doodad made absolutely no difference. But surprisingly, it didn't make the battery charge indicator on the task bar go away either, so I don't know what disabling this did (or didn't do). I suspect that the measured latency is a result of the old Digigram VX Pocket audio card that I'm using. When I removed it and used the SoundMax built-in audio hardware, the DPC checker shows about 36 us with Winamp playing. And again, enabling or disabling the battery monitor makes no difference. The Windows default sound device gives two options for the VX Pocket, one that says WDM and the other doesn't. I'd been using the one that doesn't say WDM (VX Pocket Mixer 1) but switching to the WDM version drops the latency down to the 2000 us range. When I switch to the Mackie Onyx Firewire mixer card, the DPC latency is in the 160 us range and doesn't change noticeably whether audio is playing or not. More unknowns, and probably never-learns. -- If you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo -- I'm really Mike Rivers ) |
#3
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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Optimizing XP laptop for FireWire, a useful trick!
Soundhaspriority wrote:
"Jay Ts" wrote in message g.com... [snip] Graphics and sound acceleration are no problem here, but the Wi-Fi adapter definitely was! I was seeing a whopping 22,000 microseconds (usec) of delays, every minute, like clockwork. That ruined it for any serious audio application. Disabling the Wi-Fi driver (in ... - Device Manager - Network Adapters) fixed it. On my laptop, the WiFi device driver was BY FAR the biggest problem. It just varies from model to model, and the design of the device driver for the particular WiFi adapter hardware in the system is what matters. What wifi device is in the machine? It's listed in the Device Manager as "Toshiba Wireless LAN Mini PCI Card". The driver is by "Agere Systems", version 7.62, released in June, 2002. I think this is the final version of the driver. It's an old laptop! Jay Ts -- To contact me, use this web page: http://www.jayts.com/contact.php |
#4
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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Optimizing XP laptop for FireWire, a useful trick!
"Soundhaspriority" wrote in message ... "Jay Ts" wrote in message g.com... [snip] Graphics and sound acceleration are no problem here, but the Wi-Fi adapter definitely was! I was seeing a whopping 22,000 microseconds (usec) of delays, every minute, like clockwork. That ruined it for any serious audio application. Disabling the Wi-Fi driver (in ... - Device Manager - Network Adapters) fixed it. On my laptop, the WiFi device driver was BY FAR the biggest problem. It just varies from model to model, and the design of the device driver for the particular WiFi adapter hardware in the system is what matters. Maybe there are laptops with problematic graphics acceleration and sound acceleration, too. (?) [snip] I have heard that there are. I was a bit too quick to draw a general conclusion. What wifi device is in the machine? Bob Morein (310) 237-6511 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Hi Bob, I'd tried this Latency checker before (even suggested it to others on this newsgroup if I recall correctly !) without success....my Core 2 Duo Intel laptop was spiking up to 4000 us every 10 seconds precisely, and after disabling and restoring all the Usual Suspects I finally disabled the inbuilt CD/DVD drive and ..lo and behold....it dropped down to a steady 300-500 us 'green fence' and stays that way. I've never noticed any clicks or pops that could be attributed to those regular spike peaks, so it hadn't bothered me much...but why would a (non operating) drive cause these ? Nice to have tracked it down though.......! Also, I notice you say "Dual core Windows laptops have other problems. I don't have one to test with, and I plan to avoid them for audio capture until those problems are resolved"......can you shed any more light on this ( mine seems to work fine with an Audiofire 8 using Reaper and Wavelab 6) ? Ray |
#5
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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Optimizing XP laptop for FireWire, a useful trick!
"Soundhaspriority" wrote in message news "Ray Thomas" wrote in message ... "Soundhaspriority" wrote in message ... "Jay Ts" wrote in message g.com... [snip] Graphics and sound acceleration are no problem here, but the Wi-Fi adapter definitely was! I was seeing a whopping 22,000 microseconds (usec) of delays, every minute, like clockwork. That ruined it for any serious audio application. Disabling the Wi-Fi driver (in ... - Device Manager - Network Adapters) fixed it. On my laptop, the WiFi device driver was BY FAR the biggest problem. It just varies from model to model, and the design of the device driver for the particular WiFi adapter hardware in the system is what matters. Maybe there are laptops with problematic graphics acceleration and sound acceleration, too. (?) [snip] I have heard that there are. I was a bit too quick to draw a general conclusion. What wifi device is in the machine? Bob Morein (310) 237-6511 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Hi Bob, I'd tried this Latency checker before (even suggested it to others on this newsgroup if I recall correctly !) without success....my Core 2 Duo Intel laptop was spiking up to 4000 us every 10 seconds precisely, and after disabling and restoring all the Usual Suspects I finally disabled the inbuilt CD/DVD drive and ..lo and behold....it dropped down to a steady 300-500 us 'green fence' and stays that way. I've never noticed any clicks or pops that could be attributed to those regular spike peaks, so it hadn't bothered me much...but why would a (non operating) drive cause these ? Nice to have tracked it down though.......! Also, I notice you say "Dual core Windows laptops have other problems. I don't have one to test with, and I plan to avoid them for audio capture until those problems are resolved"......can you shed any more light on this ( mine seems to work fine with an Audiofire 8 using Reaper and Wavelab 6) ? Ray Hi, Ray. My statement is based on two things: 1. observations of other forums, and my own test of two laptops. I saw that Motunation is full of people who cannot get a Traveler to work on state-of-the-art laptops such as yours. I got it working with one antique laptop, while the second laptop suffered only from the sin of being too slow for use. Neither of my antique laptops crashed, bluescreened, etc. 2. I have noticed that multiprocessor machines are quirkier than uniprocessor machines. Code can behave differently one each. Suppose there is a block of data that two threads can work on. In a multiprocessor environment, a "mutex", mutual-exclusion, is used to make sure that if the processes are hosted on different CPU, they will wait their proper turns to work on the data. If the programmer makes a mistake in writing the mutex, both processors can end up grabbing for the data at the same time, or out of order. But if the same code is executed on a single processor machine, the bug might show, because the single processor can execute only on thread at a time anyway. My observations are only for pre-sale. If you have something that works, you have "run the gauntlet." Bob Morein (310) 237-6511 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bob, Yes it seems there are many flavours of dual and multicore processors out there, and not all audio programs are equally disposed to use those cores to maximum efficiency...Reaper does I believe, whereas Steinberg is still moving in that direction. The following forum (incl some Motu users) topic highlights this: http://www.soundonsound.com/forum/sh...rue#Post681120 By the way, my latency score dropped even more significantly when I disabled the Battery condition indicator, as you recommended, and the only reservation could be that the power management schemes that folks fine tune their PC's with (eg no hibernation, screen saver off, battery power extenders, etc) may be lost into the bargain ? You might even question whether the on-board battery has any intrinsic use to you, as most laptops devote a lot of resources to maximizing battery life...to the possible detriment of audio performance, and if most of your work involves being connected to mains AC anyway...? Here's an example: http://forums.cnet.com/5208-6142_102...sageID=2948458 I ran my old laptop for 2 years battery-less after it failed to hold a charge longer than 15 mins, so I simply removed it and carried on ...! Yes my gauntlet run worked for me, although as you've shown there is always room for improvement. Finally, here's a very good overview of how to recognize processor bottlenecks, RAM drought or struggling CPU's: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jul0...ician_0706.htm Ray |
#6
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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Optimizing XP laptop for FireWire, a useful trick!
Ray Thomas wrote:
I finally disabled the inbuilt CD/DVD drive and ..lo and behold....it dropped down to a steady 300-500 us 'green fence' and stays that way. ...but why would a (non operating) drive cause these ? It's probably checking every ten seconds to see if there was a disk in the drive that it had to do something with. You probably would have had the same result if you disabled the auto-detect function, but that's pretty difficult to do. People will tell you to right-click on the CD drive in My Conmputer and select the AutoPlay tab, but that doesn't work. You need to make a Registry change to actually disable the check for a new disk in the drive. As usual, Google for "disable Winsows CD Auto Play" or something like that and you'll find instructions that may be correct. g -- If you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo -- I'm really Mike Rivers ) |
#7
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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Optimizing XP laptop for FireWire, a useful trick!
On Fri, 30 Jan 2009 16:33:41 GMT, Mike Rivers
wrote: Ray Thomas wrote: I finally disabled the inbuilt CD/DVD drive and ..lo and behold....it dropped down to a steady 300-500 us 'green fence' and stays that way. ...but why would a (non operating) drive cause these ? It's probably checking every ten seconds to see if there was a disk in the drive that it had to do something with. You probably would have had the same result if you disabled the auto-detect function, but that's pretty difficult to do. People will tell you to right-click on the CD drive in My Conmputer and select the AutoPlay tab, but that doesn't work. You need to make a Registry change to actually disable the check for a new disk in the drive. As usual, Google for "disable Winsows CD Auto Play" or something like that and you'll find instructions that may be correct. g Go he http://www.moozek.com/2008/08/21/def...ing-for-audio/ Note, some of this stuff is marginally helpful these days dues to faster machines etc however lot's of good information here. First thing I do on a machine is disable auto-insert-notification. It's nothing but a PITA even on a none DAW system. |
#8
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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Optimizing XP laptop for FireWire, a useful trick!
"Mike Rivers" wrote in message ... Ray Thomas wrote: I finally disabled the inbuilt CD/DVD drive and ..lo and behold....it dropped down to a steady 300-500 us 'green fence' and stays that way. ...but why would a (non operating) drive cause these ? It's probably checking every ten seconds to see if there was a disk in the drive that it had to do something with. You probably would have had the same result if you disabled the auto-detect function, but that's pretty difficult to do. People will tell you to right-click on the CD drive in My Conmputer and select the AutoPlay tab, but that doesn't work. You need to make a Registry change to actually disable the check for a new disk in the drive. As usual, Google for "disable Winsows CD Auto Play" or something like that and you'll find instructions that may be correct. g Hi Mike, I tried that (using this source, very good as it turns out: http://www.windowsnetworking.com/kba...dowsXPPro.html ) however that only prevents the autoplay function when a disc is inserted, not from searching for 'disc present' every 10 secs or so. Hence disabling the drive from Device Manager remains (for me) the best and quickest option so far....but thanks for the tip anyway ! Ray |
#9
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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Optimizing XP laptop for FireWire, a useful trick!
Ray Thomas wrote:
Hi Mike, I tried that (using this source, very good as it turns out: however that only prevents the autoplay function when a disc is inserted, not from searching for 'disc present' every 10 secs or so. Hence disabling the drive from Device Manager remains (for me) the best and quickest option so far....but thanks for the tip anyway ! Here's how to nuke it in Windows XP: 1. Click Start, click Run, type Gpedit.msc in the Open box, and then click OK. 2 Under Computer Configuration, expand Administrative Templates, and then click System. 3. In the Settings pane, right-click Turn off Autoplay, and then click Properties. 4. Click Enabled, and then select All drives in the Turn off Autoplay on box to disable Autorun on all drives. 5. Restart the computer. -- If you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo -- I'm really Mike Rivers ) |
#10
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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Optimizing XP laptop for FireWire, a useful trick!
Mike Rivers wrote:
Ray Thomas wrote: Hi Mike, I tried that (using this source, very good as it turns out: however that only prevents the autoplay function when a disc is inserted, not from searching for 'disc present' every 10 secs or so. Hence disabling the drive from Device Manager remains (for me) the best and quickest option so far....but thanks for the tip anyway ! Here's how to nuke it in Windows XP: 1. Click Start, click Run, type Gpedit.msc in the Open box, and then click OK. 2 Under Computer Configuration, expand Administrative Templates, and then click System. 3. In the Settings pane, right-click Turn off Autoplay, and then click Properties. 4. Click Enabled, and then select All drives in the Turn off Autoplay on box to disable Autorun on all drives. 5. Restart the computer. Note, that "GPedit.msc" (Group Policy Editor) will ONLY work in XP PRO, but not in XP HOME! A better choice is to download and install a powerful little tool from MS, called "TweakUI" http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/D...powertoys.mspx Be sure to download the normal version, NOT the one for "Itanium based systems" - unless you happen to have one. If you do, you will know it! ;-) Another nice and useful add-on is the "Alt-Tab replacement" on the same page. The rest is rather of little use for most users. After installation, open TweakUI from Start-Programs-Powertoys for XP, - click + at "My Computer" - then + at "AutoPlay" - then + at "Types" to disable AutoPlay. Anyway, TweakUI has some other nice features besides this one. Just look around it and youŽll see, what I mean... Phil |
#11
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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Optimizing XP laptop for FireWire, a useful trick!
Here's how to nuke it in Windows XP: 1. Click Start, click Run, type Gpedit.msc in the Open box, and then click OK. 2 Under Computer Configuration, expand Administrative Templates, and then click System. 3. In the Settings pane, right-click Turn off Autoplay, and then click Properties. 4. Click Enabled, and then select All drives in the Turn off Autoplay on box to disable Autorun on all drives. 5. Restart the computer. Thanks Mike....that did the trick ! Ray |
#12
Posted to rec.audio.pro
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Optimizing XP laptop for FireWire, a useful trick!
Phil W wrote:
Note, that "GPedit.msc" (Group Policy Editor) will ONLY work in XP PRO, but not in XP HOME! Too bad. A better choice is to download and install a powerful little tool from MS, called "TweakUI" That's what I tried first (well, second after clicking on "take no action" in the Properties box for every kind of file listed) and it still didn't keep something from popping up on many CDs or USB memory thumb drives. I suppose that some of this is a result of not clearly knowing the difference between "auto play" and "auto detect" and the fact that whatever file types Microsoft has included in the "action" list, someone has (or will) come up with some other file that will cause the drive to ask what it should do. The problem is that none of those solutions (other than perhaps the registry edit) ever tells the removable drive simply to acknowledge that there's something to read, and to not even look at what is is until I tell it to. Another nice and useful add-on is the "Alt-Tab replacement" on the same page. The rest is rather of little use for most users. What does that do? I don't even remember what Alt-Tab does, but I think I may have used it now and then. -- If you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo -- I'm really Mike Rivers ) |
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