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Posts: 13629
Location: Vermont
Joined: November 12, 2007
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I use DPC Latency checker. This will catch various low level operating system and drive problems related to interrupt processing and operating system kernel processing in response to interrupts. Other problems relate to I/O, file system locks and competition by various processes, those that you may be running and those that the system may be running "beneath the sheets". I suggest running the Windows 7 task monitor and look at the various processes. Be sure and click the box that allows you to see the system processes. Take a good look at what is going on and try to get a feel as to what looks normal when your system is working well. When you are having problems, then take a look and see if you can see something different going on. It is not necessary to understand what all the various rows and columns of this display mean. Just watch them and over time you will get a feel for what is good and what is bad from an audio perspective. I am assuming that the OP is running Windows 7 as a general purpose operating system, not stripping it down. If one can dedicate a computer purely to audio than one can take a different approach and remove everything that is unnecessary to music playback. This may or may not make the ultimate result sound any better, but it will definitely reduce the number of places where problems can hide. In addition, if one runs a dedicated system that is not connected to the Internet you can dispense with Windows Update. That way, M$ won't "improve" the performance of the system and recreate stutter, glitches or poor sound in the interest of "security" or revenue enhancement.
The one thing that is most likely to create problems is any kind of anti-virus software. The worst of this is third party programs that aren't tightly integrated with the operating system. However, the free "Windows Defender" can also create problems. Usually, it doesn't have a bad effect, but periodically it goes about its "housekeeping" all the while screwing the real-time audio performance of the system. So if there is one thing one can do to get rid of your problems, disable the anti-virus software. This is probably not a good idea to do on a system used for email and web surfing, but if you can abstain from these activities for a while, then you can safely test to see if this is the source of your problem. Unfortunately, Windows Defender does not just slow down system activity during its periodic updates (which can be scheduled for the middle of the night). This is why you will have to look closely at each of your system processes and understand what it is doing and whether or not it is necessary. Sorry, this is the reality of using commercial off the shelf software for a hard realtime critical application such as high quality audio playback.
Or, you can just crank up the buffer sizes and hope the problem goes away. If this approach works in your system, then you won't have the stutter and glitches. However, be aware that doing this will probably result in a lower sound quality, because smaller buffer sizes (when they work) almost always sound better. (Bits "should" just be bits, but practice seldom accords with theory, as will be apparent if one listens carefully.)
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
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