[prot]

I still have a >10 years old pre-core intel laptop with 2gb ram and it plays 24/192 with no glitches. So no, it's not a ram issue and most probably not hardware (such issues are very rare nowadays). Just run the latency checker and you'll see where/if you have Pc issues.

 

[atomicbob]

 
Thanks for the latency tester!!
- the full duplex & gigabit was set to auto in the network card settings -- I will try to force gigabit full duplex when I get home later.
  I want to say there may be more to investigate in network throttling, when DVS or Rednet first installed it asked to control "flow control" of the networking and I hit yes
- high performance power settings are on, minimum cpu state is 100% (speedstep is disabled in bios as well)
- no router or switch, it's a direct connect between PC and Rednet 3 (although some suggest I try a switch between the two... with better management?)
- my PC however is an older i7 from 2009 (1.7GHz quad core) but when I pop open the task manager to look at cpu usage, it's way below 50% while music is playing.
- could it be I only have 4GB of RAM? but music playing shouldn't be that intensive here.. I'll try an 8GB I suppose

@Soundsgoodtome - go here:
https://www.audinate.com/resources/faqs
look at
https://www.audinate.com/resources/faqs#collapse34 on dropouts and distortion
https://www.audinate.com/resources/faqs#collapse88 tune windows PC for audio
Particularly note the recommended DPC Checker (a different latency checker that has been in use by audio pros for quite some time) from Thesycon
http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml
 
Focusrite also has a FAQ page referencing tuning windows PC for audio.

 

[Soundsgoodtome]

  @Soundsgoodtome - go here:
https://www.audinate.com/resources/faqs
look at
https://www.audinate.com/resources/faqs#collapse34 on dropouts and distortion
https://www.audinate.com/resources/faqs#collapse88 tune windows PC for audio
Particularly note the recommended DPC Checker (a different latency checker that has been in use by audio pros for quite some time) from Thesycon
http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml
 
Focusrite also has a FAQ page referencing tuning windows PC for audio.

Great links Bob! There are a few tricks in the Windows PC tuning section of Focusrite's FAQ page that I have not tried yet, including disabling flow control and setting "interrupt moderation" for best performance. Both I've never had to touch before going into ethernet as a transport.

A lot of these tweaks I've done from previous readings into tweaking Windows 7 to be as audio-friendly as possible from a several years back but this is an excellent resource nonetheless. I may also turn off indexing as suggested, this particular pc is used for one use only. Performance is already in background services and virtual mem is set to 6500 currently but will try to max it at 10,000. I've also tried setting thread priorities manually in services (not in this focusrite guide) but no joy there as well. It's a head scratcher but my first guess would be the network settings above.

https://www.audinate.com/resources/faqs#collapse87

Spoiler: Copy of Focusrites "How Do I tune a Windows PC for best audio performance?"

The suggestions below can be used to improve Windows PC performance for audio recording and processing in some (most) situations. However, all systems are different, and there are no guarantees. We recommend that you create a system restore point before making fundamental changes to your PC. The suggestions below assume you are using Windows 7 (Windows feature paths may differ for other operating systems).
Warning:  Audinate accepts no responsibility for negative consequences as a result of following these recommendations.

• Defragment the hard drive regularly. This will improve data access times and reduce the load on the hard drive.
• Disable any screen savers, antivirus software, Windows Firewall, and Windows Defender. Background tasks that kick in unexpectedly can interrupt audio. Also disable system sounds to prevent them creeping into recordings. (Note: Disabling all firewall and antivirus software is not recommended for computers with active Internet connections.)
• If you need a paging file, increase the virtual memory (swap space). A rule of thumb is to set your virtual memory to twice the size of your RAM, but there are other considerations. If you're sure you do not need a paging file, switch it off entirely for all drives. Search for a good resource on swap space / virtual memory / paging file optimization for more information.
• Ensure your computer's power profile (Control Panel > Power Options) is set to High Performance (or 'Adjust for best performance'), and disable theme effects, and window animations. This will ensure your CPU speed is not restricted, and processing power is not wasted on moving unnecessary pixels around.
• Configure the power profile to prevent sleep / hibernation and hard drive shut-down due to inactivity. Surprise shut-downs cause catastrophic interruptions to recordings.
• Make sure DMA (Direct Memory Access) is enabled on each IDE channel. DMA is the recommended (fastest) disk access method for audio. To enable DMA, open the device manager (right-click My Computer and select Manage > Device Manager). Then expand the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, open the properties (right-click) for each channel, and ensure DMA is enabled in the Advanced settings.
• Remove all unnecessary fonts. Loading fonts uses resources.
• Ensure all hard drives related to audio work are formatted as NTFS.
• Ensure your BIOS and chipset drivers are up to date. Go to your chipset manufacturer's website for more information.
• Set processor scheduling to 'Background Services' (Control Panel > System > Advanced System Settings > Advanced > Performance). This should improve audio driver performance.
• Switch off automatic indexing (go to Start and type in 'indexing options' > press Enter > Modify). Indexing requires processor power, which you require for audio.
• Disable Wi-Fi. Computers that are trying to connect to unstable Wi-Fi networks are prone to CPU spikes, which can interrupt audio.
• Ensure your OS and all drivers are updated to the latest versions.
• If you know what you're doing, use services.msc to set any unnecessary startup services to 'manual'. If you aren't sure about which services to change, skip this step, or check out Black Viper's service configurations pages.
• DPC Latency Checker is a free application that can be used to analyse your computer's processing performance. Any significant number of DPC spikes above 100µsec have the potential to interrupt audio when running with low buffer settings. As a rule of thumb, a PC can be considered to be well-configured when the average DPC latency is below 100µsec. There should be minimal spikes beyond that level. Unfortunately, other hardware device drivers are normally responsible for these spikes. The process for identifying and removing the offending drivers is simply trial and error. As always, make sure you start off with the most up-to-date device drivers for all of your hardware.
• 'Flow Control' and 'Interrupt Moderation' can reduce the performance of your Ethernet interface and cause packets to be delayed. This is often the cause of late audio measurements on the Latency graph in Dante Controller for connections in and out of DVS. To configure Flow Control and Interrupt Moderation:
  • Go to Control Panel > Network and Internet > Network Connections
  • Right-click the network adaptor you use for Dante traffic, and select ‘Properties’
  • Click ‘Configure’
  • Select the ‘Advanced’ tab
  • Click ‘Flow Control’ and set the value to ‘Disabled’
  • Click ‘Interrupt Moderation’ and adjust for best performance (reduced latency vs. CPU usage)
  • Click OK

Advanced Configuration

Many motherboards provide additional configuration options. To achieve reliable performance at very low buffer settings, the following may also be required:

1. Set CStates to OFF
2. Disable Intel SpeedStep
3. Enable TurboBoost

Surprisingly, hardware RAID can be problematic for low-latency performance. This might sound counter-intuitive, but the device drivers required to run hardware RAID controllers (in particular, Intel RAID controllers that may be built into your motherboard) can result in excessive DPC spikes in the system. This prevents the audio hardware and DAW from timely access to memory, which will limit your ability to reduce ASIO buffers to the minimum possible value. Your system running a driver called IASTOR.SYS is indicative of hardware RAID being enabled.
Many motherboards provide an option to disable this, however, it will require the hard disk to be re-formatted and the OS re-installed. If you really know what you are doing, it is certainly possible to install a second disk and selectively boot between the two as you toggle RAID on or off. Remember that a disk formatted for a hardware Raid system will not be readable if raid is disabled, and vice versa.

Very Advanced Configuration

Microsoft provide a Windows Performance Toolkit as part of the development SDK. This includes a tool called “xperf”. This is a very advanced tool that can help you to identify which drivers are responsible for any DPC or Interrupt latency in your system. If you have access to this tool, you can use it to identify components in your system that may be causing DPC or other forms of system latency. Search http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/ for xperf for more information.

 

[rb2013]

Great stuff guys!  Why I love this thread.

 

[Clemmaster]

Dante Latency

The Dante Latency drop-down menu allows you to set the device latency (time before playout).

A Dante device receiving audio from Dante Virtual Soundcard will use this value (unless the receiving device only supports higher latencies). The latency compensates primarily for computer scheduling jitter, as well as delay variations encountered in the network.

Supported values are:

1. 4ms (low)
2. 6ms (medium)*
3. 10ms (high)*

* Not supported at sample rates of 176.4 kHz or 192 kHz when transmitting to hardware devices running Dante firmware v3.7.x or earlier. In order to enable these latency settings for the higher sample rates, upgrade your Dante device firmware to v3.8.x or above. Please contact your device manufacturer for information about Dante firmware upgrades.

As a rule of thumb, 4ms can be used where Dante Virtual Soundcard is running on a high-spec computer with low scheduling jitter. Computers with poor scheduling performance may need to use the 10ms Dante Latency setting.

Note:  If the Dante Latency setting is set too low to compensate for network delay variation and computer scheduling jitter, there is a risk of intermittent loss of audio.

 

[Luckbad]

Thanks, Clem.

My Rednet 3 is waiting for me at work. Got a stomach bug and couldn't go in to get it.

 

[rb2013]

 

Dante Latency

The Dante Latency drop-down menu allows you to set the device latency (time before playout).

A Dante device receiving audio from Dante Virtual Soundcard will use this value (unless the receiving device only supports higher latencies). The latency compensates primarily for computer scheduling jitter, as well as delay variations encountered in the network.

Supported values are:

1. 4ms (low)
2. 6ms (medium)*
3. 10ms (high)*

* Not supported at sample rates of 176.4 kHz or 192 kHz when transmitting to hardware devices running Dante firmware v3.7.x or earlier. In order to enable these latency settings for the higher sample rates, upgrade your Dante device firmware to v3.8.x or above. Please contact your device manufacturer for information about Dante firmware upgrades.

As a rule of thumb, 4ms can be used where Dante Virtual Soundcard is running on a high-spec computer with low scheduling jitter. Computers with poor scheduling performance may need to use the 10ms Dante Latency setting.

Note:  If the Dante Latency setting is set too low to compensate for network delay variation and computer scheduling jitter, there is a risk of intermittent loss of audio.

Good info - so my newer iCore 7 Haswell WIN10 worked with the 4ms and 192k with both the old and the new firmware versions.
 
PC $450 at costco - Aspire TC-705, iCore 4790 3.6GHz, 12GB DDR3, WIN 10 Home 64 bit, Haswell chipset.
 
I understand that Haswell and Skylake had significant performance improvements for GB Ethernet.
 
So may be that's why the REDNET stuff launched in 2013 never took off, but now is a sota AOIP solution.

 

[somestranger26]

 
Great links Bob! There are a few tricks in the Windows PC tuning section of Focusrite's FAQ page that I have not tried yet, including disabling flow control and setting "interrupt moderation" for best performance. Both I've never had to touch before going into ethernet as a transport.

A lot of these tweaks I've done from previous readings into tweaking Windows 7 to be as audio-friendly as possible from a several years back but this is an excellent resource nonetheless. I may also turn off indexing as suggested, this particular pc is used for one use only. Performance is already in background services and virtual mem is set to 6500 currently but will try to max it at 10,000. I've also tried setting thread priorities manually in services (not in this focusrite guide) but no joy there as well. It's a head scratcher but my first guess would be the network settings above.

 
I disabled the flow control and interrupt moderation, and am using the built-in Intel I210 on my motherboard. Those didn't help. I've used these latency checkers before and never had any issues shown with them.
 
I used to have frequent and much longer USB dropouts when I had the original Audio-GD Digital Interface which was still using a crappy isochronous chip. That was when I was living in the dorms at college and the power quality was trash; when I moved off campus the mysterious dropouts disappeared. This makes me wonder if it's a similar issue in my current apartment, which has some of the worst power PS Audio's engineers have ever seen (it was constructed in 2014!!!). I've never had any dropouts with async USB, but who knows.
 
I'm going to wait and see if the problem resolves itself when I move to a brand new condo in August, which should have much better power and I also had them run a dedicated circuit for audio.
 
If that doesn't work, I'm going to reinstall W10 because I have no idea what drivers or software could  be causing it. The Thesycon download page recommended watching the DPC checker while disabling devices, but that isn't helpful when it's green 99.999% of the time and then 10ms every 15 minutes it has a huge latency spike. Very hard to diagnose. Increasing ASIO latency, buffer, etc. doesn't make a difference.
 
I'm also going to be replacing my RAID SSDs with a single M2 NVMe SSD so I can then disable the RAID controller, SATA controller, and get four drives worth of noise out of the system.
 
Here is my computer giving me the middle finger every 20 minutes:

 

  I tried the TeraDak LPS on the Sender optical Ethernet - that did improve things a bit.  One last try before sending back to Amazon.
 
Then tried taking the whole loop out of the Ethernet chain - I did notice a diminished bass depth.  So I guess it'll be staying in.  Not a night and day difference  - but I had the two LPS's already and for $100 worth keeping it.

 
So no difference with LPS on receiver, and a small difference with LPS on both ends? Mine are on the way back. The $200 I gain returning the optical boxes and selling my LPS is better put toward an MC-3+ USB. Maybe I'll revisit these sort of tweaks once I upgrade my speakers and buy a better DAC for the speaker system. Currently looking at either a Dangerous Convert-2, Yggdrasil, or used PS Audio DirectStream. Speakers will be upgraded from Magnepan MMG to 3.7i.

 

[jabbr]

@SomeStranger
I seem to recall that one of the latency checkers is able to show which driver/software is causing the latency spikes.
You could let it run for some time and than check a table which shows which drivers/software cause how much maximum latency.

Don't know which one, but since there are only two around, it shouldn't be difficult to find the proper one.

 

[Soundsgoodtome]

My pc passed the two latency tests, but still got skip.

I did a bunch of stuff under the network card configuration and got it working proper with 24/192khz - something I've not been able to do before. Problem is now I've enabled everything I disabled but can't make 24/192khz not work anymore.

More importantly, somestranger26, the high latency in my rednet control is now down to the green zone of 1-1.2 ms average whereas before it was 11-14 averaging in the red when sending 192khz.

 

[Clemmaster]

My Rednet 3 stills screws up my router's wifi, no matter what I do.
 
Basically, when audio is streaming, the Wifi connection becomes extremely slow after one or two minutes (the devices are still connect, but the bars go down to 1 and report "no network connection").
I'm wondering if the Rednet is using multi-cast and saturates the router?
 
I upgraded to am Asus RT-AC56U with dual cores and 256MB ram, to no avail.
 
In the end, I resorted to a direct connection from my laptop to the Rednet (no switch, straight cable. Thanks APIPA).
 
Still, it's an annoying issue. I contacted Focusrite's support.

 

[johnjen]

SGTM, I don't remember if you are running your RN3 on it's own NIC, and network, or not.
 
If not, this alone is (or can be) a major source of 'problems'.
 
Just a thought.
 
JJ

 

[jabbr]

My Rednet 3 stills screws up my router's wifi, no matter what I do.

Basically, when audio is streaming, the Wifi connection becomes extremely slow after one or two minutes (the devices are still connect, but the bars go down to 1 and report "no network connection").
I'm wondering if the Rednet is using multi-cast and saturates the router?

I upgraded to am Asus RT-AC56U with dual cores and 256MB ram, to no avail.

In the end, I resorted to a direct connection from my laptop to the Rednet (no switch, straight cable. Thanks APIPA).

Still, it's an annoying issue. I contacted Focusrite's support.

If you run a Rednet over a switch or router into the rest of the local network, it can indeed lead to network congestion.
Audinate explicitly warns about this risk and gives clear instructions on how to setup your network switches.
Check out the Audinate website faq and support and also check out the Audinate channel on Youtube where they give very clear instructions and demo's.

Mind you, this is a Professional audio device and not a consumer level device, so they (rightfully) expect a certain level of knowledge and understanding of audio-over-ip networking. They do help you very much with their support documentation and videos though.

 

[Soundsgoodtome]

It's a direct connect from pc to rednet 3, no networks to pass through or multi task (internet connection). Essentially an isolated pc connected directly to the Rednet 3.

SGTM, I don't remember if you are running your RN3 on it's own NIC, and network, or not.

If not, this alone is (or can be) a major source of 'problems'.

Just a thought.

JJ

 

[johnjen]

Yeah that’s about as 'clean' as it gets.
 
As an added thought, have you made sure your registry is clean and is not fragmented?
 
JJ