[mikiphile]

Hey there guys. I'm starting this thread because I want to get some more info on this matter. My Windows 10 upgrade is waiting for me, and I am really concerned about whether foobar2000 (with the wasapi plugin) will be compatible with the upgrade.
 
I am also concerned about the possibility of streaming dropouts occurring. I have a 2 year old ThinkPad T530 with an i5 processor running Win7, which has worked fine so far. Could this upgrade cause any problems related to DPC Latency?
 
Anyways, I would really like your opinion whether this upgrade is wise, in terms of the audio. This thread could also serve as reference to those who might be wandering about the same thing.
 
Thanks,
 
Mike

 

[Fabithierry]

yes, it works perfectly!

 

[pshych0]

Using foobar + darkone + wasapi on win10 since launch day - works flawlessly.

 

[althingsninja]

I use foobar to read files from a nas and provide hdmi audio to a receiver.  it worked excellent with 8.1 and with windows 10 on launch day. Recent updates seem to correlate with degraded performance.  maybe its a memory management issue, but after a few hours of playback the sound becomes laden with Digi noise and drop outs.  any ideas?

 

[Lavcat]

I'm experiencing severe dropouts using WASAPI (or not using WASAPI) with foobar2000 v1.3.9 and Windows 10 Pro.  At first I thought it was a network problem but now I know it is the same with music files on the local MVMe drive.
 
No such dropout problems on old, three core AMD Phenom running Windows 7 Pro with spinning rust.  Even over a network to Pentium III NT 4.0 server.
 
Any idea how to configure foobar for Windows 10 to avoid dropouts?  I've tried WASAPI event and WASAPI push.  Buffer length, short or long, doesn't seem to matter.  I can't take it any longer.
 
Why should an overclocked six core Haswell-E be unlistenable while an underclocked Pentium III, pushing fifteen years, works just beautifully?  Admittedly the PIII is dual CPU.

 

[Lavcat]

Update:  Microsoft's Groove Music player has the same dropouts, so it is unlikely to be a problem with foobar configuration.

 

[PleasantSounds]

Windows has not been designed to support real time processes like audio playback - they are an afterthought and what you're experiencing is a symptom of that. 
 
Foobar can be made somewhat more immune to the dropouts (through boosting thread priority), but if this is too frequent then you need to look at the other processes running on your PC and decide which ones can be stopped. Latency Monitor is often recommended as a good tool to investigate what is going on. Some processes tend to hold on to the critical resources for too long and as a result the audio stream gets interrupted while foobar (or any other audio player) waits for access to the CPU, USB bus or hard disk, to name a few. The worst offender in my experience is the indexing service. Some antivirus packages are bad too, but it could be an outdated driver or many other things. 

 

[Lavcat]

Thanks for the suggestion of LatencyMon.  LatencyMon reports "Your system appears to be suitable for handling real-time audio and other tasks without dropouts."  Meanwhile dropouts are horrible.
 
I disabled 13 services, including Windows Search, and ran with and without a pagefile.  I tried disabling the network drivers for test.  Nothing made any difference to the dropouts.
 
This is a rather fresh installation of Windows 10 on new hardware.  No old drivers.
 
I am running out of ideas and patience.

 

[Lavcat]

Success, sort of.
 
I had been having the dropouts using audio over HDMI (AMD Radeon Nano).  Today in desperation I decided to try audio over USB (in both cases to a NAD M51).  USB is not quite as convenient for me as HDMI, but the audio works perfectly over USB -- no dropouts at all that I can hear.
 
Funny thing is audio over HDMI works fine in Windows 7 with the same Nano card.  Also interesting:  I never noticed any game audio glitches with audio over HDMI in Windows 10.  I only had the problem playing music, using foobar (with or without WASAPI) or Microsoft Groove.

 

[PleasantSounds]

I would check if AMD has any driver updates for your video card, as this is clearly what's different from your old setup. Hope you are not using the MS driver that gets installed at the setup?

 

[Lavcat]

  I would check if AMD has any driver updates for your video card, as this is clearly what's different from your old setup. Hope you are not using the MS driver that gets installed at the setup?

 
I'm using the driver AMD released two days ago...not that the previous drivers worked any better or worse.

 

[churchilljasona]

Anyone know where I can GET the WASAPI component for Windows 10?

 

[necropimp]

one thing i noticed when i went from 8.1 to 10 in regards to foobar and wasapi

in windows 8.1 while playing music in foobar using wasapi i could adjust the windows volume slider and toggle the various effects in my sound card's settings with no effect on the audio coming from foobar... which i liked because 1. nothing says "yes i am definitely getting bit perfect playback" quite like no change from windows volume slider or sound card effects 2. i could leave the simulated surround feature on for gaming (was more of a thing when i was on a 2.1ch setup not as much now that i have 5.1ch)

in windows 10... yeah all those things now affect the audio coming from foobar...

 

[jcn3]

one thing i noticed when i went from 8.1 to 10 in regards to foobar and wasapi

in windows 8.1 while playing music in foobar using wasapi i could adjust the windows volume slider and toggle the various effects in my sound card's settings with no effect on the audio coming from foobar... which i liked because 1. nothing says "yes i am definitely getting bit perfect playback" quite like no change from windows volume slider or sound card effects 2. i could leave the simulated surround feature on for gaming (was more of a thing when i was on a 2.1ch setup not as much now that i have 5.1ch)

in windows 10... yeah all those things now affect the audio coming from foobar...

 
looks like you don't have "exclusive mode" enabled -- i'd confirm that.

 

[necropimp]

looks like you don't have "exclusive mode" enabled -- i'd confirm that.

the "allow applications to take exclusive control of this device" checkbox is checked... and no other audio will play while foobar is playing music

it's as if windows 10 exclusive mode isn't quite as exclusive as 8.1... like it will still give handjobs behind the mcdonalds in another area code so it's totally not cheating