[Neccros]

I recently got one of these from a friend and noticed audio would skip every once in a while, sometimes more than others.   Even with my Fiio E10 hooked up I would still get the stuttering audio.....
 
Sometimes its OK but then it will skip again....This happens with both the built in audio/speakers and the DAC
 
Sorry if I missed a post somewhere about this..... 
 
 
Anyone have ideas????  I searched HPs site but it seems this is a pretty new Ultrabook so not a lot of posts about it.

 

[DrSheep]

I think you are having USB sync issue.  Try getting the AudioQuest DragonFly to see if it works better with it's "Asynchronous USB Transfer".

 

[Neccros]

Possibly.... its happening w/o anything USB attached too.... I ran that latency tester and I get solid even yellow levels with a single red one...
 
I didn't have time to sit and disable hardware to figure out whats the cause but I will later today...

 

[DrSheep]

What do you use to play your music?  I am guessing it might also be a memory cache issue with the software, or your harddrive is not fast enough.  I think you should try the following:
 

• try to use different software to play the same set of songs and see if you are getting those skips.
• take note of when and where the skip happenes.  Sometimes when downloading from itunes or torrent, the file might not out back exactly as the original and will cause skips.
• try playing from a USB stick or SSD, and if it still skips, then it will not be a problem with the harddrive.
• is there anyway you can try using optical connections?

 
Good luck debugging.

 

[Neccros]

Quote:

What do you use to play your music?  I am guessing it might also be a memory cache issue with the software, or your harddrive is not fast enough.  I think you should try the following:
 

• try to use different software to play the same set of songs and see if you are getting those skips.
• take note of when and where the skip happenes.  Sometimes when downloading from itunes or torrent, the file might not out back exactly as the original and will cause skips.
• try playing from a USB stick or SSD, and if it still skips, then it will not be a problem with the harddrive.
• is there anyway you can try using optical connections?

 
Good luck debugging.

1.   Since I just pulled it out of the box and plugged it in, all I had was YouTube, iTunes, WinAmp, etc...   It has a 500gig drive with a 32gig SSD  and was skipping pretty bad off the bat (Internal speakers) , but its gotten A LOT better but like I said above, I am getting solid yellow bars on the latency test I did this morning before walking out the door so I didn't have much time to diagnose...
 
2. At its worse every 2-3 seconds, now its not often but can still happen.   I need to mess with it more to find the connection to what I am doing to when it will skip or if its totally random
 
3.  Will try but I suspect same issue.
 
4.  I have a Turtle Beach Micro II with optical out I can try...  other than that, its just my Fiio E10 DAC/Amp

 

[Neccros]

Boy, tried a system refresh and newer drivers and disabling them one at a time, I STILL get 1000u(s) latency....  then it will spike to 5000-6000u(s) on occasion....
 
I know at idle it should be 500u(s) MAX!!!!!   maybe even less.....
 
 
Windows 8 blows in my opinion and I am thinking about downgrading to win 7   Anyone wanna disagree???

 

[DrSheep]

Sort of.  Win8 is not the problem, but HP putting out garbage hardware (no offense.)  I think you should return your HP if possible as this is more of a hardware problem.  If not, try to use a USB flash drive or SD card and see if it helps.

 

[Neccros]

Bleh....I pray its not garbage hardware because I kind of like this ultrabook....  I just need a solid few hours to sit there and analyze or even do an OS swap and check then....
 
Not sure USB will help since I'm trying to get the latency down to where it should be.....  Heck my 5 yo dell laptop is a champ when it comes to latency but its a tank!!!!!

 

[Neccros]

I'm finding out this is a common issue regardless of hardware

 

[DrSheep]

Quote:

I'm finding out this is a common issue regardless of hardware

That's not true.  Too bad there is no way to make more in depth analyst with out knowing more.  There are just too many factors at this point.

 

[Neccros]

Quote:

That's not true.  Too bad there is no way to make more in depth analyst with out knowing more.  There are just too many factors at this point.

 It is true, I've researched my issue and everyone with this problem has a different system/OS they experienced it on, one guy had a Macbook Pro running Win8 and had the issue...  Unfortunately there is not one common solution.
 
I found out the latency software I was using runs in Windows 8 but doesn't give accurate latency numbers due to a new "kernel timer", but that didn't change the fact I was getting skips in my audio due to something in the system.  I pretty much came to the conclusion something in the image of Windows 8 HP had on it is choking and I got sick of chasing it.   Ended up booting my copy of Windows 7 and knocking ALL the partitions out and just running Windows 7 and now it runs like a champ.   Oh and my latency averages 80uS to 100uS even while playing music or a video....
 
I wont try and fix Windows 8 in the near future unless someone puts a gun to my head and tells me I have to run it.
 
So consider this problem SOLVED!!!!!

 

[DrSheep]

Very nice, and I think you system was under spec for win8, plus win8 changed a lot of drivers codings which didn't helped.

 

[Neccros]

Under spec??? How so???  Its running a core i5 @ 1.8 ghz over clockable to 2.7ghz,  8 gigs of ram and a SSD and HD, and a ATI 8750m w/ 2 gigs of DDR3
 
HP built this with Win 8 in mind.... they dont even list Win 7 drivers but most Win 8 drivers work just fine.....

 

[DrSheep]

I bet it's you ssd hdd as it cache differently than normal hdd or a straight ssd. I would love to see what will happen if you switch to a full ssd.

 

[Neccros]

I disabled the SSD and ran the straight HD and still had issues.....