[royewest]

I'm using a core duo T60 Thinkpad running Win XP Pro as a digital source. Lots of RAM. Separate HD for the music (not the boot HD). Without getting into the details, I believe I have iTunes correctly configured for bit-perfect playback of lossless files; sometimes just playing a CD in a modern CD drive. Tried Windows Media Player to play CDs as well.

I've been auditioning USB DAC / Headphone amps.

Thinkpad USB > DAC/AMP > Headhpones.

Thinkpad USB > Xitel HiFi Pro. Xitel RCA S/PDIF > DAC/AMP > Headhpones. (Degradation of music quality by passing through Xitel is noticable, as somewhere along the line the signal gets converted to 48KHz, but that's also another story).

When I use the laptop, particularly when navigating with the browser, but really when doing anything that puts normal stress on the system, I get a lot of pops and clicks in the playback, on all of the variations described above.

Anyone have any experience solving this problem, other than just not using the laptop for anything other than music?

The point of this whole exercise was to increase the quality of sound when working, and the pops and clicks outweigh the obvious other improvements in sound quality.

 

[ShadowVlican]

disable any CPU speed altering (like cool'n'quiet for AMD processors)

once i do that on my desktop, there are absolutely no more pops and clicks at any fluctuating load

 

[Icarium]

Hrm actually. My friend had the same issues with his EMU 0404 usb with his thinkpad. There was a good thread debugging said issue and it mostly involved manipulating latency or disabling the wifi. In the end.. what turned out to solve it was actually ENABLING his wifi which had been disabled for a long time prior to buying the EMU 0404 usb.

I'd advise trying to locate the thread aforementioned.

 

[Jokieman]

Disable Sound Acceleration in DXDiag.exe It's a known issue with iTunes, that's why a lot of people choose to run foobar as their backend.

 

[dougwx12]

Find the setting in quicktime for the priority level it runs at, and set it to high or realtime.

 

[jeanius]

changing its priority to realtime could fix the problem.. it's possible that you might have spyware.. or something that uses up your cpu needlessly. ctrl+alt+del to see what's using up your cpu the most and see if you need it running.

 

[dougwx12]

Doesn't have to be spyware. IE is a frickin' CPU pig, and the scroll-wheel used to give me problems as well. Why scrolling causes such a huge CPU spike, I'll never know.

 

[royewest]

Thanks for the advice.

I tried upping the priority of iTunes to "Realtime." This helps, but does not really fix the problem. One guaranteed way to hear a lot of noise is to pass the mouse cursor back and forth over iTune's own menus so they drop down: Clicks like mad.

If I discover anything else relevant to solving this problem, I will share it.

I'll add that:

* My laptop is pretty well maintained and while there are no guarantees, I don't think my problem is a virus or other invasive code

* I enjoyed some extended listening without experiencing pops and clicks on Sunday, with all apps shut down except iTunes

 

[lowmagnet]

I was having clicks and pops so I brought up the hardware manager, looked through the tree to find my iMic (on my work machine) and wrote down the USB bus number (27CB).

I then switched to IRQ mode and found a USB bus without any shared IRQ (27CB was on the same IRQ as the onboard sound) and wrote the bus number down (27C9).

Then I went back into the connection view, and started plugging my iMic in to various ports until it came up on 27C9, and isolation was achieved.

I'm going to post this to the DAC1 thread as well since it may be a first experience for people with USB sound.

 

[pftrvlr]

I have some clicks before I switched from DS to ASIO in FB2K. Now it is OK.

 

[royewest]

An Airport Express with Airtunes has solved my noise problems. I've connected the AE to a DAC/Headphone amp with a mini-Toslink > Toslink cable and I get no more noise. I read this suggestion somewhere on these forums but have lost track of which put the bug in my ear to try this solution -- thanks!

 

[EnOYiN]

Here is the best solution: Use search. I am absolutely sure that we already had this thread here several times and every single time there is someone coming up with the same solutions.

 

[royewest]

I used search quite a bit while trying to learn how to get a clean 44.1KHz, bit-perfect stream from my laptop to a DAC via USB. That failed so I'm posting what worked for me.

I tried a dozen other things recommended on this and other sites I found by search, browings, and posting requests for help, before discovering that the Airport Express solved my problem. I ran through the others first because they didn't cost $100. Other players, other audio drivers, messing with Windows settings for process priority, USB tricks, etc., etc.

Perhaps someday someone else will be helped, when searching for help on this topic, by my posting a positive resolution to the thread I started.

 

[Kurios]

Reviving an old thread ..but just letting know what helped in my case. I changed Foobar2000 DS output to WASAPI and it killed the popping sounds for 99%.