[PurpleAngel]

Quote:

Asus Xonar Essence STX sound card: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001OV789U/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00
 
My guesses so far as to the problem:

1. Not enough power from the power supply unit? Or I just have crappy/sketchy one in general?
2. Malfunction with my RAM (even though my system recognizes all 16GB that I installed)?
3. sound card driver? (I have reinstalled the latest driver multiple times)
4. sound card itself is defective (hard to believe seeing as how everything works, save for the random microstuttering)

At this point I am pretty stuck, but have a feeling you guys may have a better clue than me, any help or feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Update your motherboard's chip set drivers to the latest version
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/raid_windows.aspx#2
 
Try the third party drivers "Unified Xonar Drivers" from the website Brainbit.
 
You did disable the on-board audio, in your motherboard's bios?

 

[KonaBear]

Quote:

I had the same issue for the longest time. Check out this:
 
http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml
 
Download it and see if the cutouts occur with a spike in your latency. 

okay will try this right now, thank you for the quick help! will update how it goes

 

[KonaBear]

Quote:

Update your motherboard's chip set drivers to the latest version
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/raid_windows.aspx#2
 
Try the third party drivers "Unified Xonar Drivers" from the website Brainbit.
 
You did disable the on-board audio, in your motherboard's bios?

yes I disabled the on-board audio in bios, and now I will try the chip set drivers as well as finding the Unified Xonar Drivers.  On the link you provided, will I also need the other two downloads for RAID and RAIDXPERT? Thanks!

 

[elwappo99]

Quote:

okay will try this right now, thank you for the quick help! will update how it goes

 
I had the same issue and it drove me nuts. Took me 2 solid hours but finally figured out it was a monitor program I had from Asus for my motherboard, that allowed overclocking, etc. Caused a spike every 5 seconds and every minute one of those was enough to clip the sound. Drove me nuts! 
 
good luck with it

 

[PurpleAngel]

Quote:

Yes I disabled the on-board audio in bios, and now I will try the chip set drivers as well as finding the Unified Xonar Drivers.  On the link you provided, will I also need the other two downloads for RAID and RAIDXPERT? Thanks!

The RAID & RAIDEXPERT are drivers that I really doubt you have a need for.

 

[KonaBear]

big thank you to PurpleAngel and elwappo for the very helpful links and advice, I am currently testing everything to see if there are any more audio drops...so far so good.  I installed the latest Unified Xonar Drivers as well as updated bios after testing my latency and now it seems to be much more stable...more testing to come.
 
Quick question, will adjusting the latency via the taskbar icon help at all? (right click on the Asus Audio Center Icon in taskbar --> click "Asus Xonar Asio" --> gives option to change bit depth and latency...any recommend settings I should use?
 
Cheers

 

[e6600]

Quote:

big thank you to PurpleAngel and elwappo for the very helpful links and advice, I am currently testing everything to see if there are any more audio drops...so far so good.  I installed the latest Unified Xonar Drivers as well as updated bios after testing my latency and now it seems to be much more stable...more testing to come.
 
Quick question, will adjusting the latency via the taskbar icon help at all? (right click on the Asus Audio Center Icon in taskbar --> click "Asus Xonar Asio" --> gives option to change bit depth and latency...any recommend settings I should use?
 
Cheers

asio latency is mostly for recording.  theres no effect on playback and sq, only a slight delay in vsts and stuff like visualizations
i have mine at 300, and my foobar buffer length at 3000.  mostly since i like playing games with music on

 

[elwappo99]

Quote:

big thank you to PurpleAngel and elwappo for the very helpful links and advice, I am currently testing everything to see if there are any more audio drops...so far so good.  I installed the latest Unified Xonar Drivers as well as updated bios after testing my latency and now it seems to be much more stable...more testing to come.
 
Quick question, will adjusting the latency via the taskbar icon help at all? (right click on the Asus Audio Center Icon in taskbar --> click "Asus Xonar Asio" --> gives option to change bit depth and latency...any recommend settings I should use?
 
Cheers

 
The dpc latency tester is testing the whole machine, and I don't think adjusting it in the taskbar would affect much. Usually the dpc software shows if you have any major issues with latency. 
 
Does anyone else not use the Xonar Asio? I find I get better results from using direct sound WASAPI than the "speaker out" through Xonar...

 

[KonaBear]

update: ive encountered the audio drops again not sure why or where they came from so I started the latency checker and it showed some disappointing results (pictured).  I then tried going into device manager to disable various devices but to avail 
 
 

 

 

[elwappo99]

Quote:

update: ive encountered the audio drops again not sure why or where they came from so I started the latency checker and it showed some disappointing results (pictured).  I then tried going into device manager to disable various devices but to avail 
 
 
 

 
 
Oh my god....  that will definitely do it. At a bare minimum you should be under 150us.

 

[KonaBear]

Quote:

 
 
Oh my god....  that will definitely do it. At a bare minimum you should be under 150us.

right?!  The scary part is I have no clue as to pinpointing the problem 

 

[KonaBear]

for comparison the pictures above are when I was listening to music on foobar and browsing the web, etc
 
the ones below are in idle mode
 

 

[elwappo99]

I would guess due to the somewhat normal interval of those peaks it is a monitoring software and not hardware. 
 
Step 1: Update ALL of your drivers. See if that helps
 
Step 2: Figure out every piece of software that is running and begin to close it. Did your motherboard come with any software you use? 

 

[KonaBear]

Quote:

I would guess due to the somewhat normal interval of those peaks it is a monitoring software and not hardware. 
 
Step 1: Update ALL of your drivers. See if that helps
 
Step 2: Figure out every piece of software that is running and begin to close it. Did your motherboard come with any software you use? 

sounds, good.  it looks like all my drivers are up to date as far as I can tell.  Yes, my motherboard did come with software, all of which I installed, and seemingly is up to date...will look further into it, however.

 

[KonaBear]

latest update:
 
found out the program that was doing it.  It's called EasyTune6, something that came with my motherboard and is used for overclocking, thermostat, fan control, etc.  It was set to monitor my temperature every 3 seconds which is what was creating all the annoying, yet consistent spikes...