Vista's "enhancements" maul your sound!

[Chris Tch]

I've had Vista installed for a while (disappointed) and turned on the bass limiter enhancement which supposedly boosts bass at a certain frequency while cutting anything below. Well, it did boost the bass, but didn't cut any of the other sound (which I preferred). However, I noticed on some songs that after a heavy bass hit, a drum kick for example, was at average volume, but whatever quiet part followed, was quickly ramped up. I thought it was just a bad recording, but after a while I noticed it on a bunch of different songs. I messed around with Foobar, thinking it might have done something, but no. I finally checked Vista's settings, and disabled the bass enhancement. No more dynamic compression. So if you ever want to fool around with equalization or other effects, find other software, because Vista does a pretty poor job.

Not to mention any external sound card (USB) causes any screen movement to represent itself as loud clicks, pops, and short pauses in any sounds playing. Didn't happen with XP either. I've read about many people having this problem as well, with some solutions working for different people, and some people having no success in fixing it, like me.

If you value high quality, untouched sound, I'd personally stay away from Vista, at least until they work everything out.

 

[EnOYiN]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chris Tch /img/forum/go_quote.gif If you value high quality, untouched sound, I'd personally stay away from Vista, at least until they work everything out.

I have installed several computers with Vista now and I haven't had any problems so far. The audio architecture is not that different from the XP one for as far as going around it. Just use ASIO and you'll be fine.

 

[Hancoque]

I have a USB audio interface and don't experience your problems. I even play demanding 3D games while listening to music at 96 kHz. Never caused me a problem in Vista. And I don't even have a great CPU, it's still a single core unit.

Did you install up-to-date drivers for your video adapter? It may be the reason for your problems. Oh, and drivers for your main board cannot hurt, too.

 

[Jigglybootch]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chris Tch /img/forum/go_quote.gif If you value high quality, untouched sound, I'd personally stay away from Vista, at least until they work everything out.

I'd stay away from Vista in general.

 

[MaloS]

I am using Vista, just moved recently from XP. No problems at all - I've no idea where everyone is getting this from.

I do find one common pattern though - all Vista sound bashers don't seem to have a good source, nor the computer that seems to be powerful enough for Vista. (I heard pauses when using my roommate's laptop which is AMD based for 3 years ago, with only 512 ram, with my DAC)...but even that was not major.

But then I do have to admit...my DAC is E-MU 1616, which is nice and cranky and does not let the OS do any of the work =]

 

[Sir Nobax]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jigglybootch /img/forum/go_quote.gif I'd stay away from Vista in general.

And audio enhancements while you're at it.

 

[Chris Tch]

I have a pretty new Core 2 Duo Dell laptop with a Radeon X1400 graphics card and 1GB RAM. Power problems is not an issue, so I don't really know what's causing these problems. I've read that MANY people have this popping/crackling audio problem though, and I'd really like to know how to fix it without reinstalling an OS. However I believe the audio enhancements do the same thing for everyone, which is a problem.

 

[Sir Nobax]

Those problems can be either:

Not enough CPU power (do not take this with a grain of salt, hardware interuptions killed my C2D performance, causing it to plop, distort and stutter, and it is alot more powerfull then that laptop).
Like i said, hardware interuptions due to badly configured hardware settings.
Not enough buffering.

 

[Sir Nobax]

To see if there are any hardware interuptions, download microsofts "Process viewer", and look if there's something happening while you are 'scrolling'.

 

[Jigglybootch]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chris Tch /img/forum/go_quote.gif I've read that MANY people have this popping/crackling audio problem though

I had the problem. I can firmly say that it was not power related. Luckily, my sound card has a mode that allows me to bypass the OS altogether and go straight to the hardware (PureWave, as Echo calls it). That's the only thing that fixed the problem. I don't know exactly how much blame to put on Vista for that, but I can say firmly that Vista definitely has issues.

 

[TheAnomaly]

i have Vista HP, and i'm using the onboard audio from my Gigabyte P35-DS3R. honestly, it sounds as good as the processing from my Audigy 2 in my old computer, but with substantially lower white noise. maybe that's from the PSU, maybe it's from the creative soundcard...no idea. i was concerned that onboard audio wouldn't be very good until i get a separate DAC (currently waiting for funds for an 0404 USB), but i am very pleased with its audio quality. no audio problems whatsoever.

 

[thomaspf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jigglybootch /img/forum/go_quote.gif I had the problem. I can firmly say that it was not power related. Luckily, my sound card has a mode that allows me to bypass the OS altogether and go straight to the hardware (PureWave, as Echo calls it). That's the only thing that fixed the problem. I don't know exactly how much blame to put on Vista for that, but I can say firmly that Vista definitely has issues.

I have a similar issue with my Indigo card. It seems that Echo still has a lot of work to do to get their Vista drivers fixed. I don't seem to have any problems with my Juli@ or any of my onboard sound card drivers.

Cheers

Thomas

 

[germanium]

Try going to the control panel/power options & changing the profile to high performance. This stops the processor from changing multipliers all the time. This stops the stuttering of sound in Windows Vista. Windows Vista over rides the BIOS settings in this regard so even if disable this feature in the BIOS Windows Vista will still change the multiplier if left in any other mode than high performance.

I Have a Core 2 Duo E6600 overclocked & this helped tremendously & stopped all audio stuttering.

 

[thomaspf]

Interesting. I have never tried that.

Thanks

Thomas

 

[germanium]

Quote:

Originally Posted by thomaspf /img/forum/go_quote.gif Interesting. I have never tried that. Thanks Thomas

Your welcome.

hope it works for you. Let me know, ok.