Audio dropout mystery

[schmidj]

This is not a dbPoweramp issue, just the opposite, but maybe the collective intelligence here has an idea of the cause:

Recently (I'm not sure exactly how recently, because I don't use the problem software too often; several programs which play audio take "hits" or momentary dropouts every 10 seconds, very repeatedly and always. It happens whether playing a CD (from any of three drives) or a file from the disc or network. It happens with Windows Media Player, Winamp, Itunes player and playing audio through Nero's media player. It doesn't happen with the dbPoweramp ripper or EAC auditioning a CD, or with Sony's Sound Forge in file editing mode. I am pretty sure it doesn't happen with Isotope's RX3 either, although I didn't try that this evening. The problem is very consistent and repeatable.

The computer is a relatively new (less than one year old) machine I assembled myself, 8 core fast Intel processor running W7 pro 64 bit. Tons of memory, I think 32 gigs? Audio is a MOTU 828MK2 firewire external box. C drive is an SSD, running software. Data is on a mirrored raid array or on a QNAP NAS, Gigabyte ethernet (don't think that's the issue, as the problem exists also with the three SATA DVD drives, (which are even on two different SATA controllers)

Checked task manager, no other "applications" running, tried shutting down a few suspect tasks and services to no avail. Windows performance monitor shows nothing untoward, nothing maxing out.

This wasn't an issue in the past, I did listen to audio on WMP fairly recently without the hits.

It seems to me that something must be hogging some resource repeatedly every 10 seconds, but what? I guess I may have to shut off tasks and services until it stops dropping out, to identify the culprit. What is different about how dBpoweramp, EAC and my audio editing software play audio to the MOTU box than WMP, Winamp and Itunes?

Any suggestions will be much appreciated. I'm about to start pulling my hair out. At least it isn't a bad burner burning coasters, which is what I first thought I had...

John Schmidt

[schmidj]

Well, issue resolved, I think. Still a little mystery, though. And I still have most of my hair...

After the above post, I decided to try using another audio interface. I hooked up a USB interface I had and plugged headphones into it, selected it in WMP instead of the MOTU, and it played fine, no dropouts. Reselected the MOTU, listened to it, and dropouts were back. At that point I am starting to think clock reference issues. MOTU is set to internal reference. Decided to try to change it to something else (word clock, SPDIF in, etc.) There is a MOTU control on the computer to control that. But it said that I had to shut down all audio applications to change the setting, even though no applications were running. Went into task manager and shut off the board native sound control (which I usually leave on, so the computer volume control works), and then I could change the reference source, which I did and then changed it back. Tried it again and the dropouts were gone!! Rebooted, which restarted the native audio control, and dropouts still gone, all appears to be good now!

What I don't understand: 1) if the MOTU box had reference issues, why didn't rebooting the computer and power cycling the MOTU (which I did more than once) fix it, if actually switching the reference source (to a source that actually had nothing connected) and back fixed it??? 2) why did some software exhibit the issue, but not other software?

Anyway, it appears to be OK now.

John