Problem with Weiss DAC2 driver

[extracampine]

I've been experiencing skipping during playback with my current system. I've not yet worked out exactly what is causing it, but I have noticed the following unusual activity:

 

Without the Weiss DAC2 connected, or with the Weiss driver disabled (under device manager/sound, video and game controllers/Weiss Firewire IO) the CPU load seems reasonable (fluctuates between 0 and 5%).

 

HOWEVER, when I enable the Weiss Firewire IO driver, or plug in the Weiss DAC, the CPU usage constantly fluctuates between 5-45%. This is without even running Mediamonkey or playing back any audio files. When I look at the Resource Monitor, at the top of the list for CPU usage is "System Interrupts" with description "Deferred Procedure Calls and Interrupt Service Routines", this item being accountable for the extra CPU usage.

 

I am wondering if this behaviour is responsible for the skips in the playback. When I start mediamonkey and play a file, the CPU load fluctuates even more wildly. I thought I heard that playback of a FLAC file should not tax the CPU too much.

 

I have what I think is the latest Weiss driver, which came with the installation CD though is the same version as available from the Weiss website (driver version 3.5.0.7171 dated 02/11/2009). Device status says "this device is working properly". I am running Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit on a Dell Vostro 1520 laptop (dual-core 2.2 GHz, 2GB RAM, windows rating 3.4). I do not use the laptop for anything else.

 

Any help appreciated, from Daniel or otherwise! Thanks!!

 

[Nyal Mellor]

There have been many reported problems with the firewire chipset that Dell is using on their laptops http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=73829

 

[Guest]

open up task manager in WIndows [right click on task bar]

Open MM without playing any music

Under processes tab, right click on MM and set the priority to low...then go back and set the affinity to CPU 1 [by un-checking the cpu 0 box]

 

Try playing some music, any difference?

 

 

 

 

[vortecjr]

can you post the logic behind the settings?

 

Thanks

 

Jesus R

www.sonore.us

 

[Guest]

Basically, it gives the firewire card the Lions share of the computers processing power.

 

I used a headless Vista machine with firewire, through test after test I have narrowed down what uses more power. For example a black background slows down vnc a lot more than a white background. If you start JRiver normally it will idle at about 3K, switching it to low priority reduces its memory footprint by about 40% and moving it to cpu 1 [which seems to be the least used] lowers the memory footprint even further. BTW, the greatest reduction in memory usage from JRiver is to minimize it....try it, open up a task manager while JRiver is open then minimize it and see the difference. IMO, doing this opens up just a bit more room for spikes so that the streaming part can go more smoothly. When I do this I am able to lower the latency on my firewire card to 128 without hiccups, as supposed to needing twice that without out it. On my headless Vista machine I close every non-essential process, even the explorer shell....so I dont have a start menu, or title bar, which frees up another 10K.

 

Well thats my reason, I don't know how logical it is, but it improves perceived performance for me.

 

[Guest]

http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=36600&p=234612&hilit=wasapi#p234612

 

[vortecjr]

cool info thanks for posting it! I'm going to try it on one of my systems. My personal pc is a single core, but I can still set priorities and play with that.

 

I noticed you have a linux boot. Im working on a cool project that is linux based so keep an eye out for future posts on it.

 

Regards

 

Jesus R

www.sonore.us

 

[extracampine]

I may have avoided the problem by swapping laptops with my girlfriend; sony vaio instead of dell :-)