Audio Crackling on Windows 8.1 DPC Latency?

[effa114]

Hello!

First poster here, but I've just been browsing a number of very informative threads on DPC latency issues.

I built my own system this spring, and have been experiencing DPC latency issues pretty much since the get-go.

I have been digging into it, and have been running Latency Mon. Generally the worst offenders seem to be tcpip.sys and ndis.sys

I have investigated all my drivers to the best of my knowledge, and have updated to latest BIOS for my Gigabyte Z87X-UD3H board. Also, I heard that avast! IS 2014 was a possible contributor to ndis.sys spikes. I have not yet uninstalled it fully, but I have disabled the firewall, which I have read might solve this, but it still is crackling and popping when listening to music both on and offline, and when in games and watching video.

I am on wifi, with a dedicated wifi card (motherboard does not natively support it).

Anyhow, I just ran an XPERF trace and my log is available here: https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=450E81CF2477C8C8!2092&authkey=!AGKxRIQUoARS70k&ithint=file,etl During the log run, I was playing music from iTunes, and was hearing crackling and popping throughout.

I will be trying to fiddle with some BIOS settings now and will see if anything pops. If you are reading this TomasD, I would really appreciate your expertise on this matter; it seems you've been very successful in helping others!

Cheers,
Benjamin

 

[TomasD]

Hi Benjamin,

There are couple DPC spikes from NDIS.SYS, but it doesn't look like the cause of the issues.

Prior proceeding with this further, could you please answer the following questions?

• Is your nVidia drivers up-to-date?
• Were your SteelSeries headphones installed since the beginning of the build or you installed them later (when you already had issues)?

Thank you.

 

[effa114]

Hi Benjamin,

There are couple DPC spikes from NDIS.SYS, but it doesn't look like the cause of the issues.

Prior proceeding with this further, could you please answer the following questions?

• Is your nVidia drivers up-to-date?
• Were your SteelSeries headphones installed since the beginning of the build or you installed them later (when you already had issues)?

Thank you.

Hi Tomas, thanks for the quick response!

My nVidia Drivers are 344.11, which is the latest non-beta driver available.

The only SteelSeries product I am using is actually a gaming mouse, and it has been used with the system since the beginning.

Hope this helps!

Also, I should note that I have been able to reduce the severity of ndis.sys latency (as measured in LatencyMon) by running Ipreset.bat as suggested by another forum. This has been successful, but seemingly only temporarily. After about an hour of run-time or even shorter, crackling begins again.

Thanks again and I look forward to hearing back from you!

Cheers,
Ben

 

[TomasD]

<...>
The only SteelSeries product I am using is actually a gaming mouse, and it has been used with the system since the beginning.
<...>

If you unplug this mouse and use some other mouse connected to a different port - does the issue persists?