Audio Kontrol 1, clickles and drops, DPC latency

Hi,

I recently purchased an Audio Kontrol 1. I am having a lot of troubles to make it work on my Dell Inspiron 1440 with Windows 7 64 bits. I installed the latest drivers and everything was ok, but I began to get a lot of clickles, silences, and audio artifacts.

I am using the DPC latency checker and I have a latency average of 400 microseconds, with spikes of 1000~2000 microseconds every 20 seconds.

I already tried a lot of things such as disable other device drivers, wifi, onboard sound card, video card and I also update my hardware drivers to the latest version, even the BIOS.

The interface is unusable on my system. I would like to know if there is any solution before returning it (or worse, selling it, because in Argentina we dont have return policies).

Thanks in advance!
Ariel

 

There are a few threads which highlight similar issues to yours.

In my situation I have been unable to resolve the problems after a month or two of support from NI and DELL. DELL sent a tech out, replaced parts (mobo, HD,CPU), reinstalled OS, offered me a refund because it couldn't run AK1.

NI's support was somewhat underwhelming, being very swift to assume my system is at fault and nothing could possibly be wrong with the AK1 or its drivers.

I'm switching laptops and audio interface after this experience.

 

The problem of DPC spikes exists with all Dell laptops from studio range to insprions. The Dell tech support and product teams know about this and still choose to waste money with m/board replacements. I got them to give me a refund eventually on mine after 7 months.

Went and bought an Acer which suffers less.

 

Yes, I already read a lot of thread about. I am trying to solve the problem myself, doing some serious debugging on my machine. I will post the results in a few days.

Thank you anyway!
Ariel

 

I sorted DPC issues on my PC with latest Windows service pack, latest Ak1 drivers and graphic drivers reinstall ...thought that windows auto update would automaticly install all service packs but u have to do it yourself.
So far I dont have problems anymore, but it took me 6 months to get things working like it used to be

I need recommendation of good cables to connect my DDM4000 and AK1, because i get HI freq noise in my recordings...I suspect bad cables?

Noise can be heard here http://soundcloud.com/psyman/patrick-graser-notic-nastic-im-very-close-psyman-remix

 

im pretty sure its not the cable. try an isolating transformer (line isolator). i think that should solve the problem.

a good one is the Palmer PLI-03 für RCA or the PLI-02 for XLR
not cheap, but worth the money.

 

Finally I solved my problem. I trace the DPC latency and I found that the ACPI.SYS driver was the problem. Apparently the driver makes some bios calls each 15 seconds in order to sense the battery charge status. This procedure was ruining DPC latency times. I found a sworkarround removing the battery from the notebook. Now I am havind high DPC latency times (300 microsec average) without spikes, and my audio kontrol is working just fine with a decent latency, about 10ms/20ms. I am using Windwos 7 64 bits, and, for now, it is enough for me.

I will try to make some changes to ACPI.SYS in order to avoid battery charge status calls. I will post my results as soon as I play with it.

Thank you to everyone for the help.
Ariel

 

You're a legend ... it worked on my system too! Like you, I've been trying to isolate the dpc problem for months without success. Now, with the battery removed, I can't get it to make any kind of spike in DPC latency checker, no matter what I do.

However ... when I plug in the AK1 I still get ridiculous CPU load peaks every 20 seconds or so. According to the resource monitor, DPCs are using up 50% of both cores every 20 seconds. It seems I only have this problem when AK1's (officially 'perfect') drivers are engaged.

Thanks. While it hasn't fixed the erratic behaviour of the AK1, it's the only real progress I've managed to make in months ......

 

You're going to see some cycling. However, 50%, needless to say, is pretty high. Try setting your USB latency to 2 ms; does that improve matters?

ew

 

Where do you set USB latency?

 

driver menu (Audio Kontrol 1 ASIO Panel)

 

With USB set at 8ms, CPU peaks drop to 25%.

 

8 ms is way too high, though- that means you'd need to set your audio latency to at least 16 ms :~

You've got a Dell, right? Do you know what chipset the mainboard's using?

ew

 

Hi Scaper7,

I'm glad it worked for you too. I am trying to hack the ACPI.SYS in order to avoid battery removal. Anyway, I algo get CPU peaks at a 20 seconds interval using AK1, but it seems to be not enough to affect audio quality.

Ariel

 

I have exactly the same problem (High CPU load all 20 sec)
However, I dont use an AK1 I use an Edirol UA-4Fx USB soundcard.
The Edirol UA-4Fx both are USB 1 and not USB 2 and I have asked myself if this can be the reason.


It looks like this:
http://hphsite.de/Klavier/USB-PCI.PNG

Its a screenshot of Taskmanager. Note that only the first 50% show the load of the USB soundcard. For the secon 50% of the trace I switched to the onboard sound with ASIO4ALL for demonstration purposes. The difference is dramatic.

Have done everything, unplugged accu, disabled high precision timer, uninstalled and deactivated softmodem and onboard sound.

The problem remains even then, when I switch the Edirol into non-advanced mode. In this mode the Edirol ASIO driver is inactive and the stock windows drivers are used.

I believe it is the same problem.
My Computer is a MSI EX600, Core2 Duo CPU 1,82 GHz. Main chipset is VIA and devicemanager says "Intel(R) ICH8 Family USB Unversal Host Controller".
USB drivers are made by Microsoft.

I dont know if the USB chipset is really made by Intel or if it is only Intel compatible. Cardreader and so on are made by O2 Micro.

I use Windows Vista 32 Bit. I also use Kontakt Player, but the problem is with other apps too. The CPU load spikes get over 50% at 8ms total latency and are about 25% at 25ms total latency.

It is unclear to me if this is a driver problem or a Chipset problem of the computer or a firmware/chipset problem of the soundmodule.

Of course all drivers and BIOS are as new as possible.

I dont have another USB soundmodule for comparison.
It would be interesting to know to me if these People that also have this problem with AK1 can use other ASIO capable USB interfaces with better success on the same computer.

BTW, I use my onboard soundcard (Realtek HD) with 5ms /total/ latency and less than 10% CPU load....

Peter

 

OK, I wanted to have a comparison and bought a cheap USB soundcard.
"C-Media-USB Headphone set." This is 16 Bit only.
They sell this as an USB2 device, but say it is USB1 compatible. Is there a possibility to check this?
I installed no drivers at all, so I believe, the windows drivers are used.
When I access this via ASIO4ALL I get also the same figure of CPU usage at lower latencies. A little bit less, ok, but it is 16 Bits only.
This device is as small as an USB stick and it also becomes incredibly hot without any sound or load.

So I think the USB Chipset or the USB drivers are the problem. So this seems to be system-immanent and unsolvable without buying a new laptop....

Any other ideas?

Peter

 

I have managed to resolve all DPC spikes now by disabling the 'ACPI-Compliant Control Method Battery' in Device Manager. This hasn't worked previously, but I have updated the BIOS on this machine since I last tried it ... and now it works ... can't force a spike, no matter what I do. No change to CPU spikes though. I will try a different interface in a couple of days and see how that goes.

 

Hooking up another audio interface (Saffire 6 USB), everything works as it should. No CPU spikes, no dropouts ....

... everything works as it should but the AK1s sound is leagues ahead to my ears.... pity the AK1 is such a pig to settle in on my system.

 

Hi Scaper,

I disabled ACPI Compliant battery.... from device manager but I still have DPC spikes. Currently removing the battery was the only way to avoid DPC spikes.

Ariel

 

yeah guys
didnt see it until read here
i have also this 50% cpu spikes every 15 seks or so
after removing ak1 from my usb --> no spikes
plugged it in --> few litle spikes ----> setting usb buffer up to 8 helped
conclusion: i think the spikes get bigger and bigger after some time, i had this 50% spikes after running my system with the ak1 for 24h
i get away my yellow dpc spikes by disabling wlan @ device manager