Toshiba Laptops and Traktor - Cautionary information

Listen to me guys

I have throughly tested a Toshiba Satellite A305D-S6848 with an AMD turion X2 processor, and this stupid laptop has 4000-8000 milliseconds of DPC latency every 15 seconds! EVERY 15 SECONDS! Toshiba Support are all a bunch of whimps, I spend like 40 hours on the phone with them from 1st technical support level to 2nd, 3rd, Advanced Technical Support, and then finally to the Engineering Team who finally acknowleged that ALL such laptops on the planet have the exact same problem.......
the worst of all is that they can't do anything about it through BIOS updates, so this laptop is good for NOTHING.....

Whenever you go to buy a laptop, it is INCREMENTAL that you use the DPC Latency Checker tool from www.thesycon.de and check the laptop for DPC Latency! it can be found here: http://www.thesycon.de/eng/latency_check.shtml

Ditch Toshiba for good.............

 

turn your wifi off, spikes will go away. i love my toshiba!

 

Also Sergiu-Daniel, have you disabled the drivers related to battery management:
- Microsoft AC Adapter
- Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Control Method Battery (this one is the worst), causing a latency spike every 5 seconds with mine

The battery will still work and charge OK without these drivers.

I'm still running a 6 year old Toshiba notebook for Traktor, DPC latency test results 537 usec max with above drivers and Wi-Fi disabled.

I also disabled my on-board soundcard drivers. And I disabled drivers no longer necessary such as parallel printer, telephone modem, IR (infra-red) port, although eliminating these did not improve latency it reduced memory requirements a little.

 

Sergiu, there is a work around if you disable all the drivers that you don't need. First and foremost is the network adapters and any sound devices that you don't use. Set the power management to high performance and the priority to high for programs. There are pretty simple ways to make it work.

 

Why won't people read when I wrote "thoroughly"? I have disabled EVERYTHING that device manager lt me disable, i even removed it manually from the laptop by opening the thing up. Believe me, this particular model is a goner and is the worst case of DPC latency, not to mention Toshiba Support...

 

I Have a Toshiba Satiellite A200 1AI on Win 7 32Bit

I have found that the following removes DPC Latency Spikes (Thank you people on the Dell thread). Max dpc spike is now about 200


Disable the acpi threads using process hacker
http://processhacker.sourceforge.net/ When this opens there will be an item on the tree called system, double click on this, go to the threads tab. this will have a list of threads. I have 2 ACPI threads. I suspend them by right clicking/suspend. I would recommend resuming these once finished with Traktor.

In device manager I have the the following disabled.

Wireless Lan - The most important!

I always have the ones below disabled anyway as I do not use them - I'm not sure of their dpc impact.

IEEE1394 Host Controller
Texas Instruments Flash Media Controller
Toshiba Software Modem
SDA Standard Compliant SD Host Control36 over a period of 5 minutesler

I have the LAN disabled in the BIOS as I only network via wireless anyway.

See the attached image - thats a max of 536 over a period of 5 minutes

Try it

 

This is of absolutely no effect on a Toshiba Satellite A305D-S6848. This laptop is a total GONER!

 

Sorry it doesn't work for you. Did you download process hacker and are you using windows 7 32bit?

It's definitely worth a try for anyone with a similar set-up to me.

 

I downgraded to XP. I thought and read that the Zero8 was making all the clicks and pops. I guess it was the laptop. Either way I downgraded to XP until I get another mixer.

 

so i have a similar laptop and the same problems as this guy - lag spike every 15 seconds exactly. everything works perfectly in tsp except every 15 sec there's a total dropout in audio. tried all the fixes and met with the same failures. would changing my os to xp or 7 help at all? or is it a moot point as the fans are controlled by the bios and not the os (i think i read this somewhere)?

 

You can't do ANYTHING about it. I'm running Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-bit and the exact same thing is happening. It does the same thing under any Linux distro and Windows 7 PE. The only thing this laptop is good for is smashing it against a cliff and then throwing it into the water......

 

Satellite A300 (PSAJ4E-03L016KS) & Numark Omni Control

Hi Peeps

I posted on this topic before..... I'm using a Tosh A300 with the Numark Omni Control plus Traktor Scratch Pro and I've not experienced any problems.

I'm gonna list a load of my specs to see if any of you having problems can see a difference between hardware and the like.

Vista Home Premium SP2
Intel Core 2 Duo CPU T8100 @ 2.10GHz
Memory 3GB
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3470
BIOS V4.20-01/05/09
Intel ICH8M SATA AHCI Controller
Port 0 - Hitachi HTS542525K9SA00 (Listed as 232.8GB so I'm assuming it's a 250GB)
Conexant High Definition Smart Audio 221
TSSTcorp CDDVDW TS-L632H ATA Device
Chicony USB 2.0 Camera
Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN
Marvell Yukon 88E8040T PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller
FaceReg Not Installed (Slowed down my boot up time too much)
All Toshiba Tempro Alerts Updated.
All Microsoft Updates Installed except Windows Power Shell 2.0 and WinRM 2.0 (My system didn't like it)

I know the issue is supposed to be connected with a fan and some sort of spike but I can't see any controller listed so can't help you with that unfortunately.

You would have thought Toshiba would have been a bit more proficient when dealing with such issues. My lappy does everything I want it to... but I would be a bit worried about purchasing another Toshiba it's not really great advertising for them.
They've been in the game for a long time so you would expect a lot more from the company.

Thumbs down Toshiba

 

I would like to mention that I just purchased a brand new Toshiba Satellite C655 with a core i3 processor and I have not had any bad experiences with traktor as of yet.

Everything seems to run fine. Using 2x numark ndx-800 in midi mode so no audio going into the laptop but also using an external mixer.

 

Yes, the MAJOR difference is that you have an Intel proccesor and a totally different chipset.......... the AMD chipset for this model SUCKS BIG TIME!

 

What about issues with the kontrol s4? Anyone using toshiba with the new S4?

 

Well I have an intel chip and I was getting dropouts. I wasn't getting it as bad as some, maybe once an hour, enough to annoy thats for sure. Once I downloaded the latency checker I was able to pinpoint the problem and haven't had a single problem since. Basically I turned off the wireless, disabled the ethernet controller, disabled the wireless controller, disabled the webcam and the internal soundcard. Most likely its just from the wireless controller but I figured I don't need the other things running using up resources so why not just disable them as well. Runs perfectly now for the last few months.
---

at0mik-Your audio is still being controlled by your computer. The NDX800 is only acting like a controller for Traktor, the audio still has to come from a soundcard somewhere and even if you have an external soundcard like in the Numark Omni or the audio 8, the computer still controls those soundcards. Since you said you are using an external mixer I'm assuming you are using an external soundcard. If you aren't having any problems thats awesome but just as a precaution I would still download the latency checker to see if anything spikes.

 

I have noticed that when I switch active deck, there is a pop. However after adjusting the latency on the sound card (maya 44) it seems to have corrected itself.

Also, it does sound like maybe once every hour or so the song will skip. This has been bugging me. I'm not sure if it's related to this issue however I am trying to pinpoint where it's coming from.

DPC Checker looks good. No red spikes or anything.. How long should this run?

 

I'm not sure why I can't edit my previous post however,

I do get a red spike (one) maybe once every hour or so. I've disabled ethernet, wifi, and the webcam but it is still happening. I'm not sure what to do next.

This is while playing a song in traktor AND running DPC checker.

I should also mention that I'm using both the built-in screen and an external monitor and I have it running off AC power. I have set the fan / performance mode to full (100%).


edit: Okay I let DPC checker run for a while and noticed red spikes when either I enable or disable the wifi. I have since disabled the audio and it is still happening. I'm starting to get very frustrated with this laptop..

 

I want to add that I actually did return the toshiba laptop because it even with everything disabled I was showing red spikes in DPC and still getting pops/clicks.

I went to best buy and ran DPC checker on 4 of the in-store laptops:

Sony Vaio w/ core i3
Samsung w/ core i5
Asus w/ core i3
Gateway w/ core i3

All of these except the Asus were showing red spikes in DPC checker, which was a shock to me as these are all 600$+ laptops. The samsung one is almost $800 and has a better processor and still failed dpc checker.

The asus however had 1 out of every 10 bars that was slightly higher than the rest (on the edge of yellow) but still green.


This is crazy, what the hell is going on?
I had some doubts about the DPC checker program but when I called me friend who has a sony Vaio w/ core i7, he ran DPC and had all green with all of his devices enabled.
I also ran DPC checker on my home desktop and again, all green.

The common denominator here is the intel platform. With the exception of my desktop computer, all the laptops I ran DPC checker on were on the intel core platform.

Is this a problem with the chipset? Would an AMD laptop be better suited?

I did purchase the Asus K52 laptop for $600 (same spec as the toshiba which was $450) and I will be testing this thing extensively over the next few days. I'm pissed that I had to pay an extra $150 for the same laptop with a different brand, but I guess I can get over that..maybe.

edit: On the Asus, with WIFI OFF, the 1/10 bars that were yellow (~1000us) have stopped. The average is around ~300us. I'm testing traktor with 4 decks with both wifi off and on. I will post back with results.

I'm hoping to get some feedback from this thread as it's seems to have quieted down.

 

wow, well at least you were able to return the laptop. I pinpointed my problem to the wireless controller and just disabled everything else as a precaution, why have it running when you don't need it. The only reason I bought the Toshiba over any other brand was because of the 18.5" screen, it came with 6 gig of ram, and it was only $750, this was exactly a year ago. If I would have known about this problem before I bought it, I would have gotten something else. You also have to make sure that you disable the wireless in the device manager and also the switch in the front of the comp. I feel pretty lucky that I was able to get rid of this problem or else I would have been pretty pissed.