latency issues over time

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DeathOnRedBull

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First post

1 Posted on 12/24/2015 at 08:22:34

I have a Saffire Pro 14.

The problem I'm seeing is this: I leave my machine on all the time - it's never off. After a day or so, all video (I mean all, be it in Windows Media Player, or from YouTube) goes out of sync with the audio, worsening the longer the machine is left on. After about three days, video is about half a second out from the audio. I don't have a problem in my DAW (Cubase), as I don't use video.

Restarting the machine solves this, as does restarting the Windows Audio Endpoint builder service (which also restarts Windows Audio).

Additionally, the problem also happens with games, and even with Windows event sounds (volume up/down etc).

At first, I had the card at 48Khz, on low latency, with a buffer of 512. It was worse like this, but setting Windows audio to 44.1 Khz helped matters. Even after restarting the audio service, it seems like there is a SLIGHT latency when even playing videos, that shouldn't be there - a few milliseconds, maybe - enough to imperceptibly sense that the sound is a bit behind the picture.

For information, I'm running Windows 8.1 x64, with an i5-4690K and 16GB RAM, on an Asus Sabretooth Z97 Mk 1 board. the 1394 card is a Texas Instruments PCI-E, with a molex power connection. I also have an nVidia GTX 960. The internal Realtek sound is disabled in Windows, as are both nVidia audio devices.

I have a friend with an identical system (except he has a Pro 24), and he doesn't have this issue.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks.

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Simon Focusrite

AFfinity Poster

2 Posted on 02/10/2016 at 05:23:37

Hi,

Thanks for the post and the late reply, this has just popped up on my forum filter.

This to me looks to be a case of simply flushing your RAM after having the system on for a long while.
You may also wish to take a look at the following optimisations if you haven't already:

https://global.focusrite.com/answerbase/optimising-your-pc-for-audio-on-windows-8

Power Options:
Click Change advanced power settings. In the window that opens make sure you have the following settings:
Hard disc > Turn off hard disk after > Setting (Minutes) = Never
Sleep > Sleep after > Setting (Minutes) = Never
USB settings > USB selective suspend setting > Setting = Disabled
Display > Turn off display after > Setting (Minutes) = Never
Processor power management > Minimum processor state > Setting = 100%
Processor power management > Maximum processor state > Setting = 100%

Please note, not all options may be available.

It could also be worth checking for any available Firewire/Chipset driver updates for your PCIe card/motherboard, including the latest BIOS updates.

It's generally good practice in audio recording circles to shut down a computer in between sessions/projects when the computer isn't being used, I imagine the same is true for working with video and this is something that we would highly recommend seeing as it seems to resolve your issues.

Hope this helps.
Please let me know if there's anything else we can help with.

Best regards
Simon // Focusrite Technical Support

[ Post last edited on 02/10/2016 at 05:27:07 ]

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