audio performance

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Guest

I have an Acer 5102 laptop. I work with pro audio. The suppliers of my
soundcards have not yet developed Vista drivers, but in the meantime I'm
playing with the internal audio device in the machine. This worked to a low
standard in Windows Media Center edition that was on the machine at purchase.

Under Vista, I have regular clicks on playback, and on record there are
occasional blips in the recorded noise.

When I monitor what is running using Sysinternals, I see huge lists of file
and registry accesses, with very occasional instances where the audio app is
allowed to bring in some wave data.
Many of these accesses refer to apps which appear to be part of or called by
e-DataSecurity and e-Power. I'm not sure whether these are Acer or Microsoft
apps.

The question is - How do I find out what is essential and what might be
interrupting the flow of audio data. When the machine is sitting idle, the
twirly 'hourglass' can be seen to flash past occasionally. Is this a clue?
 
There are a lot of issues here. One is, did you buy that laptop with Vista
on it? If so, you probably got a lot of junkware that's taking CPU cycles
and space. You might be able to remove it, if you're diligent enough.

There's a service called Windows Search that indexes your hard drive -
disable that service to get a few more cycles.

e-? aren't Microsoft programs. Probably aforementioned junkware. Uninstall
them.

You might want to visit Acer's web site for a full set of drivers in case
you uninstall something valuable...

Dana Cline - MCE MVP
 
Thanks, Dana. The machine was delivered in Jan with Media Center Edition, the
Vista CD was delivered finally a week or two ago. I used the machine with MCE
for a couple of months, and don't remember hearing any audio 'glitches'
although it had the Acer e-whatever set of programs.
The machine was restored back to its original state under MCE before running
the Vista upgrade DVD, so any 'junkware' will be from Acer and presumably
fairly standard across their machines.

The audio still glitches with Windows Search disabled.

I'll try contacting Acer before I uninstall anything. I'm more keen on
finding the cause of the problem rather than just removing stuff blindly. I
need to ask them about some errors that show up in event viewer - a couple
relate to "acpi bios does not include an IRQ for the card in pci slot 4/5".

Bill
 
Well, just remember you can install Vista's upgrade on a clean hard drive
but you have to install it twice, first with no product key, then again with
your product key.

Dana Cline - MCE MVP
 
That info about installing twice is useful to know. I'm at the stage where an
email to Acer support is awaiting a reply. There is supposedly an update to
the video driver that should cure clicks on audio playback, but I can't get
it to install. I've found a slightly more semi-pro Edirol audio interface and
installed its Vista drivers, but it shows huge problems such as massive
delays with video while audio is recording, and gaps in playback.

I think the answer now is to wait in the hope that the drivers for this
laptop will mature and maybe in a month or so try to re-install as a working
system.
 
And the reply from Acer was to re-install. I've now done that 3 times. A
basic Microsoft install, an install with manual application of just the video
and audio drivers from Acer, an install with those plus Acer's LManager and a
full acer install. I've emailed back.

The onboard sound, when I listen to constant tone on the machine, has clicks
in WMediaPlayer via the internal soundcard. The Edirol usb audio interface
seems to play back fairly solidly when most of the Acer apps are off the
machine, but record still has huge video lag in the recording waveform
display, which eventually gives up completely. The recorded audio is there
but has gaps. This has all the symptoms of a bad video driver, and the Acer
site refers to updates, but the updates won't install on this machine.

It's an ATI Radeon Xpress 1100. The audio app that I'm using is reported by
others to work OK on Vista, with the proviso that it switches the display
back to Windows basic.

The problem is that everyone else I know involved in audio has reverted to
XP or another OS, so I have no-one to compare notes with. How does one go
about dealing with a dud driver? Is there likely to be a really basic simple
ATI driver anywhere that I could load?

Bill
 
I would pressure Acer's customer service to update/fix their drivers. You
can get the normal ATI drivers from www.ati.com but I have no idea if
they'll work on your system (they should if it's not a laptop...if it is,
then all bets are off).

Dana Cline - MCE MVP
 
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