Windows 8 - An Audio Bust

Jaguar

Well-Known Member
Aug 2, 2010
221
17
925
Bellevue, WA
I'm a little late to the Windows 8 party, having decided to stay away from it after hearing the stories of discontent with the interface. However, I heard the release of 8.1 last week would address those concerns. I was fully expecting to use it in the Music Server product I'm preparing for release in November, but after a few long evenings of working with it I'm coming to the conclusion that Win 8 is poison to audiophile music playback.

I'm going to reserve final judgement for a few more nights of experimenting, but so far I have the OS 80% optimized and where I'm expecting to see latencies in the neighborhood of 50-100ns it's still 10X that. I'll come back with my findings when I'm completely finished, but right now it looks like Windows 8 is a big disappointment for audio.
 

audioarcher

Well-Known Member
May 6, 2012
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I'm a little late to the Windows 8 party, having decided to stay away from it after hearing the stories of discontent with the interface. However, I heard the release of 8.1 last week would address those concerns. I was fully expecting to use it in the Music Server product I'm preparing for release in November, but after a few long evenings of working with it I'm coming to the conclusion that Win 8 is poison to audiophile music playback.

I'm going to reserve final judgement for a few more nights of experimenting, but so far I have the OS 80% optimized and where I'm expecting to see latencies in the neighborhood of 50-100ns it's still 10X that. I'll come back with my findings when I'm completely finished, but right now it looks like Windows 8 is a big disappointment for audio.

Hi Darin, Why is low latency good for computer audio? What audible differences do you hear with lower latency?
 

Jaguar

Well-Known Member
Aug 2, 2010
221
17
925
Bellevue, WA
Hi Darin, Why is low latency good for computer audio? What audible differences do you hear with lower latency?

In theory you want your audio data transmission to have as little interruption as possible (reduced Jitter). This is the focus behind our real-time kernel operating system, which we have as a free download on the Blog page of the Jaguar website. Latency is not the only factor, for example certain audio drivers sound better than other; in my Wyred DAC2 ASIO4All sounded slightly better than the asychronous driver that came with the DAC. The difference in sound you should listen for is less of the typical digital sound, more flowing, with less etch and haze.

I found the difference lower latency could make when I experienced sound issues with my server that I traced to sub-optimal settings in the BIOS. Using the DPC Latency Checker the latency at idle was running at about 50ns when it normally ran at 7ns; I fixed the BIOS settings and the sound was back to normal. I later had to return the motherboard under warranty and went back to my daily laptop, which I had been using for music before, which sounded so bad I quit listening to music altogether until I had the board back.

I haven't even listened to music with Win 8, but in my experience an OS with latency readings of 500-1,000 is not worth the time of plugging in my DAC.
 

audioarcher

Well-Known Member
May 6, 2012
1,396
51
970
Seattle area
In theory you want your audio data transmission to have as little interruption as possible (reduced Jitter). This is the focus behind our real-time kernel operating system, which we have as a free download on the Blog page of the Jaguar website. Latency is not the only factor, for example certain audio drivers sound better than other; in my Wyred DAC2 ASIO4All sounded slightly better than the asychronous driver that came with the DAC. The difference in sound you should listen for is less of the typical digital sound, more flowing, with less etch and haze.

I found the difference lower latency could make when I experienced sound issues with my server that I traced to sub-optimal settings in the BIOS. Using the DPC Latency Checker the latency at idle was running at about 50ns when it normally ran at 7ns; I fixed the BIOS settings and the sound was back to normal. I later had to return the motherboard under warranty and went back to my daily laptop, which I had been using for music before, which sounded so bad I quit listening to music altogether until I had the board back.

I haven't even listened to music with Win 8, but in my experience an OS with latency readings of 500-1,000 is not worth the time of plugging in my DAC.

After doing some web searching on the subject it appears that DPC latency checker is not accurate on Windows 8 according to their own web site. They are working on a new program that is. So you might want to rethink that assumption.

I just bought a Windows 8 desktop and it is a bit better than my old Windows 7 laptop for audio. It does have much better specs though. I have found a couple of web sites that explain how to lower my latency and optimize my computer for audio that I will try out. I'm not experiencing any drop outs except when my external HD goes to sleep. One of the web sites explains how to solve that problem though.

I am just getting back into computer audio after a long absence. Looks like I have allot to learn. I'm getting really good sound now so if I can improve it with some free tweaks that would be nice.
 
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Jaguar

Well-Known Member
Aug 2, 2010
221
17
925
Bellevue, WA
Thank Sean, for digging that up that's a great catch.

"Windows 8 Compatibility: The DPC latency utility runs on Windows 8 but does not show correct values. The output suggests that the Windows 8 kernel performs badly and introduces a constant latency of one millisecond, which is not the case in practice. DPCs in the Windows 8 kernel behave identical to Windows 7. The utility produces incorrect results because the implementation of kernel timers has changed in Windows 8, which causes a side effect with the measuring algorithm used by the utility. Thesycon is working on a new version of the DPC latency utility and will make it available on this site as soon as it is finished."

Looks like this program has been updated for Win 8.

http://www.resplendence.com/latencymon_whatsnew

I'll go back and compare Win 7 and Win 8 with this tool. This changes everything, but I see Win 8 has new services that have to stay running in order to open programs and it reportedly has several new power saving features, so odds are it's handicapped, but I will find out during the next few weeks and report back.


I recommend the CMP2/Cics Memory website for optimizations. It's a good idea to always save images of your drive, because some of this experimenting can cause an unbootable machine and the Last Known Good Configuration feature doesn't always work.
 
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rockitman

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Sep 20, 2011
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since we are slamming microsoft I will add another complaint (non audio). When will they color manage their browser so pictures that are color tagged are seen correctly (given a calibrated monitor) ? Very annoying for the discerning photographer.
 

Jaguar

Well-Known Member
Aug 2, 2010
221
17
925
Bellevue, WA
since we are slamming microsoft I will add another complaint (non audio). When will they color manage their browser so pictures that are color tagged are seen correctly (given a calibrated monitor) ? Very annoying for the discerning photographer.

I still prefer Windows above all other at this point, but using IE is a bridge too far. Almost as bad as Hotmail and Media Player.
 

Jaguar

Well-Known Member
Aug 2, 2010
221
17
925
Bellevue, WA
Do you know off hand whether google chrome is a color managed browser ?

I'm sure it's better than IE, but from what I've read, Firefox is the choice for photographers.
 

garylkoh

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Sep 6, 2010
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since we are slamming microsoft I will add another complaint (non audio). When will they color manage their browser so pictures that are color tagged are seen correctly (given a calibrated monitor) ? Very annoying for the discerning photographer.

I use PaleMoon which supports ICC profiles......
 

jkeny

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microstrip

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jkeny

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Feb 9, 2012
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Great news! Groucho and me should offer you a dinner - I got a new Win 8 desktop recently. ;)
Watch out for that expectation bias, though
 

audioarcher

Well-Known Member
May 6, 2012
1,396
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970
Seattle area
Yes Win 8 was disqualified from benchmarking tests due to a fault in their real-time clock which is used by these tests http://www.extremetech.com/computin...worlds-top-benchmarking-and-overclocking-site

BTW, I find the opposite of Fork - I find Win 8 sounded better than Win 7 for audio
This is without any registry tweaking or CICs/CMP2 optimisations

Fork wrote that he had not actually listened through Windows 8 yet. I don't think he has come to any conclusions yet. He was just thrown off by the inaccurate software tests he had done. A mistake anyone could make.
 

jkeny

Industry Expert, Member Sponsor
Feb 9, 2012
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Fork wrote that he had not actually listened through Windows 8 yet. I don't think he has come to any conclusions yet. He was just thrown off by the inaccurate software tests he had done. A mistake anyone could make.

Ah, right!
 

Jaguar

Well-Known Member
Aug 2, 2010
221
17
925
Bellevue, WA
Fork wrote that he had not actually listened through Windows 8 yet. I don't think he has come to any conclusions yet. He was just thrown off by the inaccurate software tests he had done. A mistake anyone could make.

Yes, my bad. I don't read so well since I started wearing reading glasses, but it looks like this topic was ready for investigation. I'll be back to try to see what I can find out as soon as I get my head back above water with some other stuff.
 

Jaguar

Well-Known Member
Aug 2, 2010
221
17
925
Bellevue, WA
Did some latency tests over the weekend. Will post the results in my called thread called "Windows 8 - NOT and Audio Bust".
 

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