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Author Topic: WDM problems  (Read 7619 times)

orangeart

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WDM problems
« on: January 06, 2015, 11:19:33 am »

Well I've been running the WDM driver since it came out and wanted to give a few thoughts and maybe get a few responses.

Firstly the addition of this little gem is absolutely wonderful, for the first time it has given me a complete start to finish solution to my audio throughput, thanks:) For me the biggest plus is the minimum amount of latency compared to using virtual cables like asio bridge, this has meant streaming movies without having to output to external DSP/crossovers as I can now do that in MC, so it's saved me a packet. However there a re a few problems which I know that other users have touched upon before.

I get a lot of pops and crackles, sometimes it's a minimum amount, sometimes it is far to distracting to use at all. When I first started using the WDM i was using a low powered atom device and just assumed it wasn't powerful enough. I'd intended on building a new media centre PC for a while so now have a 4 Ghz i5 with 8GB RAM and an SSD with a  firewire 800 card driving my Behringer FCA fireface via low latency drivers. IT still doesn't work that well, for a while I thought that i may have and earthing issue or a dreaded pin 1 XLR issue but I haven't.

Obviously I've fiddled about with all the buffer settings and am confident that I have a good handle on the settings that effect this both in MC and my drivers, maybe I've missed something though?

More recently I've become convinced that is is the WDM driver itself, I have MC installed on a laptop as well and this does exactly the same thing as the PC, even If i only have MC output to the onboard sound card. Desperate I reinstalled the asio bridge ap so that i could bypass the WDM driver and talk straight to the MC ASIO driver. This app has a handy monitoring screen that tells you a little about the clock synchronization between devices. Setting the virtual cable under the windows devices to accept a 48khz signal the ASIO bridge reports a solid incoming 48khz signal, the master sample rate reported from MC jumps up and down all over the place though. for the first 15 seconds or so any where from 39khz to 55khz during that time  it lost literally thousands of packets of data. when it settles down the sample rate settles to between 46.6 and 48.8 at which point a lock can be made and no more packets are lost, widening the device setting buffer in MC does narrow the waywardness a little but not much.

Here is my hypothesis of what is happening with the WDM driver, it is accepting a sample rate stream much like the ASIO bridge from the system but finds it difficult to lock to the internal MC audio engine because the reported clock that it is trying to lock to is wandering around and the result is dropped packets heard a clicks, pops and slodges.

Matt have you got any thoughts on some of the issues users have had? I know at least one audio driver developer offered help on this forum so I guess you are probably already looking into solutions?

I am showing at the Scalford hall audio show in late March and was hoping to show of MC working as a linear phase cross over running convolution for the filters and the room correction, it's not stable enough at the moment though. I can't run convolution with the WDM at all really. The above description is just using routing and basic filters although it does the same if I switch off everything.

Any help you give would be much appreciated.

Thanks

Stefan
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Matt

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Re: WDM problems
« Reply #1 on: January 06, 2015, 11:46:59 am »

The main buffer settings is:
Options > Audio > Advanced > Live playback latency

Have you tried increasing that one?
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Matt Ashland, JRiver Media Center

orangeart

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Re: WDM problems
« Reply #2 on: January 06, 2015, 03:47:51 pm »

Hi Matt, thanks  for looking in.

Yes afraid so.

Any idea why asio bridge would be reporting such a wildly varying master clock rate from jriver? could this be the root cause of the problems folk who have reported glitching but who have got the latency/buffers  set up correctly like myself?

Stefan
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mojave

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Re: WDM problems
« Reply #3 on: January 06, 2015, 04:04:25 pm »

I've also experienced the pops and crackles and don't think it is related to the Live Playback Latency. I've found that it happens more/only? when using ASIO output to hardware. If I switch to WASAPI then the pops/crackles go away. However, the latency with WASAPI is much greater and brings me back to thinking it might be more related to the output buffer settings for ASIO - either in JRiver or in the drivers. I'll try to check it out further.
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mwillems

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Re: WDM problems
« Reply #4 on: January 06, 2015, 04:06:54 pm »

I've also experience the pops and crackles and don't think it is related to the Live Playback Latency. I've found that it happens more/only? when using ASIO output to hardware. If I switch to WASAPI then the pops/crackles go away. However, the latency with WASAPI is much greater and brings me back to thinking it might be more related to the output buffer settings for ASIO - either in JRiver or in the drivers. I'll try to check it out further.

Mojave, I think it's highly hardware dependent; some of my hardware is crackle-free with ASIO outputs, but not WASAPI (Asus ST); some of my hardware is crackle-free with WASAPI but not ASIO (Asus U7), and some of my hardware is just plain crackle-free no matter what output format I use (Steinberg UR824, ODAC).

I would suggest to OP that he experiment with different output modes.
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orangeart

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Re: WDM problems
« Reply #5 on: January 06, 2015, 04:22:40 pm »

I think after all this time I've got it sussed, and it's not JRiver after all, well not quite, well sort of.

I think it's to do with exclusive mode access to the driver. If I open a tab with google play music, or any other streaming service for that matter when nothing else is playing and Ipc hasn't played anything the stream plays just fine. If I now pause the stream for long enough for Ipc to stop and un pause play back I get the pops and crackles. If close the tab and reopen it and start play back again all is fine again.

Therefor I think what is happening is that the google play (or other) tab is being given exclusive access and retains exclusive access when it is paused. J river however is saying, there is no longer an input and closing ipc, when google play is un-paused another Ipc session starts but google play is still trying to send its stream locked to the clock of the previous session, same sample rate but just not synced.

There seems to be two solutions, don't pause or stop JRiver stopping the Ipc....

why does Ipc stop anyhow< what is the thinking behind that?

Thanks all

Stefan
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natehansen66

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Re: WDM problems
« Reply #6 on: January 07, 2015, 05:19:26 am »

I haven't been able to get the WDM to work well enough for critical listening either. To be honest, until the other day I hadn't been very scientific about setting the hardware buffer and live playback latency. I've just tried various things. The other day I sat down and made a chart to methodically try different combinations until I landed on a good one. Fortunately I got it on the third combo......"Minimum" for hardware and 10ms for Live Playback. It worked well that day, but after the update yesterday I'm back to dropouts every minute or less. ASIO Bridge is mostly fine after the 30 seconds or so it takes to lock on and I only get a dropout every 5 minutes or better. That's without changing any latency settings. I'm also using a Firewire interface.
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Zero_G

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Re: WDM problems
« Reply #7 on: January 07, 2015, 09:03:51 am »

I have had no luck with getting rid crackles and pops.  Tried all suggested buffer settings but still no luck.
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)p(

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Re: WDM problems
« Reply #8 on: January 07, 2015, 11:48:14 am »

For me the wdm driver has been rock solid except for two occasions that it broke up Into white noise.

I mostly use the wdm driver with an older atom ion based htpc with the default settings. So I don't think pc performance matters much for its performance.

I use the wdm driver for room correction with jrmc's convolver.
My main use cases on the HTPC are:
AirPlay to airserver AirPlay receiever software to wdm driver
A software squeezebox emulator with wasapi to wdm driver
Plex with directsound to wdm driver
Occasionally:
Spotify app to wdm driver as default audio Device.
Spdiff input linked to the wdm driver in the windows audio settings in the listen tab.

All of them play and switch automatically when active. Really wonderful stuff  :)

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AudioBear

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Re: WDM problems
« Reply #9 on: January 10, 2015, 12:11:51 pm »

What are the correct settings to enable WDM driver?  I set JRiver MC 20 as the default in the audio devices, JRiver shows lpc and it appears to be "playing" but I have no sound output to laptop speakers.  Do I need to change some settings in MC?  I running windows 8.1

lost...

https://smtalbert.tinytake.com/sf/MzUxMjhfMjk4NTI4

https://smtalbert.tinytake.com/sf/MzUxMzJfMjk4NTQ0

https://smtalbert.tinytake.com/sf/MzUxMzRfMjk4NTQ2

Thank You
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orangeart

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Re: WDM problems
« Reply #10 on: January 13, 2015, 04:34:58 pm »

I wonder if you might give the WDM users a heads up on when you might get to making this more stable and useable than it currently is?

There are a few threads now about what seem to bubble down to timing errors of some sort or another.

If I may put in a feature request for the future as well please?

In ASIO bridge there is a brilliant monitoring window where you can see the input/program/output buffers in real time as well as the source and destination clocks. This is brilliant for working out what latency needs setting and where sync problems might lie. Any chance of getting a similar tool in MC.

I hope you manage to get these wrinkles ironed out, there seems to be a growing group of folk like me that have bought MC solely for access to the brilliant audio engine.

Thanks for the good work so far.

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orangeart

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Re: WDM problems
« Reply #11 on: January 15, 2015, 01:48:06 pm »

Any comments Matt?

Really want to get this working seamlessly so I can show off jrivers talents as a fully functioning front end at the Scalford hallhall audio show at the end of March :)

Stefan
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Hendrik

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Re: WDM problems
« Reply #12 on: January 15, 2015, 02:10:27 pm »

WDM isn't going to improve over night I'm afraid. Audio Drivers are extremely complex, and driver programming is a new field for us, so its a very slow process, but we're working on it...slowly.
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orangeart

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Re: WDM problems
« Reply #13 on: January 16, 2015, 01:45:07 am »

Hey Hendrik,

Thanks for replying, take your time, it's nice to have a public acknowledgment that it isn't perfect, thanks.

My idea of you might integrate the sort of tool I requested above at some point in the future?

Many thanks

Stefan
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mutato

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Re: WDM problems
« Reply #14 on: January 18, 2015, 02:10:25 pm »

I have had no luck with getting rid crackles and pops.  Tried all suggested buffer settings but still no luck.

+1
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trevoraiston

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Re: WDM problems
« Reply #15 on: March 10, 2015, 01:40:44 pm »

WDM Properties: Still trying to resolve video synch issues and dolby digital output as the only working option on my PC:  I attach screen shots of the properties of my wdm driver and for comparison my  AMD driver.

Can anyone advise if the properties on WDM driver look correct?

Thanks

Trevor
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Trevor
CustomBuild HTPC. YAMAHA RXV673 BK A/V RCVR, AE:Floor Standing AEGIS NEO 3 SPEAKERS,Center: AE NEO 7ii BK CTR SPKR, Sub NEO 8ii BK SUB, Rear:AEGIS NEO 1 V2 SPEAKERS (BLK), Sony MDR-HW700 headphones, KDL55W829BBU SONY 55" 800HZ SMART LED TV and OPPO BDP-105DBMR MULTIREGIONED FOR BLU RAY AND DVD

culliganman

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Re: WDM problems
« Reply #16 on: March 10, 2015, 03:03:50 pm »

Your JRiver WDM properties look the same as mine.
I'm having problems with crackling audio using WASAPI though, just so you know.
I'm also have video sync issues with TV but that's a different zone setup than I use for streaming music with Spotify.
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BryanC

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Re: WDM problems
« Reply #17 on: March 10, 2015, 04:48:54 pm »

Your JRiver WDM properties look the same as mine.
I'm having problems with crackling audio using WASAPI though, just so you know.
I'm also have video sync issues with TV but that's a different zone setup than I use for streaming music with Spotify.


What is your output device in MC? Realtek has been having some issues lately with crackling caused by their drivers.
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JimH

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Re: WDM problems
« Reply #18 on: March 10, 2015, 05:12:45 pm »

Could you try a different browser?
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culliganman

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Re: WDM problems
« Reply #19 on: March 10, 2015, 05:27:35 pm »

What is your output device in MC? Realtek has been having some issues lately with crackling caused by their drivers.

Dragonfly 1.2 dac to JVC receiver or Denon  AVR
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trevoraiston

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Re: WDM problems
« Reply #20 on: March 10, 2015, 08:05:13 pm »

My problem resolved.  Setting output encoding to none sorted lip-synch and Dolby issue


Thanks all those who have helped

Trevor
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Trevor
CustomBuild HTPC. YAMAHA RXV673 BK A/V RCVR, AE:Floor Standing AEGIS NEO 3 SPEAKERS,Center: AE NEO 7ii BK CTR SPKR, Sub NEO 8ii BK SUB, Rear:AEGIS NEO 1 V2 SPEAKERS (BLK), Sony MDR-HW700 headphones, KDL55W829BBU SONY 55" 800HZ SMART LED TV and OPPO BDP-105DBMR MULTIREGIONED FOR BLU RAY AND DVD
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