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[Rossputin]

Hello all,

So here's what I'm dealing with...and I realize this is NOT a problem with MC itself but I hope someone can help:

My music server device is in another room from where I listen on headphones through my home office computer, so my office MC uses the library key connection to get to the library in the other room and sends the music through my home network to get to me.

Whenever I'm using a browser and loading new pages or when Outlook checks for new mail or doing anything that uses the internet I get really really bad noise, jitter, not sure just what the precise name would be, in my music.

I've tried resetting my network adapter settings...not sure if there's something more optimal than what I have or even that is even relevant.

Anyway, it makes it almost impossible to enjoy listening while I'm working...and I'm pretty much only in the room when I'm working.

Does anyone have any thoughts about tweaks to my network and/or computer or settings and/or MC settings try to fix the problem?

Thanks in advance for any help!

[justsomeguy]

What are your computer specs?
Try temporarily disabling your antivirus.
Try enabling "Memory playback"... Tools>Options>Audio>Memory playback (will load the full file into memory before playback so you can see if it's actually the network that is causing it or something else)
Also download the free version of LatencyMon from here https://www.resplendence.com/downloads to test your system

[zybex]

This sounds more like RF interference caused by bad shielding of your soundcard, common on cheap motherboards. Sometimes just scrolling a webpage (CPU+graphics card activity) causes a low whining sound on the speakers, even without anything playing. Any other CPU activity can also cause it.

Are you using wired headphones? Try using a Bluetooth set to see if it still happens. If it doesn't then it's the bad shielding and you need to get another PCIe or USB soundcard, or just stick to the BT headphones. If your monitor is HDMI and has an audio-out for headphones you could also try that.

[Rossputin]

Audio is USB out into a fairly high-end DAC and then through a Bottlehead Crack (with Speedball) tube-based headphone amp that I built. The sound isn't a low whine. It's aggressive clicking that's hard to describe...maybe a little like a record scratching in the sense that you can not hear ANY music when the click happens. Sometimes it's just for a fraction of a second and sometimes, like if a big web page is loading, it can last for a few seconds. Doesn't seem like RF to me but rather like some sort of processing problem, probably with the network adapter but maybe with CPU? Later today I'll see if I can make a recording of what it sounds like!

This sounds more like RF interference caused by bad shielding of your soundcard, common on cheap motherboards. Sometimes just scrolling a webpage (CPU+graphics card activity) causes a low whining sound on the speakers, even without anything playing. Any other CPU activity can also cause it.

Are you using wired headphones? Try using a Bluetooth set to see if it still happens. If it doesn't then it's the bad shielding and you need to get another PCIe or USB soundcard, or just stick to the BT headphones. If your monitor is HDMI and has an audio-out for headphones you could also try that.

[Rossputin]

Which specs do you want?

I'll try disabling antivirus and antimalware when I get home today!

Does memory playback make playback slower, e.g. bigger gaps between songs?

Installing LatencyMon now!

What are your computer specs?
Try temporarily disabling your antivirus.
Try enabling "Memory playback"... Tools>Options>Audio>Memory playback (will load the full file into memory before playback so you can see if it's actually the network that is causing it or something else)
Also download the free version of LatencyMon from here https://www.resplendence.com/downloads to test your system

[Rossputin]

Got this in LatencyMon: "Conclusion: Your system appears to be having trouble handling real-time audio and other tasks. You are likely to experience buffer underruns appearing as drop outs, clicks or pops. One or more DPC routines that belong to a driver running in your system appear to be executing for too long. At least one detected problem appears to be network related. In case you are using a WLAN adapter, try disabling it to get better results. One problem may be related to power management, disable CPU throttling settings in Control Panel and BIOS setup. Check for BIOS updates."

What are your computer specs?
Try temporarily disabling your antivirus.
Try enabling "Memory playback"... Tools>Options>Audio>Memory playback (will load the full file into memory before playback so you can see if it's actually the network that is causing it or something else)
Also download the free version of LatencyMon from here https://www.resplendence.com/downloads to test your system

[David Sydney]

Just a random thought that may help you. Last year I had a fairly constant glitch, click high pitched sound appear out of seemingly nowhere and kept repeating constanly. I restore the Windows installation, update drivers and many other things. It was constant.

As it turned out my media were sitting on a Intel RAID 5 drive as they do now in a new built machine. That RAID 5 had one disk that was bad and was constanly trying to rebuild itself. Problem was I had no RAID software that had notified me it was trying to rebuild. I had removed Intel software because of compatibility issues. When I finally found it and let it rebuild overnight with everything else turned off, it restored completely and the high pitch sqeal/glitch disappeared. This was not a cheap motherboard either! Worth a look.  PS now I run Intel UMP app "Intel Optane Memory and Storage Management" just in case....

[tij]

Whats your network? Hard wired or wifi?

[justsomeguy]

Got this in LatencyMon: "Conclusion: Your system appears to be having trouble handling real-time audio and other tasks. You are likely to experience buffer underruns appearing as drop outs, clicks or pops. One or more DPC routines that belong to a driver running in your system appear to be executing for too long. At least one detected problem appears to be network related. In case you are using a WLAN adapter, try disabling it to get better results. One problem may be related to power management, disable CPU throttling settings in Control Panel and BIOS setup. Check for BIOS updates."

What drivers does it show with the high latency times?

[Rossputin]

So based on a little more research I think the problem is being caused by network drivers installed by my VPN. The problem exists even when VPN is disconnected but (so far) seems to have vanished when I uninstalled the VPN. I will reinstall and see what happens and I will also get in touch with their tech support.