Topic: Audio stuttering with WDM driver using 192kHz sampling rate (Read 3954 times)

Awesome Donkey · « **Reply #50 on:** September 17, 2024, 04:33:19 pm »

Yeah, it seems to happen with WASAPI exclusive in apps like that.

Hendrik · « **Reply #51 on:** September 17, 2024, 04:45:18 pm »

Quote from: mattkhan on September 17, 2024, 09:46:21 am

btw, when does it take effect? it doesn't seem that restarting playback is sufficient nor restarting the source app (nor even restarting MC individually) but it's hard to tell (e.g. I changed it back to 10ms to check it failed again, restarted various things but it still seems reliable)

Whenever the driver is initialized, its not really meant to be runtime configurable. I guess leaving it alone for a while without audio may make Windows restart it? Its a bit opaque.

ppataki · « **Reply #52 on:** September 18, 2024, 03:59:54 am »

I have tried with 100ms, 250ms, 500ms and 1000ms as well, unfortunately the stuttering is still there

JimH · « **Reply #53 on:** September 18, 2024, 04:05:38 am »

Turn off exclusive mode in Tidal and reboot.

ppataki · « **Reply #54 on:** September 18, 2024, 04:07:29 am »

Turning off exclusive mode in Tidal turns off high-res as well so there is no point in doing that (everything will play in 48kHz)

JimH · « **Reply #55 on:** September 18, 2024, 04:29:01 am »

That's a Tidal thing. They must be trying to prevent piracy.

But you said earlier that exclusive mode was set in MC. You can't do that with two applications.

Try WASAPI.

B4Unyu · « **Reply #56 on:** September 18, 2024, 07:52:43 am »

fyi
referencing: exclusive mode

something changed with the handling of exclusive mode in Windows 11.
made no related changes to audio device settings in MC or windows, in the more sound settings (the old windows' sound setting popup).

condition:
in Windows,
exclusive mode and app priority selected

in MC:
prevent HDMI display from turning off = unchecked (allow monitor to turn off/enter low power state.
exclusive mode = On (WASAPI Exclusive)
hardware connection is motherboard audio jack line out for pc speakers.

result:
in the midst of playing a song (any common sample rate), let the monitor fully enter low power, wake with mouse/keyboard results in the audio playing at faster speed.

note:
USB DAC device not affected.
Monitor connected via motherboard hdmi->displayport (but not using this for audio, just as display)
nvidia graphics card hdmi straight to a/v receiver (power off/standby state) then to powered down TV

just fyi,
don't care if this is fixed or not, can be worked around, not laying blame anywhere, don't even know if this is specific to this PC, but likely Windows thing again, if it happens on your PCs, probably makes no difference MC32 or MC33.

might enlighten somebody's thoughts about what is going on with topic issue.

JimH · « **Reply #57 on:** September 18, 2024, 07:57:20 am »

Thanks for the nice report.

Did you try turning off Exclusive Mode?

Awesome Donkey · « **Reply #58 on:** September 18, 2024, 08:01:57 am »

Use of Exclusive Mode here is probably the key. There's an experiment somebody can try if they're curious; load up a second version of MC (e.g. a portable version) and set it up to use the WDM driver from the primary version of MC as its audio output. Then make sure WASAPI exclusive is being used and in that portable version of MC try playing back a 24/192 file and see if you can replicate what's happening with Tidal and Qobuz at 192 kHz when using WASAPI exclusive.

mattkhan · « **Reply #59 on:** September 18, 2024, 08:27:38 am »

Quote from: B4Unyu on September 18, 2024, 07:52:43 am

fyi
referencing: exclusive mode

something changed with the handling of exclusive mode in Windows 11.
made no related changes to audio device settings in MC or windows, in the more sound settings (the old windows' sound setting popup).

I tested on Win10 and power states not involved so this does not seem relevant to the issue reported in this thread

B4Unyu · « **Reply #60 on:** September 18, 2024, 08:38:19 am »

JimH,

exclusive mode off in MC and Windows = something went wrong error in MC
exclusive mode off in MC But On in windows = same playback error

However...

DSD files in same playlist that are being down sampled to 192 are not effected.

But...

192 is selected as sample rate in windows, so 192 files will play as well, but not the other common sample rates.

assuming changing sample rate there will result in only selected sample rate files playing and DSD file will play only being converted that selected rate.

rogueblue · « **Reply #61 on:** September 19, 2024, 04:36:11 am »

Quote from: JimH on September 16, 2024, 01:05:40 am

Antivirus?

Or something else running in the background.

What's strange is it only happens when opening web browsers .. Edge, Chrome etc
Uninstalled AV and no difference.

whoareyou · « **Reply #62 on:** September 19, 2024, 04:04:47 pm »

How about looking at the driver tab? Look for driver taking way more time than anything else?

rogueblue · « **Reply #63 on:** September 19, 2024, 04:07:22 pm »

Quote from: whoareyou on September 19, 2024, 04:04:47 pm

How about looking at the driver tab? Look for driver taking way more time than anything else?

Sorry what you mean "driver tab" ... how would i go about this? Might verywell be a driver ...

Awesome Donkey · « **Reply #64 on:** September 19, 2024, 05:05:24 pm »

The Drivers tab in LatencyMon.

mattkhan · « **Reply #65 on:** September 21, 2024, 05:41:55 am »

experimented a bit more with this rebooting after each registry change to be sure it was applied

results = glitchy playback with any value tried under 1000, 1000 was completely unstable (constant loop of opening and immediately closing playback)

changing any of the MC input or output buffers (live playback latency, output device buffers) made no difference to this

ppataki · « **Reply #66 on:** September 21, 2024, 06:05:04 am »

Exactly the same as in my case
Thanks for testing, appreciated

mattkhan · « **Reply #67 on:** September 21, 2024, 08:31:27 am »

I tried the same using asio line in and get the same results (using qobuz as that supports asio output devices) so that would suggest the problem is not specific to the WDM driver but is instead in how MC handles a live input.

ppataki · « **Reply #68 on:** September 30, 2024, 03:39:30 pm »

Would be nice to fix it either way in one of the upcoming releases

fitbrit · « **Reply #69 on:** October 03, 2024, 10:44:49 am »

Quote from: Awesome Donkey on September 16, 2024, 01:42:49 pm

Okay, I just tried it out for myself (as I don't use the WDM driver feature normally) and can reproduce the stuttering at Max (192 kHz) on Tidal when playing back music. I used George Harrison's 50th Anniversary Super Deluxe edition of his album All Things Must Pass as the test and indeed it does stutter when Tidal is set to use Exclusive Mode for the audio output. On my machine at least with LatencyMon open there's no spikes in DPC latency when this occurs so all green/good there. If you disable Exclusive Mode in Tidal it plays back at 48 kHz which apparently you need Exclusive Mode enabled in Tidal to playback at higher sample rates like 192 kHz so that's a no good.

Changing buffer indeed doesn't help, and in most cases does indeed seem to make it worse.

I've had the same experience repeatedly. My solution was to stop using WDM altogether, which I had the luxury to do.

ppataki · « **Reply #70 on:** October 03, 2024, 12:16:45 pm »

Thank you for confirming the same
For those that don't have that luxury it would be great to get this fixed

audafreak · « **Reply #71 on:** October 09, 2024, 06:52:35 am »

I have the same experience with WDM driver. It does not work correctly for years thru many versions. I don't use it because of this. Currently using only ASIO - this is perfect. If I would not have ASIO HW (RME UCX II), then I would not use MC anymore.

JimH · « **Reply #72 on:** October 09, 2024, 10:38:17 am »

I merged two threads even though they were slightly different. The latencymon message above may point to an NVIDIA driver problem.

Rogueblue,
Stuttering audio is probably not a CPU problem. It doesn't take a lot of power to play audio.

ppataki · « **Reply #73 on:** October 09, 2024, 10:54:21 am »

I don't have high DPC spikes due to the Nvidia driver, @Awesome Donkey does not have DCP spikes at all and still we both have the stuttering issue at 192kHz
I doubt this is an Nvidia driver issue

As @mattkhan said it is rather an issue with how MC handles live input
Or it can still be a WDM driver issue

mattkhan · « **Reply #74 on:** October 09, 2024, 11:59:24 am »

Given the same happens with asio line in, you would think it's an MC issue rather than device specific.

dtc · « **Reply #75 on:** October 09, 2024, 04:07:17 pm »

I just tried Qobuz playing into WDM and there was significant stuttering at 192 Khz.

I also tried using MC32 as the input program rather than Qobuz and there was no stuttering at 192 KHz.

So, it seems that the problem depends on the input source.

For people who are having this problem, if you still have MC 32 (or an earlier version) you might try playing 192 KHz to the WDM on MC 33 as a test.

Windows 10, HP Laptop, Realtek speaker, MC 32.0.29

ppataki · « **Reply #76 on:** October 09, 2024, 04:17:10 pm »

MC33 stutters too, no change unfortunately

dtc · « **Reply #77 on:** October 09, 2024, 04:28:11 pm »

I had MC 32 output to WDM on MC 33. You have stuttering on that configuration?

JimH · « **Reply #78 on:** October 10, 2024, 12:36:06 am »

Antivirus can treat separate versions differently.

Settings matter.

JimH · « **Reply #79 on:** October 10, 2024, 12:39:26 am »

Quote from: ppataki on September 18, 2024, 04:07:29 am

Turning off exclusive mode in Tidal turns off high-res as well so there is no point in doing that (everything will play in 48kHz)

You can't have two programs set to exclusive. Exclusive means exclusive.

mattkhan · « **Reply #80 on:** October 10, 2024, 01:25:28 am »

I posted a while ago that it's not every source causing the problem, I used mpc to demonstrate. It's nothing to do with antivirus though, the evidence says it's an MC problem in handling input streams.

JimH · « **Reply #81 on:** October 10, 2024, 02:01:27 am »

Quote from: mattkhan on October 10, 2024, 01:25:28 am

I posted a while ago that it's not every source causing the problem, I used mpc to demonstrate. It's nothing to do with antivirus though, the evidence says it's an MC problem in handling input streams.

Steps to duplicate would help. Including settings.

mattkhan · « **Reply #82 on:** October 10, 2024, 02:09:51 am »

Already posted earlier I believe, settings are not so important because behaviour seems invariant to any relevant settings like buffers

Configure tidal or qobuz to play back to wasapi exclusive
Enable WDM driver
Play some 192kHz content in either app
MC will stutter badly

Repeat in qobuz outputting to an asio device which is capable of looping back to an input
Open asio line in pointing at those channels
MC will stutter badly

Change buffers as you like (large, small, whatever) makes no difference, it still glitches severely

dtc · « **Reply #83 on:** October 10, 2024, 07:41:57 am »

Quote from: JimH on October 10, 2024, 12:39:26 am

You can't have two programs set to exclusive. Exclusive means exclusive.

Exclusive mode is unique to each device. So, within Tidal/Qobuz you select WDM as your output device and set that to exclusive mode so you can send 192 Khz. Then, within MC you select your output device in exclusive mode to be able to send 192 KHz to your DAC.

I used Qobuz with its default settings with WDM as the output device in exclusive mode and MC with its default settings for WDM and got significant stuttering. My output device from MC was in Wasapi exclusive mode. If you have Qobuz that should be easy to test.

Awesome Donkey · « **Reply #84 on:** October 10, 2024, 08:30:47 am »

It's pretty easy to reproduce fortunately.

1) Get access to Tidal and open the Tidal app on Windows.

2) Set Tidal to use the WDM driver and make sure exclusive mode is enabled for it.

3) In my own tests in MC I'm using WASAPI exclusive with my USB DAC. Maybe does it for ASIO too, not sure, haven't tried. But for this test I would advise WASAPI exclusive in MC.

4) In the Tidal app find an artist/album that is available and plays at Max quality. For my testing I used George Harrison's All Things Must Pass (50th Anniversary) release. You can find it here: https://tidal.com/browse/album/275643024?u

5) Attempt playback, which should be at 24/192 and it should stutter significantly.

ppataki · « **Reply #85 on:** October 10, 2024, 08:39:51 am »

I tested it with both WASAPI excl. and ASIO, both stutter like hell

JimH · « **Reply #86 on:** October 10, 2024, 08:41:14 am »

Please test without exclusive mode set in MC.

dtc · « **Reply #87 on:** October 10, 2024, 08:49:00 am »

Turned off exclusive mode in MC. Same stuttering.

Hendrik · « **Reply #88 on:** October 10, 2024, 01:22:00 pm »

If anyone has experienced the issue in a case that doesn't require a paid subscription, that would simplify testing a bunch.

mattkhan · « **Reply #89 on:** October 10, 2024, 01:38:06 pm »

Fwiw both apps have a free trial

Awesome Donkey · « **Reply #90 on:** October 10, 2024, 04:13:29 pm »

As I said previously I suspect that you can reproduce it using a second (portable) MC or another player like foobar2000 and set it to use the main MC's WDM driver output (with exclusive mode enabled) while playing back local 24/192 media in the secondary player.

If I had time I'd test it myself but can't at the moment. If nobody else does I'll see if I can get the chance to try it.

Matt · « **Reply #91 on:** October 10, 2024, 07:23:49 pm »

I'm playing a 192 kHz file with Winamp to the WDM driver and it's playing nicely. MC is getting the 192 kHz signal. I'm outputting to my Mytek DAC.

What else should I do to reproduce?

I tried as 5.1 and 2 channel from Winamp and both worked (converted to stereo by MC's output).

Thanks.

dtc · « **Reply #92 on:** October 10, 2024, 07:53:27 pm »

The problem has been reported with Tidal and Qobuz. I would suggest trying those.

dtc · « **Reply #93 on:** October 10, 2024, 09:30:58 pm »

Quote from: kr4 on September 17, 2024, 04:11:04 pm

I tried this with Qobuz and it works just fine with WASAPI (no stuttering) but not with WASAPI Exclusive.

For Quboz, I see the same thing with shared mode set to 192 Khz in Windows options. The problem with using shared mode is that everything gets upsampled by Windows to the shared mode frequency, in this case to 192 KHz.

Just to add another wrinkle, in Amazon Music 192 Khz works in both shared mode and exclusive mode. But with exclusive mode set within Amazon Music and enabled for the WDM driver, Amazon music says it is sending 192, but the signal WDM receives is the shared mode sample rate set that is set in Windows settings. No idea how that happens, but Audio Path clearly shows that it is getting the shared mode sample rate, even though everything is set to exclusive mode.

I no longer subscribe to Tidal but as I remember you cannot send 192 Khz unless you use exclusive mode. That should be checked by a current subscriber.

Now I am totally confused.

JimH · « **Reply #94 on:** October 11, 2024, 12:35:45 am »

There's one more possibility that I haven't raised because it seemed unlikely.

They may be trying to detect another program recording their streams, and when they think they do, limiting the bandwidth so that it seems to work but doesn't.

dtc · « **Reply #95 on:** October 11, 2024, 08:43:12 pm »

The cases I tested seemed to work at 96K. I would be surprised if they throttled 192 but not 96, but who knows.

mattkhan · « **Reply #96 on:** October 12, 2024, 09:54:02 am »

Quote from: JimH on October 11, 2024, 12:35:45 am

There's one more possibility that I haven't raised because it seemed unlikely.

They may be trying to detect another program recording their streams, and when they think they do, limiting the bandwidth so that it seems to work but doesn't.

I confirmed this is not the case as following

* qobuz output to asio to channels 1 & 2
* MC asio line in listening to channels 1 & 2
* MC asio output to some other channel range
* reaper daw listening to asio channels 1 & 2
* start playback, confirm audible audio (played by MC) is glitchy
* start recording in reaper for 10s or so
* render track to a 192kHz wav
* stop all of the above
* play wav file in MC
* audio plays normally

conclusion = 192kHz input processing in MC is flawed

Nikkel · « **Reply #97 on:** October 17, 2024, 12:45:49 pm »

Been struggling with this for a couple of years now and thought Its something I'm doing wrong... good to see I'm not alone

With Tidal I don't use Exclusive mode with MC WDM 192kHz cos stutterzzzz! This on Win10 and now Win11 ASIO

Straight to SMSL SU-9 DAC Exclusive mode is fine with everything

WASAPI will sometimes give no sound at all on WDM using exclusive but I haven't really played around on WASAPI that much as I seem to have less issues with ASIO

ppataki · « **Reply #98 on:** October 27, 2024, 12:19:28 pm »

Do we know if this issue is going to get fixed anytime soon?

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Author Topic: Audio stuttering with WDM driver using 192kHz sampling rate (Read 3954 times)