Topic: ASIO glitches/stutter with Asus Xonar Essence ST (Read 39092 times)

jodokus · « **on:** August 05, 2013, 02:18:25 am »

My last resort after hours of testing and re-installing different drivers. This is my story: I just updated my soundcard (x-fi xtreme music) to an Asus Essence ST, but it’s driving me crazy. I always used the ASIO setting in JRiver without problems, but the Essence ST keeps stuttering/glitching when playing music (mostly flac). The glitching/stuttering worsens when I browse (Chrome worse thand IE) or startup other programs. Other settings like WASAPI (with or without Event), DirectSound or Kernel Streaming give no problems, but in my opinion the sound quality is not good enough compared to ASIO (on my high end hifi rig). This is my HTPC setup:

Asus P5K Deluxe (latest bios) with 4gb ddr
Intel C2D 6600
Crucial M4 SSD
Samsung F1
XFX Radeon HD7770 video
Seasonic G series power supply
Asus Xonar Essence ST PCI

This is what I tried to fix the problem:

-Changing buffer settings (every setting possible). This makes no difference, a higher latency in the ASIO setting (50ms) only a little bit.
I used a latency checker to see whats happening and the signal is more restless than with WASAPI. I enabled the energy "high performance" setting,
disabled Intel Speedstep, changed priority to processes instead of programs, disabled onboard sound and wlan.

-Tried every driver possible, from the Unified drivers (low latency is the best option) to the latest or older Asus ones.

-Clean install Windows 8 and Windows 7

Who can help me out, I'm pretty desperate.....

InflatableMouse · « **Reply #1 on:** August 05, 2013, 02:42:12 am »

I own the same card with H6 board for multichannel analog output and I prefer ASIO as well.

Windows 7 is considerably more stable than Windows 8 in this respect, Windows 8 is almost useless as a tiny bit of system load causes static and stutters.

But my system is a lot faster than yours: i5 3770k with 16GB 1600mhz.

Did you try enabling/disabling HPET (high precision timer in BIOS/EUFI)?

jodokus · « **Reply #2 on:** August 05, 2013, 03:15:15 am »

I don't think HPET is available in the P5K Deluxe bios.....

jodokus · « **Reply #3 on:** August 05, 2013, 05:16:52 am »

Last thing I want to add: I never get glitches/stutter while playing video (HQ setting)....

JimH · « **Reply #4 on:** August 05, 2013, 07:02:13 am »

Did you try ASUS? The ASIO driver must be theirs.

jodokus · « **Reply #5 on:** August 05, 2013, 12:54:09 pm »

Asus support is terrible....

jodokus · « **Reply #6 on:** August 05, 2013, 03:23:21 pm »

I reduced the glitches a little bit by lowering the prebuffer in JRiver to 2 seconds! I only went higher before (20 seconds) and that didn't work. Anyone an explanation for this?

mojave · « **Reply #7 on:** August 05, 2013, 03:42:23 pm »

What do you have set in the Asus ASIO Control Panel? Have you tried changing the latency there?

jodokus · « **Reply #8 on:** August 06, 2013, 02:38:21 am »

I have the same settings, 24 bit, 50ms. Higher than 50ms makes nog difference, lower makes the glitching worse...

mwillems · « **Reply #9 on:** August 06, 2013, 10:42:01 am »

Quote from: jodokus on August 05, 2013, 03:23:21 pm

I reduced the glitches a little bit by lowering the prebuffer in JRiver to 2 seconds! I only went higher before (20 seconds) and that didn't work. Anyone an explanation for this?

My experience was that lower buffers were generally better. I was (last year) running an ST, and had some similar problems, but setting the buffers to 10ms in the ASIO control panel and pre-buffering at the lowest setting seemed to help. The issue that finally fixed it though was plugging my card into a different PCI slot. Have you tried that? Also, the asus factory drivers sometimes don't uninstall completely when one attempts to uninstall them, and that led to issues (for me) with subsequent driver installs. The unified drivers website has a tool that's designed to identify and deal with that problem. Have you tried that with a clean install?

jodokus · « **Reply #10 on:** August 06, 2013, 12:08:44 pm »

Thanks for the input mwillems. I even tried a clean install of Windows 7, no luck though... The low latency Unified drivers are much better than the asus ones. I'll try the 10ms again with the 2 seconds prebuffer. I also tried a different pci slot, same story...

salora · « **Reply #11 on:** August 06, 2013, 05:53:35 pm »

Sadly i have the same issue With an hdav 1.3 deluxe , even With asus beta driver for W8, though it was working with w7,
i don't find another solution than wasapi but sound is not as great as with asio

jodokus · « **Reply #12 on:** August 07, 2013, 06:38:32 am »

Somebody think a better cpu (quad 8300 for instance) will make a difference?

InflatableMouse · « **Reply #13 on:** August 07, 2013, 07:17:24 am »

In my case its related to cpu load, but obviously my issue doesn't necessarily have to be the same as yours.

Can't you use Wasapi? If you can, you may want to try it out.

The Asus driver resamples only if you feed it a different samplerate than what is configured. So if you let MC do the resampling the Asus driver won't touch it.

jodokus · « **Reply #14 on:** August 07, 2013, 08:12:12 am »

Wasapi works, but I don't like the sound quality of Wasapi. It sounds compressed and dull, not open and liquid like Asio. I don't understand you don't hear this....

InflatableMouse · « **Reply #15 on:** August 07, 2013, 08:22:08 am »

I do when I leave it to resample but like I said, you can prevent that by configuring MC resample instead.

jodokus · « **Reply #16 on:** August 07, 2013, 08:45:20 am »

Really? Will the quality be the same as Asio? Can you give me your MC settings? Would be great!

InflatableMouse · « **Reply #17 on:** August 07, 2013, 10:24:11 am »

First, open c-media panel and set the samplerate. See first attachment.

In MC, open DSP studio, tick the box for output format and set all the sample rates to the same samplerate you set in c-media panel. See second attachment.

It's very hard to do a blind test with 2 zones but for me, this definitely got rid of the dullness with Wasapi.

jodokus · « **Reply #18 on:** August 07, 2013, 11:12:46 am »

Thanks a lot Mouse! Isn't it bad to upsample 44.1 to 96, quality wise?

InflatableMouse · « **Reply #19 on:** August 07, 2013, 11:27:31 am »

I don't think so.

But if you're concerned about it and if 44.1 is the only samplerate you have in your library, you can set the c-media panel to 44.100 and don't do any upsampling in MC. Then you won't have any upsampling at all.

Chances are though you have other samplerates as well so I think letting MC resample is a good compromise.

jodokus · « **Reply #20 on:** August 07, 2013, 01:52:28 pm »

Great support Mouse, I am grateful. I don't agree on wasapi though, it doesn't stand a chance. It is still weird that playing video is always glich-free with Asio....

InflatableMouse · « **Reply #21 on:** August 07, 2013, 01:59:56 pm »

That's strange. There shouldn't be any difference if the Asus driver is not resampling, they are both bit perfect and both use the same path to deliver audio.

Are you using Wasapi in exclusive mode? If you right click the speaker icon in the notification area, choose playback devices, choose the Asus Xonar Essence audio device (called 'Speakers' for me), click properties, select advanced tab.

Under Exclusive Mode, make sure 'Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device' is ticked, and make sure the 'give exclusive mode applications priority' is ticked as well.

If exclusive mode is not enabled, the Windows mixer will resample everything to whatever is configured under 'Default Format'.

ASIO is unaffected by these settings.

jodokus · « **Reply #22 on:** August 07, 2013, 02:45:50 pm »

The options are enabled and I know Wasapi is direct as well... Still it sounds different. When Asus Xonar Center is on, the eq shows the music playing with Wasapi. With Asio it looks disabled... This tells me Asio is more direct. Do you agree?

InflatableMouse · « **Reply #23 on:** August 07, 2013, 04:03:46 pm »

Yes, I agree but that shouldn't matter unless it alters some bits which I don't think it does if you feed it the same sample rate its set to.

But maybe I'm wrong and you hear something I don't.

jodokus · « **Reply #24 on:** August 08, 2013, 02:19:14 pm »

When you set it to 44.1 and play 44.1 music, it still sounds dull. Maybe i am too picky for you guys, but i am certain the "wasapi is number 1, together with asio story" is doubtfull. Wasapi is the save choice, but asio shines. I hope the JRiver brains will perfect the asio system, maybe even correct the bugs that bad driver companies like Asus make. Your great product deserves it!

dean70 · « **Reply #25 on:** August 08, 2013, 11:50:04 pm »

Quote from: jodokus on August 07, 2013, 02:45:50 pm

The options are enabled and I know Wasapi is direct as well... Still it sounds different. When Asus Xonar Center is on, the eq shows the music playing with Wasapi. With Asio it looks disabled... This tells me Asio is more direct. Do you agree?

ASIO with the UniDriver is definately more "direct". Infact it continues to work fine even with all the Windows Audio services disabled.

jodokus · « **Reply #26 on:** August 10, 2013, 05:39:28 am »

Anybody with an Asus Essence ST and JRiver thats working glitch-free with ASIO?

InflatableMouse · « **Reply #27 on:** August 10, 2013, 05:46:09 am »

Yes, if I leave my pc alone and if no background processes start doing anything intensive. A little isn't a problem but if something works on multiple threads using all 4 cores (not even to a 100%), or does something very disk intensive (like extracting an 8GB archive) it starts stuttering with static pops. But then sometimes, it just plays a few songs without any stuttering at all and other times, just scrolling through artists or albums in Theater View gives me a few static pops.

For some reason its less during movie playback than playing music only.

jodokus · « **Reply #28 on:** August 10, 2013, 06:12:26 am »

Same here!

JimH · « **Reply #29 on:** August 10, 2013, 06:31:05 am »

Antivirus?

Anything else non-stock, including any modifications to Windows?

InflatableMouse · « **Reply #30 on:** August 10, 2013, 09:20:15 am »

Quote from: JimH on August 10, 2013, 06:31:05 am

Antivirus?

Disabled.

Quote from: JimH on August 10, 2013, 06:31:05 am

Anything else non-stock, including any modifications to Windows?

At the time of testing, no. Brand new install of Windows 8, latest Xonar Uni drivers (tried them all, actually).

Really though, I think its a problem with Asus ASIO driver, Wasapi works fine.

Except maybe why playing videos seem to be less prone to stutter, I haven't really tested it extensively like I tested with audio. It's more an impression I have.

jodokus · « **Reply #31 on:** August 10, 2013, 09:28:06 am »

I have the same impression, no stutter while playing video. Isn't there a modified asus asio driver somewhere?

darkheart · « **Reply #32 on:** August 10, 2013, 10:41:06 am »

Maybe the key is 44.1 vs 48khz?

jodokus · « **Reply #33 on:** August 10, 2013, 10:53:12 am »

I thought about that...... Anyway to test it?

jodokus · « **Reply #34 on:** August 11, 2013, 07:19:22 am »

I checked the latency with DPC after disabling as much as possible. The baseline is around 100us with peaks of 150us while playing music. Is that healthy?

jodokus · « **Reply #35 on:** August 11, 2013, 07:54:11 am »

With running Utorrent the peaks go up to 2700us and the stuttering is present....

JimH · « **Reply #36 on:** August 11, 2013, 07:59:17 am »

We don't provide help for torrent use. Closing this thread now.

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Author Topic: ASIO glitches/stutter with Asus Xonar Essence ST (Read 39092 times)