Clicking and Popping in Vista

[AdamH]

Leif,

I am experiencing some very frustrating clicks and pops with Vista. Now that we are being forced to buy computers with Vista, I figured why not give it a shot?

Installed the latest version of Breakaway, adjusted everything to the highest possible buffer amount, and I am still getting bad pops every 10-15 seconds. Here are the computer’s specs:

Dell Inspiron 1525 Laptop
2.00 gHz Intel Celeron
2 GB RAM
SigmaTel HD Audio

Can you shed some light on this?

Thanks!
Adam

[Anonymous]

dell laptops are loaded w/ a bunch of crap. format, reinstall windows without the dell b.s.
my friend bought a brand new dell dualcore and it was slower than my 10 year old 1.5 ghz, until i formatted it for her. Hope that helps.

[AdamH]

Is there a way to reformat Windows without loading all the extra crap? I know XP like the back of my hand, but close to nothing about Vista.

Thanks!
Adam

[Anonymous]

heres a video of how-to format vista and reinstall. If u want to use xp theres a video about that too. But a clean install of vista sounds like a good idea.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9ehGfaOHSM

[AdamH]

I guess my question is…what is the difference between re-formatting the drive and using the installation that Dell sent? I just got the computer yesterday, so it doesn’t have anything on it besides my radio automation software and Breakaway. Will re-formatting it forego all of the additional Dell crap?

Adam

[Anonymous]

The windows vista thats on the dell cd is just windows vista, not a special dell version of vista. so.. formatting per the instructions in the video and reinstalling just windows from the dell cd, will not load the dell software (including anti spyware,virus,etc..). Once u reinstall Vista from the dell cd your computer will not know whether its a dell or a home built pc.

Scrap any "anti" program they gave you and use only Zone alarm security suite. If you wish to install xp, make a win98 boot disk (downloadedable) and format in dos, and install windows xp.
If installing XP your cd key might not work, if it doesnt call: 1-888-571-2048 and they will give u a new one.

im not too familiar w/ vista but i have used it, and dont like it at all. But you can turn off alot of annoying things that make vista so much different than XP.

i always did a clean install when i bought a pc from a major distro. Also, try and make a seperate partition to install windows on so u will never lose anyting besides windows if u want to reformat again. But the dells i remember come pre partitioned, like c,d,e hard drives which is actually one single drive cut into many virtual drives..

[lpy7]

Unfortunately, Vista is a piece of crap when it comes to audio. I tried it (not Breakaway, just running standard audio programs) on 2 computers and both had glitches. Running XP on those same PCs, everything was perfect. Microsft try to deny the problem by saying your computer isn’t a cd player, so there’s not much you can do but either put up with it or change back to XP.

http://www.google.com.au/search?q=vista+audio+glitches

Also check this out: http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml – you will see how Vista’s latency goes through the roof…very unstable.

If by some slim chance the audio is fine until Breakaway is installed, then it could be a separate issue, but I doubt it.

[Leif]

I feel your pain. Vista is the bane of my existence as a developer!

What audio interface is actually in use? Kernel Streaming (KS), DirectSound (DS) or Wave?

It may be worth looking in the expert settings and changing to a different interface.

///Leif

[AdamH]

Leif,

Thanks for your reply. I have tried every method of streaming…Kernel creates the most clicks, and direct and wave cause about the same amount, but less than kernel. Buffers are set as high as possible. I will be reformatting the drive tomorrow to see if that fixes the issue. I’ll write tomorrow to let you know if anything changes.

When do you think Breakaway will be completely Vista ready?

Adam

[Leif]

Hi Adam!

I’m not sure there is such a thing as completely vista ready — not if the term "vista" in that statement includes every computer that happens to be running vista, whichever arbitrary latency-unfriendly software happens to be installed. 🙂

I’ve been able to get acceptable latency and very high stability on clean Vista 32 and Vista 64 systems — but I installed Vista myself, did not use a factory preinstalled version.

The latency check tool lpy linked to earlier seems to be a very useful tool, did you try to run it? What latency values do you get?

Maybe it could help in determining what driver / software is actually causing the problem, which would be a better solution — then we’d know more clearly what was causing it, so you wouldn’t have to reinstall the whole system.

///Leif

[JesseG]

As far as the subject of reinstalling vista. First off, the Vista that Dell sends out is indeed quite customized. It is NOT just a stock OEM dvd.

As a fan of fair use, and since you already own a license for it, is to download an OEM copy of Vista SP1 in whatever flavor of Vista it is that you own… and have a look at this website:
http://www.vlite.net/

There’s 1,001 tutorials on how to use that stuff, so… word up yoself.

[Anonymous]

Hey Adamh i have the same notebook with the same specs and reinstalling the dell cd with vista worked for me. Also which breakaway version are you using? I had lot’s of glitches with the standard download version 1.01. Try the latest beta release cuz since i stated using the beta’s i haven’t had nearly as much popping! Each beta is also getting better and better with vista!! Hope this helps..

[Anonymous]

I just wanted to mention for the sake of all my comments about clicks and pops throughout the forums here, that I’m using Vista, also. My best results have been using the kernel streaming on the Breakaway input. If you are concerned about the delay from higher buffer sizes, use the test tone to help you set the lowest size buffer while still hearing a clean sound. Then listen to a good source sound (quality music works well) for the output. In my case, the only output driver I could use for my sound card was directsound.

Some test versions were better than others in Vista as far as the clicking and popping, but the best one so far is the current version (at time of writing is 1.20.12 for Breakaway Personal). I recommend you keep testing new versions, as there’s been a lot of progress made, at least as I’ve noticed, with Breakaway having a wonderful clean sound using Vista.

I’ve been in the Control Panel for Sound under Vista so many times, it’s not funny anymore. I finally found settings (and often Vista will change them for no good reason, so I’m back in there again) that work well. I encourage you to try different settings and see which works best. It’s worth the time, as Breakaway does a wonderful job, even under Vista.

Carl

[Anonymous]

Here’s a screenshot that I think captures the crackles I hear in Vista, on the Breakaway pipeline in the front-end.
I experience them even when bypass is engaged, but they are not in the source material.

[Anonymous]

I thought to update my video driver, since more popping and crackle occurred the larger I made the Breakaway Personal window – but after a restart, I could no longer run and of the last few Breakaway Personal RC’s without crashing. However Breakaway Broadcast Processor 0.9.0.49 works just fine, and it’s the only Breakaway I can use at the moment.

What video interactions could be occurring to cause the pops and crackles, and then the unrecoverable crash of Breakaway Personal after the video driver update?

[Author]

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