dimelives1
Thanks for the responses, guys.
 
Yeah, I was sure to only install the driver itself and leave out the 3D, PhysX, and GeForce Experience add-ons.

I just ran back through this thread and caught this. You actually do want the PhysX drivers. Try running the installer in custom mode again and "perform clean installation" at the bottom. Only the Display drivers, and PhysX drivers should be checked though.
 
Also watch during that installation. I forget if Nvidia slips in other things (I believe it re-enables the HDMI audio outputs in Device Manager as well, which should be disabled); but fortunately, they are all discrete entries in the Windows uninstall dialogs for "Software and Programs" Do a quick check of programs by installation date in Windows after the install just to check those.
 
IIRC, every driver update requires the HDMI audio outs disabled in the Device Manager.

It sounds a lot like a driver issue, but hard to tell. Have you checked the Device Manager and disabled the HDMI audio?
 
Have you tried running Resplendence LatencyMon (it is in the free downloads on the left on that page)? For most machines, audio buffers in the 256 sample range will usually play fine for most things, but not the best for tracking. As far as drivers specific to the Nvidia card, I can only think of the HDMI audio if you didn't load the bloatware.
 
LatencyMon will give a little better insight on what is running on the machine.

I just read through this entire thread again and one thing I couldn't find, mettelus, was what you're using for audio hardware. It was the post about shared IRQs that got me thinking about this.
 
Assuming you're using outboard audio hardware connected via USB... have you tried plugging your audio hardware into a different USB port? Sometimes it matters, too, if you've got a USB 2.0 device plugged into either a USB 1.0 (or 1.1) or USB 3.0 port. They're all supposed to be backwards/forwards compatible, but it's really kind of a crap shoot. You'll have to consult your MB manual to find out which USB ports are 2.0, 1.0 and 3.0 although they are color-coded so you could just try it in a port that's a different color than the one you have it in now.
 
And if it's a PCI or PCIe card, do you have another slot you can move it to?
 
Be warned, however, that switching slots or ports could necessitate reinstalling drivers depending on which version of Windows you're using.
 
If it's an IRQ issue, shaking things up like this can make a difference (even though that whole FF thing still makes no sense in this context and seems more like the memory allocation issue that was being bandied about earlier).

dimelives1
I'm stumped. What can be gleaned from this? The only thing I can think of is maybe it's some kind of memory issue, like the video card for some reason needs more to do in able to run smoothly in Sonar?... But how would that make any sense?
Opening a browser window is even easier than disabling the driver as a workaround, but I'd love to know WHY it's having the effect that it is.
Any theories?... 

Could well be the driver service routines behave differently. You'd probably see something interesting running Resplendence LatencyMon when the glitching is happening.

Keith

OK, I finally go the chance to run Resplendence LatencyMon to see if it yielded any helpful results. I tested it with nothing running but Sonar (and LatencyMon, of course), where the stuttering playback occurs, as a control test. Then I ran the same stretch of audio with a blank Firefox window open, where the stuttering does not occur. Here are the most notable discrepancies between the two sets of data; I'll leave it to those more savvy than I with these kinds of stats to say what may or may not be relevant:
 
MEASURED INTERRUPT TO USER PROCESS LATENCIES
 
Highest measured interrupt to process latency (µs)
Control:  2151.312516
w/Firefox:  845.879520
 
Highest measured interrupt to DPC latency (µs)
Control:  1664.384298
w/Firefox:  600.875581
 
REPORTED ISRs
 
Highest ISR routine execution time (µs)
Control:  1897.498997
w/Firefox:  949.337567
 
Driver with highest ISR routine execution time
Control:  dxgkrnl.sys - DirectX Graphics Kernel, Microsoft Corporation
w/Firefox:  dxgkrnl.sys - DirectX Graphics Kernel, Microsoft Corporation
 
ISR count (execution time 1000-1999 µs)
Control:  51
w/Firefox:  0
 
REPORTED DPCs
 
Highest DPC routine execution time (µs)
Control:  1868.751337
w/Firefox:  876.690842
 
Driver with highest DPC routine execution time
Control:  nvlddmkm.sys - NVIDIA Windows Kernel Mode Driver, Version 372.54 , NVIDIA Corporation
w/Firefox:  USBPORT.SYS - USB 1.1 & 2.0 Port Driver, Microsoft Corporation
 
DPC count (execution time 500-999 µs)
Control:  22
w/Firefox:  33
 
DPC count (execution time 1000-1999 µs)
Control:  5
w/Firefox:  0
 
PER CPU DATA
 
CPU 0 ISR highest execution time (µs)
Control:  1879.471925
w/Firefox:  921.260695
 
CPU 1 ISR highest execution time (µs)
Control:  1755.911430
w/Firefox:  653.038436
 
CPU 1 DPC highest execution time (µs)
Control:  1313.464572
w/Firefox:  284.248997
 
CPU 2 ISR highest execution time (µs)
Control:  1835.136698
w/Firefox:  897.509358
 
CPU 2 DPC highest execution time (µs)
Control:  1868.751337
w/Firefox:  345.708890
 
CPU 3 ISR highest execution time (µs)
Control:  1897.498997
w/Firefox:  949.337567
 
CPU 3 DPC highest execution time (µs)
Control:  1806.969586
w/Firefox:  269.467580
 
CONCLUSION
 
Control:  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. Also one or more ISR routines that belong to a driver running in your system appear to be executing for too long. One problem may be related to power management, disable CPU throttling settings in Control Panel and BIOS setup. Check for BIOS updates. LatencyMon has been analyzing your system for  0:01:12  (h:mm:ss) on all processors.
 
w/Firefox:  Your system appears to be suitable for handling real-time audio and other tasks without dropouts. LatencyMon has been analyzing your system for  0:01:13  (h:mm:ss) on all processors.
 
 
(I also ran a test with Windows Picture Viewer open, which stops the stuttering from happening too. The results were virtually identical to those of having Firefox open.)
 
--------------------------------------------------
 
So, is there anything that can be determined from any of that? Keith would appear to me to have been on the right track with the driver routines. But are we able to figure out a "why" or "what can be done about it"?
 
 

rontarrant
Okay, can you borrow a USB audio device from someone and try that? You'd have to remove your PCI audio card to make it a fair test.

 
I apologize, Ron, I mistook you before; I thought you were referring to the video card.
 
My audio interface is a USB type, the Roland Cakewalk UA-1G (which some may scoff at, but it has served me well for my needs, up to installing the new video card).
 

rontarrant
Just curious: what MB do you have (make/model)?

 
It's a 0K83V0 board, from a Dell Inspiron 560s. (Hey, I'm on a tight budget over here)
 

pwalpwal
the nvidia control panel has settings-per-app, it's worth checking those for sonar if you haven't already
 

 
I've looked around in those settings a little bit, but I wouldn't know which ones to adjust (if any) to try to help fix the behavior I'm experiencing.

The solution is to uninstall the video driver in device manager, restart and let Windows find the correct video driver.

After you do this you will say wow. The Nvidia add ons don't cause any problems.

Things that pops into mind:
a) did you check for bios and chipset updates from computer manufacturer?
Various things may be used by grapics drivers now. Buying a computer I always had a couple of those updates the following years at least.
b) for test only - go to windows performance settings and select optimize for performance, you may looose aero then, but just for troubleshooting if related. Certain grapics acceleration stuff create problems, like background shadow on popupmenus etc, I had that very thing opening a menu and got pops in audio and just turned that off. If related you might get a way with disabling just a simple feature like that and keep the rest of aero.
c) bios settings about share graphics ram or similar - don't remember wording. Something todo with mapping graphics into normal ram space or something. Just change as a test. New card with more memory may inflict on this.
d) does firefox or other software install dll's in own folder rather than in common files folder. If doing that windows may reuse a dll already open when ff runs, making things go smooth. Process Exlorer can tell you about what dll's are open in every process and what it is dependent on. Long shot, and not easy to track down, but might be related how background processes running remove a problem.
e) the sonar setting for using audio exclusive or not and what drivers are installed for windows audio to use mediaplayers and stuff. To troubleshoot I would try altering some of that, may change sonar setting, maybe disable temporarily windows audio things like certain outputs etc. Just part of narrowing down the problem.
 
Hope you get some new ideas what to try....

Thanks for the suggestions, guys. Some interesting developments...
 

chuckebaby
on a side note, I would open my Anti virus control panel and add Sonar.exe to my exclusion list.
it is possible your AV is trying to run a scan on it every time you open it (also add your Graphics driver to that exclusion list as well) by opening Firefox, its possible your AV is using its resources there instead.

 
While I've already made it a habit to put my AV (Norton Secutity) in silent mode whenever I work, I decided to give this a shot. I added the main Cakewalk and NVIDIA program folders to the exclusion list, opened up a project, and lo and behold, the stuttering did not occur!... until a system restart, that is. So, I went back into the exclusion list and removed the folders, as that seemed to not be a lasting solution. BUT, it appears that we are getting warmer, because afterward, even with the folders removed from the exclusion list, my project ran smoothly once again (again, until the next restart). Further experimentation seems to show that simply opening Norton, and then the settings window within, causes the unstable behavior to not occur (even after closing Norton), until restarting the computer.
 
If this, coupled with the Firefox/Windows Picture Viewer workarounds, gives another hint to anyone about what may be going on, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
 
 

chuckebaby
im not sure I know of any modern day MOBO that does NOT support open GL.
I mean its your choice of course. but you should not have any problems running open GL with onboard graphics.

 
That's what you might think, but alas, thus was the case. I even confirmed that my onboard GPU did not have support for OpenGL (only DirectX) before getting the new graphics card.
 
I've slowly cobbled together a bit of a Frankenstein's monster with my PC with various upgrades over the years, but its foundation is still that of a 6+ yr old, entry-level Dell. So, what's commonplace among most modern-day equipment is not necessarily so for my... unique setup xP
 

chuckebaby
you also might want to get a look at Task manager while running sonar, look for spikes while the glitch is happening.

 
Nothing has jumped out at me there.
 

lfm
Things that pops into mind:
a) did you check for bios and chipset updates from computer manufacturer?
Various things may be used by grapics drivers now. Buying a computer I always had a couple of those updates the following years at least.

 
BIOS and all comonents are up-to-date.
 

lfm
b) for test only - go to windows performance settings and select optimize for performance, you may looose aero then, but just for troubleshooting if related. Certain grapics acceleration stuff create problems, like background shadow on popupmenus etc, I had that very thing opening a menu and got pops in audio and just turned that off. If related you might get a way with disabling just a simple feature like that and keep the rest of aero.

 
I believe I tried that before, but I just tried it again to be sure, and it causes no change in the behavior.
 

lfm
c) bios settings about share graphics ram or similar - don't remember wording. Something todo with mapping graphics into normal ram space or something. Just change as a test. New card with more memory may inflict on this.

 
I don't think I have those settings in my BIOS. It's pretty basic and outdated, in line with what I told Chuck about my system as a whole.
 

lfm
d) does firefox or other software install dll's in own folder rather than in common files folder. If doing that windows may reuse a dll already open when ff runs, making things go smooth. Process Exlorer can tell you about what dll's are open in every process and what it is dependent on. Long shot, and not easy to track down, but might be related how background processes running remove a problem.

 
Yes, it looks like Firefox has its dll's installed in its own Program Files folder, and not in any common folder. But I don't think I understand how that could make things run smoother...
 

lfm
e) the sonar setting for using audio exclusive or not and what drivers are installed for windows audio to use mediaplayers and stuff. To troubleshoot I would try altering some of that, may change sonar setting, maybe disable temporarily windows audio things like certain outputs etc. Just part of narrowing down the problem.

 
I've already disabled all other audio drivers and given Sonar exclusive control of audio while its open, if that's what you're referring to.

ampfixer
Try completely removing Norton from your system. I've seen it cause no end of system issues.

I was going to suggest the same thing.  Norton's is nothing but trouble.

chuckebaby
I have to agree with John and Promidi. Norton is indeed the worst and most resource pig on this planet earth.
I mean no offense of course. this is probably the Anti virus that came with your Internet provider (Comcast, exc).
so its not your fault.

 
On the contrary, Norton is my AV program of choice. I've found it (from first-hand experience) to be the most reliable and secure of all AV's I've tried over the years (including free ones like Avast and AVG, and other paid ones like McAfee). And since I do all of my business on one PC at present, I'd be pretty hesitant to divorce myself from what I consider to be among the best at what it does.
 
I know it has the deeply-rooted reputation of being a resource-hog to the point of practically crippling one's system performance, and six or seven years ago, I'd have had to agree with that. But newer versions, and on more modern machines, have become notably more efficient, to where I never notice it getting in the way anymore... with the one possible exception being this issue I'm having now.
 
BUT, these symptoms never occurred until I installed the new graphics card. So if it is related to Norton, it's not Norton alone that's creating the problem, but some commingling of Norton and the card, one that, for some reason, gets cleared up by popping open Norton's settings window for a quick second. What I'd like to know (beyond just that Norton sucks) is why that seemingly inconsequential action fixes the problems I experience in Sonar...
 

ampfixer
Try completely removing Norton from your system. I've seen it cause no end of system issues. If it does nothing you can always reinstall it.

 
Well, I could try doing so, and it may very well make the stuttering and other issues stop, but like I explained to Chuck, Norton's my AV of choice. So if the only solutions are to open and close Norton's settings menu once a day to make things behave, or to switch from Norton to another AV program entirely, I have to admit I'm currently more comfortable with the former.
 

promidi
I was going to suggest the same thing.  Norton's is nothing but trouble.

 
In my case, it's saved me (more than once) from malicious attacks against which I've witnessed other AV's fail. So I have to side with it there, at the very least.
 

Would be easy to temporarily uninstall Norton completely, check if the problem goes away - then reinstall (if desired). 

chuckebaby
I have to agree with John and Promidi. Norton is indeed the worst and most resource pig on this planet earth.
I mean no offense of course. this is probably the Anti virus that came with your Internet provider (Comcast, exc).
so its not your fault.
 
Just a minor suggestion but a switch to this Anti Virus:
https://www.avast.com/download-thank-you.php?product=FAV-ONLINE&locale=en-ww
 
Free Avast Anti Virus.
It's what 80% of us DAW users in the industry use (If using a Hybrid PC = DAW online PC).
It's free and it works, it also uses less than half of the resources of what Norton uses.
 
More often than not the Top 2 AV for DAW users are Avast and Microsoft security essentials.
Norton uses a lot of resources because it checks for every little thing.
I haven't paid for Anti Virus in over 7 years. Been using free Avast since 2008.
I did a paper on it in school (college not high school :-) It was a group project. We found that Avast was the best 3rd party free AV. The tests we did included blocking Malware, Rootkits, EXC.
The only thing it couldn't block was the FBI Virus. but since it was a test, all HD's were reformatted so I didn't need to worry. It was a great project. imagine surfing the net, trying to get a virus .
wouldn't try that on my DAW though.
 

I started using Avast about the same time as you, and would agree in general, up until last year.
 
I used Avast for years after fleeing from Norton.  We used Symantec at work, so I thought Norton had to be the best choice for home use.  But at some point it seemed to become so heavy on resources that I quit.  It may have improved since, but I never gave it another chance.  Personal opinion 
 
But in recent years, Avast has tried to add every possible option to become a security suite.  You have to be very aware during install to avoid the extras you may not want or need. Some things you even have to uninstall after the install.  Even then, I once had an extra browser installed on my PC out of the blue (pushed by Avast during update, not during an install), without being asked.  That was the final straw for me with Avast.  Avast AV detection scores have also slipped slightly recently.  I used to be a huge fan, but I have my concerns about the company now. Personal opinion
 
I have seen that the top AV detection scores now consistently belong to Avira, Bitdefender, and Kaspersky, and maybe a few others from time to time.  I am running Avira on my DAW without issue.  Avira Free uses the same detection engine as the Pro version, and has a good scan exclusion config.  You can exclude your audio and graphics drivers and programs to avoid possible conflicts.  Avira is light, and uses the Avira Protection Cloud to screen suspicious files, so your PC client doesn't have to run heavy algorithms.  I give it my recommendation.
 
I have been testing Bitdefender Free on a non-DAW PC, and it is light as well, but has limited scan config options.  Set and forget.  I think it may be a good runner up, if it doesn't conflict with anything on your system.
 
For the lightest resource hit and best Windows compatibility (and the lowest AV detection score), there is always Microsoft Security Essentials (Win 7) and Windows Defender (Win 8.1/10).

abacab



I started using Avast about the same time as you, and would agree in general, up until last year.
But in recent years, Avast has tried to add every possible option to become a security suite.  You have to be very aware during install to avoid the extras you may not want or need. Some things you even have to uninstall after the install.  Even then, I once had an extra browser installed on my PC out of the blue (pushed by Avast during update, not during an install), without being asked.  That was the final straw for me with Avast.  Avast AV detection scores have also slipped slightly recently.  I used to be a huge fan, but I have my concerns about the company now. Personal opinion
 
I have been testing Bitdefender Free on a non-DAW PC, and it is light as well, but has limited scan config options.  Set and forget.  I think it may be a good runner up, if it doesn't conflict with anything on your system.
 
For the lightest resource hit and best Windows compatibility (and the lowest AV detection score), there is always Microsoft Security Essentials (Win 7) and Windows Defender (Win 8.1/10).

I know this is an older post but I still use Avast.
Its free and with free comes hoops to jump through. I have never found extra software installed except the browser clean up tools and auto software updater, exc but those are 1 click turn off/uninstall. There is no shutting down and reboot needed.
 
What it comes down to is sooner or later those free AV software's you are exploring will soon add other bells and whistles, more hoops to jump through when they gain popularity like Avast has.
 
I totally agree Avast has got heavier through the years but I have noticed little difference in CPU usage once setting it up correctly and even a good paid for AV needs to be set up correctly. so no big deal there.
 

A + for the Bitdefender use, I've been using couple years, no impact virtually.