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[Solved] Drop outs on FM, not online...
https://forums.stereotool.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=32441		 Page 1 of 1
Author:  baldrick_nz [ Mon May 02, 2022 7:49 am ]
Post subject:  [Solved] Drop outs on FM, not online...
Hi there,

We have two PCs, the main one has RadioDJ, MB recaster with ST DSP plug in installed. The other is our TX PC which receives a raw signal over ethernet from the main PC via Stereo Tool 9.90 standalone.

Lately, I've noticed audio drops of less than a second, which happen randomly throughout the day, but only on FM.

I've been running Task Manager on both PCs to identify which one is causing the problem. When the blips happen, there is nothing obvious on the main PC.

However on the TX PC I notice a negative spike whenever the drop out happens. That is, CPU drops from it's usual 48% to 10% then back to 48% when the music plays again.

I would have thought a positive spike (one hitting 100%) would have been the likely culprit, but no.

Has anyone else experienced this? Or where would I start to look for a solution? It's a reconditioned Dell Optiplex 9020 USFF PC i5 4590S Quad Core Up to 3.0Ghz 4GB 128GB SSD W10 Pro 64 Bit.

EDIT: I've seen on another post to download and run LatencyMon, which tells me after few minutes of running that the PC should be fine running realtime audio. I'll leave it running over night.

Also, I had uninstalled Breakaway Pipeline and assumed it would be removed from the sound settings, but it hadn't been. I've now defaulted the recording side to 192k StereoMixer and the Play side to 192k Speakers (internal Reaktek drivers). So now everything is set to 192k. I restarted the PC and noticed an immediate 10% CPU improvement from within Stereo Tool itself.

Incidentally, how does one turn off the weather icon on the Win10 taskbar (and other useless features) off?

I'll come back tomorrow if LatencyMon finds any issues.

Any other fault finding suggestions would be most welcome.

Thanks in advance,
Baldrick.
Author:  hvz [ Wed May 04, 2022 8:13 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Drop outs on FM, not online...
Are you using a different sound card for input than for output on the TX pc? There could be buffering issues, if the difference in clock speed between the two is huge (which really shouldn't happen unless something is really broken, but on some systems it does happen). If so, you would see the buffer filling of the output sound card move over time, instead of it staying in the center.
Author:  baldrick_nz [ Thu May 05, 2022 4:48 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Drop outs on FM, not online...
Quote:
Are you using a different sound card for input than for output on the TX pc? There could be buffering issues, if the difference in clock speed between the two is huge (which really shouldn't happen unless something is really broken, but on some systems it does happen). If so, you would see the buffer filling of the output sound card move over time, instead of it staying in the center.
Thanks for your reply Hans,

Here's the summary from the main page of LatencyMod plus screen shots of input and output: https://imgur.com/a/MFMbGFy

The input and output come from the same soundcard.

I remembered I had changed the output buffer from 30ms to 100ms, not sure why but can't remember the dropouts being present when it was at 30ms. I've now changed it to 32ms, as Stereo Tool is the only app that's running, aside of the usual win10/Dell processes. If there are any Dell programmes that you know of that I can safely uninstall, I'd be happy to do so.

I hope it helps!

Thanks again,
Baldrick
Author:  Bojcha [ Thu May 05, 2022 2:33 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Drop outs on FM, not online...
Try input sync ON, not auto.
Author:  baldrick_nz [ Thu May 05, 2022 10:23 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Drop outs on FM, not online...
Quote:
Try input sync ON, not auto.
Thanks Bojcha, done.

I'll monitor it over the weekend when I have a bit more time and report back if it's still dropping out (or not).

Thanks again,
Baldrick

**EDIT** Still noticing dropouts, maybe not as bad as when buffering at 100ms, so backed off to 500ms, where the buffer has settled around 1/2 scale rather than constantly 100% as it was at 100ms. Not noticing any immediate dropouts as yet. I'll monitor it at 500ms over the weekend and report back.

Looks like it's now solved. Thanks for all the help!

I also discovered that the program I was streaming to our TX PC with was limited to 192kbps, using AAC. It sounded pretty good, though you could hear artifacts on some songs. But what a difference when I changed to stream instead through VLC using ogg@500kbps! Sounds much better. Much fuller sound, with artifacts radically reduced. I tried to use FLAC lossless, but the right amount of sibilance we had became mushy. 500kbps using ogg seems a happy balance.
Author:  Bojcha [ Mon May 30, 2022 3:37 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: [Solved] Drop outs on FM, not online...
Try voicemeeter, it streams PCM wav. If you have enough bandwidth it's really good, flexible and free.
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