AIR and Win10

[thumb5]

Today, I am using the PC for internet, email, and indeed catching up on this very forum, and AIR is running just fine.  So what's changed from the crackling session last Friday?

Indeed, the $64,000 question. If it's stuttering (rather than white noise) my first guess would be something to do with network traffic - maybe what's going on in your router rather than the PC?

[Manfred]

I was using AIR Ethernet  / Windows 10 for a few hours Friday evening.  For a while, lots of stuttering and similar annoying artefacts.  For the record, the PC was being used for nothing other than music streaming at this time.  I tried the normal thing of shutting down and re-starting AIR, which didn't help much.  I had a quick look at task manager, and Kaspersky ant-virus appeared to be top of the CPU usage list, along with a couple of other utilities flicking up.  It wasn't an appropriate time to start messing with PC settings etc, so we just put up with it.  Shortly after this, all annoyances stopped, and AIR Ethernet / Windows 10 ran 100% perfectly for the rest of the evening.

Curiously, AIR appears to be running ok this morning, and Kaspersky is still lurking high up on the CPU usage list, although not as obviously dominant as it was Friday, and at a typically lower CPU %.

Mindful of all this, Manfred's post above certainly peaked my interest.  I recall AlexS mentioning once that he runs a PC with all anti-virus software disabled (brave man), although a risk he was fully aware of and prepared to take.

I am not a PC specialist but I get the basic gist of what Manfred is doing, worthy of further investigation I think?

Hi
Kapersky AV also real time scans all processes. Typically one could exclude directories and process for scanning. In MS Win 10 you find that under Properties-> Security & Updates -> Windows Defender. I don't know how that works under Kapersky so you must have a look in the associated documentation. One should avoid that AV software scans Real Time Audio processes. It generates problems.
Bes regards : Manfred

[Confused]

In the interest of scientific endeavour and information gathering, I have just manually set Kaspersky to do a full system scan. Doesn't appear to be affecting AIR at all ....

So it's not the processor work that Kaspersky is invoking that is causing the issue as such, at least not while slogging through thousands of files on hard drive, but I guess if it does move onto scanning real time processes, then that may be an issue?

[thumb5]

Maybe it's possible to disable the real-time process scanning independently of the other anti-virus activities?  In which case that might be worth trying to see whether it has any effect without sacrificing too much safety.  I'm a little sceptical that it would make a difference, though: I'd take scanning real-time processes to mean that the AV software is reading their memory looking for malware signatures.  That should be non-intrusive apart from CPU usage and perhaps some effect on cache occupancy; in that case I'd have thought it's more likely to cause problems if the AV is scanning unrelated processes.  Just thinking aloud...

[brit]

Have now downloaded Windows 10 to PC and tried AIR - have had it running for about 4 hours without any sign of DWN. I must admit that even when running Windows 7, I had no problems so plus ça change here, thank goodness  .

David

[smokejumper]

I upgraded to Win 10 and it made no difference. I get WN exactly in the same situations as previously.

[Rufus McDufus]

I upgraded to Win 10 and it made no difference. I get WN exactly in the same situations as previously.

Which firmware are you using on the Devialet, and AIR version?

[smokejumper]

Rufus, I am using 8.1.3 and Air 2.1.4 beta 4. My experiences are not as bad as others, I eventually get WN after about 90 mins streaming at 24/192. TBH I have switched mainly to USB now in any case. I was just curious to see if Win 10 fixed my issue, but also to report to others who may be thinking about upgrading to Win 10, that it night not fix it for them.

[Rufus McDufus]

Ah OK. Sounds like the problem may not be 100% eradicated then with Win 10. I know they put some clocking workarounds in the 2.1.4 beta 4 AIR.

[petrik]

I also get white noise with Win 10, but only when playing 24/192 files. I haven't had any problems with 16/44.1 files or when streaming from Tidal. I'm currently using AIR 2.1.3.