Occasional Half-second Audio / Video Stutter In Windows 8.1?
Jul 27, 2014
My PC
CPU: i7 2700K
MoBo: Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H
GPU: Gigabyte GTX 670
Surround Sound Receiver: Onkyo 515
OS: Windows 8.1 Pro
My pc has been running great for about two years now, but starting a couple weeks ago I have been noticing an occasional audio "hiccup" once or twice per hour where everything seems to lag out for a half-second. If a computer could fart it would sound like this stutter I am talking about.
This audio stutter occurs whether i am listening to music, watching videos, or playing games. I have since performed a clean re-install of windows 8.1, and run the system file checker to verify the integrity of my OS files, but the problem persists. I have tried two of the most recent Nvidia drivers (including a beta) for the GTX 670, and will try reverting back to older drivers next.
I don't believe it to be a problem with the receiver because I have tested it on other inputs (TV, PS3) and the problem is not seen (heard) there.
I have an older setup (1366 i7 930) that has worked well for years with XP, Win 7, Win 8 and now running Win 8.1.
About 4 months ago I started getting every kind of problem : BSODs, audio skips and stutter, video hangs and blank screens (with mouse cursor still working), slow response, dropouts, logouts and general instability. These problems were at their worst when I was using older software and when the CPU was heavily loaded. The CPU temperature was never an issue and has been logged at well under 70C. The event logs showed multitudes of totally spurious errors but they mostly related to power faults and bad or missed interrupts.
It would take too long to describe the frustrating process I used to trace the problem but I have finally found a solution. My system has been working flawlessly for two weeks now and I have put it through the wringer.
In short the faults were all caused by the video driver for my Sapphire AMD 7970 card. I had accepted the Microsoft drivers as a conservative, but stable solution for my installation. This has always worked in the past. Microsoft puts stability ahead of performance in their released drivers (they say) and although they do stuff up every now and then I have never had any problems before.
Two weeks ago I installed the latest Catalyst package with the v14.100.0.0 driver and all of my problems vanished. I am amazed by the response and speed difference I am experiencing. I must add that I had reinstalled both my MS video and audio drivers before and switched them to minimal functionality with no success.
I had very bad experiences with Nvidia native drivers which is why I switched to ATI/AMD and MS drivers.
When I watch YouTube videos, or videos/music in MPC my system audio stutter when multitasking
this also happens during watching a video but its a very short stutter and the whole immersion gets lost away............
I noticed this all started to happen after i brought my GPU back to life the 2nd time also not sure if its related but i have been having few problems with Google chrome its a bit better after i disabled hardware acceleration but its all good with Firefox apart from YouTube but YouTube stutters worst when multitasking in chrome
The video render-er i use in MPC is madvr MPC (K lite codec pack) is updatedMy GPU Power colour HD4870 1 gig version Drivers updated latest (GPU)When i was taking about bring it back to life i was talking about baking it.Sound card Xonar DG Drivers updated using beta versionMy CPU utilization didn't reach 100 nor 60%My GPU utilization doesn't go above 4%
I "temporally" solved it back then by Installing bunch of windows updates plus not only that problem also my chrome problem is fixed
Audio stuter when multitasking with mpc and youtube - Operating Systems and Software
I upgraded from Win7 to Windows 8 (both running the MS Media Center) and it's created a problem with music playback . It used to work fine, but now I get random stutters. Sometimes it goes 10 or 15 minutes without any problem, but often it's more frequent than that - and it's very, very annoying. The system runs an AMD A8 APU, Gigabyte A75M UD2H motherboard, 4 GB of RAM and Win 8 Pro with MC. I use the audio on the motherboard (Realtek HD audio) and output is via SPDIF to a dedicated DAC (brand is Rega) and then to a Denon amp. I've had no problems with audio from DVD/Blu-Ray, TV (via TV tuner card) or when streaming TV programs via the internet. Music is my prime use for the media center.
By the way, I've tried upgrading all the drivers I can, eg downloaded latest drivers from Gigabyte website, AMD website, Realtek website, Linksys website (for WUSB600N wireless network adapter). There is a newer driver for my TV tuner card (KWorld PCIE dual tuner PE310) available via MS update but last time I tried updating drivers for that card via MS update I lost all my TV channels and had to roll-back and re-scan them to recover.
I have an older MC system (running an Athlon 64 ) which I also upgraded from Win7 to Windows 8, and it seems to have no problem. It uses analogue audio out to an external amp.
I've read that Windows 8 has DPC latency problems and that can cause audio stutter. I downloaded some software which measures the latency, and it was showing a consistent value, in the "yellow" range - which seemed to mean it was slightly higher than ideal but shouldn't have been a problem. Unfortunately I can't recall the name of the software now, or where I found it(!!).
Ever since I installed Windows 8 (and now Windows 8.1 Pro Preview Build 9431), I hear occasional buzzing sounds while playing .mp3 files on my desktop computer (Dell XPS 8500). This occurs using both iTunes and Winamp. The .mp3 files play fine on other devices, such as my iPod. This makes me suspect that this is a Windows problem.
When I watch YouTube videos I get random stutters where the sound skips. The image doesn't seem to freeze though, just the sound
I also get issues with the sound streaming music online, where it pauses for a second and stutters even though it's not buffering.
When this happens, NT Kernel & System shoots up in task manager and uses more CPU than the browser. This by the way happens in every browser, IE, Chrome or Firefox.
It doesn't happen when playing music in iTunes or watching videos from my hard drive.
That being said I'm not posting about a buffering type stutter, I am aware of that and this is not it. This is like basically suddenly the computer has a big spike in memory or cpu usage and the video/sound clip stutters for a sec. But it happens often enough to be very annoying. In a 15 min YouTube clip it happened 10 times.
I have reinstalled my IDT High Definition Codec and my Intel HD Graphics 4000 driver, but still the problem persists.
I've had this laptop over a year now, and just recently I've noticed when I leave it on a while and come back, either the audio of the entire laptop will die, or online videos just won't play. After restarting it goes back to normal until a few hours later when it happens again. I'm not sure what to do here.
No audio or video from Hopper Sling Box to Dell XPS 8.1 Works on my Windows 7. I can change the channel, create a recording event but I cannot view or hear. Registers strong bitrate but no picture/sound. Dish cannot resolve. Thought the 64 bit was the problem but they say that has been resolved.
the laptop is a ASUS K55A and originally came with windows 8. I've tried updating the drivers once the 8.1 version came out but the problem keeps recurring.
See what'll happen is, I can be watching a tv show or movie and once it's over or even if I pause it for say 10 minutes, the sound will completely cut out. I won't know this until I resume or play another video. It happens every single time, I don't get it. My only remedy right now is to open the task manager and restart the audiosrv service for the sound to work again. The funny thing is, the video will play to the end and when it stops, then the sound dies so it's not every x minutes.
On top of this, the video can be playing just fine but if I want to play a random flash video and pause my show for a bit, the flash video will play for 2 seconds then stop.
I just installed the Shark007 Codecs and reboot the PC. Because, I need to play.MKV video files. I didn't change that plugin settings. Now when I play the AVI video files which has dual audio (two languages), now Windows Media player automatically playing both audio sounds.
When I search on the internet, I found that setting Haali as the AVI splitter in the AVI tab will fix it. Unfortunately, in my situation, it didn't work. After I choose Haali splitter, it shows "Windows media player encountered a problem while playing the file" error.
I have a startup video I like and have it set up to start fine in win 7 with task scheduler. In win 8 I follow the same procedure to create a basic task and it does not work. very simply :
1. create basic task
2.name it - I name it
3. trigger - I choose daily
4. daily- I choose the time
5. Action- start a program
6. start a program-now this works in win 7 fine-I browse to the video I want to play and select it. the video is set up to open with jetaudio and when I manually go to the the video and double click it the video opens fine and plays with jet audio.
7. finish-click finish
now I think I am done so I test it with 'run' and first win 8 asks how do I want to open it...jet audio, adobe, internet explorer, etc...I know I have this file type and as a matter of fact all video file defaulted to jet audio. so why it is asking this in win 8 is beyond me. it does not do this in win 7. so anyway I click jetaudio-now jetaudio starts but does not play the video. its crazy because when I go directly to the video file in 'my videos' double click it and jetaudio opens and plays the video file.
Got my new WIN 8 pc set up (see below). webcam videos (AVI) play fine. Digital camera videos (MOV) play fine. The issue is with MPG videos. They have sound but no picture. These are videos originally on VHS, burned to DVD and then copied to hard drive. They play fine on WIN 7, but not WIN 8. When I open them with WMP, I have sound, but no picture. When I open them with VIDEO, I get the error: "That item was encoded in a format that is not supported by your version of Windows." Do I need third-party software to view these correctly? __________________ HP PAVILION SLIMLINE 400 WINDOWS 8 4 GB RAM 64 BIT 1TB HDD
I downloaded a demo for a game a couple days ago and all I get is audio, my video drivers are up to date. The developers said they were using a program called Unity 3D. I will list my specs below.
HP ENVY X2 running Windows 8
Processor: Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU Z2760 @ 1.80Ghz 1.80 GHz
Memory: 2.00GB
System Type: 32-bit Operating System, x86 based processor
Graphics Card: Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator
When plugging a microphone or instrument into the mic/line input of my new Windows 8.1 computer, there is a 1/8 or 1/16 note lag in the sound coming through my desktop speakers/headphones. Recording is fine, I'm talking about live monitoring.
I've used an XP computer for several years to record multi-track music, and also to record Skype conversations for a podcast. My mixer has always been plugged into the line in of the factory sound card, and monitored either with my desktop speakers or by plugging headphones into the desktop speakers, no problem.
Now I've been forced to upgrade to Windows 8.1, and the basic function of plugging a mic into an input jack and hearing myself doesn't work. This goes for analog and USB gear. There are HUNDREDS of pages on the Internet about this, since Windows 7, with no solutions.
Here is a video I made detailing the problem, and demonstrating how any proposed fix (update drivers, use the sound card software, try USB, use high performance power settings) hasn't worked.
I have two displays, an HDTV connected through HDMI and an older LCD connected via DVI. All my audio comes through the TV. In fact, I've disabled the on board audio device on the motherboard. I noticed that the Audio tab in the Catalyst Control Center says "Your displays do not support audio.", but it shows my Panasonic TV in the Playback devices. The playback does work, but I get weird mutes.If I go full screen in Youtube or Netflix the sound mutes for like 30 seconds. When i anything (change tabs in Chrome, click a link, move windows around in a VM) on the other display, the sound mutes for 30 seconds. I basically am unable to do anything on my other display while something is streaming.
It never happened before. Also I got a boat of crap that I had to delete, and I hope I did not delete the wrong thing. I'm also getting these pop ups that keep popping up, and never had this happen before. and I also have these videos that pop up as well.
When using Flash Player within IE10 in 8, audio and video synch is fine at standard small screen, but when I go to full screen they do not synch. The video is behind timing with the audio. It looks as though the video skips now and then trying to catch up with the audio. I dual boot with 7 and do not have a problem with Flash within IE10 there, so I'm assuming it's not hardware. This happens on any site using Flash.
All the settings in both Flash Players are the same. The only difference is that my 7 OS is 32 bit with 32bit Flash whereas my 8 OS is 64bit with 32bit Flash.
I'm trying to stream TV program videos available from my TV provider on my Windows 8 laptop (Firefox from the desktop). I get a black screen and no audio. On my W7 desktop it works flawlessly.
When the audio is on, for videos, games, music, etc. it sometimes "skips" like an old cd player. Its pretty obnoxious, and I'm wondering why exactly this is so. I'm assuming I have an old driver or something, because I upgraded my pc from win 7 to win 8 pro.
My laptop produces squeaking sound whenever i play some music or video... this sound is also observed when i put the computer on a external speakers.. The hdd is recently changed.. What can be the problem..
Okay well this happened like 2-3 weeks ago, i have an extremely annoying problem.. The sound of my computer would randomly stop working for some reason.. Not only that, but when i watch youtube the video or any video it won't load and it would literally pause or freeze.
To fix this i would have to disconnect/reconnect my headset or disable/enable my headset through the sound control panel; when i do this, it seems to fix everything, as the sound would come back and the videos would load back up and work normally again, but in 20min or 1hour the same problem would occur again and i would have to do the same process over and over again..
My OS is windows 8.1 And my headset is a Logitech H540
Windows 8. Occasionally, my computer just stutters (freezes for about half a second) several times in a row, ranging from about 6 to 10 times in a row. Literally everything will stop and freeze during that moment; the screen, sound, mouse, my friends even report that my mic input stutters. This happens about once every hour, usually a bit less than that.
It doesn't matter what I'm doing with the computer when this happens; Playing games, watching a video on YT or just on the desktop, doing nothing.
I've done a few recent changes a few weeks back too. I replaced my NVidia GeForce 470 with the NVidia Geforce 660 Ti. I had also connected my sis' laptop's HDD around there as well, when her laptop broke down.
I've done a SFC scan and I've updated my NVidia drivers multiple times.
My specs:
OS: Windows 8 Enterprise 64 bit VCard: NVidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti RAM: 2x 4GB DDR3 CPU: Intel i5 760 @ 2.80GHz HDD: Samsung HD 103SJ ATA Motherboard: P55-GD65 (MS-7583) by Micro-Star International
I upgraded my computer from windows 7 to windows 8 on day 1, relatively no problems since then.
About last week I started having trouble with wifi, not sure if its HP bios updates or Windows 8 general updates that may have caused the problem. It's not that it disconnects often, its more like once every few days. Still an annoying problem when I'm working on something and I have to go into my wifi connection and disconnect then reconnect.
Its not the router connection, I've checked it at the same time on my phone and ipad and it's working fine.
I have a Asus N750JV. My problem is that when I want to play a movie on the Smart samsung tv with my HDMI cable the video is perfect but the sound is still playing from my laptop instead of the tv.
For sometime now, can't say exactly when it started, all Flash videos have a strange startup delay. Videos buffer fast, no complaints, audio starts immediately but the video hangs there up to 7 - 8 seconds showing the first frame and then after this delay, jumps forward to catch the audio and finally plays normally.
I have difficulties to describe this, lets try with other words: I start for example a YouTube video. Audio of the video starts immediately, totally normally, but for the first 7 or 8 seconds the video only shows a still image of the first frame, totally frozen, then jumps to same time spot where audio currently is going and from that point I can watch videos normally. I lose nothing of the audio but visually I am not able to see those first seconds of the video.
When finally both audio and video streams are normal and running, if I switch to / from full screen, the same happens again although the video is frozen only 2 to 4 seconds (audio runs normally), delay being not as long as when video is started.
I have latest Flash installed, the laptop in question is the one told in my system specs. The issue is only when streaming Flash videos; disabling Flash for instance in IE11 and using HTML5 player instead, all videos (even YouTube) work as they should, both audio and video starting immediately.
Motherboard: Gigabyte P67A-D3-B3 (don't really know the rev on this one) GPU: ATI Radeon 6770 HD 1 GB, original clocking on 850 mhz Processor: Intel Core i5 2500 3,30 Ghz (No OC on this one) RAM: Team Elite 8GB (2x4096MB) CL11 1600 Mhz HDD: 500 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM SATA 6Gbit/s
Sometimes, not very often my windows 8 stutters and making every program that im running on the computer lag, it is 4 significant stutters that's driving me crazy, i just made a complete reformatting and a clean install of the operative system and it still occurs from time to time.
The operative system is "Windows 8 Pro x64" without Media Center.
Temporary freezes and occasional "not responding" messages are not often seen in Windows 8, but occur much more frequently than they do in W7. Same hardware, same software. Only the drives and a few drivers differ.
These hesitations arise in various programs or while manipulating UI options, and have since the earliest Windows 8 betas, though they have become less frequent with each release. No forum messages that I have come across relate specifically to this random issue.
Additionally, Windows 8 is a multitasking slug as contrasted to W7 when, for example, a large file is downloading in the background. Open another program in W7 and it pops up almost immediately; open in Windows 8 and it takes 15-30'. Priority has been assigned to both "programs" and "background services." Made no difference.
2600 Intel CPU, ASUS P8P67le MB, NVidia 210 GPU, at least 28G free space on each drive.
Recently I updated to 8.1, and now after maybe a week I get the occasional Instruction memory error with 0x000000 type codes.
At one point whenever I logged in it would popup with explorer.exe failed, so I wouldn't be able to do anything on the PC, I restored to a system restore point and it now is gone, however I will see it every now and again. Not a big deal now, but I would like to repair it if possible, as it obviously can't be doing any good for the PC.
