Audio stuttering using ASIO4ALL

[KeyMs92]

Hi,

For a while I've been using VSTi with my piano. Recently, I discovered that I could solve my long-lasting latency problem by installing the ASIO4ALL driver. My experience has been great, and having the latency reduced to inaudible really makes a huge difference. However, there is also a problem... For some reason, I get random audio stutters every minute or so. I would be willing to accept this if it were just the shortcoming of my CPU. But suprisingly, the CPU only peaked at about 10%. I've played around with the buffer size but that didn't really satisfy me. There were definitely less stutters when increasing the buffer size but even at 512k the audio stuttered regularly.
So that's about it.. I'll give you some info on what I'm using:

Hardware:
HP ProBook 6450b
Intel Core i5 540M 2.53Ghz
4GB RAM
High-definition audio (integrated)

Software:
Windows 7 x64
Finale 2010
Kontakt 4
IDT high definition audio codec

Hoping for some suggetions, thanks!

[tehnik]

check your system with this www.thesycon.de/eng/latency_check.shtml

if it shows some red figures then you've got some driver interferring with realtime audio - on my laptop temporarily disabling wifi while making music solves the stuttering problem completely.

[KeyMs92]

Thanks for your reply!
I've tried the tool, and did see a few red bars (although only a few), reaching about halfway. Like in your case, disabling the wifi helped me to get rid of them. With wifi disabled, the latency was very stable and reached no more than 250 microseconds.

Unfortunately, it didn't stop the stuttering problem. The stuttering is still there, in the same amount. As I see it, the stuttering problems must then be caused not by the system but by the software and/or the hardware components. What do you think?

[tehnik]

there might be only 2 causes - either your system cant handle so much processing at given latency and u need to set it a bit higher, or there is still dpc problem - do u see red bars on dpc latency check tool after disabling wifi? maybe its another device's driver thats causing stuttering

[KeyMs92]

Hmm.. I'm starting to wonder if I'm looking in the right direction with this problem. I'm getting all low green figures with DPC Latency and the CPU usage is almost neglectable. I've searched around a lot and found that many people experience pops and cracks when there is a system problem (something I also experience when I try to max out the CPU).

The stuttering, as I described, is like the particular tone is pressed in 20 times instead of once. I get the feeling, that this must be a distortion in the midi signal carried from the controller to the pc or a malfunction in the way the software processes the midi input (of which I think the latter is more likely)...

[Xionor]

Resurrecting age-old threat, as I have the exact same problem. Every 60 seconds the AUDIO OUTPUT of the ASIO4ALL driver turns into a garbled stuttering mess. I've tried all the settings in the drivers and nothing is helping.

[Xionor]

Just to give some more info

I'm using Windows 7 and Reaper. I've tried the DPC Latency Checker and it is always low, latency is low even when the sound becomes garbled. It appears almost every 60 seconds of system time, whether I've started playing the sound file now or 30 seconds later. So it means it can happen as I'm clicking Play or it can happen 30 seconds after.