Are there techniques to heal dropouts?

I have heard many times graphics card drivers can cause issues with dropouts. What graphics card do you have? Check for driver updates. Not via Windows but rather direct from manufacturer website.
 
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Thanks again for your continuing advice, everyone.

Based on what keith.rogers suggested, I have been trying a few things and trying to narrow it down. I have currently been running Latencymon for over 20 minutes with antivirus disabled and the power management set to "high performance" and I have not yet encountered a warning, although the highest DPC time has been nearly 600 µs, which is a little outside my comfort zone. That event was for nvddlkmm.sys, which is an Nvidia driver for my GT-610 card. But if it get's no worse than that in the next hour or so, then I've probably found the solution. If not, then I guess I need to look at graphics drivers and stuff.

Can anyone recommend a good antivirus for an audio workstation? I'd rather not leave my machine unprotected if I can avoid it, even for short periods. I've been using Avast for the last little while. Before that I was using Panda, but it messed up my firewall protection and I had to switch.
 
I spoke too soon :( I got big spikes for interrupt to process latency, ISR execution and DPC execution all at the same time after 37 minutes. The ISR one was dxgkrnl.exe (DirectX) and the DPC one was ndis.sys (network).
 
There are probably much more precise ways to approach but there's a bunch of blind troubleshooting you can do to rule out whole areas.
Try a different DAW first to rule that out, then you could disable your audio interface and try a recording using built-in audio port only.
If the problem persists you could disable your network adapters (all...) and any firewalls/antivirus and try then. After that, you could remove the nvidia card and try with on board graphics, if you have that option.

If it's going to take 30-40 minutes to show an issue that's a few hours work so...fair enough if you don't want to. ;)

This is all on the assumption that your setup once worked fine, and that you're testing with a blank session - One audio track, no effects or virtual instruments.

If all of that yields nothing or you don't want to go down that road, consider running a memory test for a few hours at least.
Specific processes taking longer than expected would be a real red herring if there's any kind of hardware failure at play.
 
Old ones but I have had them work for peeps before and quite recently.

Make sure Windows Sounds are stopped.
Disable On Board Sound. In BIOS if poss, in Devices if not. THEN reinstall AI drivers.
Stop Wireless Network Controllers.

I have used nothing but Ms Security Essentials and a monthly'ish sweep with Malwarebytes for at least 5 years on all my PCs. Low rent/resource hit and never really had a problem.

Dave.
 
There are probably much more precise ways to approach but there's a bunch of blind troubleshooting you can do to rule out whole areas.
Try a different DAW first to rule that out, then you could disable your audio interface and try a recording using built-in audio port only.
If the problem persists you could disable your network adapters (all...) and any firewalls/antivirus and try then. After that, you could remove the nvidia card and try with on board graphics, if you have that option.

If it's going to take 30-40 minutes to show an issue that's a few hours work so...fair enough if you don't want to. ;)

This is all on the assumption that your setup once worked fine, and that you're testing with a blank session - One audio track, no effects or virtual instruments.

If all of that yields nothing or you don't want to go down that road, consider running a memory test for a few hours at least.
Specific processes taking longer than expected would be a real red herring if there's any kind of hardware failure at play.

All the testing I am doing at the moment doesn't involve a DAW at all. I'm simply running Latencymon with nothing much else happening and seeing whether the machine can avoid latency spikes in the time it takes me to go and wash the dishes and have a cup of tea. I've even tried running it with the audio interface unplugged.

I'll have a look in BIOS to see whether I can disable on-board audio, but i also have audio from the graphics card going through HDMI to the TV I use as a monitor. Do I need to disable that as well?
 
...
Can anyone recommend a good antivirus for an audio workstation? I'd rather not leave my machine unprotected if I can avoid it, even for short periods. I've been using Avast for the last little while. Before that I was using Panda, but it messed up my firewall protection and I had to switch.
Well, if you stay off the internet, and only connect to check/download updates for your DAW and plugins, or upload bounces to your favorite sharing site, then you probably don't need any antivirus running all the time. A periodic sweep (I do it on my wife's PC a couple times a year) with MalwareBytes is not a waste of time.

I'm with the MS Security Essentials users. (Well, technically it only is on my wife's PC and a 10? year-old laptop one of the kids left behind.) I worked fairly closely with MS for a few years and I don't think [these days] anyone has a keener interest in keeping the Windows OS virus-free than they do. Not saying that Avast, Kapersky, et al, don't occasionally pick up and publish a signature an hour or two before MS, but unless you're visiting lots of sites you shouldn't be, including playing games on social media, you really have no reason to add a 3rd party app IME.

P.S. One of the things that drives anti-virus s/w crazy is file open/write/close, because every time that happens they have to check to see if a virus has been embedded. Hmm. What does audio software do all the time????
 
Recently I have started getting very bad problems of latency. These may be connected to the Windows update...

The Fall Creators Update does mess with drivers. I had several that were deleted or corrupted, and one was not compatible with the update - had to install an earlier version to fix. Unfortunately, you probably won't know of these problems until something 'suddenly' doesn't work after the update - as appears to be the case here. In my case, my system slowed to a crawl until I re-installed or repaired my drivers.
 
The Fall Creators Update does mess with drivers. I had several that were deleted or corrupted, and one was not compatible with the update - had to install an earlier version to fix. Unfortunately, you probably won't know of these problems until something 'suddenly' doesn't work after the update - as appears to be the case here. In my case, my system slowed to a crawl until I re-installed or repaired my drivers.

It certainly broke the driver for the audio interface I use with my laptop, but then again that device is more than ten years old and not supported by the manufacturer any more. I guess I'll have to try uninstalling and reinstalling drivers on the desktop machine to the limited extent that that is possible and see if it makes a difference.
 
Not sure if this will help you, but worth a try.

Hit your Windows Key > type 'app' > Return > left-click your driver > Modify > Next > Repair > follow through..
 
That's ok. You didn't mention so I assumed you're running Windows 10.

These should open your System Apps list so you can get to your driver.
___________________

Pressing your Windows Key should make your Start Menu pop-up

Then blindly type the word "app" without hitting Return key (there won't be a box there to see what you're typing)

Another window should open over your Start Menu with "Apps & features" (or similar) at the top

Hit your Return Key

Scroll down to find your audio driver - then left-click it

Left-click the Modify button (if the Modify button is innactive - STOP here. (Repair is not an option, you must uninstall/re-install)

Left-click the Next button

Left-click the Repair button and follow remaining prompts
 
I have been fortunate to not have to deal too much with latency issues. But I have found that typically its a computer issue of simply not having the firepower. That said, there can be resource drains that can be identified so that even a mediocre drive will work. But that is still dependent on how many tracks, plugins, etc to are trying to process. If that is very low, and you have issues and your hardware meets the needed standard, could be a hard disk problem.
 
As I keep saying, I get the latency problems even when the DAW is not running and the machine is more or less idle. I can see it in Latencymon. And it's certainly not a question of shortage of resources because I have a very capable computer. I know what it's like to work with a computer that is under-powered, but that is really not the problem here.
 
As I keep saying, I get the latency problems even when the DAW is not running and the machine is more or less idle. I can see it in Latencymon.

I'm not quite following...if the computer is idle...what is experiencing latency?
IOW...something would have to be running for latency to have meaning.
 
I'm not quite following...if the computer is idle...what is experiencing latency?
IOW...something would have to be running for latency to have meaning.

Well obviously the machine is never truly idle, but what I mean is that I'm not doing any heavy lifting whatever. I am letting the machine sit there and do its own thing while I go away and have a cup of tea. And when I do that with Latencymon running, Latencymon tells me that I get big delays in interrupt to process latency, ISR routine execution time and DPC routine execution time. When I have my DAW running, even with no demanding plugins and few audio tracks, these become very obvious as dropouts.
 
It seems like a driver or hardware conflict going on somewhere. I'm not sure a ram issue could cause that but I have had ram go bad twice. May as well do a test on your memory. And ram is guaranteed for life so the replacement would be free.

I still have a feeling it is an issue with the graphics card but that is just my fake psychic abilities spewing...
 
Well obviously the machine is never truly idle, but what I mean is that I'm not doing any heavy lifting whatever. I am letting the machine sit there and do its own thing while I go away and have a cup of tea. And when I do that with Latencymon running, Latencymon tells me that I get big delays in interrupt to process latency, ISR routine execution time and DPC routine execution time. When I have my DAW running, even with no demanding plugins and few audio tracks, these become very obvious as dropouts.
This is by definition a resource problem. The video about CPU power and real-time processing is very relevant to your situation. It doesn't matter how much gHz CPU, how many cores/threads, how much RAM, SSD speed, etc. is in the box. What matters is whether when a process needs something, i.e., a resource, to get a job done within a fixed amount of time, it is able to do that. Your system apparently is not able to keep up with the demands of audio processing, which specifically must complete certain tasks within a time frame (because of buffer size allocations, among other constraints).

Watch the video again. The job is to figure out what is causing the problem. It may be a temporary deadlock between high privilege processes, like A/V services, network interrupts, a flaky piece of h/w like a disk controller throwing exception interrupts, really a long list. Or maybe you've disconnected from the internet, removed a/v and all extraneous stuff, run all your disk analyses, tried external drives, etc., and still see the problem?
 
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