Reply 100 of 105, by DracoNihil
- Rank
- Oldbie
wrote:*that's usually ASIO for Windows, zilch for OSX
OSX doesn't have a low latency direct audio pathway? Nothing like JACK for Linux? OSX is technically a *NIX as it's derived from BSD...
wrote:That's pure speculation without any evidence. You can't be sure it's not a driver problem or it's not a hardware limitation that […]
That's pure speculation without any evidence.
You can't be sure it's not a driver problem or it's not a hardware limitation that makes audiog behaves like that. If you have some crappy onboard audio device and said device wants to "enrich" sound via a software way , or is simply incapable of doing all sound operations on it's own, then ofcourse it will use cpu time via the audio subsystem.
And define "stock UUA driver" , there is also a "stock SVGA driver" in windows that noone uses or complains about: it's just there to offer basic functionality until a hardware specific driver gets installed.What hardware devices give you problems and what exactly are you doing when those problems appear? I just checked my work pc with a Q9300 and onboard realtek audio on an ASUS P45 mobo with MS's driver (or whatever driver win7 had for it , I didn't bother to install any driver in my work pc for audio) and audiog is stuck at 0%.
Anything that uses audio causes tiny amounts of audiodg CPU usage. Recording input causes even more. This is with the stock Microsoft UAA driver on RealTek HD Audio codec's. Default settings as well. (Or whatever "settings" that get's set when you click the big "Restore Defaults" button in the audio device page)
Hardware has nothing to do with audiodg, Windows 7 does not do hardware mixing, it just drives a software mixed sample stream to whatever audio device that can accept it through it's generic driver or whatever vendor specific driver you have installed on your system. The stock UAA driver is the "High Definition Audio Device" driver that Microsoft authors, it can be used with any device that complies with Microsoft's UAA specification, yes the X-Fi series cards can be used in this way but you wont beable to use OpenAL with it or anything else for that matter.
When you go to look at sound devices or sound cards, around the time Vista and 7 came out you'd see these stickers for Universal Audio Architecture, telling you the card is effectively "plug and play", because it can work with the built in driver Windows Vista\7 comes with. This is similar to how ALSA works but ALSA has vendor specific drivers for every sort of device you can imagine, not a blanket driver like Microsoft's and that only handles Intel HD Audio specification devices.
For the record this is the driver I'm talking about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Audio_Architecture
So when you think about it, this is supposed to be a stock barebones driver. It should just simply provide audio and that's it... Why does even Microsoft's own driver have these stupid software DSP "plugins" associated with it? Why are we not allowed to strip that away so that the audiodg problem goes away for good?
As for devices I tested, my laptop which the sticker on it has since been rubbed off because ASUS has no idea how to design stickers, so I can't identify it for you, my old Gateway OEM which had a RealLek HD Audio, and this new motherboard I'm using in this new system that has a RealTek HD Audio as well. I'm using the UAA driver and I still get audiodg usage with it despite "Disable All Enhancements" being checked... No I am NOT GOING TO GO THROUGH MULTIPLE FRESH INSTALLS, that has done NOTHING to debug this issue. It is a problem with this stupid "Software DSP Plugin" crap you can't permanently disable and unroot from the audio service. If this doesn't count as "evidence" then I don't know what will.
By the way, programs like Skype, Teamspeak, Mumble, etc. Most VoIP programs and also Audacity, will jump audiodg to 5-12% just from making use of your microphone...
“I am the dragon without a name…”
― Κυνικός Δράκων