Windows Vista Beta 2 audio stack

Beta 2 is nice and all, but the audio in it really sucks still. For most of my machines, the audio pips, pops, and stutters. When I am talking on skype, sometimes the recieving party will describe my voice as "robotish". Why is this? Will it be fixed someday? Some reviews of Vista I see people are like "the sound is so clear and full", I feel like I am missing out on something here. I have a Realtek AC'97 built in sound card, which is using the Nvidia Nforce Audio drivers from Windows Update.

That stuttering also happens on the Realtek chip? I thought this was a Creative only issue because of their crappy drivers. Ah well, here goes the plan of switching to NForce audio to make Vista a fulltime system...

Well these nforce audio drivers should be compatable with Vista, they say so. Nvidia needs to step it up then, although if Creatives have the same problem...I dont know. I read here http://digitalfive.org/content/enhanced-sound-performance-with-windows-vista.html That those check boxes help. But They do not check for me so I can't try. I am tempted to try XP drivers on Vista and then seeing of those boxes stay checked. Vista is pretty darn stable, but with the audio the way it is, I can't commit much more time to it.

Lets just say, it doesn't pop that much. Then again, I didn't put it under huge load. But allowing applications to take exclusive access kind of kills the idea behind the new audio stack.

The issue I see here is that when an application chokes itself out of the alotted CPU timeslice, userland audio will screw up. This is a problem of the application, but I suppose they also relied on the stack sitting in a central place working on its own.

Also, foobar2000 HATES the new stack for some reason.

I guess just overall I'm disappointed on where it is at at Beta 2. I do not know whos fault it is to blame, Microsoft's or Realtek/Nvidia.

Audio stuttering in Vista has been known to be caused by other things too. For instance, on my system (GeForce 6600GT, nForce4 chipset, using Realtek AC'97 onboard audio (I also have an X-Fi but that doesn't work at all in Vista)) audio used to stutter because of the bad video drivers (with the nVidia WDDM 87.15 and older) and because of the SATA drivers in Vista (after I install the SATA drivers for XP from nVidia, Vista runs much better).

Using the Realtek AC'97 onboard audio of that system, with the good (well, better) WDDM drivers (87.45 and up) and the nForce IDE drivers installed, I have not had any stutters at all for the last three builds. My microphone also works fine (I love speech recognition in Vista, btw).

Sven Groot, I would like to get in contact with you, for we have almost the same system configuration. Same sound card and such. I am using Vista Beta 2 88.61 drivers from Nvidia. I have installed the Nvidia nforce Audio driver as well. I'll try updating my IDE drivers.

I have had this problem with skype beta on xp but i have not tryed on windows vista

Your suggestion seemed to help a lot! The Nvidia ide/sata drivers seemed to help. Unfortunitely playing like Unreal 2004 while voip conferencing still makes the audio go crazy in the voip program.

I heard these sound issues may also be caused by video and network drivers. Something about they may tie up the CPU.

sven, I also have around the same configuration as you.

My audio tends to stutter occasionally when watching tv in Media Center. 

Coming back from standby mode in Media Center doesn't reactivate audio in the system, so I have to restart my system in order to get sound back.

Sorry, I haven't really used Media Center at all.

Hey sorry if i am re opening a useless thread, but i know what it is that causes the hiss and pop distortion on the ac 97 on board sound card. Its the inibility to mute the line in on this new volume control panel, the option just isnt there. The reason i know this is because when i re installed xp i had the same sound problems then remembered i hadnt yet muted the line in, alas its not possible on vistas dumbed down audio control panel- its like you can only muted and adjust the volume of the output line and nothing else! Ive spent about 2 solid days trying to find a fix or a driver that the "sndvol.exe" will control properly- i even got the one from xp running in vista but to no avail its seems severley restricted to only adjusting "master volume"

Any help on this would be fantastic

Mike

I was having this problem too and found this thread, so I will post the solution I found here.  I am using an Asus A8V motherboard (VIA K8T800Pro chipset).  I tried replacing the PATA/SATA driver, the Realtek AC'97 driver, and the ethernet driver with multiple versions, none of these replacements helped.

What did help was replacing the driver for the device "VIA SATA RAID Controller" in Device Manager under Storage Controllers.  I updated this driver with the latest version of the "VIA V-RAID Driver" I found (5.30c) on VIA's website here:

http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx?PageID=420&OSID=1&CatID=1180&SubCatID=143

Now I can't get my system to stutter.  Note that the audio was the most noticable part, but it wasn't just the audio.  Before updating this driver the system acted as if DMA wasn't enabled on my disk interface.  Everything slowed and stuttered when disk access was taking place.

The version of the driver that had been installed at install time was something about or over a year old.  This one shows the date 3/31/2006.

Hope this helps someone.  I had a hard time finding info on this.

Hi Bumwith:

I have the same mainboard as you, I installed the VIA Raid drivers you suggested and solved the sound stuttering.

Thank you for your post.  

on my test system I have sound on my tv tuner not in use onboard realtek ac 97 (disabled)  and soundblaster live 5.1

I have tryed with the live 5.1 many times to get 5.1 the speakers worked in xp the sound test from microsoft works fine the speakers work but I only get stero sound in windows vista:(

On this page there are 2 drivers did you install both or only the v-vraid ?