Interesting Vista Music vs. Network article

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=702

This is naturally the type of thing the Inquirer and the other "Tabloid" sites live for.

The original thread on 2CPU.COM is interesting more for the number of posters who immediately decided the cause was DRM... 'cos it's got it's fingers in everywhere dude !!

Nevertheless, I'm sort of curious as to what it's about and what's causing it.

Oh my God, Gutman was right after all!!!!!

Anyway, anyone able to check if this happens with other playes, or what the dxdiag tool says?

It sure doesn't happen on my system. Maybe his audio driver is doing something weird?

Over on the Inquirer, the article: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=41842 states...

~In this, Vista seems to be showing its legacy of "cooperative multitasking" from Windows 3.0 onward.~

I assume that this is just an inflammatory jibe, and that the writer didn't actually believe that to be true.

Maybe he should try stopping the Multimedia Class Scheduler service.

MMCS: Enables relative prioritization of work based on system-wide task priorities. This is intended mainly for multimedia applications.  If this service is stopped, individual tasks resort to their default priority.

Microsoft explains (Translation: we don't know WTF is going on, but most likely it's all this vast amount of DRM code gobbling up CPU, and we cannot really admit this, so we need to come up with some more FUD.) Pathetic.

glebd wrote:

Microsoft explains (Translation: we don't know WTF is going on, but most likely it's all this vast amount of DRM code gobbling up CPU, and we cannot really admit this, so we need to come up with some more FUD.) Pathetic.

What's pathetic is that everybody keeps attributing this to DRM without any clear indication that it is indeed the cause.

Science. Hypothesis, evidence, conclusion.

glebd wrote:

Microsoft explains (Translation: we don't know WTF is going on, but most likely it's all this vast amount of DRM code gobbling up CPU, and we cannot really admit this, so we need to come up with some more FUD.) Pathetic.

Explain to me how I am able to play mp3 music in WMP and still be able to download and upload at 10mbps??

...oh yeah, we haven't been on the moon yet and US government brougt down NY twins.

Bas wrote:


What's pathetic is that everybody keeps attributing this to DRM without any clear indication that it is indeed the cause.

Science. Hypothesis, evidence, conclusion.

this cannot be drm-related since the CPU usage is pretty low and also this happens with all sort of audio, not only with the one played through WMP (that uses the protected audio path). I believe it has something to do with the network drivers that lose their priority due to the multimedia scheduler always switching context. I wonder if somebody has tried changing NIC or the NIC settings.

on my PC (realtek soundcard, rtl8139+ network card) this doesn't seem to happen at all.

RoyalSchrubber wrote:



glebd wrote:Microsoft explains (Translation: we don't know WTF is going on, but most likely it's all this vast amount of DRM code gobbling up CPU, and we cannot really admit this, so we need to come up with some more FUD.) Pathetic.

Explain to me how I am able to play mp3 music in WMP and still be able to download and upload at 10mbps??

...oh yeah, we haven't been on the moon yet and US government brougt down NY twins.

if you like conspiracies there's a better explanation to this.

since Vista audio drivers weren't anywhere near ready at launch, with realtek (most used) drivers using about 35% CPU on a pentium 4 3ghz (some other audio drivers did even worse) Microsoft decided to assign 80% of the CPU to audio/video drivers through the MMCSS service.

if in fact the CPU assigned was below than 50% then audio would have always been skipping and popping on slower systems ruining all the show with people screaming "OMG Vista can't even do audio. Vista is the 5ux0r5".

microsoft also probably didn't take in account cool&quiet and speedstep because they were in an hurry: speedstep will clock down the CPU and since Vista reserves only 20% of the CPU to the rest any other activity will be extremely slowed down (if the network card let's say 10% of cpu at 3ghz, how much do you think it would use at a downclocked 800mhz speed with an artificial 20% limit?).

also the CPU won't clock up, because the low cpu usage that is artificially limited by vista's MMCSS. this is most likely the cause of all this mess.

so speedstep/cool&quiet enabled and a slow pc are probably the causes. too bad I don't have a pc with such problem to try this out :O

Ok I started downloading debian dvd images (btw I found out lamers are blocking IE, so I had to use FF) and fired up torrents. There's no difference if I do only this or if I listen to two mp3 streams or even two movies. Maybe because I don't have gigabit connection?

I'm not saying the glitch someone experienced does not exist - it's just that vista probably does not have this problem. Maybe a guy had bad drivers installed, anyone thought about that?

Sven Groot wrote:

Mark Russovich explains what happened.

Larry Osterman adds his 2c.

How dare you Sven, that better be €0.02 because LarryO's posts are worth alot more than the average 2c!

KevinB wrote:



Sven Groot wrote: Mark Russovich explains what happened. Larry Osterman adds his 2c.

How dare you Sven, that better be €0.02 because LarryO's posts are worth alot more than the average 2c!

It's just a figure of speech! A figure of speech I tells you! Don't send me back in the box! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

*deep breath*

Ok, I'm calm now. Carry on.

Sven Groot wrote:

Mark Russovich explains what happened.

Larry Osterman adds his 2c.

This is no good, this post contains an unacceptable amount of facts!

PerfectPhase wrote:



Sven Groot wrote: Mark Russovich explains what happened. Larry Osterman adds his 2c.

This is no good, this post contains an unacceptable amount of facts!

Indeed. Shan't do at all.

On a somewhat related note, Charles and Rory et al need to get their act together and get Mark Russinovich back onto C9 pronto. His blog makes for some fine reading and the last video with him was a good watch also. I know he is probably busy cranking out new tools, but tell him I have personally asked for this video, I'm sure it will make all the difference....

Mark Russinovich explains what happened.

Larry Osterman adds his 2c.

it looks like somebody found a "solution" for this problem by turning off the culprit service.

I've maxed out my gigabit NIC on LAN parties before, it didn't result in audio glitching on XP. Might be related due to me using Intel NICs over the cheap crap like Realtek. But now that I've Vista, my audio glitches without much input from anything, even less the network stack. My current system, Solaris, doesn't have anything like realtime functionality in the scheduler (except if you perform a rain dance (it has a realtime scheduler)), huge network load doesn't throw off audio either.

So yeah, fission mailed.

I used to have lots of audio glitches on Vista with my X-Fi. Until some Creative driver update around February or March, after which it worked fine.

On my new machine here in Japan I unfortunately do not have such an impressive audio rig. I just have an onboard Realtek HD Audio now. In the four months that I've had this machine, I've not experienced even a single audio glitch. Not with music, not with videos, not with games, never.

Tom Servo wrote:

I've maxed out my gigabit NIC on LAN parties before, it didn't result in audio glitching on XP. Might be related due to me using Intel NICs over the cheap crap like Realtek. But now that I've Vista, my audio glitches without much input from anything, even less the network stack. My current system, Solaris, doesn't have anything like realtime functionality in the scheduler (except if you perform a rain dance (it has a realtime scheduler)), huge network load doesn't throw off audio either.

So yeah, fission mailed.

I'm also willing to bet that Solaris or XP have a lot more than 10ms in audio latency Larger buffers mean more time to do other stuff between audio buffer refills. 2000/XP were notably bad when it came to audio buffers.

Please note that audio is now mostly software accelerated in Vista which results in more CPU usage, less latency and better quality (no more shoddy sampling rate tricks going on inside the audio driver).

That brought along issues like these and the death of DirectSound but it also provided less latency, better audio quality and per-app volume.

Tom Servo wrote:

I've maxed out my gigabit NIC on LAN parties before, it didn't result in audio glitching on XP. Might be related due to me using Intel NICs over the cheap crap like Realtek. But now that I've Vista, my audio glitches without much input from anything, even less the network stack. My current system, Solaris, doesn't have anything like realtime functionality in the scheduler (except if you perform a rain dance (it has a realtime scheduler)), huge network load doesn't throw off audio either.

So yeah, fission mailed.

Actually this... "feature" causes "network glitches", not audio.

Here is one workaround:
http://courtneymalone.com/2007/08/28/a-note-on-vista-network-speed/