Playing Music Slows Vista Network Performance? 748
An anonymous reader writes "Over the months since Vista's release, there has been no doubt about the reduced level of network performance experienced compared to Windows XP. However, some users over at the 2CPU forums have discovered an unexplained connection with audio playback resulting in a cap at approximately 5%-10% of total network throughput. Whenever any audio is being sent to a sound card (even, several users report, while paused), network performance is instantly reduced. As soon as the audio is stopped, the throughput begins to climb to its expected speed. It's a tough one for users — what do you pick, sound or speed? So much for multi-tasking."
DRM strikes again? (Score:4, Insightful)
how on earth? (Score:5, Insightful)
How on earth does the sound and network subsystem overlap?
PCI resource scheduler issue? I'd love to see Disk I/O on a fast RAID Vs sound usage...
-nB
The hits just keep on rolling for Vista (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like the Top 40 of suck.
Okay, it's a lot of little things but those add up for many users and businesses. I'm sure MSFT will get all the little niggling things fixed...eventually. The main issue I see is that MSFT really needed a home run with Vista and what they fielded wasn't much of an improvement even when it's working properly. And certainly not worth the cost differential.
Re:Could be DRM related (Score:5, Insightful)
-nB
Re:how on earth? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, you see, it's a feature, not a bug
Audio fingerprinting? (Score:4, Insightful)
I can find a reference for video fingerprinting which quite explains things more eloquently then me : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_video_finger
I could imagine this would come at quite a hit in terms of processor bandwidth and hence slowing down the whole system.
Of course I would expect this would be visible in Task Manager, I would be tempted to check myself except that I do not (and do not intend to) use Vista.
FUD of highest quality (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course you can write anything you want negatve about MS in /. and any sheep will just believe it without further inverstigation....
Or more accurately (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a tough one for users....? (Score:4, Insightful)
there are any number of operating systems, even some by Micorosft, that do not have this problem.
I'm sick of the going in asumption being "well, you have to use x". No. You don't. There are a cacophany of choices everyone makes. And it drives me batshit when people assume that buying Microsoft anything is not a choice.
Every time your mom or Joe down the street or some multinational company buys Microsoft's wares - its a choice. Whether or not its a good choice is strictly up to the situation.
Re:how on earth? (Score:5, Insightful)
So far I find you explanation the most likely if unpopular.
I sort of want some proof before I start stringing people up.
Re:how on earth? (Score:4, Insightful)
WP:RS (Score:1, Insightful)
If the only source for a story is one which would not qualify as a Reliable Source per Wikipedia guidelines [wikipedia.org], reconsider whether you have a story.
Yes, that includes stories based on a thread on a hardware forum.
I'm not asking for Slashdot to be held to journalistic standards (multiple source and/or independant investigative reporting). But Slashdot is supposed to be a news site, not a rumour mill. Is a single reliable source for unverified speculation like this too much to ask?
second version syndrome (Score:2, Insightful)
In the old days:
Version 1 is the unproven version.
Version 2 is the bug-fix version.
Version 3 is the new features version.
Now it's:
x.0 is the new-feature version
Be wary of any software release promising new features.
Re:FUD of highest quality (Score:3, Insightful)
Noticed you got modded up, tho' so things are not quite that bad...
Perhaps people, (well, the non-shrill and abusive ones, anyway), are entitled to be a little sour after so much money spent, and so many broken promises.
Don't forget that many of the diehard FOSS, LAMP etc fans here are also forced to use Ms prducts on a daily basis - either for their own work, or for support. They, like me, don't like it when it's broken and you can't just nip into the source to find the problem and perhaps avoid or fix it... Or download an alternative product, or write your own...
Also, please note that there's a big difference between one person having something working OK, compared to many people experiencing a similar problem. I would imagine that if all Vista users were experiencing this kind of issue, then the cause would have been found and fixed by now. Just because everything is working, (or seems to be, or problem is not noticed...), for most people, it does not mean that there is no problem for some people, indeed sometimes a significant number of them...
I've given up trying to install Linux on an old laptop I was going to turn into a media centre. Just keeps crashing and can't get the screen drivers etc. Does this mean that ALL Linux is crap? Of course not... Does the parent post mean that Vista is rubbish? Of course not. But it's another sign that it's as not as robust as it should have been given the resources available to the authors.
Re:not really (Score:5, Insightful)
then they better not buy Office 2007. its nothing the fsck like Office 2003, 2000, 97, or 95.
They also should keep using XP, because Vista is totally different than XP.
Me - i'm at the point when someone tells me they have a problem with their computer, i say "wow. i don't have that problem. My Mac just works." and i continue my day. I don't think about it, i don't say it smugly. I just don't care.
I stare at them in cold silence because if i told them that my car was blowing up or catching fire or refused to start they'd say "huh.. i'd get a new car, and not the same kind".
I got to the point where i didn't want to help people any more that use Windows. Because i dont care. I can't care. It was consuming all my free time becuase "oh, he can help, he knows computers".
I help my mom, and my wife. I bought my mom a Mac mini, and my wife as a MacBook. And i have never had to reinstall my mom's Mac mini (i reinstalled Windows XP on her HP 4 times).
Everyone else has to fend for themselves - i don't care about their problems with their computers any more.
Make it work / DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
But Vista is something absolutely new under the sun. Vista is the first time that a major portion of the goal has been to, "Make it NOT work, some of the time." That's right, non-functionality is a key goal of Vista, because that's really what DRM is. Under the "wrong circumstances," don't work, or at least degrade operation. (Who knows, maybe "degrade operation" is an even tougher goal than "don't work.")
So here we have it, conflicting goals:
- Work! Do what the user wants you to do.
- Don't work! The user is naughty even asking you to do that!
and the hardest...
- Figure out when to work, and when to not work.
A much more subtle set of requirements than normal software. An important facet is that it blurs the notion of "who's in charge?"
- With OSS, the user/programmer is in charge.
- With Windows up to XP, the user is in charge, though Microsoft has a few deeply-buried probably-static exceptions.
- With Vista...
Re:how on earth? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Or more accurately (Score:5, Insightful)
except Microsoft no longer offers updates for 2K, and Visual Studio plays more nicely
with XP (for example, the DirectX SDK hasn't installed on 2K for two years).
This will eventually provide your reason for people to use Vista: They will have little
choice.
Re:DRM strikes again? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Actually more likely is the services which handles media getting more cpu time is doing just that, prioritising the audio over the network. Or, it could be HD sound they're playing which is clogging up the limited bandwidth on the PCI bus."
If a plain duron from the turn of the century could handle 100mps ethernet and play mp3s, there's something seriously wrong with Vista not being able to do the same on modern hardware.
Re:Could be DRM related (Score:3, Insightful)
If that were true, you wouldn't be here. Therefore, since you're here, you're wrong. QED. : )
Re:how on earth? (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't rule out the possibility that they have the sound card "playing" silence when you pause the player. Particularly if they use fade-cuts, dynamic range compression, or really any time-lagged processing of the sound, it may take considerably less effort to feed the buffer with silence rather than actually stopping playback.
Of course, that still has nothing to do with slowing down the network, but I'd consider it as the most likely explanation for why paused playback still causes the problem.
Re:FUD of highest quality (Score:3, Insightful)
Right. YOU don't seem to be having the problem, so there is no problem.
Actually, it only takes one working example (GP may or may not be telling the truth, it's irrelevant) to prove that it *isn't* Vista itself, but some outside influence (drivers, hardware bugs, etc).
It's actually a very good forum-thread article (Score:3, Insightful)
Those who modded you up must not have read the article, which is par for the course here I guess. But that forum thread is actually an excellent one, showing that many Vista user have witnessed this problem, and it detailed the many steps they took to try to fix it, unsuccessfully.
You must be from Microsoft, and this simple truth of people's experiences with Vista hurts. Well tough. Vista is bug-ridden like Windows was until XP, and by abandoning XP for a new O/S, MS has several years of bug-fixing ahead of it before Vista reaches XP standards.
Instead of wasting time trying to dismiss people's troubles with Vista, why don't you do something more productive, like fixing the code?
Re:Or more accurately (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Could be DRM related (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Audio drivers in userspace ? (Score:3, Insightful)
All the open source media players I am aware of implement the pause feature the same way: by feeding "silence" to the sound card. So by pausing an MP3 you save less than 1% of CPU time decoding your MP3 stream (negligible), but the whole userspace audio subsystem is still sending 48,000 x 2 (stereo) 16-bit samples per second to the kernel...
So I would say it actually reinforces my theory of the audio drivers being in userspace causing this pb.
Re:Could be DRM related (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Make it work / DRM (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:DRM strikes again? (Score:5, Insightful)
So why is this necessary on a laptop with 2 speakers?
Re:Incompetence! Opportunity! (Score:3, Insightful)
Windows ME sucked hard, too, and it didn't seem to really push many users off of Windows -- they just skipped that version and Microsoft had to flog their developers a little harder to get something better (XP Home, as memory serves) out quickly. Once Microsoft admits that Vista is a turd and stops trying to polish it, they'll probably grind out something marginally better that they can ram down consumers throats.
As long as the popularity of Linux and other free OSes (or heck, even just alternative OSes that follow reasonable standards and care about interoperability) continues to climb slowly and steadily, Linux can succeed without a "year of."
Re:DRM strikes again? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's nothing "wrong" with it. It's what we must accept so that our good friends at the RIAA can make sure we're not stealing their excellent music, performed by such brilliant, talented artists like Britney Spears.
Re:Incompetence! Opportunity! (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, 2007 is halfway over; so far, I haven't seen major user migrations towards Linux, and I highly doubt I'll see any by the end of the year.
People dissatisfied with Vista pre-installed on their laptops don't install Linux; they return the laptops and demand XP.
Yes, it would be nice to see more people using Linux. And more people will start using Linux. Not, however, enough for us to justly call 2007 the Year of Linux.
Businesses still depend on Windows-based solutions, and many have signed pacts with the Devil and can't back out easily. Games are still not written with Linux in mind. Major commercial software products are mostly still unavailable on Linux.
Not until I see e.g. Photoshop and some WoW-equivalent (in popularity, not gameplay) games running natively on Linux will I even begin to think about the Year of Linux.
And to make one point clear: I like my apps open. I don't program, but it gives me a nice, fuzzy, secure feeling.
I also like to play a game from time to time - and when I do, I don't think much about software freedom and open source.
Re:how on earth? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's also better to play silence than to stop playing entirely, if you're using digital outputs. Stopping the output means that the receiver/amplifier loses its signal lock and has to regain it when you un-pause. This often causes a delay or an audible click.
Re:not really (Score:3, Insightful)
But for Mac users, it seems to be more about using a computer with an actual design philosophy - a computer that actually tries to be something, to have its own identity. Like VW Bugs or whatever. Yeah, sure, there are Apple people all over the internet who never shut up about them but the same is true of pretty much every OS user...and least of all from Windows users who tend to be unenthusiastic. They may not hate Windows but I have to laugh every time someone accuses someone else of being a "Windows fanboy." They may exist but as a percentage of the user population, they're insignificant.
Windows is dry, has no personality, and tries to be everything to everyone; jack of all trades, master of none. Windows succeeds because of momentum, sure, but it succeeds even more because the rest of us support the people who don't know any better and wind up with Windows computers in front of them. If we all - Mac, Linux users, even disgruntled but knowledgeable Windows users, agreed to stop helping out horribly stuck Windows people for one year, I wonder how things would change.
The value of Apples to Apple "fanboys" is that they connect with the philosophy behind their design. Just like every car isn't meant for every driver, this is especially true of Macs. The chances of me being a regular Mac user are next to zero but IRL, the most interesting, creative, dynamic, passionate people I have met, have been, disproportionately, Mac users - and just now I'm thinking of old coworkers of mine in Canada, who were not by any stretch of the imagination ignorant (they wrote Windows tech support docs!). I cannot ignore this. I also cannot even consider Apple's place in things without recounting the Apple II series of computers, arguably the most important home computers ever produced. I cannot discount the NUMBER OF HOT CHICKS I have seen in cafes using Macs. (And I say this matters, because it if is so god damned important that computer illiterate seniors be able to use an operating system, which seems to be the standard of measure of an OS's "readiness," then, dammit, the hot chick factor damn well matters too.) - (by which I mean neither should but still)
I really don't understand the hostility toward Mac users some people have. When Mac users start tooting about their systems, at very worst it's insufferably...cute - at *worst*. They love their computers. They don't just live with them or use them mindlessly because it's what they've been given. They love them. I can see why someone who likes the power and access to the actual kernel source code wouldn't dig on them, but I can certainly allow for the fact that we're not all *like that.*
And as a Linux user, I'm down with that. The real problem is OS monoculture, and Mac users and their evangelism are an ally in that fight - to show people that there are alternatives. Every Mac convert is *probably* one less potential zombie in a botnet. Different strokes...
I continue to be puzzled at people who have issues with Macs or Mac users. Yeah, I don't think the platform is as free and open as it could or should be. I've read about sporadic hardware problems, and frankly I think Steve Jobs is a complete asshole (I am, like most hobbyists, a Woz groupie, however). I understand the excesses of the lifestyle branding Apple has engaged in. But I don't think that's nearly as influential in the lives of Mac die-hards as the commercials would have us believe. Most Mac users I know have used Macs for years and years, sometimes going all the way back to Apple IIes. They're tools they've carried through their lives, the way some of us carry Leatherman supertools around - school papers, resumes, job letters, love letters, visual and audio artwork, manifestoes, and so on.
I'm just perplexed how such a small minority could be irritating or offensive or whatever it is you're suggesting in your above post.
Our real enemy is obvious: People who mistitle every humorous mp3 as being by WEIRD AL YANKOVIC. Those fucking people need wedgies. Can we not all agree on this?
Re:how on earth? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Incompetence! Opportunity! (Score:3, Insightful)
OTOH, Windows Home Server will be a Windows 2003 (NT 5.2) variant - so they're still working on the old line.
Re:DRM strikes again? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm going to assume the question is serious. There is no fundamental difference between speakers and microphones other than using materials which allow for more efficient functionality in one direction. It's like electrical motors and generaters; in fact a speaker is a kind of motor which converts electrical energy to kinetic energy, and a microphone is a kind of generator which converts kinetic energy to electrical energy; each can act in the other direction, just with less efficiency. Modern Sonar is generally passive, i.e. uses the "microphone" functionality so I mentioned that version. But an active array is essentially a bunch of speakers + microphones, etc.
The point of my response was to address the implication that Sonar is using some special kind of technology that isn't comparable to speakers and audio processing. It's not. It's just a matter of degree and specialization. The simple case of adding phase-delays so that disparate audio signals are synchronized is something commercial sound studios have been able to do since the 60's with analog electronics (or actually any electronics hobbiest), and something every sound card that can generate stereo has been able to do digitally since -- well I'm not sure when the first stereo sound cards came out... sometime in the 80's?
Re:Not very accurate (Score:5, Insightful)
1st hand experience with it here. I like it better then XP. I'm posting from Vista. I don't have crashes. I don't have hangups. It handles software errors much more gracefully. And as said, and no, I'm not joking, with Aero turned off the experience is faster then XP.
Typically when Vista gets bought up on
Due to hardware and XP stability there's not a great reason for home upgrade IMO. But hardware compat is getting better and better all the time. For the enterprise, we're not on it at my place, no major reason to be currently. And like most enterprises we don't upgrade OS's. We buy hardware with an OS installed. Vista is probably a few years off since XP is pretty decent and there's no hurry to upgrade.
But 99% of the knocking Vista posts here are 100% ignorant prattle and nothing more.
Re:Or more accurately (Score:2, Insightful)
Honestly though, this pile of dung is by far the best pile of dung that I've seen.
Re:Microsoft user here. (Score:3, Insightful)
If you'd asked me in 1997, having to click "OK" or "Allow" multiple times every time I want to change an icon on the desktop, or copy a file from a USB harddrive isn't exactly what I would have expected to be doing in 2007. This is ludicrous. The software isn't getting smarter, it's getting stupider. I have to OK every little stupid action because there's no way for MS to know if I'm doing it or malware is doing it. It's funny, I don't have these hassles with Linux. MS's attitude is that they simply cannot provide real security so they foist all the responsibility on the user. To me, Vista is a step backwards in usability.
Good thing I'm running Ubuntu, where time actually moves forwards.
Re:Incompetence! Opportunity! (Score:3, Insightful)
Right, so as a consultant, *you* do the choosing for your clients. It is up to *you* to choose and recommend the solution that matches the needs of your client. This is the job of consultants in every industry, and in every industry there are almost always competing solutions to any particular problem.
So pick one
For the open source community as a whole, that is never going to happen. It's not an open source thing, it's a human nature thing. Of course, within the community there will be smaller groups that make choices, eg. Ubuntu choosing GNOME as its desktop environment - in fact most distributions make a choice of the default and/or supported desktop.
picking standards and increasing interoperability is a very big part of the effort.
Absolutely, and this is already happening. In quite a few key areas the two desktop platforms are already cooperating on standards and other areas of common ground; but it is unrealistic for you to expect one camp to throw away everything and basically say "whoops, sorry everyone - we got it completely wrong, the other camp were right so we'll use all their stuff now.". Of course that's an exaggeration, but to me that's pretty much what you'd like to see happen.
It seems to me that this is more of a marketing problem. Perhaps if you, the consultant, were to push "the KDE desktop" or "the GNOME desktop", or heck even "the Ubuntu desktop" instead of "the Linux desktop", the issue of competing solutions would not even need to be brought up with your clients.