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)
Re:DRM strikes again? (Score:5, Informative)
See http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2007/
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:DRM strikes again? (Score:5, Informative)
Unless your using a pci network card, or a fairly old/cheap motherboard, it should have nothing to do with the available bandwidth on the pci bus
Re:DRM strikes again? (Score:5, Funny)
Dude, who taught you punctuation? Arnold Rimmer??
Re:DRM strikes again? (Score:5, Insightful)
So why is this necessary on a laptop with 2 speakers?
Re:DRM strikes again? (Score:5, Funny)
The truth about Vista sound (Score:5, Funny)
Once it determines the maximum quality feedback parameters, it backs off various parameters to try to reduce the computational footprint. It keeps a record of these adjustments and periodically adds them back in temporarily to make sure the basic parameters are still valid. If any of these trials show the need, it will restart the complete feedback search cycle.
Where does the network figure in all this, you ask? Simple. All that I have described so far is reactive feedback. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, or more usefully, predicting how much feedback control is necessary can pay bigger dividends -- more bang for the buck, so to speak -- than reactive analysis. If it can tell what you are doing from packet analysis, it has a better chance of predicting your head position. It looks at HTML pages and tries to guess what content is shown, in order to know if it is likely to affect your head position, and then tries to guess where that content will show on the screen, in order to predict where your head will be.
Coupled with mouse and keyboard controls, this can lead to amazing sound quality from the piss-poor speakers found on most laptops, even simulating 5.1 speaker systems with just the two speakers found on most computers.
Now you know.
Re:DRM strikes again? (Score:5, Informative)
Explain to me the difference between speakers and sonar tranceivers? I mean, I was a Sonar Tech in the Navy for only 4 years, so maybe I missed something, but a sonar array is basically a bunch of high-quality underwater microphones and a shitload of audio processing. Essentially doing the reverse of what the poster above claimed Vista does (never mind that that kind of processing ability is what sound cards are *for*). IOW: you're wrong.
As long as you have more than one channel, audio processing can do exactly that sort of thing; the only problem is, that it would ruin the whole point of multiple channels. You want the audio processing to cause the sounds to reach your ears at different times because than it simulates what happens when something is not directly in front of you. The initial implentation of this technology for consumer purposes has a very familiar name: stereo.
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: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:DRM strikes again? (Score:5, Funny)
Talented artists like Britney Spears
---------------------^
Re:DRM strikes again? (Score:5, Funny)
Conspiracy! (Score:5, Funny)
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:Incompetence! Opportunity! (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, I think it means a boost for Apple (so kind of Linux :) rather than Linux directly. Apple is intended to be a consumer desktop system and it does this very well. Linux variants are undoubtedly improving, but (in my experience) unlike Apple, the Linux systems are simply not designed to be consumer desktop system. If somebody actually did this, then you'd have an Apple competitor.
But Linux development seems more focused on generating dozens of distros and taking all of the forks in the road instead of picking something and sticking with it. For the simple example look at KDE vs GNOME. You can argue back and forth about the merits of both, but as a person building software I don't want to have to make screenshots for both and test under both, this is just needless doubling of my work.
Linux does not encourage the development of shrink-wrapped, quick-to-develop software. Part of making a consumer (non-business) OS is making decisions for the consumer (b/c they don't know how) and then to sticking with those. We can yell about the Windows Registry, but Linux has how many "replacements" (all of them better)? How does this help consumers? All it does is make things more complicated for developers rather than simpler.
Linux is like the giant sandbox of great ideas, it constantly gets better, but it's goals is not be a consumer desktop OS. Until somebody stands up and says: "This is THE linux consumer OS and EVERYTHING done for consumer (not business) needs will work here", until that day, disgruntled MS users will simply shift to MAC.
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
Re:how on earth? (Score:4, Funny)
My 0.02? Its all the DRM piling up at an astounding rate, bringing the network to its knees.
CHECK SECURITY CERTIFICATE...NOT FOUND
CHECK SECURITY CERTIFICATE...NOT FOUND
CHECK SECURITY CERTIFICATE...NOT FOUND
And so on and so forth. Could be wrong though.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:how on earth? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, you see, it's a feature, not a bug
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:5, Funny)
You must be new here . . . but how did you grab such a low UID?
Re:how on earth? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:how on earth? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:how on earth? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:how on earth? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:how on earth? (Score:5, Funny)
There is one thing that can summon the Great Old Ones.
One.
And that is the implication that someone with a higher UID is one of them.
I claim my prize for having successfully beckoned a few and retire to the library for brandy and cigars.
Re:how on earth? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:how on earth? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:how on earth? (Score:5, Funny)
Who are you calling a newbie, newbie?
Re:how on earth? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:For teh win (Score:5, Funny)
No, you're not. He hasn't posted [slashdot.org] in a while.
Re:how on earth? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:how on earth? (Score:5, Funny)
The Slashdor ID was probably inherited from a "wierd uncle" which died in a strange accident in his basement when a pile of old Sun workstations fell on top of him.
Re:how on earth? (Score:5, Interesting)
Call me old-skool, but... (Score:5, Informative)
Hand me down my silly-scope, Maw, the danged computer's a-runnin' slow agin...
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:how on earth? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:how on earth? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Does it? I thought it just had a really low-power CPU and highly optimised - as in assembler - software. If the iPod was based on hardwired chips that did MP3 and only MP3, Rockbox would never have worked on it.
Re:how on earth? (Score:4, Informative)
My 486DX2-66 could not play MP3s; the CPU was pegged solid at 100% usage, and at best they still skipped and stalled.
My P90 could play MP3s, but it took 80%-100% of the CPU cycles, so would sometimes skip.
On my P233, it took about 30%-40% of CPU cycles.
On my P3-550 (Win98), it takes about 3%, for either the old DOS player or for WinAmp. Its twin brother (WinXPPro) also uses about 3% in WinAmp. These systems are 8 years old.
On a modern P4, I'd expect playing MP3s would need only a fraction of a percent of CPU cycles. So even if very poorly scheduled, how could the sound subsystem use them all up??
I'm wondering if a crappy network driver might be the actual culprit. I've seen a shit driver bring a P2 to a near-halt, when the only app in use was DOOM (which will run on a 386, so you know it doesn't eat much by current standards).
Re:how on earth? (Score:5, Interesting)
Vista does put in place measures to ensure that multimedia applications have a higher I/O priority than other operations.
Whoever did these tests should try again with the Multimedia Class Scheduler service disabled to see if it makes a difference. Also they need to try multiple multimedia applications (WMP would benefit from MCS, but other multimedia apps may not yet).
Except... (Score:5, Interesting)
For the record, I just tested this bug on Vista Small Business and found the same result. If I load WMP, I can still utilize ~35% of the network, but as soon as I start a song, or have a song paused (or even stopped but still loaded) it drops down to 8-10% every time.
Re:how on earth? (Score:4, Interesting)
So, based on this (and how accurate my memory is), I'd say that Vista definitely gives priority to audio over other resources.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
DRM sucks... it's gotten so bad that they're interfering with all sorts of normal (non-infringing) activities in the hopes of getting the genie back in the bottle. When will they learn that it's too little, too late.
I mean, what? I'm supposed to choose between listening to music, or doing my job? BAH!
Every day, MacOS and Linux are looking better and better.
Re:how on earth? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:how on earth? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
...too little, too late.
Are you implying DRM would have worked if only they'd done more, sooner? I try to avoid such phrasing. DRM-- the entire idea of DRM, not just the implementations-- is fundamentally flawed. Don't want any non-tech people who happen to read these posts to get the wrong idea. DRM works about as well as a locked door in a free standing wall-- a few people will be fooled and not notice the wall can be walked around or that they can be on either side of the wall anytime they want, and that in turn fools a
Re:how on earth? (Score:4, Funny)
The smoke from the cigars mixes in the air of the smoke-filled back rooms where these things are decided between the content cartel and the company that makes Windows Media Central or whatever that thing used to be called.
Re:how on earth? (Score:5, Interesting)
My guess would be that it's a bug in the PCI code. You interact with network and sound hardware in roughly the same way; write a memory address to a control register and the device DMAs it across. If there's a race condition or stale lock in the code that deals with the PCI bus then data being sent from the network or sound card drivers down through the PCI abstraction layer could be delayed. My guess would be that someone decided to optimise things for media playback, and so put the sound drivers at a higher priority than the network drivers (since most of the time you are more likely to notice audio skipping than slight drops in network performance), and the sound card driver is not releasing a lock in a timely fashion.
This, of course, comes with a huge disclaimer to the effect that I have no inside information as to the structure of the Vista kernel, and might be completely making all of this up.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder how it affects systems where the networking is not on PCI (maybe an integrated northbridge component which is not glued to an internal PCI bus), or the audio controller is on a completely different PCI host controller (this scenario is practically unheard of on most x86 systems though.. would be intriguing to find out nonetheless
Ooh. Could it be tha
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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:how on earth? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:how on earth? (Score:5, Interesting)
Could be DRM related (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Could be DRM related (Score:5, Insightful)
-nB
Re:Could be DRM related (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe Redmond in their infinite wisdom are hiding all the DRM processing in a way that doesn't show up on the CPU use graphs - but impacts the system performance because in reality the CPUs are all pegged doing DRM compares to see if heuristic signatures match copyright violations.
Re:Could be DRM related (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If that were true, you wouldn't be here. Therefore, since you're here, you're wrong. QED. : )
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: (Score:3, Interesting)
Vista network performance is *supposed* to be better: "support for the Next Generation TCP/IP Stack" and "TCP/IP window size auto-tuning" are two features that the Que book, "Using Microsoft Windows Vista" describes. This audio issue is probably related to DRM, however.
There are some things that sound good, but I had to dig to find them -- "I/O cancellation" is one of them. I don't know how many times I've had a client crash their desktop when trying to access a non-synched shared folder when disconnecte
Wow! (Score:5, Funny)
Wow! I bet streaming audio must suck!
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Funny)
Whatever you do, absolutely do not try this with RealPlayer on Vista. That has the potential to result in catastrophic system failure.
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wow! (Score:4, Funny)
coldplay (Score:3, Funny)
Sorry, could not resist.
Re:coldplay (Score:4, Funny)
Re:coldplay (Score:5, Funny)
Mu. Only Mac users listen to Coldplay.
Not Just MP3's Slowing Network Performance (Score:4, Interesting)
Not a hardware issue, and may not DRM, either (Score:5, Informative)
Could be DRM, maybe, but that's just speculation. One guy said he stripped the audio from a video and played just the video, so I'm not certain it's DRM, either.
Microsoft user here. (Score:5, Interesting)
Now. That being said. Ever since I saw screens of "longhorn" and the list of proposed features, I was excited. I knew a lot of it wouldn't be in the retail release, but still...Microsoft had me more excited about an operating system than I had been since the first press releases of Windows 95. It wasn't just Aero (which frankly doesn't really sway me one way or the other), it was primarily the little tweaks and things that they were talking about. Vista looked like it was going to be mind blowing.
And then it was released. Every week, some new story surfaces about something not working right, or something being broken, or some kind of fucked compatability...as it stands, I don't think Vista will ever be on my computer. XP works fantastic for me (although I do have an Ubuntu box hooked up to my computer for movie and TV show playback), and Vista seems to case more problems than it solves.
Grats, MS. Unless you pull something out of your asses soon, you are going to lose more and more users such as myself. And we are important insofar as your desktop buisness goes, because we KNOW you are full of shit and we still don't care.
We are starting to care, though.
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.
Synopsis (Score:5, Interesting)
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: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.
Re:you're being passive aggressive (Score:5, Funny)
I guess they just want to Think Different, but you'd think that they'd use desktop and GUI concepts similar to what Windows uses. And yet strangely, several million Windows users started using Macs this year.
Re:you're being passive aggressive (Score:4, Informative)
My point was that OS X does NOT have an "utterly foreign" interface as the GGP stated. My examples were obviously bogus; you don't really have to do these things...Unless you really HAVE punched a dog in the face in order to launch a new application in OS X - in which case I wonder if you should be allowed near technology at all.
Prioritizing multimedia? (Score:4, Informative)
Wasn't there a story on Slashdot a while back about how multimedia apps in Vista would take priority over others whether you wanted to or not? This summary [slashdot.org] (you'll actually have to RTFA since it's not in the summary, sorry ... or just look through some of the comments) might be the one I'm looking for...
Iterative Development Cycle (Score:4, Interesting)
- Bugs like this get noticed sooner and are easier to fix since they are fresh.
- QA cycles are more focused.
- Customer feedback helps drive the product to something the customers actually want to use.
- Customers can have an easier time adapting to smaller changes.
Please note that OS X has proven that a faster iterative development model can work for a desktop operating system. They're releasing every year or so http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X#Mac_OS_X_10Big-bang software releases, ala Vista taking years to develop, are destined for bugs and customer rejection like this. If you, as a software developer are stuck in a project with a release date longer than a year away, please take the time to set your project manager straight.
My PC Did Something Similar (Score:3, Interesting)
I had to change out the motherboard for an unrelated reason, and the problem went away. It was a completely different chipset on the new motherboard, so I figure there was a problem with the drivers for the old one. I think it was C-Media audio.
Introducing... (Score:3, Funny)
Music Benchmarks:
Windows 3.11_ **********
Windows Vista ***
And it comes with Reversi, too!
Clearly (Score:5, Funny)
Seems perfectly reasonable to me. If you don't like it, there are plenty of alternatives out there.
Audio drivers in userspace ? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
"I can see it's not cpu usage, as it happens even while the video/audio is paused"
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...
Windows License Exchange/Refunds? (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyhoo, my question is, does Microsoft offer license exchanges or refunds? Before you laugh, I recall sometime or another, that a PC manufacturer offered refunds on PCs shipped with XP, when the end user wanted to build a Linux box, or an XP box with a preexisting license. Hopefully I can at least try this with Toshiba, I could use the beer money.
Possibly Performance Timers? (Score:4, Informative)
Another possibility is the media timers in the microsoft API. I don't know about Vista, but under XP, the system timers by default are not very accurate, because higher accuracy timers taking more processing time to update. However, this isn't really acceptable for audio/video and gaming, so they have a special Multimedia mode you can set that will make them update at a higher frequency.
Unfortunately... this is a system wide setting. Which means if their network application is doing a lot of system time lookups for timestamps or something, it is incurring the extra penalty as well.
We noticed this at some point when a particular simulation application ran correctly - only when windows media player was also running. WMP enables this multimedia mode, affecting every other application using timers on the system.
Maybe its because... (Score:4, Interesting)
Perhaps they're sending your music up the network pipe for comparison and analysis as you play?
</theory>
My Guess (Score:4, Interesting)
Vista is just overall a hugely bad idea -- the idea being the Hollywood now owns your PC.
Or more accurately (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Or more accurately (Score:4, Insightful)
Not very accurate (Score:5, Funny)
The new look and feel can be turned off, in which case it certainly isn't slower. I'd consider it faster then XP to be honest.
I like its smart use of dead cycles and unused RAM for indexing and precaching. I like the new explorer options and much improved searching.
All in all it's certainly a step forward.
I don't know if I'd say it's worth upgrading over XP for most people that are running XP just fine now. But I certainly would suggest Vista over XP if one were going to be buying one OS or the other.
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: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:Or more accurately (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Or more accurately (Score:5, Interesting)
And as soon as it gets directX 10 support you should be able to run the DX10 only games on XP.
Re:antiFUD of poorest quality (Score:5, Funny)
Re:FUD of highest quality (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (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, d