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Some update on this high pitched sound (My experience):
I've not seen this in a year, and first encounter a week after my new system (new mainboard) has been installed. Notable changes:
- I used to use my STX only for my K701 headphone, and normally used onboard for both speakers, gaming headset and mic. Now I use STX II completely as the onboard soundcard increases dpc as much as the STX II so might as well skip using onboard. (30-40~us dpc latency on playback)
- I tend to hibernate PC nowadays (Suspend to disk), not sure if this screws up something in the driver state after resume. (The pitch happened roughly 10 hours after coming out of hibernation) by playing a video in VLC. Nothing changed before that on a low level.
- My new board has a ton of low-level tweak options (also for PCIE) like LTR, OBFF, power down lanes, power gating, its too much to name. But maybe I can tweak some of this on the specific port and maybe it will help. I already disabled all possible power saving on all pcie root ports but maybe for STX II its a bad thing?
- My Nvidia gpu is the only device running in emulated line-based interrupt mode, not sure if forcing pure MSI mode would help with the STX II (conflicts?)
- I can adjust logical interrupt redirection in my bios (This affects on what cores the ISR is processed, hash vector, round robin, fixed (All on core0)
- When it happened, I had high disk load on my Intel RST RAID controller (for a few hours) but its running in MSI-X mode so it spreads interrupts around all available cores).
We need to find a way to reproduce this high pitch state in order to find out where its coming from.
Oh something else, also PCIe options i.e. to enable peer write (Allow pcie devices to talk to each other directly). Maybe I should isolate the card on the slot, or isolate them all and disallow those functions.
I manually moved (copy-pasted) your comment. I wanted you to do that because I didn't knew if you subscribed to receive notifications of replies by e-mail but it seems you didn't see my reply to you on the UNi Xonar page.
It's really great that you've provided all these details.
1. Tell me your new motherboard, OS and video card model.
2. Tell me your old motherboard and if you had a different OS and video card then.
3. Did you ever had this problem with your old motherboard? You had the STX or STX II then? How many times you would say it happened?
4. Does the STX II card does not share the IRQ with other devices than maybe "PCI standard PCI-to-PCI bridge" or similar (which is the PCIe bridge on the card).
A solution to trigger this would be very helpful in finding the solution. At the moment, I don't have any specific idea.
Let us know if you find anythings or one of the possible solutions that I've posted above works.
1. New board is a MSI MEG Z390 ACE, Windows 1809 LTSC (Heavily dumbed down, remove any potential interference for gaming and multimedia), Nvidia 2080 Super.
2. Asus 270G Gaming, 1607 LTSB, Nvidia 1070 GTX.
3.I've has the STX II on both configurations. The screech happened (from what I can remember) once on each configuration, in the whole lifetime that I've had these setups. The new board/setup only a few weeks now and happened not soon thereafter. However it must be noted that I was still in the process of optimizing bios and my overclock was not entirely stable then.
4. The card has never shared any interrupts to my knowledge, and it doesnt seem as if pci bridges get assigned an interrupt. All my other devices have always ran in MSI or MSI-X mode.
With the exception to my Nvidia cards which by default run in line based interrupt emulation mode (Still in MSI as afaik PCI-E no longer has physical lines for it). But also they never shared same interrupt with the STX II.
Another side note, the board came with a integrated Killer network which also runs in emulated line based interrupt by default as it can allegedly bug out in MSI-X mode. I do not trust the device in its entirety and opted for a proven Intel I210 pci-e card which is at least proven stable. But when the screech happened I still ran the onboard killer and not sure if in MSI or INT mode.
Another few notes; The STX II card runs on PCH lanes due to physical restrictions, but when I tried it in a cpu connected pcie slot my DPC latency went up double time.
So far the most significant changes I've made:
- Defaulted to 16/44Khz from 24/44Khz
- Disabled Pci-e peer write.
- Specifically dropped to Gen1 speed on the port for STX II
- Remove all non essential devices by disabling pcie root ports in bios.
- Stabilized my overclock
Maybe a few other bios settings but no clue if they will actually be effective.
Interesting thing about the CPU connected PCIe slot and DPC being double. I find it strange but I haven't tested this myself with my Xonar DX card or other PCIe cards. Maybe someday I'll test this on my system. My motherboard is a MSI Z390-A Pro, which has only a PCIe x16 slot connected to the CPU, but I could switch the GPU in the chipset PCIe slot. Ideally this behavior should be tested with other PCIe cards as well, currently I don't have any.
Since you have that Intel network card, maybe you can try and see how DPC goes with the card in the CPU connected slot.
BTW I am amazed at how many BIOS options your motherboard has compared to mine, like those low-level tweak options that you've mentioned and chipset PCIe slots gen switching. My motherboard only have the option to switch PCIe for the CPU PCIe x16 slot and for DMI(chipset) connection.
I actually cant remember if all these advanced settings came with default bios as well, or with a modded bios by someone who exposed the HPET timer option.
I think these are all on my board by default tho (some are kind of hidden or have a shortcut to get to them)
Its like all the options you can ever dream of to min-maximg a system 🙂
A modded BIOS would explain these advanced options. Can you provide a link to where you've found the modded BIOS?
https://www.win-raid.com/t5705f54-MSI-Z-MEG-ACE-BIOS-REQUEST.html
Not sure if one for your board exists, or how hard it would be to mod yourself assuming you have the right tools. The most important feature seems to be that exposes a whole new 'Chipset' menu.
Can even change APIC interrupt redirection and stuff!
You would really ask yourself buying a 300+ euro enthusiast mainboard why these options are not exposed to the end user on default firmware.
You sure you only have 1 16x slot? I thought pretty much every board has a few CPU and a few PCH lanes and it automatically scales down to 8x once another card is slotted so they share bandwidth.
I'm sure. All the low end z390 boards have only 1 PCIe slot wired to CPU. You can find out how the slots are wired by looking at detailed specification or sometimes in the motherboards manual on the block diagram. MSI obfuscates this very well in the detailed specs, for my motherboard they list "2 x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots(support x16/x4 mode)". If it where to have 2 slots wired to the CPU they would have listed "2 x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots(support x16/x0, x8/x8 modes)".
Ah gotcha.
Yeah my manual actually shows all possibilities and combos and which physical slots are connected to what lanes.
Too bad your board can't share multiple slots 🙁
But looks like keeping the cards on PCH is the best idea anyhow, a latency hogging card connected directly to CPU doesn't look like a very good idea.
Is it confirmed that it only happens on start of a new audio stream in Windows? So far I've only seen it happen right as I started a video in VLC.
The majority of cases at least. There is this page with a lot of reports. At some point I've read them all, but I don't remember all reports.
Ah i see.
Something else I noticed with latencymon is that the card is 'silent' on activation, once a program that claims or activates a stream (probably voice activated mic) dpc's start to happen. Strange thing is even after closing the particular program, dpc's keep going until i disable and re-enable then card in device manager.
That behavior is it only for voice recording/transmission programs or it happens with audio players as well? Which driver version you have installed?
I always used the latest signed driver for STX II.
http://uni.maxedtech.com/download/uni-xonar-stxii-11-5-v1-80b-r3/
I would have to check if the same thing occcurs with only playback software.LE: Confirmed also with simple program like Winamp, once stream started, stopped, close the software, dpc's just keep going until I restart the driver.
I doubt it is a problem, but it is strange for sure. Seems like overhead that shouldn't be there? Looks like the card/driver remains in a different state .. could this become a problem in the long run perhaps?
I could try if the same thing happens with the built-in audio chip next.
This issue drives me crazy to this day. I've come to the point numerous times where I just wanted to trash my STX in the bin or just fall back to the motherboard's audio, simply because I don't want to have my ears almost blown out every damn time it happens.
The most common occurrence for me seems to be when playing videos on YouTube in a browser, often when I skip forward or backward.
Respect for still going after STX issues after all these years!
Thanks for sharing. If you can tell me your motherboard, video card and OS.
Let us know if the possible solutions work for you.
Gigabyte X570 AORUS ELITE
AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT
Windows 10 Pro x64
Xonar STX with Xonar Driver Version: 10.0.8.1825
Since the last time the issue occurred, I've made the following changes:
- Disabled SpeakerCompensation
- Close AsusAudioCenter on Windows startup and make use of XonarSwitch instead
So far no issue yet, however not enough time has passed in order to tell if these changes have had any influence or not.
The problem arose in my browser chrome, not only when watching YouTube, but when playing any sound in the browser. Player Foobar often caused white noises.
Just a general note, it could be possible that this random NOISE screech is simply not solvable, but potentially only possible to fully minimize its occurance by optimizing a system as much as possible, and i mean everything (from bios to windows). Minimizing race conditions, interference, points of failure.
This is a method I've been applying to my systems for years now, because there are plenty of other problems in computer land that are caused by bad configurations/junk running. Maybe this is also why I've only encountered this issue twice in the last 2/3 years and I use my PC quite heavily (daily).
What I could do is run a default Windows unneutered, default bios settings and see how fast i can make it happen, and from there start to apply every single tweak and option, but this seems to be days of work at minimum.
I have noticed that this happens when using wasapi. i use firefox and the audio output in firefox is wasapi, so watching youtube sometimes causes this extremely loud white noise to come up. I was using wasapi in Potplayer and i was often getting the same issue. Switched to waveout and it hasn't happened since. For audio Foobar with asio and no issues there.
I am using WASAPI as playback in AIMP and in SMplayer for a couple of years now, never had this problem with any of them.
Maybe WASAPI playback is a factor but I don't think it's what is causing this.
Please mention your sound card, motherboard, video card, and OS.
Using windows 10. For me now this only happens with firefox. After changing the output to my video player haven't had any problem. Before it was happening quite often when playing videos. Only solution disabling windows audio service, restarting the sound card from device manager and re-enabling windows audio.
Could be that some xonar cards come defective from the factory, because this white noise is usually followed by the right channel cutting off. Lots of people complaining on the internet, no solution and Asus doesn't care.
Please mention your sound card, motherboard, video card, and OS.
Let me know if you try the possible solutions above and if it worked in your case.
I have tried those methods long time ago. The card is Xonar D1 and i think it does this since the beginning. Not sure if it was happening on Windows 7, It could be that it started with Windows 8. Maybe some conflict with windows audio system and the driver.
I will try using Chrome for youtube, it doesn't use wasapi by default.
WASAPI Push or Event? Shared or Exclusive? Windows sound settings (Exclusive on? High priority on?)
Interesting though, last time it happened I could remember running VLC player which seems to use WASAPI by default. But could just be coincidence as well. Maybe it only happens in exclusive mode and the fix would be easy (disble exclusive in windows sound options) 🙂
However is Firefox is also using Wasapi... I shouldve seen loads of screeches lol.
The problem arose in my browser chrome, not only when watching YouTube, but when playing any sound in the browser. Player Foobar often caused white noises.
Firefox is using Wasapi, only program that causes problem. Foobar with asio, PotPlayer set to waveout, no issues at all.
https://i.ibb.co/rF2SMf0/fgfgfgfgfgfgf.png
I have this problem also, couple times per day + quiet right channel couple times per day....
Important thing is that it is not a hardware defect but a driver problem. I'm sure about it cuz on Linux everything works like a charm. Problem occurs only on Windows. I've installed it many times with different xonar drivers, doesn't matter, it ends up with white noise or almost non existing right channel.
BTW. I have Xonar DX.
Does the white noise issue and quiet right channel issue happen at same time? Which motherboard do you have? Which Windows?
Let us know if any of the possible solutions presented in the article above work for you.
So update after a long time using my new system:
Hasn't happened for 3 months straight until now. I was watching a Twitter video in Firefox (Something I never ever do until now) and the screech happened. I quickly switched profiles with XonarSwitch and it disappeared ofcourse.
Strange... I've used Youtube in Firefox (and other random vids) on the web for all this time. Does twitter use a different api maybe?
Ps. It was a cold boot (Probably an hour uptime at best).
If it is (Exclusive) wasapi, perhaps unticking the 'Take exclusive device stuff and priority' could solve it?
Some website mentions that you should not use 24-bit sampling rate (in shared mode) and the driver sets it to 24/48 by default.
Also: I usually put my Nvidia card interrupt affinity to a different core than 0, it is known that Nvidia drivers cause latency spikes on certain events (Up to 1ms+~ dpc latency) like transition to full screen games, or opening up a video, even opening any metro based apps like SearchUI or start menu can trigger this.
If there is any device I can change to significantly lower the system DPC latency and even the driver execution times is by setting the GPU to a different core.
LE: Obviously it was still on default (which usually defer it to core 0)
Last update from me, I think these solved my issues (and improved response time / smoothness in general)
Speakers to 16/44, all devices to MSI.
Eliminate all rogue devices that I dont need (USB Port/Internal Hubs, PCI Root ports, Asmedia controllers etc) through BIOS.
GPU, Intel RAID controller, USB XHCI controller all to seperate cores (from core 0 default).
And my network adapter on RSS (Supports MSI-X) and also put the two RSS queues to free cores through Set-NetAdapterRss in powershell.
Together with BIOS Interrupt Redirection on 'Hash Vector'.
No more high pitch noises since then. Good luck everyone! This either fully minimizes it's occurance or altogether.
LE: Forgot 'bcdedit /set disabledynamictick yes' to the list.
Thank you for sharing all these details with us. You really went to the deep end with these optimizations. I hope you come back in a few months and confirm if you haven't had any loud screech noise.
Some questions:
1. Have you noticed any impact to DPC latency by assigning Intel RAID controller and USB XHCI controller to different cores?
2. Want to know if you also done what I said at possible solution 1? If yes, was that done also when the last loud noise issue occurred?
3. Have you disabled the SpeakerCompensation for the Xonar drivers? If yes, was that done also when the last loud noise issue occurred?
I am interested in testing whether there's any improvement in response time or DPC latency by assigning a different core for each of the important drivers. When it comes to response time or system smoothness, I would like to see if there is any improvement that can be proven with benchmarks. For example, I'm thinking for the USB controller testing to check the read access time for a USB flash drive with HDTune Pro or Aida64->Disk Benchmark, if there is a slightly lower access time that means the mouse input lag would also be improved.
Hi,
First of all thank you for the great work on keeping the cards alive.
I have experienced the discussed issue both on my old and on my new system. Both running win10 (1909). I have a Xonar DX with the latest 1.81 driver, low latency option.
The rest is:
Asus prime X570
Ryzen 3600x
MSI GTX1660ti
What i noticed is that the screeching sounds happens much more seldom now compared to my old system (GB H97 HD3 + i5 4460, 1.71 and 1.80 driver). Currently it has happened so far only in a defined way - when skipping forward in Youtube, like randomly clicking the progress bar to go forward, usually when doing it more than once. Hope this helps.
Thank you for the info. Some questions:
1. Your AMD Ryzen system is on Windows 10?
2. Which Windows you had on your Intel system?
3. How often you would say the issue happens currently?
4. Your motherboard is PRIME X570-PRO or PRIME X570-P?
If you try any of the possible solutions presented in the article, let us know how that goes.
Hi,
1. Yes, Win10, version 1909.
2. Again Windows 10, but version 1803 I think.
3. Currently - very, very seldom. So far 3-4 times since December when I switched to the new system.
4. The Prime X570-P
I actually haven't used any of the workarounds so far on the new system, since in the first moths it didn't happen at all. Just disabled all inputs of the soundcard yesterday, since i use a USB mic anyway. I also did not bother to disable the other hardware either. The onboard audio is enabled as well as the HDMI/DIsplayPort passthrough from the video card. Seems to be not really relevant - with my old system I had the onboard audio disabled in BIOS, as well as the HDMI, but still feels like the problem was happening more often than now. Although I must admit there were some issues with the PCIx slot in my old system - the card did not want to work properly when installed in the normal x1 (not recognized and driver failed to install) slot, so I moved it to the PCIx4 slot where it worked without other issues.
In the current system it runs on the x1 slot without issues.
I would also be inclined to attribute the problem to some sort of IRQ mishandling/collision on the PCIx.
Hello my dear friend! I continue to keep notifications about the work of my sound card. Updated windows to version 2004 a month ago and periodically update the video card drivers. As before, everything works stably with the maximum volume in the main mixer slider. I would like to know if you saw any patterns in this problem in order to
curesolve it completely?I didn't receive enough feedback on which of the possible solutions fixes the problem and but even if I had, this does not look like something I have access to fix in the Xonar drivers, if that's what you are asking.
I've previously responded to your last comment from here with:
To clarify something, I did not suggest setting volume to 100% as a possible solution, instead this was to prevent hearing or equipment damage if the loud volume issue occurs.
Which of my recommendations you currently have applied (disabled recording devices, installed drivers with Low DPC Latency configuration, etc.)?
Are there any reports this noise bug happened on Windows XP ?
Hi,
An update from my side - looks like changing the sampling rate fixed it. Previously I used 44.1kHz, but some time ago saw a thread suggesting changing to something different fixes it. So I changed to 48k. So far so good, no problems in more than a month.
Do you remember where did you say the suggestion for changing the sample rate? Which sample rate did you change the one in ASUS, C-Media or XonarSwitch audio panels or the one from Windows Sound? Did you ever changed the sample rate from Windows Sound or you kept it as it was as default?
Let us know how it goes with the current change.
Hmm, I think i changed it in the c-media. But once i change it there, it changes everywhere, including windows sound. I think it was always consistenly reflecting the change, no matter where i do it. Initially I think I set it to 44.1 in windows sound panel. Thought that it makes no sense to use 192.
If you changed the sample rate only in ASUS or C-Media Panel, it does not change it for Windows Sound-> Playback devices. By default, on Windows 10 the playback devices sample rate is set to 48kHz and this resets to default each time you install the audio drivers. Most likely you had a mismatch between the card's sample rate and Windows's playback sample rate and maybe this was what was causing the problem.
Now, for best audio quality for music I generally recommend setting it to 44.1kHz. I explain this here. If you decide to test with 44.1kHz sample rate for both card and Windows, let me know how it goes. But you should keep the current settings for a time and see if you still get the issue.
You are right, but I was also wrong. It was set to 44.1k in the windows sound panel and set to 48kHz in the card panels. In this config i did not experience the noise issue. I tried setting them all equal now, also changed to 96k to see if it makes any difference.
On Windows 10 20H2, x64, with driver UNi Xonar STXII 11.5 v1.80b r3, about once per 2 weeks, absolutely randomly I get high pitched screeching at high volume. It lasts about 1 minute or so, then goes away. Pressing mute button mutes all audio except screeching. I checked Xonar Audio Center and its audio graph doesn't register screeching.
On Windows 7 I never experienced such issue.
I have this issue also. Sometimes it's gone and only shows up again when I reinstall windows. This issue has been there with 3 different mainboards, 2 different CPUs and 3 different GPUs but also gone from time to time. So my guess is some of these settings / combination of them:
Windows:
+ Which playback / recording devices are enabled/disabled
+ Sample Rate
Xonar Audio Center:
+ Audio Channels
+ Sample Rate
I just reinstalled windows, and now the issue is back when it was gone for months. My current settings are:
Windows: Sample Rate: 24bit, 48Khz, all playback devices enabled, all recording devices enabled
Audio Center: 2 Channels, 48Khz, everything else disabled.
When it worked without this issue, do you remember having set a different sample rate than 48kHz in the Xonar card panel and Windows Sound or the sample rate not being the same in both places?
Tell us your current Windows version, if you are on Windows 10, its specific version, your Xonar card, CPU, motherboard, and GPU.
Let us know if you find what's causing it.
Win 10 20h2 (OS Build 19042.789), Xonar DX, Ryzen9 5900X, MSI Tomahawk 570X, RTX 2080 Ti.
I only remember having 192Khz set in Asus Xonar DX always in the past (but it occurred with that setting as well, so this can't be the deciding factor). But I was changing the one in windows all the time.
I haven't had the issue for all this time. Now today directly after updating my NVIDIA GPU drivers, the issue occurred inside of Firefox. I only updated the graphics drivers and unchecked everything else (disabled HD audio driver, usb-c, etc.). And BAM the issue is here again.
On Windows 10 (19042.572), x64, with driver UNi Xonar STXII 11.5 v1.80b r3 (installed with Low Latency checked), about once per 2 weeks, absolutely randomly I get high pitched screeching at high volume. It lasts about 1 minute or so, then goes away. Pressing mute button (on keyboard, global hotkey) mutes all audio except screeching. I checked Essence STX II Audio Center and its audio graph doesn't register screeching. On Windows 7 (which was missing 2 years worth of all sorts of updates) I never experienced such issue.
Sample Rate in Essence STX II Audio Center is set to 44.1. and so it was set for currently active speaker in Window's Sound Control Panel. (I had the same settings in Win7 too.)
I tried setting it to 48 in Audio Center, but the problem still occurred. I reset it back to 44.1. Then one time when I got the screech, I went Sound Control Panel > playing speaker properties > under Advanced tab I selected 48000 > OK. Then the screeching went to background and became a strongly muffled tone as if system noise from interference from something. The muffled tone lasted for about few minutes then went away. I still need 2 months to monitor if it still occurs if only Window's setting is at 48000.
Previously I experienced such issue with ASUS' own official driver. The driver couldn't process audio fast enough and crashed, leaving me deaf with horrid loud noise. Forcing me to use a batch script to restart the damned audio driver over and over. (For e.g. Bud Spencer & Terence Hill - Lalalalalala (HARDSTYLE REMIX by High Level) [available on YT] had a high chance to crash official ASUS' driver.)
Other info: Intel i7-4790 CPU - stock clock, NVIDIA GTX 980, ASRock Z97X Killer.
Okay, it's been enough time, I can tell now for sure, that this tiny workaround prevents screeching in my case. I have had zero issues this far.
Thanks for the update. Please clarify which workaround. Setting the sample rate in the Asus Xonar Audio Center to 44.1kHz and in Windows Sound->Speaker properties to 48000? 48000 with which bit-depth, 16-bit or 24-bit?
I've been getting the same issue for months and I've had the sample rate in Xonar Audio Center set to 44.1 KHz. I will try changing it to 48 KHz now and see if it's stopped over the next several weeks. I should note that in Windows control panel it was still set to 48 KHz, so I wonder if that led to some kind of conflict - Audio Center at 44.1 and Windows at 48.