Reducing latency / ACPI problems

[Punky921]

Hey guys,

So I just picked up a new Lenovo Ideapad y560p and so far I'm really enjoying it. I'm running Windows 7, and was getting minor latency spikes (using DPC Latency Checker) in the neighborhood of 400-500 every 15 seconds. When I pulled the battery out, those spikes went away and latency hovered around 50-100. So I disabled the ACPI battery device in the Device Manager and things seemed cool for a while.

I just installed Win 7 SP1 this morning and it appears the problem is back, whether or not I disable the ACPI battery device. I checked msconfig, and it seems like SP1 added a metric ton of new services, which I'm not okay with, but they don't seem to be the source of the problem.

When I pull the battery, the spikes go away again. The spikes are smaller (~300) but more frequent now (every ~5 seconds).

Any idea what I should disable to stop these spikes and ensure that my latency is as smooth as possible?

Thanks, guys!

[andy c]

Are you disabling other stuff like modem, network card, wifi and setting the power saving setting to always on? All these things can introduce dpc latency spikes. Don't get to bogged down with the figures use your ears, if you hear no clicks or pops in your audio the latency is not really being a problem. Hope you get it sorted I have been there myself and know how frustrating it can be to get on top of them.

[Punky921]

All that stuff is deactivated. That was my first stop for limiting the latency.

Though Ableton (I have Live 7) has always been really gentle on my system unless I was doing something profoundly wacky. So maybe I'm worrying too much.

[andy c]

DPC latency is more to do with how windows shares the CPU cycles and not so much about sheer power. If your not hearing any audio cliches than you might be worrying to much, it could always be the case that the audio card is calling the cpu and causing the spike which I think would not cause a click. I got burned bad with two really bad laptops in a row regarding DPC latency, those where giving me really bad audio problems. There was some really good posts about DPC on the sound on sound forum in the pc music pages ( http://www.soundonsound.com/forum/postl ... oard=PCMus )you might find some better help there things might have changed a bit in the past few years since I had these problems.

[Punky921]

Awesome, thanks for the link. I went with Lenovo because I heard they're one of the more solidly built laptops with good drivers for the base hardware. Jesus I've heard so many horror stories about PC laptops. I didn't want to become a "statistic" so to speak.

[andy c]

No worries mate hope you get it sorted.