C7.5 Comparison Win7 to Win8.1

I had C7.5.10 (C7.5) running stable on a Win7 SP1 machine. Upgraded to a new machine running Win8.1. C7.5 started generating audio and MIDI glitches. Could see from the Performance Meter that although the “average” usage (the green bar) never moved much beyond about 10%, the “real-time peak” usage (the blue bar) would unpredictably jump to the right lighting the virtual overload LED and the playback of MIDI and Audio would glitch.

I’ve now installed the new machine as dual boot Win7 and Win8.1 and can run C7.5 (with identical preferences) under both of them. Here’s the result of the experiments (in all cases the Yamaha FW buffer is set to “small” – the default):-

Win7
Firewire: VIA Driver (NOT legacy)
Yamaha FW Driver: 160 Samples
ASIO Guard: enabled
Steinberg Power Scheme: enabled
Performance Meter Green Bar: never exceeds 5%
Performance Meter Blue Bar: never exceeds 80% (and then only occasionally and momentarily)
No audio or MIDI drop outs. C7.5 perfectly stable.

Win8.1
Firewire: VIA Driver (NOT legacy)
Yamaha FW Driver: 160 Samples
ASIO Guard: enabled
Steinberg Power Scheme: enabled
Performance Meter Green Bar: never exceeds 15%
Performance Meter Blue Bar: frequent random peaks to 100% lighting the virtual overload LED
Repeated audio or MIDI drop outs (average about 4 or 5 a minute).

Win8.1
Firewire: VIA Driver (NOT legacy!)
Yamaha FW Driver: 160 Samples
ASIO Guard: disabled
Steinberg Power Scheme: disabled
Performance Meter Green Bar: never exceeds 10%
Performance Meter Blue Bar: frequent random peaks to 100% lighting the virtual overload LED
Repeated audio or MIDI drop outs (average about 3 or 4 a minute).

Win8.1
Firewire: VIA Driver (NOT legacy!)
Yamaha FW Driver: 256 Samples
ASIO Guard: disabled
Steinberg Power Scheme: disabled
Performance Meter Green Bar: never exceeds 5%
Performance Meter Blue Bar: frequent random peaks to 100% lighting the virtual overload LED
Repeated audio or MIDI drop outs (average about 2 or 3 a minute).

Win8.1
Firewire: VIA Driver (NOT legacy!)
Yamaha FW Driver: 512 Samples
ASIO Guard: disabled
Steinberg Power Scheme: disabled
Performance Meter Green Bar: never exceeds 2% (barely visible)
Performance Meter Blue Bar: frequent random peaks to 100% lighting the virtual overload LED
Repeated audio or MIDI drop outs (average about 1 or 2 a minute).

Not until the Yamaha FW driver is set to more than 2048 samples does the real-time peak meter not at some point during the playback jump suddenly to the 100% overload and cause a glitch. Of, course, at that sample rate recording live MIDI is impossible.

Using the legacy FW driver in Win7 and Win8.1 on this machine makes very little, if any, relative difference to these results.

There is clearly a big difference between the way C7.5 is handled under Win7 and Win8.1. Anyone thinking about upgrading should take warning.

It’s not Cubase that’s performing differently it’s your FireWire drivers.

No 1: VIA is NOT a good chipset fro ANY FireWire device

2: Windows 8.1 is causing a few issues with FireWire generally.


I’d say get yourself a PCIe Texas instruments card and try that first.

FireWire is a dead protocol now so I’d suggest moving to USB or PCIe solutions.

I switched to a UR824 as my master from the MR816 due to FireWire been on its way out.

@Jenks,

As Norbury stated, VIA is not the preferred Firewire chip to use. However, that it worked under Win 7, and not Win 8.1 suggests that the reason may be elsewhere, especially since they are supposed to be able to use the same drivers.

However, I found the VIA 1394 chip on my new motherboard did not work with my Firefaces, having used them for several years on my previous motherboard that had a TI chip.

I bought both the TI XIO2213A-based PCIe Syba SD-PEX30009 and SIIG NN-FW0012-S1, and either works fine with a single 1394 audio interface under 8.1, though the former includes a 6-pin 1394a port. They are not expensive. I am running two Firefaces at 192k with 256 sample buffers.


If you want to try to isolate what might be actually creating the spikes, try How to Diagnose and Fix High DPC Latency Issues with WPA (Windows Vista/7/8).

Note that while the DPC Latency Checker tool mentioned in the blog does not really indicate the true DPC latency under 8.1 (tends to show ~1ms when it is actually less), it will indicate those times when the delays are too great (clipping, etc) with red bars. At least with it you can see if it is DPC latencies that are creating your problems.

Actual diagnosis can get more complicated, and the latter tools in the blog can help to drill down, though they are rather technical.


Did you let Windows load all the drivers, or did you load the OEM motherboard drivers from disc or their web site? It is just that some manufacturers have extra utilities for monitoring or overclocking and these are often designed without DPC latency considerations. If you have any extraneous motherboard utilities, perhaps get rid of them. I have found that Gigabyte and Asus have been guilty of this. Test DPC latency for a minute after you remove each.

@Patanjali

You guessed right, this is an Asus mobo and I have an AMD GPU with multi-monitor support (I use 3). The mobo has a 1394 i/f on it using VIA chips.

  1. I tried the tests above also using a TI chip based firewire card (having disabled the i/f on the mobo). Almost no difference in the results (relatively speaking). On my older machine I was running TI chips on the firewire using the legacy driver. Under Win7 the two machines behave almost identically; the latency on the new machine is slightly less.

  2. Built the PC myself and loaded the OEM drivers; no utilities (not even Catalyst) installed. The only things running on the machine are the standard MS services (and not many of those - eg networking, indexing and so on is disabled), the Yamaha FW driver and Cubase (plus the MOTIF and N12 extensions).

  3. I’ve used Windows Performance Tools to investigate the DPCs and it looks as if the issue with Win8.1 is connected with the GPU (this seems not to be true on Win7) though even then the delays are very small.

There is something going on that is different when Cubase runs on Win8.1 than when it runs on Win7. All the hardware is the same (which is why I tested without using the legacy FW driver - it can’t be used in Win8.1 without some jiggery-pokery to put the OS in in test mode so you can use self-signed drivers).

@Norbury Brook

Until I replace them, I have no option but to use FW since that’s way Yamaha have implemented the MOTIF XS and N12 digital connectivity with Cubase - there is quite a considerable investment in those three technologies which I can’t afford to bin.

You have to admit I had about as much chance of getting that wrong as I would have of guessing which make of phone a person has (Apple or Samsung)? :laughing: :laughing: :wink:

I understand, I would however say if you’re tied to FireWire then if possible revert to using windows 7. It will be around and supported for a long time to come so now worries there. I had to make the decision when moving to windows 8.1 to switch from FireWire to USB for these very reasons. Some users have been ‘lucky’ with FireWire and windows 8.1 however form recent experience with a clients machine and a fireface, even RME are struggling at times so that shows you there’s problems if they can’t get things working well.


Speaking of which, have you tried the unsigned legacy windows 7 drivers in windows 8? It’s worked for some, just Google it.

MC