[Tubewin]

Has anyone noticed their sound system sounding worse after leaving their desktop on warming up with no cpu usage? I've been turning on my "audio" desktop on and then go game on a different computer for a few hours, but when I come back to listen to music it sounds more harsh and digital. But when I turn on my "audio" computer and actually open up youtube and have some cpu usage, the sound is so much better...

There is an option for the minimum processor state "idle cpu usage". The default setting for intel is 5% minimum. I think I'm going to raise it to 20% and experiment to see if there is a audible difference. I'm using a I9-12900k but I think raising cpu usage may have an effect on any processor.

 

[dunring]

That's the speed range, which on a laptop is handy but on a gaming computer will keep throttling your CPU clock speeds down. The thing that effects sound more is go into device manager and disable power management for all your USB ports and hubs. Check sound settings on both to make sure your not running them differently, that might be what you're hearing. The processor state just will cause breakups in playback if it's overwhelmed, like on a cheap laptop from 12 years ago. Set your min CPU to 100 in power settings, also go into that and disable power management for anything like media playback, USB, and hard drive idle to zero so it'll never put your SSD/NVME drive into standby mode. Microsoft went nuts assuming every computer is a laptop, or for corporate clients with 5,000 workstations to save power. Winaero tweaker, Autoruns, and DDU (display driver uninstaller) will help. DDU works to remove old audio drivers as well to clean up sound problems. Just make a restore point before doing anything so you have a parachute to go back in case.

 

[Tubewin]

That's the speed range, which on a laptop is handy but on a gaming computer will keep throttling your CPU clock speeds down. The thing that effects sound more is go into device manager and disable power management for all your USB ports and hubs. Check sound settings on both to make sure your not running them differently, that might be what you're hearing. The processor state just will cause breakups in playback if it's overwhelmed, like on a cheap laptop from 12 years ago. Set your min CPU to 100 in power settings, also go into that and disable power management for anything like media playback, USB, and hard drive idle to zero so it'll never put your SSD/NVME drive into standby mode. Microsoft went nuts assuming every computer is a laptop, or for corporate clients with 5,000 workstations to save power. Winaero tweaker, Autoruns, and DDU (display driver uninstaller) will help. DDU works to remove old audio drivers as well to clean up sound problems. Just make a restore point before doing anything so you have a parachute to go back in case.

The minimum processor state is just what the pc is going to be on idle right? You think 100 is optimal? Interesting.

 

[dunring]

Yes, it keeps it from adjusting downward when in use, which makes gameplay really sluggish. For a laptop it's handy to keep temperatures down and extend battery life though.

 

[Tubewin]

That's the speed range, which on a laptop is handy but on a gaming computer will keep throttling your CPU clock speeds down. The thing that effects sound more is go into device manager and disable power management for all your USB ports and hubs. Check sound settings on both to make sure your not running them differently, that might be what you're hearing. The processor state just will cause breakups in playback if it's overwhelmed, like on a cheap laptop from 12 years ago. Set your min CPU to 100 in power settings, also go into that and disable power management for anything like media playback, USB, and hard drive idle to zero so it'll never put your SSD/NVME drive into standby mode. Microsoft went nuts assuming every computer is a laptop, or for corporate clients with 5,000 workstations to save power. Winaero tweaker, Autoruns, and DDU (display driver uninstaller) will help. DDU works to remove old audio drivers as well to clean up sound problems. Just make a restore point before doing anything so you have a parachute to go back in case.

Thanks for the tips. So setting my hard drive idle setting to never and usb selective suspend to disabled, is that correct?

I also went to device manager and unchecked where it says computer can turn off to save power, is that right?

 

[Tubewin]

Yes, it keeps it from adjusting downward when in use, which makes gameplay really sluggish. For a laptop it's handy to keep temperatures down and extend battery life though.

I'm using my desktop solely for music. I have a separate gaming laptop I use for gaming. Would setting my audio desktop pc's minimum processor state to 100% be beneficial to the sound or no relation to the sound?

 

[Ghoostknight]

If you do hear noise of your mouse moving (GPU) because you use a straight usb cable you usually also can hear how it gets considerably worse when you start playing a game... pretty obivous hint here there is a difference but im unsure how much of a difference it makes once you started filtering/isolating USB

Tho, i also have noticed with a raspberry pi that underclocking helps to improve SQ.. (and setting the cpu governor to always max clock speed)

 

[Tubewin]

If you do hear noise of your mouse moving (GPU) because you use a straight usb cable you usually also can hear how it gets considerably worse when you start playing a game... pretty obivous hint here there is a difference but im unsure how much of a difference it makes once you started filtering/isolating USB

Tho, i also have noticed with a raspberry pi that underclocking helps to improve SQ.. (and setting the cpu governor to always max clock speed)

I don't hear any noise when I move the mouse on my audio pc. I thought I noticed better sound quality when I didn't leave the processor idling for a few hours, is what I'm trying to say. I can see in my core temp app, that the moment I move my mouse the wattage goes up a few watts. I thought there could have been a correlation at least on my computer, where if I don't give my audio pc a chance to idle, it sounded better. I took dunring's advice, and disabled the suspend selective usb option and chose "never" (it keeps going back to 0, but I guess that's the same thing as never) for hd idling. I'll give that a try and see if there's an improvement. I thought it might have been the processor's activity or lack thereof, but dunring's advice makes a lot more sense.

 

[Brandfuchs]

I'm wondering if it would be more convenient to build a desktop computer only for playing music. I mean, for someone like me who needs to use the computer for extended periods for work, it seems unrealistic to let the computer idle for long periods.

 

[Tubewin]

I'm wondering if it would be more convenient to build a desktop computer only for playing music. I mean, for someone like me who needs to use the computer for extended periods for work, it seems unrealistic to let the computer idle for long periods.

Well, you don't want it to idle is my point. What dunring suggests seems to help though. If you idle without turning off/changing those preferences, it diverts power away from certain components affecting to overall sound. I game on my laptop connected to a monitor and listen to music through my desktop with jcat pcie usb and net cards.

 

[theveterans]

Have you tried turning off everything, including speed step and power states, i.e. run at base or overclocked frequency minimum. It'll consume more power but if you don't get harsh sound on that state, it's a good compromise. For me though, I have zero issues with my dual core 7th gen laptop playing Spotify at less than 1% usage at 0.6 MHz lowest multiplier

 

[Brandfuchs]

Well, you don't want it to idle is my point. What dunring suggests seems to help though. If you idle without turning off/changing those preferences, it diverts power away from certain components affecting to overall sound. I game on my laptop connected to a monitor and listen to music through my desktop with jcat pcie usb and net cards.

Awww, I misread it! I thought the sentence was "keeping the computer in an idle state"...

 

[Tubewin]

Have you tried turning off everything, including speed step and power states, i.e. run at base or overclocked frequency minimum. It'll consume more power but if you don't get harsh sound on that state, it's a good compromise. For me though, I have zero issues with my dual core 7th gen laptop playing Spotify at less than 1% usage at 0.6 MHz lowest multiplier

After trying to figure out what the issue was, I don't think it's the cpu that's causing it for me. It has something to do with the pc diverting power when it's afk for an hour or so. But I changed some settings around, and the issue seemed to have stopped.

 

[theveterans]

Nice! If it doesn't have a stable/maximum state PCI-E power delivery to your Jcat card, you will get tons of jitter causing that harsh sound

 

[Tubewin]

Nice! If it doesn't have a stable/maximum state PCI-E power delivery to your Jcat card, you will get tons of jitter causing that harsh sound

Yeah, I learned that the hard way