strix b250f and audio version 6.0.1.8273 system instablity

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richac

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Jul 31, 2017
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Had to roll back to the 8090 drivers, because when running sonic studio I would get audio dropouts, stutters, and almost crashing in battlefield 1 game. Even tabbing to and from desktop when using full screen programs was sketchy.


Didn't use the 8158 drivers because now I believe they were the cause of my occasional but annoying audio pops when resuming from suspend. Even when just browsing and listneing to music. The latest drivers just seem to be even worse.

Not only that, when going back to the 8090, now I have much more bass in my earphones. The latest driver did feel very tinny to me, I thought immediately it didn't sound right, and now that's confirmed. Even after a fresh install of windows. SO something very wrong with those drivers on my system. At first I thought it was the lastet NVidia drivers. turns out to be the audio and sonic.

8090 drivers with the system run great.

i7-7700k
32gb ddr4 2400
960 evo 500gb m.2
evga super sonic g3 750watt
NVidia 1070 8gb
strix b250f
 
pendragon1 said:
since its Realtek based you could try one of the newer versions posted here:

https://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/topic/24364-latest-realtek-audio-codecs/?page=16
Click to expand...

But I can't just install the drivers directly from realtek. or sonic studio will not work. So no audio enhancements, or equalizer settings. Not only that, asus will no longer give me the room correction settings for a 5.1 speaker setup. The sonic studio version apparently has to match the asus driver version. I'm fine with the 8090 version and the games I play. But I definitely will report this issue back to asus.
 
ah I see. Asus tying their drivers to it seems about right though, not the first time I've seen that. guess you have to stick where you are. at least you got it sorted!
 
pendragon1 said:
ah I see. Asus tying their drivers to it seems about right though, not the first time I've seen that. guess you have to stick where you are. at least you got it sorted!
Click to expand...

turns out its not sorted man. after a reboot I had the same issue arise again.

I've actually narrowed it down to a permissions issue. Turns out if I use an admin account I don't have any issues.

The audio pops when playing music and browsing at same time and lag or stutter in games coincide with mouse and keyboard clicks. Which is why I originally thought it was a usb issue, or a keyboard or mouse issue. But I've tried diff keyboards and mice, diff ports. But I'm not sure why this would only happen when using a standard account, and also only seems to happen when using headphone jack. Whether front or back.

I'm wondering now if this is because I installed and updated windows with a MS login account, not a local account? And then created a local admin account afterwards and changed the MS account to a standard user.

If I change the local admin to standard user and make the MS login admin. I don't have the problems. When toggling them back I thought somehow that fixed something. But after a resume from suspend, I got the issue again. My only choice right now, is to run bf1 as administrator so I have no problems with it when using the sonic studio after a resume or reboot. I'm not sure I wanna bother reinstalling windows again with only local accounts to see if there is any difference. I just went through the whole headache of reinstalling and its a long process.

Although after the recent blizzard exploit it feels sketchy to have to run any game as admin. But sonic studio does greatly improve the sound and i'm into good audio so I'm contemplating it. I'm going to report this issue to asus regardless and see what they say.

I sure do miss thx tru studio I had with an older gigabyte board, that always worked fine and didn't even require admin to run. Not only does asus tie the software to its specific custom drivers, sonic studio won't load unless run as admin, so that's probably part of the problem. The drivers don't even install properly when clicking to run as admin from standard user account. I have to install the drivers from admin account as well or they don't even install.
 
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try compatibility setting on sonic, set it to run as admin see if that helps at all.
 
pendragon1 said:
try compatibility setting on sonic, set it to run as admin see if that helps at all.
Click to expand...

Yes that's what I already do, as I said sonic studio doesn't run as non admin. So I have that box ticked, otherwise it asks me to install the audio drivers which are already installed.

What I noticed is that sonic studio auto starts only on the account that the audio drivers were installed on. If I change another account to admin it doesn't auto start on it. only the account I installed the drivers from.

Right now I just created a new local standard user, to see if its the ms login account that causes issues.. If this doesn't work what I will try is, making the account admin. reinstalling the drivers from that admin account, then changing that same account to standard and see if that helps.
 
OK but you were talking about account....
if you are the only user just have an admin account to help avoid issues like this. and when you install stuff tick the box for "all users".
 
pendragon1 said:
OK but you were talking about account....
if you are the only user just have an admin account to help avoid issues like this. and when you install stuff tick the box for "all users".
Click to expand...

ya it seems whether its a local or ms login stander user doesn't matter. Also doesn't matter if I make the account admin just to install the drivers and switch it back. Because Upon resume from suspend I get the issues.

There is no box to tick, but it seems I do just have to run as admin for daily use if I want to avoid these sound and system instability issues when using sonic studio. In particular the account I installed all the updates and drivers on. I'm an audiophile and don't want to give it up, and I don't want to have to buy another sound card.

Only problem is that's not sane in this day and age with the amount of security problems. But what can I do. Asus was supposed to respond within 48 hours but I never got an email. I don't think they are taking it seriously. I've googled and seen many horror stories about sonic studio, and it seems most people just uninstall it, so I don't have high hopes they will even look into this. But I would like to use it since it greatly increases the sound quality and 3d effects.

Security is just a façade anyways right? Especially when you are a gamer....

Ironic cause they came out with the bios patch the day after meltdown & spectre went public. And I got a performance increase in general not a loss like the media claimed, but yet I'm forced to run as admin if I want top performance and compatiblity when using sonic studio. Wow...
 
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you should be running an admin account as your main account anyways. just so you don't run into issues like this.
the tick box is under the exe properties/security. set it to always run as an admin.
 
I find that nuts though. But then again, maybe naive to think a standard user is not trivial to escalate anyways. But I never had to do this on past machines in the past. Like I said gigabyte board using thx trustudio never needed to be run on an admin account. This is a first for me. Never even had to run games as admin, except some real old ones or cheap poorly developed ones...

But it is a gaming machine and all I do is watch movies, listen to music and game on it. If people want to spy on me or steal my passwords its not that big of a deal. I have another machine I use for more sensitive tasks. But this is still something I will have to get used to since it goes against what I considered good computer hygiene or best security practices. This is the machine I use daily.
 
well it sounds like its acting normal for a non-admin account. the whole point is that its locked down and you can make changes or run anything that might compromise the system. so its deeming SS as some kind of potential threat.
Ps: for some reason I thought you had win10 but I just re-read and don't see mention of OS anywhere...
 
pendragon1 said:
well it sounds like its acting normal for a non-admin account. the whole point is that its locked down and you can make changes or run anything that might compromise the system. so its deeming SS as some kind of potential threat.
Ps: for some reason I thought you had win10 but I just re-read and don't see mention of OS anywhere...
Click to expand...

yes I have win10.
 
pendragon1 said:
sounds about right then
Click to expand...

well I'm devastated man. I booted up this morning and went to go play battlefront 1 trial I just downloaded. and was getting pops and total audio dropout, at one point the whole game froze with the sound looping for a couple seconds. I I rebooted and the issue was gone.

Only thing I can think of is I had adjusted my nvidia desktop settings, which I haven't done on the admin account yet. I had only done that on the standard user accounts previously. I usually lower gamma a little for my monitor instead of using the "letting apps decide" option. I wonder now if this is causing conflict with sonic studio.

So now i put nvidia settings back to defaults, and letting apps decide and will see what happens. IF I still get the issue after a boot or resume. Then i will just totally uninstall sonic studio and see if I still get the issue.

Amd of I still get the issue after that then I don't know. Must be a hardware issue. I didn't have any issues when using a usb sound card. I might have to go back to that. :(
 
Still getting the problem, but now I have some other ideas. I'm going to disable asmedia and secure boot in bios and see if there is a diff.

I know asus is gonna want to test the board if its not a software issue. And oh god what a headache. But I don't even use any usb 3.0 devices. and wtf is security anyways right?

When reading people with 170 boards aand others in the past complaining, they also had it coincide with usb mouse input. Like i feel it does with my mouse and keyboards. And if changing keyboards and mice and usb ports don't help. Maybe its the asmedia drivers. or maybe secure boot is causing issues after the latest windows patches.

crossing my fingers.
 
didn't work. turned off fastboot, also didn't work. only thing to try now is to clear cmos. But I think I'm just gonna have to go back to the usb soundcard I was using.

I've been reading lots of threads on here and on asus rog forums, about many people complaining about this same very issue. Been a common issue among asus users for years. Seems Asus just has horrible audio driver support. Last asus board I buy.


Well I just cleared my cmos, didn't touch bios and booted up. Also got an idea from this forum to disable fast startup from within windows not bios https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?97220-Maximus-X-Audio-Popping/page12

There is so many threads on this same issue I'm glad its just not me lol.

it just seems like this is such a common issue, that maybe I got lucky with past dell machines and custom gigabyte board builds I had. Because I never had the issue.

After I reset the cmos I'm not having the issue anymore after a resume form sleep when listening to music and browsing. But I still hear the issue when gaming bf1. but only very slightly now because I'm listening hard for it. I'll see fi it gets worse after a while. I checked all the plugs. Not much else I can do, dont think rma the board would help.

Only thing I did not do was reseat the vid card and memory cards. I actually did have to reseat the vid card when I first got this machine to stop random bsod's on windows bootup. I only found out about the fix because of these very forums which is why I'm posting here. Someone with another rog part posted that was the fix for that and sure enough it was. It blew my ming, shout outs to that guy. Was hoping someone would have a fix for this issue. But it seems the only 100% fix for me would be to go back to using the same usb card I was using.
 
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you mean after clearing the cmos? and turning fast boot off in windows? so far... I sleeped a couple times, and rebooted.

But I'm not convinced yet. As I said no more issues listening to music at all... but a very slight, much lessened bit of pops when gaming in bf1. I don't think most people would notice it now. I can live with this, if it lasts. But I'm not convinced yet. Will post back after some more reboots and resumes after some high cpu intensive tasks. I'm going to give it some time.

But as I've said previously, I've now found out even without sonic studio, and even on admin account, even in high performance mode, no matter the drivers. I was getting the problem. Crossing my fingers it was a bios issue that was now cleared. I did update the bios 2 or 3 times since getting the pc. So maybe it got a little messed up and now its fixed. I shall see...
 
ive never seen or heard of a bios update affecting the onboard sound. only thing ive seen is enable/disable in the bios. I still think that the issues are to do with the admin account and maybe a driver issue. if you will to play with it true one of the newer drivers from the link above. and also try other speaker/phones to make sure they are not an issue.
 
I think clearing the cmos and disabling fast boot through windows might of helped things. Bios can affect many things. When I first got this board I had to reseat the vid card after installing windows for mysterious reasons. I was getting random boot bsod BOOT crashes. I had no clue wtf was going on thought i had a piece of bad hardware. I found a post on these very forums explaining that I simply had to reseat the vid card. I coudln't believe it! lol but it worked.

I think this issue I'm having was just a problem with the integrated sound on this board all along but for the first few months I was using a usb card and never realized. And not until playing a game that utilizes very high cpu like bf. But its a common issue. Not even just among Asus users., just more common among them apparenlty...lol

Now I don't have the issue when listening to music after sleep, so slight its unnoticeable in battlefield 1. (unless you are listening very hard for it) But its still a very big problem in Battllefront 2. audio drop outs and hitches.

I think this is because the cpu is also spiking to 100% quite frequently on my 7700k when playing battlefront 2. I was getting a similar issue with BF1 months ago which was causing stutters. It was affecting many other people with the same chip who complained and EA Dice addressed the problem. now the cpu for bf1 stays between 60-80%.

So this might be a game specific issue here, regarding battlefront 2. I can live with this. I will report it to them. But there is a still an underlying issue in general and as games get more demanding I might be forced to buy a usb card in the future. Unlike the 7700k, my b250f is uncommon and less likely to be fixed.

This is a vga light bug I reported that asus recently fixed with the latest bios, but I believe that is because it also affected other models, not just mine. And there no way it could go unoticed. https://hardforum.com/threads/asus-z170-pro- But there still seems to be some resume from sleep issues with my board regarding the supreme fx.


But look at how common this issue is:

https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?44753-RIVBE-SupremeFX-Audio-crackle/page3\

https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?97220-Maximus-X-Audio-Popping/page9

https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthre...270E-wont-Wake-UP-after-Sleep-and-sound-issue

I think what Microsoft and Asus do is just throw their hands up and blame realtek.

EVEN ON DELL!! https://www.dell.com/community/Sput...-suspend-hibernate-on-XPS13-9360/td-p/5169011

And I've had a dell studio xps desktop and never had the issue. I think its a matter of rolling dice whether your integrated sound card is going to work properly or not. It probably doesn't even depend on model. Honestly, I think its probably just a matter of how noticeable any sound or destabilizing issues ares, and thats why most power users never use the integrated sound card. Windows 10 also seems to have way worse drivers.
 
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still happens. its the board. I will have to buy a usb soundcard and see how that is.

updated firmware for my 960 evo and installed samsung nvme drivers. Still have the issue....
 
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richac said:
still happens. its the board. I will have to buy a usb soundcard and see how that is.

updated firmware for my 960 evo and installed samsung nvme drivers. Still have the issue....
Click to expand...

Just curious, did you enable stereo mix in your sound configuration?
 
no I have it disabled, should I enable it?

The problem also is total audio dropouts and stuttering when playing high demanding games. It might be a combination of the realtek and NVME 960 evo drive conflicting. Googling around alot of system have problems sleeping with ssd's nvme's in particular. I updated to the latest firmware for the drive which supposedly fixed windows power issues. Doesn't seem to have helped mine though...

The USB soundcard I was using when I didn't have this issues was a sennheiser gsx 1000. IT also didn't use any software or needed any drivers which may be why I had no issues with it. But who knows. I'm just avoiding using sleep mode and crossing my fingers nothing else goes wrong down the road. Its probably just another bios issue.
 
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