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I own a Intel Core i5 760 CPU based PC. 16Gb of RAM, AMD Radeon HD 7850, Asus Xonar DSX audio card, and a Creative Sound Blaster Sigma headset (with USB audio device). It's just to enumerate all my audio devices. Once again:

  • Realtek chip based on Motherboard (MSI P55-CD53). I almost never use it. It's now disabled from BIOS.
  • Creative Sound Blaster Sigma USB audio device for headset.
  • AMD Radeon HD 7850 (and HD 5670 before that) audio via HDMI
  • Asus Xonar DSX audio via S/PDIF and DTS Connect

All drivers seem to be up to date so I must exclude the possibility that the driver doesn't work properly on Win8.

And no matter what audio device I use, I always get the same problems. The audio works fine for a while, then once every hour or so it gets totally interrupted for 0.5 seconds or so, then it continues for 0.5 seconds, then stops again, and like this for 3-4 seconds. It's very annoying.

The stream is not interrupted, it continues to play when it's not audible, so it's not a read buffer issue. Something like this:
00:00:00 - 00:54:14 - audible
00:54:14 - 00:54:15 - inaudible
00:54:15 - 00:54:16 - audible
00:54:16 - 00:54:17 - inaudible
00:54:17 - 00:54:18 - audible
00:54:18 - 00:54:19 - inaudible
00:54:19 - 02:15:07 - audible
then the pattern repeats itself

I surfed the net for solutions, but all links lead to dead ends. One solution I tried was running bcdedit /set disabledynamictick yes as administrator. It had no positive effect, but I have the subjective perception that the stutters became more frequent since I ran that.

Update
With LatencyMon I've discovered very high latency with most drivers. I searched more, and found it might be because of HPET, so I turned it off in BIOS. The latency improved for most drivers, but occasionally tcpip.sys will give a 40ms latency, and that's where the audio stutters. I've updated to the latest network drivers, but unfortunately there aren't any for Windows 8 specifically, so I'm relying on compatibility with Win7.

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  • looks like you have DPC issues. Trace them with xperf: msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=140263 Apr 17, 2013 at 17:15
  • Thanks. I've started the logging tool. Also uninstalled DaemonTools for now, because if the author mentioned that case (SPTD, of which I was using the latest version), it must be kind of frequent. I'll see if it helps.
    – Alex
    Apr 18, 2013 at 14:18
  • I've disabled HPET from BIOS, and the DPC timers got much lower, however I still get a high DPC Latency (and the occasional sound stutter) from time to time, caused by tcpip.sys. I've updated to the latest drivers, but the MSI website only offers drivers for Windows 7, not Windows 8. msi.com/product/mb/P55-CD53.html So the stuttering continues and I have ran out of ideas.
    – Alex
    Apr 21, 2013 at 8:27
  • upload the ETL file, so that I can take a look at it. Apr 21, 2013 at 18:55

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