Audio pops and clicks - ACPI latency - Wdf01000.sys latency - The result and the solution

[MAO-FHO]

Hi all,
This post follows the discussion started in October 2022 which you can find on the following link:
https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Audio/Audio-pops-and-clicks-ACPI-latency-Wdf01000-sys-latency...

Hi all,
This post follows the discussion started in October 2022 which you can find on the following link:
https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Audio/Audio-pops-and-clicks-ACPI-latency-Wdf01000-sys-latency...

In this post, as a reminder, my situation was as follows:
I used the Presonus Studio 68 C audio card with Cubase Artist 12 and vst + Band in a Box on a Lenovo C930 under windows 10 without ever having encountered any audio problems (no crackling, no latency, etc.). The C930 is now 4 years old, equipped with an 8th generation i7, 16GB of DDR4 Ram, integrated graphics chipset and SSD.

For personal reasons and power (it could from time to time appear that the C930 was at its limits with important projects), I acquired a much more powerful PC: the HP 16 Envy: i9 12th generation, 32 GB DDR5 Ram, 2 TB ultra-fast SSD Nvme, Nvdia Gforce RTX 3060 graphics card.

Alas, despite its power vs. the C930, I always got crackles despite the fact that the Presonus audio hardware was not involved. The only solution I had was to use Asio4All instead of Presonus drivers, but Asio4all is not multi-client.

Despite my contacts with HP and their help, impossible to find the solution. Ditto on the side of Presonus, unable to give me a solution despite all the optimizations made on the HP. And according to my discoveries on the web, I am not the only one to have experienced these problems (and therefore today the solution which in my opinion could well save the situation for many people, even if it is not is not an HP).

Completely idle about the problem, I decided to sell the HP. But I had the following idea: Query the AI, query ChatGPT 4 for which I have a subscription and ask it to help me find the solution. 1 hour after the beginning of the discussion with this tool... I had the solution! I no longer have any cracking, no more 'pops', everything works wonderfully and icing on the cake, no particular optimization is to be done on the HP, including the use of the NVIDIA graphics card (which I dedicate moreover specifically to the display of Cubase 12 and BandInABox in parallel applications or in VST).

The solution: the Alimentation Power Plan! Ok... I knew that this point could be related to my problems and you can imagine that I had fully optimized this parameter. YES but: HP seems to restrict access to High Performance mode... to put it simply, impossible to actually configure a High Performance power mode on this machine through the user interface.

GPT4 therefore offered me to use the small software ThrottleStop 9.5 from TeckPowerUp. This small program is, among other things, capable of unlocking and configuring a High Performance power supply mode with the additional possibility, however, of limiting the use of processors to maintain a maximum temperature of 50 degrees (it is configurable), of so as to remain within the usage limits defined by HP in the other power supply modes.

Once this software is installed... the results are simply breathtaking! There are no other words... Non-existent latency, incredible real-time processing (including in HyperTreading) (to tell you, in Cubase's performance controller, the 3 parameters observed in real time do not exceed never the first bar, and again, they very rarely reach it), no more cracks, pops, red zones, etc. So happy with the result, I tried to push the whole thing to its maximum... it still responds now to the finger and the eye without problem (example in passing: multitrack real-time audio processing and effects: absolutely imperceptible shift live.).

So ! a long post but which I hope will open a door of solution for those who like me have had a hard time. And I have no doubt that ThrottleStop 9.5 will succeed in solving similar problems on other PCs. (ps: I have no commercial link with TeckPowerUp!

The link to download ThrottleStop 9.5:
https://www.techpowerup.com/download/techpowerup-throttlestop/

Last precision, once your high performance power plan and any parameters you have set (such as the maximum temperature for the processors as mentioned above), you will no longer need the software. The newly created power plan will remain available, activatable or not, in your PC.

Enjoy!