SOLVED: ASIO output "choppy" on WIndows 11

Gear
1

Hello my friends,

today I had an issue with very choppy ASIO out audio. It drove me absolutely mad!

Yesterday, everything worked perfectly, today I could not play anything through my computer. No music, no bass, nothing.

Checked Windows, drivers, apps. Reinstalled the ASIO driver. Took me two hours.

Nothing worked.

Then I looked at the USB cable connecting my Notebook to my Motu M4 audio interface.

It was very close to my QC3.0 USB Ports Multi Ports Charger that has a wireless charging feature. So I put my BlitzWolf 868H (yes, it really is called BLITZ Wolf!) away, and everything went back to normal.

If anybody has the same issue: look for QC3.0 devices near your cables!

EDIT: potentially, modern USB cables with built-in chips also cause issues. See below…
EDIT 2: to get rid of even the slightest noise, I additionally put the carger on another wall socket.

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yeah, interference is a big deal. Often when someone complains about “noisy pickups” the actual problem is “really EMF-noisy home electronics”.

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I really learned something today. Over the years I had all kinds of noises in devices: hum, hiss, clicking, crackling, distortions.

But this was really new to me! I was 100 % convinced it’s buffer size.

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That’s really common too of course :slight_smile:

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USBs can be really noisy. If I plug my cordless mouse receiver into a USB socket next to something busy, like a heavily used external hard drive USB, the mouse receiver starts getting really erratic. Took me ages to figure out the cause. I kept changing the mouse batteties etc. To no avail.

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Even though the clean power station?

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No amount of power filtering will help, say, a PC with a glass side case that is basically beaming out electromagnetic interference. Many pickups will pick this up. I have even had this happen with humbuckers.

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Oh yes that happens to me a few times.

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I can get my J pickups to hum along to my PC accessing a SSD, much less a hard drive :rofl:

It’s amazing how much EM radiation that home electronics can generate.

It also makes me happy to have moved my music production back to my mac. Of course that’s in addition to MacOS being like 10 times nicer for daily use than Windows IMO :slight_smile:

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If you look closely at the picture I posted at “Show us your practice space”, you’ll see my Belkin PF30 powerconditioner.

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I have three of them - totally unnecessary in Germany, as the power grid is almost perfect.

It has (of course) no effect on electromagnetic waves from devices that are near a USB cable. I found out the hard way ^^

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Yes it’s actually the very high frequencies of the signals going through the computer bus, USBs, screen cables etc. Not to mention the bluetooth’s, WiFi etc.

You could really only fix this by putting all your computer kit in a Faraday cage!

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Or I’ll just play in a faraday cage :slight_smile:

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@howard to the resuce :slight_smile:

I still had some crackling and dropouts, even when putting some distance between the USB cable and the USB Ports Multi Ports Charger.

Like any nerd, I have quite a cable collection and always try to use the best cable possible. In this case the best might have been the worst.

I used a 3m USB-C cable, specifically this one:

https://www.amazon.com/Transfer-Monitor-Compatible-Thunderbolt3-MonitorDisplay/dp/B093H88QH6?ref_=ast_sto_dp&th=1

The description says: “USBC to USBC lead built-in 56Ω Pull-up Resistor and 24AWG thick copper cores to ensure loading safety. The E-marker Chip automatically adjusts the current and ensures charging your device”

I think that might be the issue, as I tried a normal USB-C 2.0 cable without any chips and that works flawlessly!

Do you have a theory?

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Could be the higher power and data rate of USB3 over the USB-C. USB2 is much lower power and much slower.

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My theory is that the chip itself might switch sometimes, possibly between high and low power mode.

I am using chipless cables only now for audio interfaces…