So I hope whoever has this laptop and a FW interface can find this

So this Dell G7 7590 is a PITA to set up for audio. Few things to do.

1. Uninstall everything Dell related. Double check in services.msc for any Dell stuff and disable it.
2. Remove the Intel thermal platform thing from device manager. There is a way for it to not come back after uninstall. Google it.
3. Stay in BIOS 1.11. After that, Intel disabled undervolt so your computer is going to throttle. Guaranteed.
4. Apply a healthy undervolt. Lots of guides on how to do that. I use throttlestop.
5. Now into DPC. In my case, anything that is not OHCI legacy controller for 1394 is getting horrible performance. I am using apple TB to FW adapter and the TB2 to TB3 adapter. Windows detects it as an LSI adapter. Do not use that. Use legacy controller. Update driver and say choose from your computer and then use the legacy one.
6. Make sure your bios is set to let TB devices with no security and to use native enumeration. I tried it all and if using BIOS enum, I would get a ****load of DPC spikes.
7. Use a utility called MSI_util v3. Set Hd audio driver to use MSI mode and not line mode. Just tick the MSI box. Do not freak out.

Now forget about all this computer crap and get back to making music. My DPCs stay around 1ms. I just taxed this setup stupidly heavy by playing a game, uninstalling a program and running reaper at the same time. Attached is the graphical proof.

Enjoy.

What's the app/utility you're measuring the latency with ?

Windows performance recorder. Then open the file in windows performance analyzer. Go to computing and select DPC box.

Latency monitor is also an option but I have found it does not go as deep and sometimes it is misleading. Documented in some forums.

Windows Performance Recorder and Windows Performance Analyzer can be found in the Windows 10 ADK (Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit) download.

There's version to match each windows build version eg 2004, 1903, etc

The Windows Performance Tookit is the only part of a ADK you need and can be selected during install.

Alright updates on this. Few things that I left out of the equation last time.

I reactivated ethernet adapters and everything went to hell. So I spent 2 days fixing it. Here is my findings, so you make more music and forget suffering.
Network adapters should have every option related to saving energy, off. Both wifi and lan.
In your Ethernet adapter options in device manager there is also one option to turn off energy saving. Do it. Turn it off. Also do not DO NOT do not install Killer drivers. I installed realtek drivers for the ethernet on what should be a Killer E2500 supposedly. They are the same thing, looks like. It is dated 12/31/2020, V. 10.46.1231.2020. Filename as downloaded from realtek is Install_Win10_10046_01212021. Extract the file with winrar and point indows to the files with the have disk option.

Alright time to stop fighting computers and get back to pitches and emotions.

Just set up an i7-1165G7 32GB 1TB XPS 13 9310 here.

This is what has helped me

Clean install (make sure to download the killer wi-fi drivers to a USB drive first, because on this XPS model the generic windows wifi drivers do not work)

Uninstall Dell Support Assist and Dell Power Manager. There was a related service called Dell Data Vault that was causing a ton of latency, and disappeared when I uninstalled Support Assist. Can temporarily reinstall if we ever want to check for updates that Windows Update misses.

Disable C-Step and Turboboost in Bios

Disable integrated audio devices not being used (Realtek in this case)

edit, Pete Brown says this will not affect the signal chain in DAW: Uninstall Waves MaxxAudio and Disable Signal Enhancement (right click speaker in system tray>Advanced tab>uncheck "enable audio enhancements"

In that same window, Communications tab > "When windows detects communications activity > do nothing.

edit, The following appears on a lot of lists but is according to Pete Brown counterproductive for DAW use, so ymmv: Set Performance to Background Processes (control panel>system>advanced system settings>advanced tab> background services)

In Device Manager, right click all USB devices>Power Management>uncheck "allow the computer to turn off this device to save power."

Disable System Sounds

And I uninstalled every app I don't use. I think I uninstalled the Killer Suite.

Also just running LatencyMon or HWinfo or other monitoring tools, seems to increase latency & skipping.

Few more details from my side:

Windows 10x64 1809. Disabled updates.
Uninstalled everything related to Intel Dynamic thermal platform. There is a way to uninstall those devices an have them remain uninstalled with a registry edit.

I use throttlestop to control my cpu. If I disable turbo, I get better performance as well.

Good comments about the Killer stuff earlier. That is death for DAWs.

On this one: why stop at 1809? Not sure how many plugins you run, but our change to the FLS slot allocation is in 1903 and later.

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/windo...in-windows-10/

Pete

Thanks for chiming in, Pete

Reason is I am scared of having issues because of updates. Specially related to firewire and thunderbolt. I am running a TC Electronic Konnekt 48 via thunderbolt adapters and reading threads like this:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...ba25ad0?auth=1 I am only listing this one but found plenty. Makes me freak out. Do you think it would not be an issue? So far, no problems with FLS.

I do not know if it is possible but if there is something I would ask Microsoft is to be very supportive of firewire. Simple reason being that thunderbolt basically enabled tons of users to keep using their (often high end and expensive) firewire interfaces. In fact big names like RME, Motu, Universal Audio, still sell the firewire versions of their best units. I read about Microsoft improving the FW driver in Windows 7. Somehow. Please correct me if I am wrong, but after that ver complicated read, I understood that work can still be done to improve stability, and compatibility with devices, specially when talking DPCs, IRQs, MSI and stuff like that.

Thanks for the info.

I've spoken to the team lately, and they haven't touched the Firewire driver in ages. But there have been reports of issues being caused external to that. I'm not sure what caused them, but in most cases that I saw, reinstalling fixed it.

I get the concern, though. If you rely on Firewire, it's touchy. I can't give you a definitive "it will still work".

The improvements to the driver back in Windows 7 were actually worse for pro audio (they were more for cameras and drives), which is why folks often have to use the "legacy" driver instead.

I'd love to say that we're supportive of further Firewire work, but there's no interest in investing in further firewire support. Unfortunately. It just never took off in a big way on Windows, so when Apple deprecated it, it pretty much put the last nail in the coffin.

Even among musicians it's a small segment. I used to run a firewire interface myself (MOTU). I know that doesn't help you or the other musicians still using Firewire today.

I haven't tested any firewire devices with TB3, however. I know that is hit & miss for folks as well, and will depend on the device. For example:
https://support.presonus.com/hc/en-u...ewire-devices-

Pete

Funny enough, today I installed Killer drivers via Windows Update and the thing is working. My interface is good. All is nice. Still in 1809 tho.

I guess the only way to update windows for music machines is to install something like Acronis True Image and run a full backup before updating. If anything goes south, you can go back. I guess you can do the same with windows restore, but I have had several ocassions where a mesagge saying that it could not restore killed all.

I did a full system image in case I have any issues and installed Windows 10 20H2 from ISO (regular update did not work), with high hopes. Even after changing to Legacy firewire drivers I get random sample rate and also buffer changes, as many forums reported.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...8bd0354?page=1

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...ba25ad0?page=1

One of the users in those forums reported this: "I have found that on updates 1903 and 1909, (whichever of the two), if I go and uninstall the update then my audio F/W interface works correctly on Buffer sizes and Sampling rates."

Focusrite told people to stay on 1806: Saffire Pro 40 Firewire crashes on Windows 10

Well, I find all this interesting because it looks like it is not a driver issue but something related to audio device management, like it is managing the device more aggresively and changing samplerate.

Since I could not upgrade to 1909 via regular means due to update error (I ran the update troubleshooter tool), can not uninstall KB453068.

Maybe you guys could take a look at it? Maybe see what changed in that update to 1903 and KB453068, maybe release a hotfix or patch so we could upgrade. That would be awesome.

Here is how the behavior looks:

Alright gonna continue this blog type thread:

I found that a firewire cable/connection was also intermittent. Changed the cable and getting zero dropouts on 1809. I can not say I totally attribute the issues to this but now I have my doubts for certain. I will probably wait till 21H1 to try a new update.

I can confidently say that 20H2 felt way faster in my system. Other than that, did not perceive any difference.

I should start a blog or something

Most of the woes went away by just disbling C1E in ThrottleStop. Happy!
I can even have TurboBoost enabled and things go buttery. Not even one crackle.

Although there are many threads on the subject, this closed thread that I referenced before contains useful information.
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...?auth=1&page=1
It seems the audio issues are nor firewire specific, (some people mentioned that they have issues also over USB). Which means that drivers are probably fine.

There is something else, internally messing with audio, that started in 19xx versions.

Pete, do you have any light on this subject?

In other forum and private reports here, it turned out that uninstalling and reinstalling the vendor driver seemed to fix the issue, so I haven't investigated further.

Pete

Thanks for the answer. In my case, I did a clean install of 20H2, so driver was just fresh. Did something audio-related changed in the mentioned revisions?

From the reports, I'm assuming *something* changed which has impacted these.

However, it was not in the audio stack (which wouldn't impact ASIO anyway), nor was it any change in the Firewire code, which hasn't been touched in a while.

I just don't have enough data to make sense of what is going on, and where the impact is coming from (hardware/driver/windows/something else)

Pete

Hi, Pete. I reported this in the "Windows 11 is rolling out..." thread but probably did not see it since did not write a reply, so I'll copy paste what I wrote there (with minor changes):

Coming from this threads:
How I set up a dell G7 7590 windows 10 x64 with 1394 firewire TC Konnekt 48 for good DPC performance

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...ba25ad0?page=4

For some reason, my firewire audio interfaces are working again, rock solid. (TC StudioKonnekt 48 which I was using only via ADAT as monitor controller, Konnekt Live and M-Audio ProFire 610, all DICE II chipset based) I am running W11 22H2, build 22621.2715

Something changed recently in windows that makes the audio sample ratio not change randomly like it did from W10 1903 on. I had to replace my old audio interface because of that and spend a hefty amount of money. Never dropped the old one since I liked it a lot and in hopes that Microsoft would ever fix it (even without intention?). Do not know exactly when it changed but for sure is less than 4 months since the change.

Maybe timing can help out identify the issue? I know FW audio is not going to be supported but at least it does not have to be broken.

There are still tons of perfectly fine FW audio interfaces out there and too much electronic waste in in this beautiful planet to keep polluting and superconsuming, just because of small-big issues like this. Hope that invoking Microsoft environmental mission, this could be something in the list?

Thanks. I did see this in the other forum, but it reads like it's all working for you, so I'm not sure what the question is. Can you clarify?

Pete

Yes, Pete. Something changed in windows so that the latest versions do work fine again. Whilst I'm not asking explicitly for firewire support, at least identifying what broke it before / fixed now would be important so not to break it again and people can keep using their interfaces, since is definitely windows related.

Understood.

Unfortunately, I can't get anyone to look at firewire stuff, especially if they need to go out of their way to do so. It's just not a priority. AFAICT there's no team set up to investigate, and no usable trace scripts set up to capture firewire events.

Pete

Alright, Pete. Thanks for chiming in. I hope it just keeps working like always did before 1903.

Hi there Barbaroja,
very interesting post. I'm still having a lot of issues with my Konnekt48 (W10) Mostly the PC doesn't see it when I turn it on so I have to turn the TC K48 on an off several time. Sometimes it goes to bsod and need to restart the whole thing. Did you experience these kind of problems too, or was it just the random changes of sample rate ? (mine does that, also) I keep pushing back w11 update cause I was scared that it could be the last nail on my Konnekt coffin, but now your post gave me new hope. I really love the Konnekt48 , it has everything I need, but it has really become painful and so time consuming to use it. Having to fight 20 minutes every time you turn on Cubase before being able to work its a big big big turn off. Cheers

Try some tweaks.
Attention, you can not enable MSI(Message Signaled-Based Interrupts) for FireWire, old USB 2
controller and old SATA/WiFi.
If you wish, post a screenshot of the MSI screen here.

Thank you Pictus for the suggestions, lots of things to read, many I knew, many I didn't.
But most of all, I checked the power scheme which I already had changed and it seems that Windows has pulled one of his classic tricks on me and set it back to "balanced" after one of the updates. So first thing first, I set that up again following the guide. Let's see if it helps.

Hi, 7shadow. Common issue with fw units is that you have to turn them on before your PC or before connecting the port. Just an odd quirk. Otherwise, in my case never had bsod issues. I'd try a spare drive and do a fresh W11 install and see if it works. If it does, I'd slowly migrate all my stuff, I can't afford not to operate the studio if anything goes bad.

Your bsod symptoms could be system specific, tho. Only way to know is to try.