Voicemeeter Banana - Audio pops/clicks, system stutter after Win 10 v2004 update

The Virtual Audio Mixer discussions and support...
Vincent Burel
Site Admin
Posts: 2008
Joined: Sun Jan 17, 2010 12:01 pm

Re: Voicemeeter Banana - Audio pops/clicks, system stutter after Win 10 v2004 update

Post by Vincent Burel »

well, it is possible that Microsoft introduced again a bug preventing to run real time audio process correctly,
remember the memory bug we pointed out in january 2018 producing cut in the sound: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=519

The problem is that Microsoft does not have real interest in audio, so does not validate this part as it should as we also explained it in this article:
https://www.facebook.com/notes/vb-audio ... 880540508/

so, the only things to do is to wait for another update or try to re-install all from scratch... sometimes it works...
HOWIEC
Posts: 12
Joined: Mon Apr 30, 2018 5:44 am

Re: Voicemeeter Banana - Audio pops/clicks, system stutter after Win 10 v2004 update

Post by HOWIEC »

Yeah, pretty unfortunate that MS doesn't address that.

You'd think that MS could try to offer something like "configs / profiles" or at the very least general guides/instructions (for common settings or more) that can help tune the system for different modes of user applications (gaming, audio production, etc.) and design and tune the underlying architecture accordingly.

I ran the WIN10 Memory Management Stress Test for almost 6min on v1909 (build 18363.900) WITH Voicemeeter Banana running and highest value was 0.07ms.

I'm only guessing that it might be higher on v2004 if it aligns with the highest ISR latency per LatencyMon...
Vincent Burel
Site Admin
Posts: 2008
Joined: Sun Jan 17, 2010 12:01 pm

Re: Voicemeeter Banana - Audio pops/clicks, system stutter after Win 10 v2004 update

Post by Vincent Burel »

0.07ms is very good... but this bug is expected to be corrected...
however you should make the test on several hours (24h) to get a significant measure...
we consider it's good up to 2.5 ms

Anayway, if you still have strange problem with audio, we recommend to re-install out our audio virtual drivers / voicemeeter - step by step as it is described in this topic/message #2: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=451
theslickmeister
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Jun 12, 2020 1:43 pm

Re: Voicemeeter Banana - Audio pops/clicks, system stutter after Win 10 v2004 update

Post by theslickmeister »

I just wanted to say that I experienced exactly the same thing when upgrading to Win 10 v2004. I have pretty vanilla VM setup (standard install + virtual devices) and when I upgraded to v2004 I started hearing contstant pops/click over the audio too. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling VM (with reboots whenever prompted) but nothing fixed it, as a last resort I rolled back the v2004 update and everything was working fine again.

There's definitely some audio latency change in v2004 which is affecting VM users. My worry is that users finding VM products for the first time that already have v2004 installed are going to think it's a bad product because of this. I love VM and don't want it to be affected negatively by the change in windows.

P.S. Just to clarify somethingin HOWIEC's post above, he tested v1909 and got 0.07ms (not v2004), they (and I) suspect it's much worse under v2004, thanks.
Vincent Burel
Site Admin
Posts: 2008
Joined: Sun Jan 17, 2010 12:01 pm

Re: Voicemeeter Banana - Audio pops/clicks, system stutter after Win 10 v2004 update

Post by Vincent Burel »

yes, but i think the problem is not the memory stress test or real time capabilities.

todays 99.99% of windows audio problems come from the audio driver installation procedure (merging audio driver together and completely breaking the audio stack) as we explained in the topic: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=442
theslickmeister
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Jun 12, 2020 1:43 pm

Re: Voicemeeter Banana - Audio pops/clicks, system stutter after Win 10 v2004 update

Post by theslickmeister »

OK, I've spent the last 4hrs tring to get to the bottom of the v2004 issues I've been having - I thought I'd take another stab at updating to Win10 v2004, and also following all the steps outlined here regarding unplugging of devices and uninstalling/rebooting piece by piece...
viewtopic.php?t=442

Sufficied to say, that it didn't fix the issue - or moreover, it seemed to fix the issue initially after I'd uninstalled everything and reinstalled voicemeeter, but then when I started reinstalling virtual audio devices again the problem would reappear.

I managed to figure out that if you have any of the voicemeeter virtual cables setup as WDM in ANY if the HARDWARE OUT ports in voicemeeter, that you get distortion/crackling on all HARDWARE OUT ports, even those that don't have a virtual cable setup to them - those that go straight to hardware produce the same crackling affect. I susect that Windows 10 v2004 has updated their WDM driver and it's no longer compatible with voicemeeter.

However, as a workaround you can set the virtual cables to use KS instead of WDM in HARDWARE OUT and they appear to then work correctly - without the crackling noise. I'm not sure at this point if there's any downside to using KS over WDM, but it seems fine atm. I hope that someone else find this post and it helps them too.
xcasxcursex
Posts: 173
Joined: Tue Feb 18, 2020 12:04 am

Re: Voicemeeter Banana - Audio pops/clicks, system stutter after Win 10 v2004 update

Post by xcasxcursex »

Sorry to kind of necro this, but this is how often I need to visit the forum ;)

I feel like the above post deserves some attention. Since there have been a small handful of people complaining of crackling in 2004, which doesn't effect most people, perhaps this observation that it is specific to using the virtual cables in WDM mode, might be the distinguishing factor for the people who have problems?
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