Audio stutters or sounds timestretched when CPU activity increases

Hi all,

For the last few weeks, whilst playing music/videos on my Sony Vaio laptop, the sound flickers and stutters when the CPU activity increases or when there is hard drive activity (for example, when I load another program). This is obviously causing some form of interference with the sound. It never used to do this before; audio playback used to continute to sound smooth and uninterrupted whilst I was using the laptop for other things. Disabling services and statup processes reduced the problem, but that was only because there was less for the system to execute, therefore less processing activity, but this isnt really a solution. It is as if there must be nothing running at all in order to achieve continuing seamless playback.
The sound card uses RealTek audio drivers, which I have obtained from the Sony Vaio website.
(OS: WinXP Service Pack 1 - might I need service pack 2?)

Cheers,
Tristan

OMG i have the same problem!
I was searching for a thread exactly like this. I'm running a SB Live external sound card through my IBM thinkpad, but it's not the sound card's fault. I know this for sure, since it happens when I use the onboard audio as well. It happens mostly when I "Right click" items on the desktop, but also happens whenever the light for the CPU blinks. PLEASE HELP, as I'm losing hope.
-James

Any news on what the fix is for this?
I too have sony laptop and the sound has gone funny ie flickers/ stutters when active hard disk activity

using win xp sp2
Please help need to watch DVD film uninterupted

Well, for starters, you guys might want to take a look at THIS article. If you would like to try this procedure, click on the link in #1 under QUICK SOLUTION and let me know if this helps. There are other things you can do to help alleviate the problem, but try the above procedure first and post back.

 

 *UPDATED ON 12-4-07*: The link I originally provided has expired. Use the link Krawlspace has provided below!

 *UPDATED ON 11-5-08*: I have replaced the expired link with the correct link (above). Also, it has been reported that the solution will not run if you are using Firefox. I recommend that you use Internet Explorer when running this program.

So it has been 7 days now since I responded to your posts. Did any of you THREE GUYS get any results? C'mon now...someone?

Hey! This actually worked. I have had my sony vaio for less than a year, and have been dealing with the stuttering since it was about 3 months old. I followed the instructions in your post and it is fixed!!!

THANK YOU!!!

You're very welcome! Glad it worked for you.

 I was in the process of repairing a friends HP laptop, typical malware flush, and all was good except for the stuttering sound.

It happened on startup, when playing MP3 files, WAV files, or any removable media.

This narrowed it to the HD.

The only common link to the problem was the HD activity light was on when the stuttering occured.

I had read on several forums about the DMA/PIO switch, and had tried to reset it several times from Device Manager, only to have it revert right back to PIO every time.

My next step was to wipe and reinstall XP, but then I found this wonderful thread, and the link to the even more wonderful little piece of script.

Ran it, rebooted, problem solved.

Many thanks to Super Dave for the link.

BTW the link he provides in his post is about to die according to it's redirect page, so here is the new link to the overview page, and the direct link to the script page.

Thank YOU for updating the link, Krawlspace!

Ahhh... this is downright heart-warming.   Good to see you guys all learning from each other, getting around this issue.  And WELCOME to you new members here!  I've never seen such activity from new registered users in a thread before.  Thanks SuperDave and all!

 I have had the same studdering problem on an Acer notebook with XP SP2 as well as a load of other similar problems that have greatly slowed my computer and could not be fixed by wiping the drive.  This did the trick.  THANK YOU!

 Holy cow, this actually worked!!!  I was about to do a whole reformat tomorrow and then I found this thread, ran the "quick fix" and it's fine now.  Even Sony tech support didn't bring this up.  This site rocks...thank you "truly-super" Dave!  You saved me a whole lot of time.  I am shocked, amazed and incredibly pleased this problem is solved!  Hail the power of the internet search!

Rock on fellow former stutterers!

gsouth575:

 Holy cow, this actually worked!!! 

Glad to hear it worked for you, gsouth. We have a lot of fun here on the HotHardware forum, and you're welcome to post with us anytime!

I found this site through a Google search as I have just started having this problem, but it perseveres! I've tried the PIO to DMA change, I had one drive that had dropped to a lower DMA, but none in PIO mode. I changed it back to BIOS control. It didn't help. So I uninstalled the IDE controller, it reinstalled on boot up, but the stutter under HDD activity still occurs. Does anyone have any other ideas what could cause it?

Hello slappy, and welcome to HotHardware. If you haven't already done so, run some adware/spyware removal programs and see if you have any unwelcome visitors on your system. At the very least run Malwarebytes Anti-Malware that you can get HERE, and Spybot Search & Destroy available HERE. I have some questions for you: 1)When you call up the Task Manager (ctrl + alt + delete) what is your CPU-usage percentage and how many processes are running? 2)What are the specs of your system? 3)What OS are you running? 4)Has this stuttering just recently started, or has it been there from Day-1? 5)What are you attempting to run that causes the stutter (i.e. DVD, YouTube or streaming-video, MP3 file, etc.)?

 I had the problem on my newly built workstation. My search for 'audio stutter' led me to HH. I found my solution at http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic34331.html as follows"

"I had a simillar problem with my machine before. Are you by any chance running a Promise or Maxtor Ultra drive controller card? If so, in device manager, under SCSI and RAID controllers, open the entry for the card and in the properties tab uncheck the box that says "Pass Windows flush-drive-cache commands to disk drives"."

Canceling that checkbox resolved the stuttering problem. It never noticed it using the same ATA133 controller in my Dell Poweredge, but on my new Asus build, it was an issue with all Flash video streams. Hope this helps!

Thanks for getting back Super Dave, this forum seems a nice place to be, I think i'm going to enjoy it!! I think I may have solved the problem. I have recently started using a wireless adaptor, but the extension cable that was plugged into the back ofthe PC - for some reason - decieded not to detect the adaptor. As a quick fix I plugged the adaptor direct into a front USB slot and THIS WAS THE PROBLEM. I think it was because either the 'slave' sound cable to the front of the case is close to the USB slots where the adaptor is, or because teh adaptor was now close to the HDD inside the case. Either way it wasn't actually the HDD activity that was caused the stuttering, it was the wireless adaptor interfering. I figured it out when watching a mpeg movie which started to stutter, and just had the idea to unlplug the wireless, the stuttering stopped. I have fixed the extension cable problem, and all is well. I write this as advice to others. Just for info, my PC is XP SP2, AMD Athlon 64 3000, 1gb DDR RAM self build (about 2 years old). Just upgraded GPU to nVidia 8800GT. The stuttering was on almost anything: film, mp3, streaming, internet sounds etc.

It is very good to hear that you have solved your problem, slappy, although I am struggling to understand WHY. If unplugging the wireless did it then so be it, and I am very happy for you! I invite you to hang-out with us here on HotHardware, as I have learned a lot by hanging-out here myself! Although I have visited other forums, only HotHardware has shown itself to be flame-free, and I like that! 

 

Thank you thank you thank you slappy!

I've been having the exact same problems for months now, every now and then tried to fix it by searching for solutions on the internet. Nothing has worked, and I haven't had a clue as to what was causing these incredibly annoying stutters...until I read your post and tried unplugging the wireless adapter. Gone are all the stuttering audio and video, but...

There's still one problem, though. It doesn't matter which USB I plug the adapter back into. As long as it's connected I have the stutters, and I have to use the wireless since the computer and the router are on different floors of the house. Do you guys think that the problem is that the adapter is to close to the computer physically and that some kind of extension USB cable placing the wireless adapter a few metres away could fix this?

autobahnmessiah:

Do you guys think that the problem is that the adapter is to close to the computer physically and that some kind of extension USB cable placing the wireless adapter a few metres away could fix this?

 

More likely it is a wireless software/driver issue. I have seen other forum posts concerning certain wireless adapters that cause the stuttering problem you have described. HERE is a good example.