Microsoft explains Windows Vista sound glitches
While we have now far more advance operating system and CPU architectures, there are still cases in which advanced Vista-based PCs may produce glitches, especially when it comes to playing music, and Microsoft has now come up with a good explanation.
In a post on Windows Vista blog, Steve Ball, senior program manager for sound in Windows Vista, has explained that advanced PCs may sometimes have trouble seamlessly playing back music because Windows is multi-tasking.
With Windows, you can run media player, word processor, virus detector, data compressors and decompressor, backup manager and many other po simultaneously.
In running multiple tasks simultaneously, “unavoidable resource conflicts do sometimes occur between the huge and diverse ecosystem of Windows hardware that enables these tasks. Even on the most expensive, brand-new machine, occasional glitches can occur if and when the system attempts to divide its finite resources among these multiple, diverse, independent, power-hungry activities,” Ball said.
But unlike most other tasks, digital media processing, which include playing back music, is time-sensitive. This means a glitch could occur when a deadline for time-sensitive processing is missed.
In Windows Vista, playing back music involves “work” that must be done at lease every 10 milliseconds so that there can be a continuous stream of music out to your speaker. If the task of playing back music is interrupted by another competing task, the processing of its time sensitive data is missed and then the user might hear a glitch in the music playback.
Some known sources of glitches include CPU starvation, GPU starvation, resource contention from devices and drivers, network devices, and bugs.
Obviously, this type of glitch may seem difficult to eliminate completely. However, Ball has promised to share its knowledge on how it handles known sources of potential sound glitches in Windows Vista in a future post. We’ll just keep you posted.
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March 25th, 2008
typical microsoft BS. This wonderful OS known as “vista” is so advanced but it cannot run music. I would accept Steve Ball’s excuse if no other OS ran music smoothly, but the fact is even window 97 did so. Mircosoft yet again proved that they cannot be trusted until at least the second generation on any product, yet we all continue to line Bill Gate’s pocket with our cash for his crappy product. Nicely done, your VISTA really sucks – I can honestly say I will never purchase another MS operating system.
March 28th, 2008
In running multiple tasks simultaneously, “unavoidable resource conflicts do sometimes occur between the huge and diverse ecosystem of Windows hardware that enables these tasks. Even on the most expensive, brand-new machine, occasional glitches can occur if and when the system attempts to divide its finite resources among these multiple, diverse, independent, power-hungry activities,” Ball said.
That’s hilarious in the light that every other desktop OS has been able to play sound just fine while running other tasks for the past 20 years, including Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows 2003, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, OS-X, Linux, Unix, etc. How does this in ANY way excuse Vista from having these problems?
Does Mr. Ball live in some time warp of reality? Sounds like he is, pun intended, dropping the “Ball” if he’s the guy in charge of sound.
April 16th, 2008
Good thread, i like these tips, its looks that i knew just small part.
February 5th, 2009
Steve Ball, senior program manager for sound in Windows Vista ? He should be Steve Ball drawing unemployment after being fired for gross incompetance.
Everything about Vista sound is attrocious even down to the Windows sounds themselves, plug a set of headphones into an XP machine, go to the sounds settings and listen to each of the default Windows sounds the beeps and ring etc all sound clean and clear, do the same on a Vista machine and you will hear tiny click, then the expected sound then another tiny click, this causes the default Vista explorer click to become a extremely annoying crunch made up of two sound glitch clicks as well as the real one.
If his department cannot even get the default windows vista operating system sound scheme to sound clean, then its hardly suprising playback and recording quality on Vista is equally as poor and for him to claim poor quality Vista sound is due to busy CPU, time sensetive applications and various other conflicts is pure drivel concocted by him to cover for his position as senior inept program manager for sound.
The reality is, take 2 machines one running XP, one running Vista put both CPUs under the same amount of load by running extra tasks on the XP machine and compare the sound for sound glitches and you will not get them on the XP machine because Steve the blame everything else for his own ineptitude Ball, was not Senior program manager for sound for Windows XP.