We have many systems with x99, and really had some big trouble since last summer. I really tried to figure out what is going on, and i'm working on a fix. For now we use dual systems, which both output the program to NDI to a third system, where we can quickly switch in case of problems. Also we now do backuprecordings of audio in a tascam recorder, in order to fix audio problems afterwards.
The main problem is the system losing connection to the soundcard, which results in massive sample drops and eventually a disconnect. Also crackling, and unstable render times, resulting in framedrops.
I didn't see it back then, but we even had huge troubles during our most important gig this year. Only saw it afterwards:
If you look well, you see sometimes the video is really choppy, this because of framedrops. I could reproduce this problem with our best x99 system, with 8 inputs sometimes the render times start jumping up and down, resulting in choppy video. It was a very troublesome gig anyway (almost no space in the front of house, cable troubles, building up over night..) so that's why were already happy it worked :)
We have a lot of systems:
System 1&2:
Asus x99 e ws
Xeon E5-2630 v4
Gtx 1080
32 gb ddr 4 ram
Decklink quad 2
System 3:
MSI X99S XPOWER AC
Radeon r9 270x
16gb ddr 4ram
4 -5 x mini recorder or intensity pro or decklink sdi (depending on the situation)
System 4:
Gygabyte z97 gaming g1
intel 4970s
GTX 950
16gb ddr3 ram
4 x mini recorder or intensity pro or decklink sdi (depending on the situation)
System 5:
don't know the exact specs, but it's an older i5, 16gb ram,.. We use it as a backup, because it still accepts those yuan cards.
Soundcards:
2x focusrite 18i20
2x focusrite 2i2
1x yamaha MG16XU
1x XENYX Q1202USB PA
We tried the x99 systems with all soundcards, and all of them will start dropping samples. There is no difference between the msi x99 and the asus, both have the same troubles. The older z97 works flawless, but is not suited for more then 4-5 cam captations/livestreams.
There are a few scenario's where the soundcards go nuts which are reproducable. I know they're not real life situations, but it might give some useful info:
situation 1:
When you record prores or another heavy coded to ssd, and the disk is full: soundcard loses connection
situation 2:
When you start 4-5 multicorders at the same time, in super heavy codec (too hard for the harddisk to handle it): soundcard loses connection.
Off course these are not real life situations, but it might be useful info to find the root of the problem.
I also could come up with a few tweaks the last weeks, which have resulted (for now) in zero problems. It's not the first time we had no problems a few gigs in a row though, so i'm not crying victory yet.
Tweak 1: change recording codec.
We used to record in hvec codec, switching to mpeg ts (same bitrate) made the render times less jumpy.
Tweak 2: change the process priority of ffmpeg with nvidia cards to below normal: made the soundcard keep it's connection (using process lasso)
Tweak 3: using processor lasso ProBalance to prevent micro lags. This made the render times even less jumpy it seems.
Tweak 3: disabling hardware encoding during livestreaming seems to help a bit with an nvidia card
With these 3 tweaks we had a few gigs in a row without any troubles. Let's hope this solves it for us :)
FIY:
An example of sample drops of the soundcard:
https://www.facebook.com...videos/1179276618834507/An example of the soundcard dropping huge amounts of frames:
https://www.facebook.com...videos/1220374621341200/Of course we have 100's of examples where it all went perfect (we do now 3-4 livestreams a week), but we often had to go the extra mile in order to fix dropouts we had during testing, or to provide all kinds of backup solutions like a second or third pc, sound recorders,..
I now did hundreds of hours of testing, and can confirm 100% sure that only on x99 we have these issues.
When it comes down to nvidia or radeon cards: both have similar issues.
All usb soundcards seem to be affected. I'm not really keen on using a built in soundcard (bad preamps) or a pcie soundcard (losing a slot).
Hope this info can help someone with similar issues a bit!
