Playing Music Slows Vista Network Performance?

An anonymous reader writes "Over the months since Vista's release, there has been no doubt about the reduced level of network performance experienced compared to Windows XP. However, some users over at the 2CPU forums have discovered an unexplained connection with audio playback resulting in a cap at approximately 5%-10% of total network throughput. Whenever any audio is being sent to a sound card (even, several users report, while paused), network performance is instantly reduced. As soon as the audio is stopped, the throughput begins to climb to its expected speed. It's a tough one for users — what do you pick, sound or speed? So much for multi-tasking."

Comments

Great!

[siDDis]

I actually have a 10% faster internet connection! All I need to do is to upgrade to Linux.

Re:Could be DRM related

[robbiethefett]

So what happens if you play back an audio file purchased (errrm, sorry, licensed) through one of the officially-approved Microsoft music stores? I'm pretty sure there is a routine built in to Vista for that very scenario.. It fires up outlook, downloads a worm, turns the machine into a zombie, and finally spams your credit card info to everyone in your contact list. come to think of it, that's actually the routine response to any user input.

Re:FUD of highest quality

[thelexx]

"This is FUD of the highest quality. I'm sitting now with my Vista edition listening to some Iron Maiden's mpr (DRM free of course) and using Windows Media Player 11. I'm measuring the network speed by sending a 34 GB files to the server with the player working and without it. The dspeed is being measured using BMST (Bandwidth Meter Speed Test). No difference at all."

Right. YOU don't seem to be having the problem, so there is no problem.

"Of course you can write anything you want negatve about MS in /. and any sheep will just believe it without further inverstigation..."

Troll.

Re:how on earth?

[the_fat_kid]

maybe that preview button wiould help.
or perhaps posting in your native tounge?
loose jumbles of english sounding words do not make paragraphs.

Works great on my 1000mbps /w playback

[Coolhand2120]

Lets see, I can play an mp3 while transferring a file at 120 mega bytes per second over an iSCSI interface hooked up to a pair of 28 disk fiber filers. I can transfer to a SATA RAID from a SATA RAID at 60 mega bytes a second. Playing an MP3 in media player or a movie, even a 1080P movie, causes no effect at all on the network speed during the copy (a 8gb ISO file). I'm pretty sure 1000 mega bits per second is equal to 120 mega bytes a second. If I can use my iSCSI NAS at 100% and play a 1080P video at the same time then I'm guessing just about anything would work without the described behavior.

I would assume spending 5 minutes running media player and performance monitor together to see if the story is true wouldn't be too much trouble. That might might make slashdot editors talk to a dirty vista OS user, let's just assume if the news is negative then the news must be true.

Lame arse code then....

[cheekyboy]

Why not just spend 1 interrupt to transfer the whole 8 to 20meg of data to ram in the ONE GO, then play the mp3 from ram.
Surely the 20meg is cheaper than 50000 switches/second. Since many lame apps use lots of ram, 20meg is hardly a killer.

Friggin use a 16-32meg buffer, thats less than 25cents of ram. Any programmer that just a lame ass OO input class that depends on the language/OS to do
its prebuffering is as lazy as a VBasic programmer. Get of your ass, write the 50 lines of code it takes to make a buffer pre loader.

Lesson one, never trust the OS to do all the magic for you, as your code could be written for any OS but if not then any model of the one OS.

Yes, all windows caches are dumb, they are not content dynamic in nature, they treat all data equally which is wrong, caching a dvd is different to caching
a txt file or an mp3 file. Some require more , some require little.