In all the sample games that support sound, every so often the game will freeze for anywhere from a fraction of a second to a little over one second.

This can be noticed most easily in the BreakoutGame sample. While playing, every so often the game will freeze; if you have task manager running at this time, you can quick take a peek and see that the process is taking up 100% of one core (12% CPU on my quad-core/hyperthreading system). After that cpu-utilization value drops back down to 0, the game resumes.

Commenting out line #177 (sound.Play();) in BreakoutGame.cs causes the problem to go away - no more freezing, and cpu utilization stays around 0-1% for the duration of the game.

Not sure if this is a problem with my specific machine or not. If there is anything I can do to generate additional debug-information please let me know.

Thanks,

--- Mark ---

Dug a little deeper into this today.

Nothing extraordinary noted using Task Manager / Resource Monitor, but Process Explorer did show one particular thread sucking up all the CPU time when the problem occurred. Unfortunately, this thread's start address was clr.dll!GetMetaDataInternalInterfaceFromPublic+0x1e505; the process has 5 threads with that same start address.

I was able to get a few stack traces during times that the problem occurred:

stack 1:
dsound.dll+0x4613
dsound.dll+0x4556
dsound.dll+0x620f
dsound.dll+0x62e7
adi_oal.dll!alDistanceModel+0xb7c7

stack 2:
wow64cpu.dll!TurboDispatchJumpAddressEnd+0x6c0
wow64cpu.dll!TurboDispatchJumpAddressEnd+0x676
wow64.dll!Wow64SystemServiceEx+0x1ce
wow64.dll!Wow64LdrpInitialize+0x429
ntdll.dll!RtlIsDosDeviceName_U+0x24c87
ntdll.dll!LdrInitializeThunk+0xe
ntdll.dll!ZwReleaseMutant+0x15
dsound.dll+0x28cd
adi_oal.dll!alDistanceModel+0xb7c7

stack 3:
wow64cpu.dll!TurboDispatchJumpAddressEnd+0x6c0
wow64cpu.dll!TurboDispatchJumpAddressEnd+0x676
wow64.dll!Wow64SystemServiceEx+0x1ce
wow64.dll!Wow64LdrpInitialize+0x429
ntdll.dll!RtlIsDosDeviceName_U+0x24c87
ntdll.dll!LdrInitializeThunk+0xe
ntdll.dll!ZwReleaseMutant+0x15
dsound.dll+0x28cd
adi_oal.dll!alDistanceModel+0xb7c7

stack 4:
dsound.dll+0x4613
dsound.dll+0x4556
dsound.dll+0x620f
dsound.dll+0x62e7
adi_oal.dll!alDistanceModel+0xb7c7

stack 5:
dsound.dll+0x54a0
dsound.dll+0x5437
dsound.dll+0x55ea
dsound.dll+0x5f4e
dsound.dll+0x59b5
dsound.dll+0x508d
adi_oal.dll!alDistanceModel+0xb7d6

I obviously haven't set up this machine to hit the Microsoft Symbol Server. Not even sure if they provide better symbols for dsound.dll or not, I can try again if you think that would be helpful.

My machine is relatively beefy - quad-core Intel Core i7 920 with 6GB RAM, Asus P6T Deluxe V2 motherboard with onboard "ADI AD2000B" audio chip. Maybe the audio controller on this motherboard - and/or my audio drivers - are causing this problem? Never noticed it before during any games, music/video playing, etc. . . . but who knows.

--- Mark ---

Edited by user Thursday, February 16, 2012 5:30:27 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Okay, found the problem: the SoundMax software that came with my motherboard driver package installed that adi_oal.dll. Apparently that DLL can cause some issues; renaming it to prevent it from being loaded completely resolved the problem.

Sorry for the red herring!

--- Mark ---