I'm the unhappy owner of an Asus VivoBook laptop which is solely for DJ purposes, it's got Serato and Rekordbox on it and nothing else... plugs into my Seventy Two and converts rotational motion into audio. £804. Should work for 10 years, right?
Bought it in 2022 and it worked a OK. Was a massive improvement on the prev. machine too. Double the spec required to run Serato at the time (16Gb Ram, i7).
Then at some point in summer 2024, something updated (I click the 'update now' button when prompted), and Serato began randomly disorting tracks. Like randomly.
The first time it happend I was in the middle of Recording the radio show for Kennet Radio on 106.7FM with DJ Stasha and the tune I put on went to shit...
I found that unplugging the usb and plugging it back in stopped the distortion but it would always come back within a few minutes. As time went on this happened quicker and quicker to the point where it is totally unusable in DVS mode which it had reached by perhaps August 2024.
I am a problem solver and despite the emotional toil (seriously - i've been DJing weekly for over twenty years, it took ages to realise not having the outlet was causing me to be increasingly introverted, tetchy at work and feeling unmoored) so I set out to find a fix. Having followed the troubleshooting guides, the optimisation guides, the setup a new power plan guides, random blog posts and reddit threads I could find, the issue was more persistent.
Each time I'd put an mp3 on, i'd get a tiny flicker of hope - this is the setting i've needed all along! It's gonna work before the inevitable red line of fuckery appears above the deck readout on the screen and the audio slows and becomes all mashed up, and my hope foundered up against the shitty Asus / Microsoft SCSI drivers that were flooding the system with latency.
Latency Mon summarizes:
Your system appears to be having trouble handling real-time audio and other tasks. You are likely to experience buffer underruns appearing as drop outs, clicks or pops. One or more DPC routines that belong to a driver running in your system appear to be executing for too long. One problem may be related to power management, disable CPU throttling settings in Control Panel and BIOS setup. Check for BIOS updates.
I spent MONTHS trying to sort it out. I approached Serato support, I approached Rane support, I opened tickets with Microsoft support and finally when I realised the Asus drivers were the secret update that fucked it all up I engaged with Asus support.
It was not a happy time for any of us.
Serato took a decent punt at fixing it but didn't get anywhere, Rane also took a decent run at the issue and stuck with me even though it was definitely not their hardware causing the problems. They also provided the closest thing to emotional support I got anywhere in the process. Microsoft Support did not listen to the problem statement, reinstalled some audio drivers and declared the issue fixed. Asus support were entirely knowlegdable and one chap in particular, Gabriel, was clue'd up - pointing firstly to bloatware installed on the new laptop (that i had never wiped) and recent Windows updates as potential factors.
After wiping the laptop and installing a clean set of drivers it was super disappointing to find the system output 90% distortion and 10% listenable music. I went back to Asus support with the plan to ask them to confirm the configuration of the BIOS matched the setting I was unable to change: SpeedStop, C-States or CPU Throttling all disabled.
They were not able to confirm these things.
OKdokes, so it's clear something changed with the configuration of the laptop or drivers to starts this problem. The update that caused it did not have a warning attached about increasing system latency and there was absolutely no avenue for me to find out the outcome of the update without running the update. Yet those fucking Asusholes deflect all responsibility to the user. Simple solution: DO NOT MAKE THE MISTAKE OF BEING AN ASUS USER.
In their own words:
Reasonable period of expected functionality is 2 years on a brand new, high spec (at the time) laptop??? Wow, that is shit! Is it a coincidence that the system became unusable for me shortly after the 24 month end of expected functionality. And because it's so short term and mad I think it needs saying again. This is a major consumer hardware manufacturer and retailer, there's no way they make products with a expected 2 year lifespan and still ahve customers, what the fuck is going on?
The Asus Prime motherboard in my PC is 8 years old and still works, seemingly against Asus expectations. What. The. Fuck are they on about?
So, just to translate that: Asus sell shitty short term products they do not intend to support for their potential lifetime, and secondly if and when we push an update that fucks everything it's your fault for listening to us and clicking the 'update' button not Asus for pushing shitty code that hasn't been properly tested because Asus prioritise cutting costs over happy and returning customers.
So Asus can go fuck themselves, I will be exercising my statutory rights to have a device that is fit for purpose or a fucking refund. I have a certain skillset thats makes me a nightmare for Corporations like them an the cost they have made me pay for their non-functional device demands I exact a similar cost from them.
I got a MacBook air this week instead and was so happy just to play some tunes again!!!
Bought it in 2022 and it worked a OK. Was a massive improvement on the prev. machine too. Double the spec required to run Serato at the time (16Gb Ram, i7).
Then at some point in summer 2024, something updated (I click the 'update now' button when prompted), and Serato began randomly disorting tracks. Like randomly.
The first time it happend I was in the middle of Recording the radio show for Kennet Radio on 106.7FM with DJ Stasha and the tune I put on went to shit...
I found that unplugging the usb and plugging it back in stopped the distortion but it would always come back within a few minutes. As time went on this happened quicker and quicker to the point where it is totally unusable in DVS mode which it had reached by perhaps August 2024.
I am a problem solver and despite the emotional toil (seriously - i've been DJing weekly for over twenty years, it took ages to realise not having the outlet was causing me to be increasingly introverted, tetchy at work and feeling unmoored) so I set out to find a fix. Having followed the troubleshooting guides, the optimisation guides, the setup a new power plan guides, random blog posts and reddit threads I could find, the issue was more persistent.
Each time I'd put an mp3 on, i'd get a tiny flicker of hope - this is the setting i've needed all along! It's gonna work before the inevitable red line of fuckery appears above the deck readout on the screen and the audio slows and becomes all mashed up, and my hope foundered up against the shitty Asus / Microsoft SCSI drivers that were flooding the system with latency.
Latency Mon summarizes:
Your system appears to be having trouble handling real-time audio and other tasks. You are likely to experience buffer underruns appearing as drop outs, clicks or pops. One or more DPC routines that belong to a driver running in your system appear to be executing for too long. One problem may be related to power management, disable CPU throttling settings in Control Panel and BIOS setup. Check for BIOS updates.
I spent MONTHS trying to sort it out. I approached Serato support, I approached Rane support, I opened tickets with Microsoft support and finally when I realised the Asus drivers were the secret update that fucked it all up I engaged with Asus support.
It was not a happy time for any of us.
Serato took a decent punt at fixing it but didn't get anywhere, Rane also took a decent run at the issue and stuck with me even though it was definitely not their hardware causing the problems. They also provided the closest thing to emotional support I got anywhere in the process. Microsoft Support did not listen to the problem statement, reinstalled some audio drivers and declared the issue fixed. Asus support were entirely knowlegdable and one chap in particular, Gabriel, was clue'd up - pointing firstly to bloatware installed on the new laptop (that i had never wiped) and recent Windows updates as potential factors.
After wiping the laptop and installing a clean set of drivers it was super disappointing to find the system output 90% distortion and 10% listenable music. I went back to Asus support with the plan to ask them to confirm the configuration of the BIOS matched the setting I was unable to change: SpeedStop, C-States or CPU Throttling all disabled.
They were not able to confirm these things.
OKdokes, so it's clear something changed with the configuration of the laptop or drivers to starts this problem. The update that caused it did not have a warning attached about increasing system latency and there was absolutely no avenue for me to find out the outcome of the update without running the update. Yet those fucking Asusholes deflect all responsibility to the user. Simple solution: DO NOT MAKE THE MISTAKE OF BEING AN ASUS USER.
In their own words:
Quote: However, we must advise that your device was originally purchased on 11 June 2022, and as such, it is now outside of both the manufacturer’s warranty period and the reasonable period of expected functionality (typically 18–24 months).
Operating systems and firmware regularly receive updates, and it is the responsibility of the user to ensure that any third-party software or applications remain compatible with such updates.
Reasonable period of expected functionality is 2 years on a brand new, high spec (at the time) laptop??? Wow, that is shit! Is it a coincidence that the system became unusable for me shortly after the 24 month end of expected functionality. And because it's so short term and mad I think it needs saying again. This is a major consumer hardware manufacturer and retailer, there's no way they make products with a expected 2 year lifespan and still ahve customers, what the fuck is going on?
The Asus Prime motherboard in my PC is 8 years old and still works, seemingly against Asus expectations. What. The. Fuck are they on about?
So, just to translate that: Asus sell shitty short term products they do not intend to support for their potential lifetime, and secondly if and when we push an update that fucks everything it's your fault for listening to us and clicking the 'update' button not Asus for pushing shitty code that hasn't been properly tested because Asus prioritise cutting costs over happy and returning customers.
So Asus can go fuck themselves, I will be exercising my statutory rights to have a device that is fit for purpose or a fucking refund. I have a certain skillset thats makes me a nightmare for Corporations like them an the cost they have made me pay for their non-functional device demands I exact a similar cost from them.
I got a MacBook air this week instead and was so happy just to play some tunes again!!!
