Acpi.sys performance issues

Question

Hi,
Many music producers encounter live audio recording issues because of acpi.sys high DPC latency.
This problem has been going on for years now.
I've seen many MVPs replying with brute force checklists that do not solve anything.
I've seen many frustrated microsoft customers reinstalling windows in an attempt to solve this issue and eventually simply switching to Mac.
I know that acpi.sys is the culprit cause I can see it's latency on LatencyMon and after disabling 'Microsoft Surface ACPI-Compliant Control Method Battery' the problem is solved.
So my question is simple, is Microsoft aware of this problem?

Answer 1

I've arrived to the same conclusion about ACPI.sys causing the latency issues with my audio interface. I'm using a top-of-the-line Alienware x17 Dell laptop.

I like @devbobcz 's idea of a native Windows profile to specifically address this issue. I bought a high end Windows gaming laptop thinking the hardware specs would keep up with MacOS stability, but the rabbit hole I've gone down to try to solve this has destroyed my faith in Windows truly being ready for a live DJing or studio workstation environment.

Answer 2

Adding to the complaints. I have a new HP Spectre notebook that is unusable for music production due to DPC latency issues caused by ACPI.sys. This problem is compounded by the fact that HP has locked down the BIOS so that you cannot control CPU throttling.

Very disappointing. I bought a new, high-powered computer with Windows 11 expecting that it would minimize latency! I guess that the joke is on me. Should have bought a Mac.

Answer 3

Dell XPS 17 i9 32 GB memory, 2x2TB SSD. Same problem. Previous PC Alienware 15 had the same issue. Prior to that had the same issue with a Dell G5. In other words, Windows simply does not work for studio music production or DJing. I am shocked that his has been going on for years and that people still consider using Windows for Music production. It just doesn't work. Period. I was a fool to think that getting yet another high end very expensive Windows 11 PC would finally solve the problem. I am now looking at one of the newly announced M2 MacBook Pro's to end this frustration. I guess Microsoft has decided to cede the music production market to Apple.

Answer 4

Same issue when trying to monitor audio from my DAW out to my usb mixer. The culprit is ACPI.sys and it's REALLY bad if you look at it through LatencyMonitor. A simple "hello" through a microphone will crackle and drop audio. A fix to get rid of the worst of it is to set your processor power to 100% on min and Max settings in advanced power settings. I tried disabling this device in device manager but it won't go away. Even with that processor fix it's still by far and away the most latent driver running on the system and still makes crackles and drops here's and there.

Answer 5

I'm sitting now with three Dell laptops XPS 15 - 9520 bought a couple of months apart.

It has gotten worse, not better. Seconds long clean drop outs on ordinary sound cards. Not only a low latency sound card problem anymore.

ACPI.SYS has times in the sizes of 2000ms or more.

Audio dropping out in teams meetings etc. Even the mouse pointer is freezing.

So obliviously Dell has not listened nor learned anything from this. Instead it's even far worse then on previous models.

Recognized the problem from my music and DJ hobby.