I recently had a problem when playing movies through iTunes on a laptop. At various parts of the movie, the entire laptop would become extremely slow, causing the movie to sputter. This happened at infrequent intervals. The laptop has a dual core 1.6Ghz and 2GB of RAM, so I new it was more than capable of playing a movie.
To look into the problem, I had the performance monitor running while I played a movie. Once the movie began to slow and sputter, I viewed the performance monitor to see which process was causing the problem. When I viewed the performance monitor I noticed that a process called audiodg.exe was consuming 35-40% of the CPU. I then investigated the problem and found a probable fix to the issue.
What is Audiodg.exe?
The audiodg.exe file made its appearance in Microsoft Vista, which explains why I haven’t seen this file before. When I viewed the properties of the file, the description stated Windows Audio Device Graph Isolation, which doesn’t help explain what it does.
After doing a little research I found out that the audiodg.exe file hosts the audio engine for Vista, and from what I hear Windows 7 as well. All the DSP and audio processing is performed within this file. Vendors are able to install their own DSP and audio effects into the audio pipeline, which will then be processed by audiodg.exe.
Unfortunately, this can also lead to some problems, as I experienced. Some audio effects can consume CPU and memory if not properly coded. How do we fix the problem? Lets take a look.
Disabling Audio Effects
In order to fix the high CPU usage, I disabled the audio enhancements processed by the audiodg.exe file. To disable the audio enhancements, use the following steps:
- Right-click the speaker icon in the lower right corner.
- Select Playback Devices from the menu. A list of devices should appear on the screen.
- Double-click the device that has a green checkmark. The properties windows for that device should open.
- Click the Enhancements tab at the top.
- From the list of enhancements, uncheck all of them, or click the Disable all enhancements checkbox.
- Click the OK button to save your changes and close the window.
- Click OK to close the Playback Devices window.
Once I disabled the enhancements, the movie played without any issues. I also didn’t notice any difference in sound with the enhancements disabled. If I do want to use sound enhancements, I’ll stick to the the options provided in the application.
Wonderful!
The tip made the process go from 53% CPU usage to 3
However, it didnt work to just uncheck all enhancements. To make it work I really had to ceck the “inactivate all enhancement” checkbox as well.
Thanks!
Hey
Had the same problem under Windows 7 x64, where the way to disable the effects is exactly the same as you discribed. Thanks for sharing your experience.
confirmed working on windows server 2008 r2 try out too, it works on every windows release that has that audiodg.exe we should contact Microsoft for a fix!
great idea!
thx man you saved my battery life
you’re really of a good help
thanx.. problem is solve..
It works well, but now I can’t use my 7.1 soundsystem – there are only the frontspeakers working, all others (rear, center, subwoofer, side) don’t. Would be nice to get a solution. My OS is Windows 7.
you got to reactivate some of your enhancements or go through your audio drivers soft ware like mine and turn down some other setting so you can still have 7.1 sound my cpu percentage was up so high cause i was using the equalizer in my realtek hd audio panel and bass boost
Omg, thank you!
But too bad I can’t use my music options, so my rock doesn’t sound as good as before this problem.
Far better than laggy music though
I already disabled all audio effects but still left the 7.1 sound activated – cpu-usage of audiodg.exe = 50%.
I set my sound on “stereo” and only enabled one of the audio effects (tried it with all of them in different combinations) – cpu-usage = 50%.
I disabled all audio effects and set my sound on “stereo” – cpu-usage of audiodg.exe = max. 4%.
Seems that audiodg.exe only starts troubling as long as I use further driver settings. That leads me to the problem that I can’t use 7.1 sound and of course all other enhancements which I’d like to use.
i have a realtek 883 with 5.1 surround and disabling all effects didn’t drop surround from working, what player are you using? i use foobar2000 0.9.6 with foo channel mixer to upmix stereo to 5.1 and i always keep sounds effects disabled and i never get 50% cpu usage on a dual core, i get at most 3-5%, if you have a realtek sound card try downloading the latest drivers from http://www.realtek.com and try again, never use the internal speaker fill function it doesn’t work fine and it’s a really bad upmixer, if you use a sigmatel or intel HDA try disabling all sound effects and manually setting the 7.1 from the internal windows audio mixer and directly and also disabling the taskbar icon.
good luck hope this helps