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.
Thanks a lot man! It works like a charm! I have Windows 7 x64, when playing Winamp, processor goes, in average, 18%. Just disable it and now it’s ~2% average. I use this computer to play games, helped to get me some more FPS! hehehe Thanks a lot!
The above solution solves the problem only partial. There is also the sound quality involved here. So for a lower CPU usage try doing this: near Enhancements tab, there is Advanced tab, be sure that the sample rate is set to CD quality.
Excellent thanks. Your idea did the trick.
A slight variation though. Nothing was selected on my enhancements tab – so I though that your tip would not help. Then I went to the Dolby tab to find that Dolby was selected. Unselecting that did the job(and improved my sound)
didn’t really work for me
but it did reduce my extremely high cpu usage altho it still has panic attacks and bursts into the 70/80%s causing audio to freeze, id say i have a virus which is doing something to my drivers because cpu usage should not be this high on a computer only running itunes at a very low level at this moment. ah well im going to reinstall windows 7 and wipe everything but can i ask, i can put a lot of software on my external harddrive but will reinstalling windows 7 install all the necessary things and the other things like the programs that came with my computer? xcept the anti-virus of course which is seperate.
its all horse S*IT, mac doesnt have any of these problems, im so about to throw this one out the window
Of course Mac doesn’t have these problems. It is a system built for one system only – no choice as to what you can have. You are stuck with what Apple gives you…nothing more.
PC and Windows on the other hand can pretty much have an infinite selection of hardware and software, which is where the problem comes in. PC manufacturers and Windows must build hardware and software that can work on many different combinations. Apple has never done that, nor probably will do that, or can probably do that.
For all the problems Windows has, it is able to do something Apple has never done.
Thanks a lot, it’ ok now after your infomation… great thank from italy. ciao
WOW, I greatly appreciate the way you explained what it was and how to solve it without making the mistake of deleting, disabling or panicing of a virus.
so simple to solve. I appreciat it. defiatly passing this info to others.
Thank you so much. This has fixed my problem i can now use my netbook without a problem.
Thanks a lot, you saved me lots of time and worrying !
“Of course Mac doesn’t have these problems. It is a system built for one system only – no choice as to what you can have. You are stuck with what Apple gives you…nothing more”
Utterly, utterly incorrect.
A wide variety of third-party audio devices work with OSX — for instance, any standard USB audio device is supported “out of the box” on OSX, and any manufacturer is free to write their own drivers for their audio devices.
OSX’s peripheral support is exactly as “open” as Windows’ peripheral support.
(Apple does, of course, limit the use of OSX to Apple-manufactured systems.)