Pops and CPU audio load spikes

Personally I wouldn't try to run PianoteQ or any serious music applications on the onboard Realtek audio in a laptop, you may well find that both this and the ground loop problem could be cured by the use of a respectable USB audio module incorporating MIDI. Do you know anyone who has one you might be able to borrow and try?

If the Realtek Audio remains as a WDM (Windows Driver Model) device, that can be due to onboard audio chipsets such as this utilizing software or partially software codecs, with the sound rendering being done by the CPU, rather than in dedicated hardware, which would take that load off the CPU.

If you can increase the pianoteq latency at all, that will help as well.  The idea of an external sound card is a very good one, but there's quite a quality range in the market.  You want something that has enough processing power (built-in chipsets) and good enough software that it actually offloads most of the work from the CPU and motherboard, most $20-40USD ones won't do that (but a few do), while most $100-200 ones almost certainly will.  The external soundcards should be something like these: https://www.bestproducts.com/tech/gadge...pc-or-mac/

Try disabling WiFi. I have a laptop (old i7 4710mq) in which there are pops and cracks if WiFi is active. In the old days it had to do with the IRQs...

Thanks, but changing to airplane mode makes nary a difference. The question I can't figure out the answer to, is, what background process is holding things up?  If I click on internet explorer (in other words to start internet explorer, even when wifi is not on), I get a mega series of pops, indicating that the pops are due to processing of data.  But I can't figure out what random background driver/program is creating the pops.  I can say that if I play a regular VST (can I say Kontact free hammersmith piano?) that I get no pops of any kind.  That implies to me that it is processor hiccups, not disk drive access, which causes the issue. 

Latencymon gave me tons of gobbledeegook.

Another question: how would using an external audio processor work?  If the laptop has to receive the MIDI signal from the piano in order for pianoteq to do its magic, how does using something like focusrite take load off of the processor?  Isn't the focusrite only getting the audio signal once it has left the laptop?  Confused about this....

It might be worthwhile running Pianoteq through the free version of Cantabile. It’s got a really useful performance monitoring view that I use along with Task Manager to work out the settings needed for a glitch free experience.
https://www.cantabilesoftware.com/free-vst-host
Cheers, Mark

Bolding added by me. This seems to add to the likelihood that digital noise injected into the audio is being misidentified as pops from latency dropouts, as well as being the result of a ground loop. This is also suggested by the quote below:

Loading an application produces bursts of digital noise, as data is squirted from the drive into RAM, screen is loaded etc. There may also be some effects present from latency, buffer underrun etc, but it's possible they are only say 20% of what is being heard, and digital noise is 80% of it.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. The purpose of an external audio device is for it to be handling the audio duties, digital to analog conversion. Are you thinking of it as a MIDI interface?

Ah, I see where you're coming from. An external audio interface certainly doesn't assist with any of the creation of the modelled audio data, so cannot reduce that part of the CPU load, true. In saying "does not process any audio", it seemed to me that being a DAC was playing a vital role in processing its part of the audio.

Better drivers is indeed one potential improvement in the performance offered by a good sound card, also more streamlined functionality. Onboard sound chips will have processing capabilities for use in gaming, movie/DVD play and 5.1/7.1 that are not utilized by a plain stereo music signal. But it's pretty likely that they still exist in the signal path, using resources, IRQs etc, even though their instantaneous function is "do nothing to this signal", then the next one "do nothing to this signal"...etc

An external audio interface will only have the functions necessary to fulfil its purpose and is likely to need less dialog with the system to achieve this.

This also points up another way that changing to an external interface may resolve an issue - it necessarily changes the allocation of resources such as IRQs, which result can be cumbersome to achieve otherwise, especially on a laptop. If a resource conflict such as IRQs (which interrupt the CPU - being an Interrupt ReQuest) is contributing to or causing the problem, using the alternative audio device might be enough to resolve the issue.