Sound touch helper constantly running and using system resources

[Hissey]

I have a single sound touch 10 speaker which I only use occasionally.  When plugging it in this week I was told I needed a software update which I duly installed.  Update worked fine and I like the new look, layout and functionality.  However, my system has completely slowed down and running the task manager shows that it is the 'SoundTouchHelper' which is constantly using up a large proportion of my cpu, disk etc.  When I only use the app occasionally why does it have to run all the time, and why does it use up so much of my computer's resources?  Can I disable it except when I want to use it?

[Brandon_M]

Hi Hissey,

Thanks for the post.  

That's very surprising that it's using that many resources.  For instance on my home PC, it uses between 0 and 2.5% cpu, 10 MB RAM, and essentially zero disk or network usage.

What kind of computer do you have?  What operating system is it running?

And yes, unless you're actively using the SoundTouch app, you don't need it running.

Thanks,

Brandon

[JulianHorn]

I saw the same problem on my system.  I'm running Windows 10 Pro version 1703 build 15063.608.  The soundtesthelper.exe process was using a large amount of CPU and disk resources, to the extent that the entire system felt sluggish.  The soundtouch app was not running and the speaker was powered off.

I killed the soundtouchhelper.exe process, then restarted the sound touch app.  The soundtouchhelper.exe process started, and consumed about 15% of the CPU while it was looking for the speaker.  The app correctly reported that no speaker could be found.  I closed the app, and soundtouchhelper.exe continued to run, still using about 15% of the CPU.  After a few minutes the CPU and disk usage correctly went way down.  So I was not able to recreate the problem.

It might be a good idea to have the sound touch app kill soundtouchhelper.exe when the app exits.  I don't see that it serves any purpose to leave that process running in the background.  Apparently there is some kind of failure mode that causes soundtouchhelper to wake up even when the app isn't running, which produces the behavior we have seen.  It's true that I can kill soundtouchhelper.exe manually, but that's kind of a pain in the neck.

[Brandon_M]

Hey JulianHorn,

Thanks for the post, and thanks for posting your findings.  My understanding is that when soundtouchhelper.exe is running in the background, it'll help identify speakers connected to your network and relay that information to SoundTouch apps running on other devices like a mobile phone or tablet.

Let me take a deeper look into this to see if the software team can shed more light on this.

In the mean time, can you collect log files please?  Follow this guide, and let me know once you have uploaded the files.

Thanks,

Brandon

[NoUse]

I'm having the same issue with my new SoundTouch 20.

The "helper" process usually uses 25% CPU on my laptop (Win7)...

Any new from support on the topic yet?

[JulianHorn]

Hi NoUse,

I don't see any official fix but I did implement a work-around which I can share. It requires some coding. I had no choice as my wife would have returned the speaker if I couldn't make this stop.

In an earlier message, Brandon_M described the rationale for why the Sound Touch app should not kill SoundTouchHelper.exe on exit. Those concerns do not apply in my case because I never access the speaker from mobile devices, just from my PC. So I implemented a simple Windows Service that wakes up every 3 minutes and checks to see if SoundTouch is running.  If not, then it checks to see if SoundTouchHelper is running, and if so, kills it.

[wil@vandeschoor.nl]

Hey Brandon,

More news on the topic? 

I observe the same problem since I updated last week the Soundtouch app and updated W10 to v1709. The Helper program takes constantly at least 25% of the CPU, 130MB of RAM and constant asccess (4 to 8 MB/s) to the HDD (I notice the sound when nothing is running on the PC). I only have 1x a Bose SoundTouch 1 speaker.

Help is much appreciated,

Wil

[Brandon_M]

Hi Wil,

Thanks for the post, and sorry to hear about the issues you're having with SoundTouchHelper.

That's a serious amount of resources that it's using.  Can you uninstall the SoundTouch app using "Uninstall SoundTouch Application" from the start menu?

Once that's done, lets re-install the SoundTouch app and log back in.  Does the helper use the same amount of resources?

Please let me know so we can get this resolved.

Best,

Brandon - Bose Support

[NoUse]

Hey Brandon,

I re-installed the app (for another reason...) but the behavior of the "helper" remaind unchanged.

Still 25% CPU usage, which is very annoying, especially during battery operation of the laptop.

Any news yet available?

Regards

Martin

[wil@vandeschoor.nl]

Before your reaction I have already moved all my music to another PC and afterwards the "helper" on the original PC started to use less CPU and memory. It really looks like it was "analysing" the music files: reading and writing them from HDD to memory and back. I haven't installed the SoundTouch tool yet on the other PC were the music is now located.

Regards,

Wil