Yeah I have been getting Audio Drop outs. Asio Guard has been unusable and if there were no Drop outs I would just ignore the VST meter. If you can’t hear something then it isn’t there right? haha!
Anyway, I have had enough and thought “Well my computer can’t get any worse” so I have just upgraded to Win 10 so I’m going to see what that’s like and if it’s any worse than what I was experiencing I shall just install my Clone of Win 8.1 and have another look at this. Or install Win 7 again but I’d rather not go back if I can help it. Thanks for everyone’s help and I shall let you know what C Pro 8 is like with Windows 10 (and yes, I know Steinberg have recommended not using it yet)…
Ouch…terribly frustrating I know. So many things can and does go wrong. I’m not in any way trying to deny that there may well be problems with CuBase itself. I just know that QC on hardware is all over the map these days. I’ve had to send back quite a number of motherboards, memory chips, and so forth over the years.
I totally agree with a comment made earlier in the thread that it would be nice to see a listing of recommended hardware by model numbers tested and known to work well together.
It took me months to figure out my more recent CuBase 8 + PNY SSD drives issue. I still got a lot of work done while I was trouble-shooting by forcing myself to ignore the glitches (the pure audio tracks, as well as any internal mix downs and/or instant renders from VSTi were fine). In my case I was kind of lucky that the problem popped up with other DAWs and even some non DAW applications, so I had a very strong indicator to rule out the DAW as the soul problem.
I don’t know if this will be helpful at all (you may well have tried every bit of it dozens of times already) but for what it’s worth:
I’ve found that I should disable any ‘tune up’ software I have installed before working with a DAW or video streaming project. I.E. I have iolo System Mechanic Pro. When it comes to working with my DAW and vsti plugins, it’s smoother/more stable if I disable all the real time memory management, power profile, disk optimization, and cpu tuning features that package offers before using my DAW.
I’ve run into situations before where virus protection engines cause problems. Isolate the DAW machine from the web long enough to try things without your virus protection engine running.
I’ve had fancy keyboard and mice drivers cause problems before (usually the stuff that comes with user mappable gaming style gear, programmable keys, really high resolutions, high polling rates, and robust KRO abilities, etc. Sometimes they do some weird stuff…like sharing and resetting system timers, etc.).
Power profiles that allow any part of the system to sleep, suspend, or throttle back have caused issues for me before.
I’ve had cases where moving audio interfaces, drives, and cards to different ports/connectors, or even swapping out cables fixed issues. Moving some stuff around calls for reseating the connections, and can force the system to reinitialize system drivers and reevaluate how it assigns interrupts.
Almost every system I’ve ever owned gets profiles built for CPU overclocking, undervolting where possible, and gunning for the best bus and memory speeds/timings I can muster. I don’t always get it right (nor are the default bios settings always stable). As crazy as it sounds…I’ve resolved quite a lot of issues in the past by simply writing down my BIOS settings, reseating the memory sticks in different slots, clearing the cmos, and starting fresh with default settings and slowly re-optimizing one bit at a time, along with all the corresponding memory and burn in testing that goes with it.
I’ve had cases where everything seemed great on the hardware end, only to discover that the power supply was not within tolerance and keeping a steady voltage under load.
I’ve had problems before trying to aggregate multiple audio devices with things like ASIO4ALL. I eventually got it working well, but it did take quite a bit of trial and error to get it stable enough to use.
I’ve owned some hardware, even pro line, way over-specced bits that just doesn’t cut it for some reason or another (I.E. My PNY SSD scenario). Too many memory sticks have failed over time to count. Have also had more than a fair share of audio cards that simply have something wrong with them. Finding the problem part or driver can drive a person crazy, particularly if he doesn’t have training in diagnostics software, or another systems to mix, match and swap out different components.
If I had a nickle for every audio card or breakout box that I’ve had to replace or recap to get all the pops and clicks out, I could get myself a new DAW machine today! I.E. My Delta 1010 got on in age…and even with no digital signal at all, it was known to send a snap or pop to the amp at times. The worst of it went away with a new shielded cable, and some fresh capacitors sorted out the rest.
If you haven’t already, I’d definitely write up a report of your issue that is as detailed as possible and file a support ticket. Run dxdiag from the start button or a command line and include the log it produces with your report. Zip up and include all the dmp files in:
All good advice and thank you. I have tried most of your suggestions.
Here’s the “new” thing. I have successfully upgraded to Windows 10 64bit - I did it between my last message above and now). All my software is working, all my settings have been saved from Win 8.1 and the machine is slick, Fast and snappy. I loaded up the same thing I was running in Cubase with all the CPU spiking and with an Asio buffer at 512, there is now no spiking. At 256 it is also fine and no spiking. That’s with 6ms input latency and good enough for me to play VIs. At 128 there is quite a lot of CPU spiking and Audio Drop outs. I’m not recommending that anyone just upgrades to Windows 10 as Steinberg hasn’t recommended it and I just did it out of frustration but everything is now so incredibly better. There could be so many things that cause this but Asio Guard is definitely working (for me) in Win 10. Very happy again.
mbr
November 22, 2015, 8:51am
22
I simply can’t run ASIO Guard with 3 SSD drives…on any setting > low , normal nor high without causing dropouts
