Asio spikes Cubase 6 / Saffire 56 Interface

Cubase
1

I keep getting asio spikes when recording or playing back audio, not only in Cubase 6, but generally if I’m playing back audio through windows media player etc.

I’ve got a decent PC that’s streamlined/clear of viruses etc which according to all the meters, isn’t running any where near it’s limit. But, it randomly has asio spikes which cause glitches or drop outs.

I just ran a session and my CPU usage was 25% and Physical Memory 25%. The Cubase ‘VST performance’ shows the ‘ASIO’ at around 20% and the ‘DISK’ only registering when I jump around the session. But then ASIO will leap up suddenly for a second and cause drop out and glitches, and then it will be fine again for a few minutes.

I’m guessing it must be something to do with the Saffire 56 interface I just bought which runs through it’s own Mix control interface. Does anyone have any suggestions of why it keeps doing this? Any suggestions would be greatly recieved!

Dell Studio PC
Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz
4.00 GB RAM
64-bit operating system - Windows 7 Home Premium
500GB Hard Drive
Cubase 6.0.0 Build 229 (32 bit)
Focusrite Liquid Saffire 56 Audio Interface (using version 2.2 of the Mix Control software)

2

I’m thinking of buying the liquid saffire 56 to run with cubase 6 on win7 did you solve your problem ?

3

This problem is documented on the Focusrite support forum. Under Windows 7 64-bit you MUST use the firewire ‘legacy’ driver.

For me this problem was 100% recreatable and 100% solvable just by changing the firewire driver.

Hope it works for you. I have recorded a number of albums using the Saffire 56 under Win7 64-bit.

4

Hey Paulb,

it’s an off topic question, but I’m just curious what kind of latency’s you’re getting with the liquid saffire and cubase ? I’m thinking of buying one of these lovely interfaces and I’m curious about that and how stable it is.
Cheers

Hazy

5

focusrite also recommend using a texas instruments chipset firewire card for your saffire or liquid mix.