Hi Everyone 
Noticed while playing with Soundiron Apocalypse Drums,in Kontakt 5 (latest version) I am getting odd crackles,in Cubase 10
I have the latest update for the audio drivers of Focusrite A.I. And checked the latency with Latency Mon,all ok
Noticed in the VST Audio System,there is a thing called disk preload,should that be increased? should I keep ASIO Guard level normal?
Sorry to ask,but relatively new to Cubase,since June of last year
appreciate any help
What is your buffer size set to in Cubase?
Try setting it to 2048 if you haven’t already, increase the ASIO-Guard priority to High and see if you still notice the problem.
Disk preload is more specific to the playback of recorded audio content; and so I don’t believe that would be particularly applicable to your situation. It may be a potential benefit for you if you have a lot of audio content, fx and etc. in the project; but that alone isn’t likely to address the crackles you’re hearing when playing your VST instrument.
How many tracks are there for the project you’re referencing? What is the average percentage shown in Cubase’s CPU/Peak meter? Is it averaging around 25%, 50%, 75%+ or what?
If you’ve tried the above suggestions and are still experiencing the problem, try freezing the VST instrument and note the result.
Thanks a lot.
It literally started with only one track loaded with Kontakt and Apocalypse Elements Drums
.What I did what ,was to recheck my A.I buffer size, (256MB) and the CPU was showing around 15%.I used latencymon,and that came back with good results. ASIO Guard is set to normal,but tweaked the disc pre load to 6%
That seemed to help,so far no crackles .
Great! Glad to hear you’ve made some progress. If you plan on laying the VST tracks to audio at some point, you could potentially freeze the VST instruments to conserve the CPU power. If you’re running great at 256 and you’re not doing an recording you could probably drop the CPU percentage a bit more by going with 384.
I use UAD Apollo interfaces so I don’t worry about latency issues when recording but even before then 384 usually kept the latency fairly unnoticeable.
My general rule of thumb is set the buffer high for playback and set it lower to decrease latency on recording. Some of those Kontakt instruments can really pull on the CPU though.
Good Luck! 