Audio Dropouts on a reasonably good PC

Hey guys!

I’v been having enormous audio dropouts, to the point where it just skips most of the song, and I’m at a loss. The worst part is that it’s seemingly inconsistant, some days it happens other days it doesn’t.
On good days I can run a session with over 120 plugins on a buffer size of 128 with no problems. On bad days it gives minute long audio dropouts on a buffersize of 2048. When I change over to another audio interface it shows the same problems

I have tried about anything. Turning of power saving options, updating all my drivers, using the sweetwater performance guide, upgrading my pc.

PC Specs:

CPU: Intel i7-7820X 3.60 GHz
COOLER: be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 3
MOBO: MSI X299 Raider
RAM: Corsair DDR4 Vengeance LPX 2x8GB 2666 C16
GPU: XFX R9 280X Black Edition
PSU: Seasonic M12II 620W
OS: Windows 10
Audio Interface: Focusrite Saffire Pro 40

SSD 1: Samsung 850 Evo 250 GB
SSD 2: WD Blue WDS100T2B0A 1TB
HDD 1: WD Black WD3003 FZEX 3TB
HDD 2: WD Black WD4005FZBX 4TB

This is al the information I collected over the last couple of days:

Day #1 Thursday 16 Aug 2018 (Good Day):
Started up Cubase 9.5.30 at 10:30. Showed no problems whatsoever all day.

Buffer size 2048: During standby it reached a maximum of ~30% average load and real time peaks hovered around 0%. Task manager showed a 21% usage of the CPU and 5.5 Gb of RAM during standby.

I did no measurements during playback.

Day #2 Saturday 18 Aug 2018 (Bad Day):
Started up Cubase 9.5.30 at 18:30. Immediately the meters started spiking up to maximum and long audio dropouts concurred. Only when there is a small amount of tracks playing the dropouts lessen.

Buffer size 2048: During standby it reached a maximum of ~70% to 100% average load and real time peaks hovered around ~30%. Task manager showed a 40% usage of the CPU and 7 Gb of RAM during standby.
During playback it stays between 90% and a 100% average load and real time peaks hovers between 50% and 75%.

I did no measurements during playback of the task manager.

Day #3 Friday 19 Aug 2018 (Good Day):
Started up Cubase 9.5.30 at 12:30. Showed no problems whatsoever all day.

Buffer size 2048: During standby it reached a maximum of ~30% average load and real time peaks hovered around 15%. Task manager showed a 19% usage of the CPU and 4.2 Gb of RAM during standby.
During playback it reached a maximum of 60% to 70% average load and real time peaks hovered around 20%. Task manager showed between 26% and 29% usage of the CPU and 4.2 Gb of RAM during standby.

Buffer size 512: During standby it reached a maximum of ~40% average load and real time peaks hovered around ~25%. Task manager showed a 22% usage of the CPU and 4.3 Gb of RAM during standby.
During playback it reached a maximum of 60% to 70% average load and real time peaks hovered around 25%. Task manager showed between 33% and 38% usage of the CPU and 4.3 Gb of RAM during standby.

Buffer size 256: During standby it reached a maximum of ~45% average load and real time peaks hovered around ~30%. Task manager showed a 24% usage of the CPU and 4.1 Gb of RAM during standby.
During playback it reached a maximum of 65% to 80% average load and real time peaks hovered around 35%. Task manager showed between 33% and 34% usage of the CPU and 4.1 Gb of RAM during standby.

Buffer size 128: During standby it reached a maximum of ~50% average load and real time peaks hovered around ~35%. Task manager showed a 27% usage of the CPU and 4.1 Gb of RAM during standby.
During playback it reached a maximum of 70% to 80% average load and real time peaks hovered around 50%. Task manager showed between 36% and 39% usage of the CPU and 4.1 Gb of RAM during standby.

At 17:00 I tried closing and opening Cubase to see if the time of day makes a difference to the performance. Upon closing Cubase froze. Forced closing through task manager.

Upon reopening Cubase on a buffersize of 256 I had an average load of 45% and real time peaks hovered around 5%. Task manager showed a 23% usage of the CPU and 6.7 Gb of RAM during standby.

Session Information:

Settings
Sample rate: 44.1 kHz
Bit Depth: 24 Bit

Project
Tracks:
Group tracks: 15 + 1 Instrument Bus + 1 Master Bus
Instrument tracks: 16
FX Tracks: 5
Audio Tracks: 56


Plugins used:

Fabfilter Pro-Q2: 40
Fabfilter Saturn: 6
Fabfilter Pro-MB: 3
Fabfilter Pro-R: 2
Fabfilter Pro-L: 2
Fabfilter Pro-C2: 1
Fabfilter Pro-L2: 1
Helix Native: 2
iZotope Ozone 7: 1
JST Sidewidener: 3
JST Finality Advanced: 1
JST BG-Bass: 1
JST BG-Guitars: 1
JST BG-Keys: 1
Klanghelm MJUC: 1
Lexicon Concerthall: 1
LX480 Complete: 1
Magic AB V2: 1
Slate Virtual Mix Rack: 5
Slate Virtual Tape Machine: 4
Slate Verbsuite: 1
Slate Trigger 2: 3
Soundtoys Echoboy: 4
Soundtoys Phase Mistress: 3
Soundtoys Pan Man: 1
SPL Transient Designer: 1
Valhalla Room: 16
Valhalla Shimmer: 4
Waves API-2500: 2
Waves C4: 1
Waves Rbass: 1
Waves MaxxBass: 1
Waves S1 Imager: 1
Waves Soundshifter Pitch: 1
Waves L1: 1
Waves SSL Comp: 1

Total VST plugins: 120

VSTi’s:
Kontakt: GetGood Drums 2.0
Kontakt: Impact Studio’s Inferno Bass (4x)
Kontakt: The Giant
JST Subdestroyer
Xfer Serum (x4)

Total VST plugins: 7

I hope anyone can help me, this is serieusly beginning to undermine my workflow.
Thank you

Hi,

Try to use LatencyMon to test your system.

Hi.

I also recommend the latencymon tool.

Could you also check in the windows taskmanager to see if any of your processor cores are maxing out when this happens? I have the same issue and I have tracked mine down to a 100 percent constant core usage on cpu 2. It would be good to know if you have the same issue here.

Cheers
Ed

Don’t know if you solved your issues, but regarding your plugin list:

  • FabFilter - never have any performance issues
    iZotope - sometimes heavy, mainly if the plugin is visible so not so much an audio processing problem as much a visual rendering deficiency
    Valhalla - never have any performance issues
    Waves - never have any performance issues, but don’t use them much these days.
    Klangheim - I have noticed that for some reason, at least on my system, MJUC is far heavier on the CPU in Nuendo and Cubase than it is say, in Ableton. And when I say heavy, I mean 7 instances of MJUC bringing down an i9 7940x.