Audio dropouts when using UADx Inserts

Cubase
1

Hi there people.

I experience audio dropout issues when clicking at an audio track with UADx plugins inserts loaded in Cubase 15 pro.

I am in Windows 11, AMD RYZEN 5900x processor, 64mb RAM, MSI TOMAHAWK 570 MAX Motherboard, RME HDSP-E RAYDAT audio interface.

Audio guard is on, setting high but doesn’t really matter, happens always in any setting…
And with any buffer size as well.

Anyone with similar experience?
Or with any ideas?

Thanks in advance

Billy

2

No problems here running many UADx plugins as inserts, sends, on groups and on master bus. I have similar set up.

3

Thanks for your answer, I have opened a ticket with UAD helpdesk too, I will post their reply here…

2 Likes
4

What GPU do you have? Or you using onboard chipset graphics?

5

Does it happen only when you click on a track while playing. Can the project be played without drop outs when you don‘t click ?

6

AMD RYZEN 5900X

64MB RAM

NVIDIA GTX 1080ti graphics.

No onboard graphics card.

7

Yes it will play without dropouts if I don’t click

8

OK, here’s a few questions for you. Might help narrow down the problem.

  1. Does the UI become laggy when you click on the track?

  2. Do you have a lot of Plugins running? or have CPU heavy plugins running? (using linear phase or oversampling)

  3. Are you using large sample libraries in the project at all? - if so, are the sample sets stored on a HD, SSD or NVME?

  4. Are your projects running off a HD or SSD or NVME?

  5. Does this happen when you click ANY track or just a specific track with plugins on? - might be a problem plugin causing it, either on the track or in the project.

    What happens if you disable / remove all the plugins in the project? Do you still get the same issue?

9

Do you have Enable Record on Selected Audio/MIDI Track turned on?

10

Yes @Grimm I do, but tried to deactivate it and made no difference at all, so I turned it back on.

11

Have you checked if there are updates available for your RME (firmware & driver)? Somewhere in the back of my head I recall RME and native UAD plugins were having issues for a brief period. These were fixed by a driver update shortly after if I am not mistaken.

12

Thanks for the reply @Reco29.

I have flashed RME to the latest firmware (208) and using the latest drivers available.

I have also updated the motherboard chipset drivers and I am noticing some improvement.

Will keep you guys posted

13

Thanks for your reply @Cupboardy

  1. No UI does not become laggy on clicking.
  2. I do run a lot of plugins, including some UADx
  3. Using pretty heavy libraries, all resting in NVME and SSD drives.
  4. Projects are running from SSD drive.
  5. Mainly happens when I click on audio tracks and rarely on heavy instrument tracks ( EZ Drummer 3).

Had no time to try to unload all plugins to check if the behaviour is the same, will do so and keep you posted.

14

OK so it doesn’t sound like GPU related. Although, if you have NVIDIA game drivers installed it can cause DSP latency that could cause issues. Ideally want to use Studio drivers for NVIDIA.

If you’re using a lot of libraries, dropouts could be caused if available System RAM is low, or if your drives were slow - but being SSD and NVME that shouldn’t be a problem. As for RAM, it’s a good idea to use purge functions to update sample pools for VST instrument patches, this will massively reduce the memory footprint.

It could be CPU hitting its limits if you have a lot of processing going on in the project or VST synths. Usually just disabling plugins one-by-one until it stops happening would be a telling sign. Which is easy to check.

If its being caused by a plugin - you can check by using global bypass in the mixer and see if the same behaviour still occurs, or use Constrain Time Delay button in the project toolbar. If it still happens, it’ll be case of saving the project as a new version, and removing all the plugins - purely to test if this makes a difference. If so, it’ll be a case of trying to find the offending plugin.