Brand new i9 9900k PC with poor performance?

Steinberg Lounge
1

Hi everyone. Just wondered if I could ask for some advice.

I’ve finally upgraded my PC and have purchased a custom built pro audio system.

Here is the spec:

i9 9900k (running at stock for now, will overclock later if needed)
Be quiet! Dark Rock PRO 4 cooler
32GB Ram.

My audio interface is my older 1st gen Scarlet 6i6. I only need one mic input. Everything else is ‘in the box’.

The PC has been tweaked by the company and optimised for music, and I’ve done a few of my own Windows tweaks (the usual ones regarding power etc), but something seems very off with my performance in Cubase 10.

In Latencymon, the PC is shown as being capable of handling audio, and all the bars are small and green after running the test repeatedly for 10 minutes at a time. Not spikes or blips.

In CPU-Z all cores and threads are showing, and when I check the CPU temp, it’s happily running at 28-32 degs. All good.

In Cubase, multi-core is checked, Asio Guard is set to normal.

The only software installed on the SSD is Cubase 10 Pro and my Komplete 12 U Collectors Edition and all my fx plugins etc.

The thing is, while I’m not getting any spikes or drop outs, my performance in Cubase 10 Pro seems quite poor…on par with what I was getting with my 10 year old PC before I upgraded - so given that the PC is brand new, completely up to date with drivers and firmware and meant for large projects, I’m beginning to wonder if my older Scarlet 6i6 Asio drivers are wonky and causing issues.

For example, last night I made a very small project: 3 x Kontakt instances (piano, bass, drum kit) and a pad loaded up in Hive. Straight away my performance meter was almost at half-way along, and got worse when I added a couple of Pro Q3s. When I raised the buffer, nothing changed. When I upped the Asio guard to high, nothing changed.

Interestingly, no matter what sample rate I choose, I only have the same few buffer settings to chose from the control panel (max 1024) so something seems weird. I’m sure I should have more options.

I really don’t want to start bouncing to audio on such a small project - that was the whole reason I upgraded from my 10 year old Win 7 dinosaur!

So basically, I can only wonder if my older Focusrite Scarlet 6i6 first gen and it’s latest driver is letting the system down.

Unfortunately, Focusrite don’t hold older drivers on their site for me to confirm this, but after a streeful few days trying find an answer, I’m looking at buying either the Steinberg UR242 or a Native Instruments interface to see if either of those work better.

Just wondered what anyone else thought? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated! I truly don’t think it’s anything to do with the PC. It’s running cool, quiet and is amazingly fast…but surely I should be getting better performance than this…

Thanks for reading! :slight_smile:

2

Some suggestions:

  1. Faulty USB cable - try a different one
  2. Driver and your motherboard USB chipset having a bad day - try alternate USB port. Not sure what your motherboard has but you have have several different types (USB3.1 USB3 and USB2). They are all backward compatible but driver might be sensitive
  3. How does it perform with generic ASIO driver and computer audio? Latency will be terrible but at least you can try the rest of the box without the Focusrite scarlet, might help you isolate issues.
  4. Any other audio drivers running? Try disabling them in the device manager.
  5. You don’t mention graphics card but if you have a separate one, try removing it and using onboard graphics on the chip and see what changes.

My i9 9900k has amazing performance wiht a Steinberg UR44 and current drivers. I had a similar problem to yours on my old machine and it was entirely due to driver issues and even on that machine was eventually cleaned up by Steinberg/Yamaha when they updated the driver.

If you can, borrow a different audio card from your local music store to help isolate the issue. My local was kind enough to let me pay a deposit wiht option to bring it back with one of their demo units to help me isolate my issue.

3

Thanks so much for replying!

I’ve been troubleshooting all morning, and have been through a lot of the things you suggest, all without any resolution sadly.

In the end, I have ordered a Steinberg UR242 to test if it is indeed the old Scarlett 6i6causing the problem. It’s really encouraging to know that you have a similar i9 9900K setup and have good performance with a Steinberg interface!

I’ll report back once I try it all out tomorrow :slight_smile:

4

A couple of thoughts;

  • Why do tweaks on Windows if you’ve bought a custom solution by Scan? Surely they would have set it up optimally, no?

  • What exactly is “the problem”? Unless I read your post wrong you have zero issues actually working on the computer, it’s just that you look at a meter and you think it should look differently…correct? If you’re basically worrying about the computer maxing out ‘too early’ then load up an old project that actually wouldn’t run well on your previous computer and see how it performs now - or - take the heavies project you currently have and start adding instruments or effects, whatever you normally do, until it no longer works - then look at how big that load is. If that load is too small then you surely have a problem. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the overall overhead of Cubase/Nuendo is fairly high regardless of CPU and so really the only way to test this is to simply add a bunch of processes to your project.

5

A couple of thoughts;

  • Why do tweaks on Windows if you’ve bought a custom solution by Scan? Surely they would have set it up optimally, no?

  • What exactly is “the problem”? Unless I read your post wrong you have zero issues actually working on the computer, it’s just that you look at a meter and you think it should look differently…correct? If you’re basically worrying about the computer maxing out ‘too early’ then load up an old project that actually wouldn’t run well on your previous computer and see how it performs now - or - take the heavies project you currently have and start adding instruments or effects, whatever you normally do, until it no longer works - then look at how big that load is. If that load is too small then you surely have a problem. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the overall overhead of Cubase/Nuendo is fairly high regardless of CPU and so really the only way to test this is to simply add a bunch of processes to your project.

6

Hi…thanks for replying.

Yes, the first thing I did was to load the large projects that stressed my old PC, but the performance was pretty much on par. This is what pointed me in the direction of the Scarlett 6i6 and the latest drivers I downloaded in preparation for the new PC arriving…that, and the odd behaviour I’m having when changing the buffer size (up and down) - it’s having no effect at all on performance, so I’m wondering if something has gone wrong with the driver/audio interface.

I uninstalled and reinstalled, but nothing changed. I’ve contacted Focusrite for an earlier driver, but no word yet. Also, having searched around online a little, I have come across a few other people having issues with the gen 1 6i6 after certain Windows updates, so I thought I’d try the Steinberg UR242 just to make sure. It arrives tomorrow, so I guess I’ll see then.

Thanks for your thoughts.

7

Just a quick update.

The Steinberg UR242 arrived today and works like a dream! Changing the buffer now has an effect on the performance meter and gives me mixing headroom again.
I can only guess that my old Scarlett has begun to have issues or that the drivers don’t suit something with my build/Windows update.

Either way, the UR242 is pretty amazing. The mic pre amps are quieter and cleaner than the Scarlett too, and the way it integrates into Cubase with the hardware/software is great :slight_smile:

8

Excellent! Good news, now back to making music.

9

If you want to hear quiet and clean converters, the try a Prism Sound. I guess a Lyra would suit your needs.

10

The Steinberg UR242 costs about €160
The Prism Sound Lyra is about €2250

Not a real comparison IMO.