Cracklings an interval

Cubase
1

Subject : Crackling (French to English translation)

Hello,

When I play or record, I hear a crackling sound that stops the recording.

Here are the clues I’ve gathered:

  • The crackling starts after a few seconds and repeats randomly.

  • It never happens twice in a row, always with an interval of 20 to 50 seconds.

  • The Audio Performance Monitor doesn’t detect any dropouts (screenshot 001).

  • This crackling causes a dropout of 2 to 3 beats (screenshot 001).

  • Windows 11 performance seems fine (screenshot 003).

  • The Cubase Audio Performance Monitor seems fine (screenshot 002).

  • 002
    002413×613 11.2 KB

  • This crackling only occurs when I play a video.

  • This crackling doesn’t occur without a video.

  • Once the crackling starts, it persists even if I delete the video.

My Bitdefender antivirus has an exception for all my music applications (Steinberg, Native Instruments and Soundiron).

My hardware:

  • Intel Ultra 7 processor (265KF 3.9GHz / 5.5GHz)
  • RAM: 2 x 16GB DDR5 6000MHz
  • SSD: 6TB
  • Cubase: 14 Pro
  • Audio interface: Komplete Audio 1 external sound card

I was hoping to be able to freeze the video track, as is possible for an audio track, but apparently not.

Thank you in advance.

Message original

Objet : craquement (traduction francais => anglais)

Bonjour,

Lorsque je joue ou que j’enregistre j’ai un craquement qui se font et arrête l’enregistrement.

Voici les indices que j’ai relevées :

-Le craquement arrive au bout de quelques secondes et cela se répéte de manière aléatoire.
-Il arrive jamais deux fois de suite, toujours avec une intervale de 20 à 50 secondes.
-Le moniteur de performance audio ne detecte aucune coupure (capture 001).
-Ce craquement provoque une coupure de 2 à 3 tempos (capture 001).
-Performance Windows 11 semble bon (capture 003).
-Performance du Moniteur de performance audi Cubase semble bon (capture 002).
-Ce craquement existe seulement si je place une vidéo.
-Ce craquement n’existe pas sans vidéo.
-Une fois que le craquement à commencé, il persiste même si je supprime la vidéo.
-Mon anti-virus Bitdefender possède l’exception de tout mes applications de musique (Steinberg, Native Instrument et Soundiron).

Mon matériel :
-Processeur Intel Ultra 7 (265KF 3.9Ghz / 5.5 Ghz)
-RAM : 2 x 16Go DDR5 6000 MHz
-SSD : 6 To
-Cubase : 14 pro
-Interface audio : carte son externe “Komplete Audio 1”

J’aurais espéré pouvoir “geler” la piste vidéo comme il est possible pour une piste sonore, mais visiblement non.

Je vous remercie par avance.

2

Hi,

Does it help, if you increase the Buffer Size? Have you tried to test your system by using LatencyMon utility?

3

Hello and thank you for your feedback.

Indeed, after trying for a few minutes, there seems to be a problem, and yet…

My system specs are:
Motherboard: B860 DS3H
Processor: Intel Ultra 7 265KF
Graphics card: RTX 5070 12Go Ventus 2x oc
RAM: 32 GB (2x16)
Audio card: Komplete Audio 1 (Native instrument).

Capture d’écran 2026-01-03 192326
Capture d’écran 2026-01-03 1923261638×893 99.2 KB

With my old system, Cubase had no problem :smiley: (a bit difficult with too many VST instruments, but with 2 or 3 track freezes, it ran fine):
i5 8400 2.80GHz
GTX 1070 Ti
RAM: 16 GB (2x8)
Audio card: M-Audio MobilePre

The crackling only occurs when I insert a video, but after testing with LatencyMon, the problem remains the same as when I took a screenshot of a new project without a video, but strangely, there’s no crackling, even with a large project.

So my setup is borderline for DAW use?

Thank you.

4

I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion based on poor performance with one video. You should probably do some troubleshooting.

  • Do you have the issue with any video?

  • What happens if you strip the audio from the video file before importing it?

  • What happens if you re-encode the video with a different codec?

  • Are you running any other video or audio media players or editing software while running Cubase?

  • Have you examined your GPU’s settings to see if it’s in some “sub-optimal” mode?

Whatever the cause of the issue is, it’s probably not your hardware specs.

5

You should probably either use the Nvidia gfx studio driver or at least make an adjustment in the standard driver settings (prefer maximum performance under 3D/Power management)

Then set Windows power scheme to high performance, disable all sleep options for every usb hub in device manager, disable usb selective suspend and run latencymon with nothing else running.

6

Regardless of the video and its format, the crackling sound appears.
No video = no crackling.
XLColdJ and Grim, I looked into it and conducted investigation.
My processor was in optimization mode (for both minimum and also maximum settings ) => corrected.
I enabled the “Stienberg audio power optimization” option in Cubase.
The video in Cubase was primarily handled by the CPU because the graphics card was in “standby” mode, not detecting the need for it like a video game (so I added Cubase to the performance list).

After that, I no longer have any crackling with video. LatencyMon is much better, even with a large project (perhaps the “Highest measured” setting still seems a bit erratic, but “ok”).

I need to check if Windows has the ability to manage performance max exclusively when it detects Cubase is open.

In any case, now everything seems perfect.

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