Cubase 10.5: can't solve crazy real-time peak

Steinberg Lounge Computer/Studio Hardware & Setup
#1

Hello guys and gals,
so, I know this has probably been posted thousands of times, but I haven’t really found any solution in any of the threads here.

This is basically my issue:

And this is latencymon after ca. 40 mins:

Screenshot_2
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I have tried countless of things, but the problem seems unsolvable. For example:

  • all performance related windows tweaks
  • disabling c-states
  • disabling various trash not needed like nvidia sound drivers etc.
  • using other ASIO drivers
  • reinstalling (probably almost) all basic drivers
  • reinstalling Cubase

Of course, setting buffer size to something above 256 remedies the problem, but that’s not an option if you want to actually record anything in real-time.

Any ideas what else I could try or what could somehow be causing this?

Current setup:
M/B: ASUS B450-F
CPU: Ryzen 5 3600x
RAM: 16GB
GPU: 1060 3GB
Audio: SSL 2
OS: Win 10

#2

Could be lots of things !

Your latencymon results don’t look too bad - I’ve seen much worse.
The ACPI.sys is a tricky one - often fairly low level , possibly dodgy bios.

Just checking - are you running Latencymon at the same time as cubase ?

1 Like
#4

Hey, thanks for the reply!

I did run it at the same time as cubase, yes. Also, forgot to mention I’ve had the same results with 3 different BIOS versions. The current one is the latest.

#5

If you run it the same time as cubase then, yes, the Audio Performance meter will peak (red lights) - and you will get glitchy playback.

Latencymon ‘mimics’ the load of a DAW.

What is the issue you are having ?

#6

There is no remarkable difference without latencymon running in the background though. Check my vid around the 00:10 mark, as soon as I enable monitoring on the track, there’s a constant dropout peak every 3rd second or so.

#7

ok - when you ‘input monitor’ then ASIO guard is switched on that track.

What is on that track ? plugins ?

#8

Indeed. There’s a NeuralDSP (amp sim) plugin on that specific one, but that only makes things slightly worse. Here’s a completely empty project with just an empty audio track:

I mean, this does not look normal. It might not cause a dropout, but it’s still extreme.

#9

What else is running on the PC in the background ?

#10

A while ago I had a long battle with audio interruptions, and in my case the culprit seemed to be Nvidia settings and/or drivers, which were interrupting CPU treads that were also needed by Cubase.

However my LatencyMon never looked as clean as yours. But then again, I’m also running a rather old Intel i7 CPU.

In any case, just in case it helps:

If I recall it correctly I had to set Nvidia 3D Power Management Mode to “Prefer Maximum Performance” (from Adaptive").

And I also removed all of the extra GeForce Experince stuff and stuck with just the pure Nvidia video drivers. (Side note: Fully cleaning out Nvidia installations needed a special little utility provided by Nvidia - at least back when I did that).

2 Likes
#11

Nico5 - top tip here for nvidia cards (was gonna go through my list on this thread!) - switch the driver to MSI mode. It’s a really simple registry tweak - or you can download something to do it for you.

All those nvidia driver spikes will go away :slight_smile: (actually they will move somewhere else but do it anyway!)

2 Likes
#12

and there are a few more nvidia things that might help (vertical sync for example)

1 Like
#13

just use the ‘manual method’ from here:

2 Likes
#14

Thanks for the reply :slight_smile:
It’s already set to maximum performance and I did a clean driver-only install after using DDU, but still… :cry:

#15

sorry Alex - that was for Nico5

you problem is elsewhere !

What is running in the background on your PC - is it a ‘audio only’ pc ? and is it a laptop ?

#16

Hey, that’s something I haven’t tried! :smiley: Found an MSI utility from the guru3d forums. Will try it and report back.

#17

Alex - do that anyway - but that is not your issue I don’t think .

Won’t do any harm

If you answer my other questions I can give you some pointers

#18

(moving to the computer forum - it’s not a cubase issue)

remember - hacking around with drivers and the registry is at your own risk !!!

#19

So, I ran that little program from guru3d and enabled msi on the 1060 and 2 audio devices:

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Problem is still there unfortunately.

#20

yes - I did say ^^^^ read my posts above :slight_smile:

and it might break your audio drivers - but hey …a little knowledge is a dangerous thing

#21

:smiley: nothing is broken though, it just didn’t change anything regarding the cpu spikes.

What would you like to know about the background programs you asked before? Is there something I can upload that will help you?