Hello guys.
I’ve been struggling to solve audio dropouts both on c13 and c14 without any luck so far.
So i am using a beast of a computer. Amd 7950X with 64 gigs of ram 6000 mhz, samsung 990pro (Windows 11) paired with a focusrite interface. So performance is not an issue.
Although i tried everything from changing clocking settings, limiting threads to cores with various different bios settings, changing cables on my interface etc etc, i still have audio dropouts. Everytime i lower buffer size the dropout is longer as well. So lets say in 1024 buffer size the dropout is almost non audible but its still there. when i use 256 the dropout is like a second long without audio output. The cpu performance meter spikes and shows a clip, and the real disaster happens when i try to record something, after record is enabled it stops the recording and a message pops up and says: audio dropout detected.
Needless to say that the cpu on the task manager and rams are (sleeping) and it doesn’t really matter if i use 300 tracks or 1 with or without plugins. its the same thing.
Also when the audio dropouts happen, some cores (lets say core 7, 12, and 15) spike 20% up. the rest of them are stable. So dropouts force the cpu to give more power momentarily for some weird reason.
The only thing that makes it go away is when i completely disable Multi processing function on studio setup. But if i disable it, it only utilizes 1 core. so i quickly run out of power… or sometimes if the computer does 7-8 powercycles (restart) sometimes it just goes away, and the next day, same story.
I never had that issue with my previous setup which was 100 times less powerfull intel i5 7900kf with 16 gigs of ram…
So any ideas and any help would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance
Pete works at Microsoft and that guide is basically just the essentials, nothing fancy. But go through it to see if it makes a difference. Then report back if you still have problems.
If you still have problems you could get HWinfo64 which is a free computer monitoring app that gives you better ‘resolution’ of data. In it you should be able to see things like CPU speed and temperature and it might show you some core problems with the computer, such as overheating and then the CPU throttling down.
Thanks for the fast response. One thing that i forgot to mention is that i am using windows 11.
Also when the audio dropouts happen, some cores (lets say core 7, 12, and 15) spike 20%. the rest of them are stable. So dropouts force the cpu to give more power, not lose power. Also on every other software, games and editing apps the system is perfect and very stable.
A couple of the most common solutions for eliminating audio dropouts on otherwise powerful PC systems are:
replacing video drivers - because many versions of gaming drivers have caused lots of latency grief in the case of Nvidia drivers, the “studio drivers” are the desirable one’s to use. I’ve also experienced a bad set of AMD video drivers, where I had to roll back to an older version.
disabling other audio hardware on the motherboard via BIOS settings (this may be taking a sledgehammer to the issue, and there’s a good chance that the underlying problem is also related to gaming audio drivers - but I’ve never bothered to dig into the details).
The issues are likely related to the fact that gaming optimized drivers reach deep into the operating system kernel, and interfere with ASIO performance (which also reaches deep into the bowels of the operating system to get to the high performance). A bit like having too many chefs in the high performance kitchen, who trip all over each other.
p.s. The guide by Pete Brown is getting quite old, and to the best of my knowledge hasn’t been kept up-to-date, so some of the recommendations in those posts have not kept pace with more modern systems. So I have stopped recommending that guide for modern systems.
The reason Pete hasn’t updated it is as far as I know because there isn’t anything to update. His approach to it is that a standard Windows install with a pro level interface with dedicated drivers works fine with just very basic tweaks. A lot of the tweaks people keep sharing are either not verified to give any advantages at all, or they are not verified to give any advantages and pose potential problems down the line, as Pete points out.
So if you have any tweaks that are verified to help performance that Pete has missed please share them with the rest of us, and of course with Pete so that he can update his blog entry.
He does discuss adjusting Nvidia settings, but there are so many different cards and driver versions that come out that it’s really a bit of a moving target. Regardless, I don’t see what he says about video/graphics that is out-of-date.
I had issues with latency after moving to Cubase 12 and 13. Things went worse when I purchased a laptop as studio on the go. After lots of trials I found the video below and it helped me to get things better. Not perfect but usable.
Not asking what your audio latency is like… It’s dpc latency…Latencymon is software useful for tracing performance issues that impact realtime audio. Free download.
I think PB is in a tough spot. A man with a good heart in a giant organization with anything but a benign heart.
MS is doubling down on all kinds of Windows enshittification, some of which offsets or possibly undercuts some of the good work PB and his colleagues are doing on making Windows ever more friendly to music making.
So for example, cleaning up Windows processes for DAW users might very well involve disabling (some of) the newer surveillance “features” in later Win10 “upgrades” and even more in Win11.
And publicly sharing the knowledge of tricks how to do that might not be something that even a rather senior MS executive is at liberty to do.
So I’m not buying that there wouldn’t be anything worth updating in those posts.
So PB does the best with things he can influence. Like MIDI 2.0 support in Windows, and chairing the MIDI association and helping Steinberg to get Cubase onto Windows for ARM.
I think that series of PB posts from a few years ago, may have been at the tail-end of an era when MS was truly focused on improved user experiences - especially in Windows. But since then MS seems to have changed course towards weaponizing Windows (see also dropping support for relatively recent computers this coming October).
So more than ever, I’m counting on unofficial information flows to optimize Windows - without resorting to shady downloads.
