Distorted and cadenced noise in Cubase 14

Hi,
I have this problem: I bought Cubase Elements 14, but when the tracks start playing, both audio and midi, you hear a distorted noise similar to a “creek… creek…”, approximately every second, regardless of the tempo set. You can only hear it when there is sound in the track. When there is silence you can’t hear it. I tried with different headphones and speakers, but it’s the same.

I thought it was the external sound card (Focusrite Scarlett 6i6), but when I tried with the internal one, directly from the PC, even disconnecting the 6i6, it was the same.

I work with a frequency of 48000 Hz (also in the sound card)

I think it’s a latency/Buffer/ASIO Driver problem… I tried a bit to change buffer, driver, latency values, but I can’t find the right configuration.

Could you kindly help me?

System info:
Notebook MSI Intel(R) Core™ i7-10875H CPU @ 2.30GHz
Ram 16.0 GB
Windows 11 - 64 bit
USB Sound Card: Focusrite Scarlett 6i6 1st gen
Internal Sound Card: Realtek(R) Audio
Tested drivers: Focusrite USB ASIO (the ones in the sound card, just downloaded), ASIO4ALL V2, Generic Low latency ASIO Driver, the native ones from Steinberg

Thanks!

The most common cause of stuff like this is a 3rd party plug-in that is in a trial mode.

EDIT
And use the Focusrite ASIO driver

Thank you, raino, for the answer.
I tried, but it’s the same… Focusrite card with Focusrite Asio Driver was the first choice, but the noise is there

No, I wasn’t clear. The ASIO driver isn’t (never say never) related to the noise you are hearing. That was more a general comment that your first choice for an ASIO driver should be the one that came with your Audio Interface and not a generic one like from Steinberg or ASIO4ALL.

To solve your problem, look for a plug-in that’s in some kind of free trial mode.

You can temporarily switch off all non-Steinberg plugins by holding down Ctrl + Alt + Shift when launching Cubase. It will bring up a dialog that has the option to start without 3rd party plugins. Please try that.

Ok, raino and Johnny, I don’t quite understand how, but I think I solved it with both of your suggestions :slight_smile:
I reset Focusrite ASIO USB as the driver and tried to exclude third-party plugins.
It was still making noise, but I tried again to change the buffer value of the sound card to 1024. A bit high, but I think the PC can handle it. I restarted Cubase normally and it’s working.
If there are any changes I’ll write it down, so it can be useful to someone else.
Thanks.

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