I am having some performance issues with Halion 6. Here are the details:
System: Windows 10, Surface Pro4 i5, 8gb memory, 256gb internal SSD, 500gb Samsung T5 SSD (storing all cubase content), UA Apollo Twin USB audio interface.
Issue: To produce the problem, all I have to do is create a chord track and add Halion 6 instrument AND enable the instrument track for recording. I have noticed when playing back certain Synth Pads (Motion sub-category, ‘Dusk of Angels’ for example) where the number of voices approach 32 on the Halion voice meter, the Cubase peak audio performance meter real-time peak hits max and I get some crackling.
I was able to reduce this significantly by modifying the Windows power plan and setting the min/max cpu to use 100%. But it still runs kind of high in terms of real-time peak performance meter, like in the 75% range and occasionally peaking above 100%, both on the cubase performance meter and Halion’s cpu peak performance meters. Windows performance meters don’t show anything over 40% for cpu and memory, and practically nothing for disk.
If I set the buffer size of my audio interface to max it goes away completely, but still runs kind of high on the performance meters.
If I disarm record for the Halion instrument track, it barely hits 10% on the audio performance meter (about 50% on Halion cpu peak meter).
I can also reproduce the problem outside of cubase with standalone Halion 6 if the voice count gets up to 32.
I know that I can tweak the CPU usage and max voice count in Halion 6 to reduce the problem. I have tried changing various Cubase performance settings, but that didn’t help either. Just wondering if there are other ways to optimize this.
So a couple questions:
- Why does arming the track for record in Cubase aggravate the problem? If not armed for record, performance peaks are much lower and no crackle. This is the part that I really don’t understand.
- Are there any additional CPU tweaks or optimizations, maybe in BIOS or somewhere else that can help with this?
- Or have I just reached the limit of what can be done on an i5 cpu in terms of number of voices, without having to limit Halion cpu usage or max voices?
- Is anyone else running an i5, or similar setup with Halion and seeing anything like this?