I run 2 PCs in my DAW studio, the primary is an AMD RYZEN 9 3950X 16 core with 128 Gb RAM on W10. The slave PC is an Intel i7 7800x with 96 Gb RAM on W10
Within the last 10 days I have noticed that when I run Cubase pro 12 on the primary I get very high power usage audio degradation and crackle. I use VEPRO7 to connect the primary and slave and any sample on the slave in VEPRO7 I now play in Cubase has a distorted crackle.
I have also found that if I play any of my Heavyocity libraries with loops they donāt actually play, they just distort with some sort of piercing screech. This happens with Damage, Damage 2, Gravity 2, Forzo, Scoring guitars, Aeon Melodic and Aeon Rhythmic. Anything with an ARP type of sequence or loop. I also get this with Symphobia Pandora, Kirk Hunter Kinetic Strings and Percussion and other libraries as well. However if I play them standalone in Kontakt they all play perfectly.
I am using a UAD Apollo Twin USB audio interface and a KK S88 Mk1 mid controller keyboard.
Nothing has changed at all in my studio setup.
I have tried using the trial version of Cubase Pro 15 but this makes no difference at all and I still get the same issues.
The problem is now so bad that I am unable to continue to work on any projects
I know there have been issues with AMD Ryzen and Cubase but I have using this as my primary running Cubase for 4 years with no issues.
I have 3 questions I would appreciate some help with.
Is the high power utilisation issue likely to be related to the AMD Ryzen processor and if so what has caused this to suddenly occur.
Is the issue related to W10 now being out of support? I have already extended support until 2026 so the PC is currently up to date
Iām not aware of any issues with Cubase and Ryzen generally, in fact theyāre one of the recommended platforms for running Cubase.
What do you mean by āhigh power utilizationā? If you mean CPU then no, thereās no reason why it should be related to the Ryzen processor.
Nothing has changed in the way that Win 10 works, even though itās now out of support.
Itās not clear from your description what youāre doing. Are you running these libraries on the slave machine under VEP or under Cubase on the Ryzen?
When you run them on Kontakt native, which machine is it running on?
A clearer description would help with any diagnostics.
I am running the libraries on the Ryzen PC in Cubase. I am not using the slave at all at the moment. There is no point until I get this issue resolved
I have the full version of Kontakt 6 so always used that. However I have tried using Kontakt 7 and 8 although these are not the full versions.
If I create a completely new project in Cubase and then as I have just done added 3 different Kontakt rack instruments choosing Kontakt 6 or 7 and adding 5 instruments to the first kontakt group, 5 instruments to the second and 2 to the third, when I get to that third Kontakt group if I then play any key from any sample on any of the 12 instruments there is a clear audio interference and it looks and sounds like CPU overload
Just to clarify, I have carried out the above exercise creating a new project a couple of times using just Kontakt 6 and then just Kontakt 7 with exactly the same results each time.
Does this help?
Thanks, but isnāt this why you would use the slave machine so you can offload some of the workload from your primary machine? It sounds like maybe youāre just overloading your primary machine.
How does the Cubase performance meter look when this is occurring? And, have you checked the Windows Task Manager to see what resources are consumed?
I donāt remember exactly how it was with Kontakt 6 (or Cubase 12), but note that the preferences in Kontakt are different for the plugin than they are for the stand-alone Kontakt application.
Open the Kontakt plugin in Cubase, go to Options and make sure āMultiprocessing supportā is OFF.
I am not using the slave just at the moment because I am trying to find out what is causing the primary to overload. If I attempt to use the slave all I get is a really distorted audio coming across so this doesnāt help with the diagnostics it just confuses it and is probably linked to the primary issue.
In a normal working environment I use the slave and primary to run my samples which is why I have the slave and connect them both using VEPRO7
I am not using the slave just at the moment because I am trying to find out what is causing the primary to overload. If I attempt to use the slave all I get is a really distorted audio coming across so this doesnāt help with the diagnostics it just confuses it and is probably linked to the primary issue.
In a normal working environment I use the slave and primary to run my samples which is why I have the slave and connect them both using VEPRO7
Thanks for the suggestion MrSondman. I did try that and it didnāt seem to make a difference. Because this issue has happened suddenly, Iām beginning to think this is a PC issue with the AMD Ryzen and although it has 128Gb Ram it maybe isnāt running on anywhere near all of the 128Gb for some reason which could explain why it doesnāt seem to be able to cope.
I donāt use Windows, so I canāt say for sureābut it seems like some people are doing well with AMD. I guess you donāt want to upgrade to Windows 11?
Yes, I have already tried that. This is an AMD Ryzen PC with 128 GB RAM so can usually manage masses of sample libraries and easily runs my standard template with 400 instruments supported by my slave PC but the AMD now struggles with 3 basic VST sessions. I believe this is an issue with the 128 GB Ram not functioning so the PC is off to see a technician today to be fully checked out.
This quote provides the key information on where to search for the culprit: If everyting did work just fine for the last couple of years and now suddenly your audio started crackling when using Cubase/DAW, then there must have been an update of either the operating system, the audio drivers, the DAW etc.
Have a look into your DAW and make sure itās still the same audio drivers as those you have been workind successfully in the past. Sometimes, strange things can happen and the DAW might pick a generic windows driver instead of your spcific ASIO drivers. Just check that.
Did you install any new software that could interfere? A couple of years ago I had the free video/audio player installed and for some reason it used to satrt itself automatically when I wanted to rip an audio CD (with a different software for audio-grabbing), so the resulting digital files containing the audio were full of crackles.
I narrowed the issue down to the only possibility being with some or all of the 128 GB RAM (4 x 32GB). The pc technician I took the AMD Ryzen to tested and confirmed he was seeing error messages so I sent the RAM back to the manufacturer who confirmed the RAM were faulty and are sending out a new set of 4 x 32 GB RAM.
Therefore I am closing this as the root cause has been identified
Thank you for the update. However, I would not consider the topic as āsolvedā for as long as you havenāt tried the new RAM sticks and can confirm that everything is running fine now that you have replaced the RAM.
ā¦ and, if I could add, always, always, always check RAM with memtest86+ (the open source one). Itās free, and all you need is a USB drive to boot from. It may take a day or two to comprehensively test 128GB, but look at the time you would have saved.
