Random Dropouts

Cubase
1

I’ve been experiencing very strange audio dropouts in Cubase Pro 13. The audio performance meter will peak and have an audio dropout. This is not only making the audio freeze when mixing, but also stopping recordings mid-take. It is also important to mention that CPU doesn’t peak in utilization when this happens
I’ll list the things that I’ve checked and tried:

  1. I’ve changed the Buffer Size and Sample Rate
  2. I’ve checked the Asio Guard and the Steinberg Audio Scheme
  3. My power settings are set to best performance, not power saving.
  4. I updated the drivers on my graphics card and on my audio interface
  5. I’ve tried only connecting the essentials to the computer and closed all background applications and processes.
  6. I’ve reinstalled Cubase
  7. I’ve tried stock and 3rd party vst’s and plugins
  8. I checked the Richard Ames video that is on lots of posts that are related to audio dropouts, but I never got anything to work.
  9. I ran LatencyMon several times, but everything seemed fine.

The only thing that I haven’t tried, but don’t know if it affects on some level, is to reseat any physical connections on my computer, like RAM, SSD’s, GPU, etc.

Weirdly, when I shut down the computer, go out for some hours, and then come back and turn it on, the problem seems to go away. But this doesn’t happen every time. Sometimes the problem persists.
Other thing that caught me by surprise is that if I use the “Generic Low Latency ASIO Driver” or the “Steingberg built-in ASIO Drive”, the problem disappears, but the latency becomes unusable for recording.

It also seems important to mention that I have this problem on Dorico 5 too.

I’ll write down my computer specs just in case:

  • CPU: Ryzen 5 2600
  • MOBO: B450 Steel Legend
  • RAM: Corsair Vengance 8x2GB 3000MHz
  • Boot Drive: Samsung SSD 980 Pro 1TB
  • SSD for vst’s: Kingston SA2000 500GB
  • GPU: Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB
  • Audio Interface: Audient iD14
  • OS: Windows 11
2

Is the computer linked to the internet? If so try turning that off & see what impact it has?

3

I tried your suggestion, but the problem persists.

4

What’s likely happening is that something on your PC is occasionally fully consuming a resource for a moment & that’s causing your dropouts. Network activity is a common source of this, so at least that’s ruled out.

I’d try launching Task Manager and leaving it running on the Performance tab while you use Cubase. Then when the problem occurs see if Task Manager shows any matching spikes in resource usage.

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5

Here are a few quick ideas off the top of my head:

Disable Windows power-saving features:
You’ve already set your power plan to “Best Performance,” which is great. However, check for any hidden power-saving features in Device Manager, especially for USB devices and your audio interface. Disabling power-saving on USB ports could help prevent any interference.

External Drive Interference:
Are you running your projects from the same SSD or using an external drive? Some users have experienced dropouts when using external drives, especially if they are set to “allow the computer to turn off this device to save power.” Double-check these settings if you’re using an external drive.

Graphics Card Driver Impact:
Since the issue doesn’t occur with the “Generic Low Latency ASIO Driver,” your Radeon RX drivers might be the culprit. GPU drivers, even when updated, can sometimes cause dropouts in DAWs. I recommend switching to the Radeon PRO Edition drivers (similar to NVIDIA Studio drivers) instead of the Adrenalin Edition. You can grab them here:
https://www.amd.com/en/support/downloads/drivers.html/graphics/radeon-rx/radeon-rx-5000-series/amd-radeon-rx-5500-xt
Rolling back or trying different versions might also help.

LED Control Software:
If you’re using any software to control system LEDs (like ASUS Aura, MSI Mystic Light, or Corsair iCUE), try disabling or uninstalling it temporarily. These programs can run background processes that interfere with audio processing and cause dropouts. If this fixes the issue, you can either leave it off or look for updated versions of the software that might perform better.

6

I was testing a little bit while monitoring the Task Manager and I found that everytime a dropout occurs, the “System” task spikes in CPU usage from >1% to 6-8%
I don’t know what is causing these spikes. Sometimes, when I turn on the PC, this spike never occurs, but sometimes it doesn’t stop, no matter what I do. It feels like the PC sometimes wakes up in a good or a bad humor haha

Doing a quick research, I found one guy in a Windows forum that suggested doing a “Reset PC and keep personal files” in the Recovery menu on Windows Settings. Apps will be deleted, and I would like to try other solutions before uninstalling everything, but if this is the only way, maybe is worth a try.

7

Interesting that it doesn’t happen every time you start up. This might be caused by Fast Startup messing with how the system loads certain drivers or processes.

Disable Fast Startup:

1.  Go to Control Panel > Power Options > Choose what the power buttons do.
2.  Click on Change settings that are currently unavailable.
3.  Uncheck the box for Turn on fast startup and save the changes.

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This might help stabilize the behavior of the system when starting up.

Driver or Device Conflicts:
Sometimes, system task spikes can be caused by driver conflicts or devices not initializing correctly at startup. It might be helpful to check the Device Manager for any drivers that may need updates or are causing issues.

8

Do you have another interface to try?
Could very well be a faulty interface/driver.
Especially because you said the problem goes away with different audio drivers…
Perhaps you have some other interface laying around? Or you can borrow one from a friend?

9

I apologize for not giving an update sooner. I’ve been pretty busy this days.

I fixed the problem. The thing that keeps bugging me is that I can’t pinpoint to the exact cause of the problem nor the solution, but I can tell you guys the path that I took to solve this issue.

I contacted the Steinberg support in my country and they old me to install Yamaha drivers from this link: Yamaha Steinberg USB Driver V2.1.3 for Windows 11/10 (64-bit) - Yamaha - México
The thing is that I don’t have any Yamaha hardware, but, weirdly, this made the problem less recuring, but not fixed. Just, instead of having the problem every few seconds, the problem appeared every several minutes.

The next thing that I did was check with lots of detail my task manager, and I found a task called “System” spike with 6-8% CPU usage, and when that happend, the problem appeard.
Right clicking the task and selecting “Open file location” I found that the file causing problems was “ntoskrnl.exe” under the “System 32” folder. So I went to lots of Microsoft forums and I saw that some guy recommended doing a “clean boot”. This meant removing all startup processes and activating almost just a few at a time to spot the process causing the issue.
To do this, I followed this guide from the microsoft website: How to perform a clean boot in Windows - Microsoft Support

After several hours of troubleshooting I disabled lots of startup processes. I’ll post images of the ones I disabled.
image
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As you can see, I disabled almost any processes that have to do with videogames and, interestingly, the “Universal Audio Helper Service”. This process was the most problematic. Not the anti-cheats (that sometimes are very invasive in a computer), but the Universal Audio process.

So, as you can see, it was not one thing that solved the issue, it was lots of little tweaks here and there to make this problem go away.
I would love for Steinberg to have a look at this issue because it is oddly specific. I didn’t found anyone on the internet that had the same problem. Even the Steinberg support in my country was really confused because the problem was super weird.

I want to thank to everyone that replied to my post and tried to help me. :heart:
I hope this post helps someone at some point, but also I hope no one encounters this problem because it is super frustrating.

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