Recommendations on a new sound card / or how to optimize current sound card

Cubase
1

Good day,
I’m currently using a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 (1st Gen) and having issues. (Cubase 8, 8.5, & 10.5)

  • It intermittently causes blue screens on reboot (Windows 10). On one occasion I had to disconnect it just so I could boot into Windows.
  • I get audio Audio Processing Spikes all the time.
  • Synths like Serum cause major issues when I’m using a sound that has a long sustain. The sound cannot play and Cubase has crashed on occasion.
  1. Any recommendations on upgrading to a better sound card?
  2. Any ideas how to improve/setup/configure my current card?
    I have the buffer set to 192–should I bump that?
    Should I change VST audio settings in Cubase? I saw a video that said I should use “Steinberg Audio Power Scheme” – I have 32 GB of memory

Thanks so much!!

2

I can’t see it being your audio interface causing the problems unless it has a hardware fault. Have you tried removing the driver and installing again?
Using a high power scheme, steinberg or windows ultimate are great for audio performance. There are also other tweaks in windows.
You may need to run latencyMon to see what is causing performance problems.

3

Thanks mkok–yes, I ran the gamut on removing and reinstalling the drivers and made sure they were the latest and greatest. I also tried moving the USB cable to different inputs. Do you know if it needs to USB 2,0 or 3.0? Also, do you know if I should increase the buffer size on the Focusrite settings? It’s set to 192–would it help to increase it to 512 or even 1024? I appreciate your response :slight_smile:

4

It may help increasing the buffers but you shouldn’t need to go that high unless your pc is really underpowered or you have a bottleneck. Are you using the steinberg power plan? You should be if you haven’t set a power plan that has the cpu at 100% without throttling.

You don’t mention your PCs specs?

5

I turned the power plan on…I haven’t had time to go back through my tracks to see how much of an impact this is, but it seemed to stop the audio clipping on one of my tracks while it was playing. It still clipped when the song loaded and when I would stop the track. I’ll know more when I start working on some of my more complicated tracks…

I’ve had my PC for 7 years so it’s getting old by computer standards–though, it was top-of-the-line when I got it:
Windows 10 / 32 GB of ram
i7-4790K CPU @ 4.00GHz, 4001 Mhz, 4 Cores, 8 Logical Processors

6

I have a new computer but my old i7 which is 12 years still works well but I suppose it depends on what you call a large project. Is this something new or has it always been a problem?