severe audio issues with Qcore 2 system W7 HP 64b

Cubase
1

Help anyone ? …Here’s the DAW & scenario’s…CUBASE ESSENTIALS 5 (5.1.2)

DAW: Gateway fx7026, Quadcore 2 9300 2.5Ghz, 8 GB RAM, 2 - 320GB Western digital 7200rpm SATA drives, 1GB FSB,
Realtech HD on-board audio, W7 home premium 64bit (yada, yada…i know). all device drivers current.

USB Audio Interface: MAUDIO FAST TRACK ULTRA (driver 5.10.0.5099, f/w 1.51). all device drivers current.

Scenario 1: create simple cubase project #1, using generic asio driver, on-board audio, map input/output to on-board audio (mic & external speakers). one track (vocals), no plugins. all sounds fine, vst performance monitor is at 15% and stable. Windows performance monitor: CPU utilization = ~15%, MEMORY utilization = ~1.25GB, disk1 IOQ = 0,
disk2 IOQ = 0, latency = 20ms. test of on-board audio (RealtechHD) output from windows sounds fine.

scenario 2: create cubase project #2, using maudio driver, map all input/output devices (8x8). one track, no plugins. vst performance monitor is erratic and unstable from 10%-100%. input/output erratic, unstable, recording & playback slow, scratchy, sparce. random scratchy audio output when nothing going on. CPU utilization = ~40%, MEMORY utilization = ~1.25GB, disk1 IOQ = 0, disk2 IOQ = 0. system interrupts = 22%. maudio buffer size = 1024, latency 25.7 ms. cubase Volume meters jumping out of control (clipping). Windows recording device list shows maudio input
device volume meter erratic (even cubase running). reboot of pc doesnt help, power cycle of maudio doesnt help. phantom power not used. if i add a few plugins esp a high latency one, the vst performance monitor peg at 100% and then no output but popping and cracking. increasing maudio buffer doesnt help. seems to be something to do with the system interrupt mode…based on the high cpu interrupt mode, maybe poorly written code (drivers) that makes use of the cpu’s from one or all parties: microsoft (os), muadio, cubase.

scenario 3: using old box: Pentium 4, 1 GB memory, 400 Mhz bus, 2 - 250 GB drives, WINXP SP2, I can use maudio interface and cubase with 3-4 plugins, and even get 14 ms latency…sounds good, but still get popping and cracking every once in a while…but if i add a few tracks, and/or plugins and/or decrease maudio buffer size it starts popping and cracking, and cpu goes up to 100%, along with vst performance as well…at least in this scenario i can control the problem and repeat the issue, but am severely limited as to what i can work with in cubase.

scenario 4: bought a sony vaio laptop for personal use (not as DAW): I7 Q720 1.6 Ghz, 4 GB, 500GB SATA II, W7 HP 64b.
cubase and maudio work basically fine with basically any cubase project (lots of power), except i still get the annoying popping and cracking every so often during playback, recording, or just doing nothing. dont wan’t to use this as my DAW. I am running all manner of stuff on it (i.e. norton, ms office, etc).

would running windows 7 pro/ultimate (64b or 32b) really make a diff ?
any suggestions?

2

ok i finally figured out the problem, after much time,money, and headache…no one on any forum was able to help.

the problem: getting loud popping / clicking / crackling randomly on my Win vista Quadcore DAW when doing nothing.

DAW: Gateway fx7026, Quadcore 2 9300 2.5Ghz, 8 GB RAM, 2 - 320GB Western digital 7200rpm SATA drives, 1GB FSB,
Realtech HD on-board audio, W7 home premium 64bit (yada, yada…i know). all device drivers current.
USB Audio Interface: MAUDIO FAST TRACK ULTRA (driver 5.10.0.5099, f/w 1.51). all device drivers current.
Cubase 5.2

  • found the motherboard and all devices were way under cooled and running way too hot (would burn your skin, uh thats way too hot. see temps from firmware)

-removed one little failing pee-pee case fan, and added 4 larger fans to strategic places in the case (disks, graphics card, near cpu, case) nice and cooler now.

  • found the integrated audio on motherboard was slightly damaged by over heating, and also a disk drive was partially damaged over time.

-unfortunately, not able to fix audio on motherboard, but reformatted partially damaged disk, lost a little capacity, but works fine now.

  • On windows, audio interface devices that need USB 2.0 to fully perform, windows MAY allocate a USB 1.0 port if your audio interface can use USB 1.0 (if you have both, due to round-robin device allocation), thus reducing performance and creating poor audio, and latency, which extremely limits the use of tracks, plugins, effects, instruments, channels, etc, in your cubase projects.

  • 20dB gain button on mic works too good (AKG Perception 220), creating severe excess audio I/O on an already problematic system, don’t use +20dB gain on mic (silence is golden!), sound check using other hardware/software volume controls.

  • Upgraded Vista to Win7, problem still existed, but Win7 has better tools to see whats going on with your cpu(s)
    Lauch task manager, then resource monitor, look for “System Interrupts” under CPU, this process services device I/O at a very high hardware priority.

If this process is running over ~ 5% of any cpu (should be very low), your system is under powered, or has a device problem, or can’t handle the I/O properly.

Looks like versions of windows before WIN 7, do not handle device interrupts very well. On larger systems (VMS, UNIX, etc) you can set the O.S. to distribute and load share the device interrupts across all available cpu’s not just CPU-0 which is by default on a lot of systems.

On the Quadcore system, upgraded to WIN 7, I watched the System Interrupt stack ramp up to 40% + as i decreased latency on the M-audio interface, and added tracks, high latency plugins, & effects, to a test cubase project, then created more audio I/O by listening to the audio output during recording and playback…loud pops & cracks (sounded like firecrackers).

  • Bought a nice top of the line sony vaio, I-7, Win 7, 4 GB memory (I-7 has 4 cores, each core is dual threaded so looks like 8 cpus from task manager), USB 2.0 only. everything has worked fine for 1 1/2 years now, I can load up the Vaio to the hilt and it doesnt even hiccup, System Interrupt stays below 2%. Although there was still a slight noise issue due to the +20 dB boost button on the mic which was easy enough to solve, just switched it off.

hope this can help someone.

God Bless,
-Staccato Rossini