Hi Ulf, Thanks for your reply.
I can confirm that I am using the generic low latency ASIO driver with an inbuilt sound chip. The only external connection is to a Dell U2410 external monitor and speaker through an HDMI connection. I don’t think this is relevant as I have tried disconnecting the HDMI and running with just the laptops screen and speaker and I still get the distortion. I have played around with ASIO4All in the past when trying to bottom the distortion problem but couldn’t get it to work.
I may have slightly mislead you before. I have just run a test from scratch and the VSTAudioEngine does indeed start up taking 800+MB of memory. But it does keep increasing. The sound was fine to start and after aprox 5mins has become distorted. The memory usage is up to 943MB now after approx.7mins but still gradually rising.
I attach zip files of the VSTAudiEngine log for yesterday and today in case they can show any light on the problem.
I’ve looked at all your log files and couldn’t find anything abnormal or suspicious.
So basically, I’m out of steam. Don’t know what is wrong on your systems. As mentioned, we have so many running installations out there in the world, it must have something to do with your particular hardware.
Is there any chance that you might get hands on some different audio interface, maybe borrow from a friend or so?
Hi Ulf,
I have a couple of other machines I can try. One already has Dorico loaded but has a dodgy main board and I’m waiting for a replacement but I’ll boot it up and give it a try. The other is at my office and will require me to set up Dorico first. I have a USB dongle so it shouldn’t be a problem migrating. I’ll let you know when I’ve tested.
No need to borrow any audio interface from a friend. As I already reported I have another sound card on the system - SB Audigy card (PCI) and there is no problem with that card. Both Cubase and Dorico work just fine without any crackling noise. The issue exists only with Focusrite Saffire. But Focusrite Saffire works without the issue with any other DAW or notation software (Sibelius 8, Notion 6, Studio One 3 Pro, Cakewalk Sonar Platinum and many others). That’s the “paradox”.
Have you tried physically unplugging the Audigy card? IIRC SoundBlaster cards used to be notorious for not playing nice with other audio hardware.
Creative Labs software also used to be notorious for being hard to uninstall completely - bits of it ended up in places the uninstaller couldn’t reach!
Hi Ulf,
I realise that with so many hardware configurations around it must be impossible to isolate every little audio quirk. I have, however, finaly found a solution to my problem. The Asus A53E Laptop that I am operating on has two high definition audio streams in its system, a microsoft one driving the the HDMI audio link and a Realtek one driving the in-built speakers and speaker port. I was getting distortion with the Generic Low Latency ASIO driver with HDMI output which was my normal method of operating. I have switched to using an ASIO4ALL v2 driver that I have on my system and found that I can operate without distortion either internally via Realtek or externally via HDMI without distortion. It could be, of course, that my setup has peculiarities that have accumulated over the years which was causing the problem (I have had Sibelius and Finale for a number of years and have also cloned the hard drive from another machine that was on its last legs) but I thought I would mention the facts in case anyone was experiencing similar problems.
Hi Joe,
many thanks for your feedback and I’m glad you could sort this out now yourself.
And good to hear that ASIO4All is performing better; it is very popular out there and by no means do we as Steinberg claim, that our Generic Low Latency driver is the best on earth. It’s just a little add-on to enable people to get sound out if they don’t have an audio interface with an own ASIO driver. Our recommendation in any case is to always use a decent device that comes with a dedicated ASIO driver.