Ur824 - occasional distortion in cubase, changing buffer helps

Steinberg Hardware UR Series
1

Hi,

I’ve been an owner of the UR824 almost since they come out and it’s generally been great, but it’ also had pretty light use as I’ve had other priorities until recently.

As I get back into it, I’ve been finding on occasion with Cubase 10 elements (latest update) - the audio will go from pristine to some distorted crap (still attempting to play the music but it’s all distorted). I’m not running at what I would think would be “ultra low” buffer settings either It can even happen at 512 samples, which would be above what most guitarists would find acceptable for monitoring/playing along with. Now if I was running some crazy big orchestral score I might understand the odd time it kicks over to something distorted - but these are somewhat barebone’s projects too - couple acoustic guitar tracks, maybe an ez drummer and a synth or two. I find it has had more of a chance to do it while altering a plugin parameter or something - but it’s not always the case (and might just be coincidental)… sometimes just the next time you hit play - distortion.

My computer isn’t exactly a slouch - a 5820k Overclocked to 4.4ghz with 32gb of ram. Cubase is installed on a Samsung 512gb NVME ssd. and the audio drive is a western digital black 1tb. I’ve followed most recommendations for “tuning” windows 10 for DAW use as well. The Ur824 is plugged directly into the motherboard in a usb 2.0 slot - no hubs, docks, or aux motherboard cards in play.

the only additional thing is I now use it with a 10ft USB cable, instead of the 6ft supplied cable, but the distortion was happening with the 6ft cable as well.

I just wanted some feedback from other UR824 users - about their real world use of the buffer settings. It makes an otherwise great device setup - feel cheap and not professional at all - one second you are in the moment making music, next second you are listening to garbled distortion - requiring you to go into the audio settings kick the buffer setting up and then back down again (if required). I understand that you can track with lower buffer settings, and then raise it up when doing playback mixing, but one should be able to at least track below 512 samples.

one would hope cubase with a ur824 would be a match made in heaven - but it definitely hasn’t been giving me that vibe as of late.

any response from UR824 users welcome. thanks

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I can write here (2 years later) that this is finally fixed with cubase 12, I can now finally click around a project, back and forth, and not have that stupid distortion kick in, where I have to go and mess with buffers (higher/lower).

I have to admit, I was on the edge of selling this UR824, even in windows it didn’t seem like it could consistently play an mp3, without the odd “hickup” interupting the music - like what could be simpler and use less resources than a mp3 stream yet it would glitch once in a while.

I’m currently on the latest 2.1.1 drivers, and I can say that the mp3 interruptions are gone, and as far as I can tell in Cubase 12, whether it was a performance improvement or what - that messing around with buffers, and distortion issues are gone.

so kudos to whoever fixed that at Steinberg/Yamaha.

p.s. I’m the same as m00t - they just changed the way I had to login as email based, so I couldn’t get back to my old account.

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