What The Heck Is My ASIO Doing?

Hey Folks,

I’ve read a bit on this topic but couldn’t find a definitive answer.

I recently purchased a Dell Studio XPS 9100 - i7 930 @ 280 GHz - Running Win 7 64 bit. Did all my installs, tweaked many startup and windows tasks that are not needed. Internal soundcard disabled, Background services set, Steady Power Mgmt…Pretty much stripped down the OS.

I’ve worked with Cubase since the early 90’s and never have I encountered the ASIO spikes I am getting. Basically, with nothing loaded, just starting CB5 I am in the 25% range on ASIO. If I add a few instruments (say Halion One & RMX) boom, my ASIO starts fluctuating from 50 to 80%, constant spiking and eventually cuts off the sound all together. If I then unload those 2 instruments, the ASIO continues to spike at that high rate. My sample rate is set to 512. I have updated every driver I can think of. I am going to list my major components below and if anyone can help me I’d be forever grateful.

Brand New Dell Studio XPS 9100
Intel i7 930 processor @ 280 GHz
8 gigs DDR3 RAM
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit
ATI Radeon 5700 Viper Dual DVI display
Layla by Echo 24/96 PCI Audio Card (Echo confirms new win7 64bit drivers)
MOTU Midi express (64Bit Drivers)
Axiom Pro 61 keyboard controller (64bit Drivers)
Cubase 5.3.2 32bit & 64bit
Stylus RMX / Trillian
Halion 2 (jbridge 64bit)
Virtual guitarist (jbridge 64bit)
Other Various plugins

Again, appreciate any suggestions, experiences, solutions!

Thanks
Ron
(Please I may not be able to reply immediately as I am heading out of town for the weekend, but have a project next week)

I had similar problems on an ACER laptop.

It was due to CPU throttling. As the CPU load increased it got warmer. The BIOS then throttled the CPU (i.e. reduced speed) until it cooled, which explained why the high ASIO load continued after unloading instruments. Unfortunately the BIOS was set to do this way before the temperature put anything at risk and was locked so that I could not alter it.

I use a utility called Throttlestop which allows you firstly to monitor whether CPU throttling is the issue and , if it is, to stop it. Since then I have had no problems.

I am not sure of the rules about posting links - but if you Google Throttlestop and look for the notebook review forums you will see how it is used and get a link to the utility.

I hope this helps

Dave

I have a similar system…new i7 based PC, Win7Pro32, new install of Cubase 6, latest Echo Layla 25/96 drivers (8.5)–just doesn’t work. System works fine with Audacity, Reaper, Real Player, Windows Media Player. But not with Cubase 6. Anybody know of a fix? I have SPRs in to Steinberg and Echo. Let’s see if they reply.

Did you guys ever mange to get your Layla’s working with Cubase 6? I have a Layla 3G and cannot for the life of me get it to work with the ASIO Echo PCI drivers in Cubase 6 on a Win 7 64bit system. Works fine with Sound Forge but for Cubase 6, I have to use the ASIO4ALL drivers.

I finally got it to work. Not sure what did it. Went all the way back to reinstalling PCI cards in my PC and updating all the PCI-related drivers. Then reinstalled latest Layla drivers. Then reinstalled Cubase 6. However, I didn’t get enough time on it to say it was stable when I starting getting distortion on my Layla interface. So I replaced it with a Mackie 1640i. No more problems. BTW, support from Echo Audio was non existent.

Yeah, I had similar issues with Cubase 5 and the Layla…turned out to be Cubase rather than the ASIO Echo PCI drivers that time, and, as you say, Echo essentially ignore support requests. I’ll probably get onto Steinberg tech support as they were very helpful last time. In the meantime, I’ll stick with the ASIO4ALL driver.