Windows 10: audio dropouts on multi-core CPU setups

st33l · January 18, 2018, 3:39pm

The link doesnt work for me

Taurean_Mixing · January 18, 2018, 3:54pm

Mine works best with: 128-256 Buffer + HT OFF + ASIOGuard High
But still not great overall performance from what I am used to on this very same machine.

The key is to experiment with your specific set up. It’s not so polarized as many make it out to be.

faaraotron · January 21, 2018, 7:35pm

cyberkrunk:

I’ve recently built out the following system:

Proc: Intel Core i9-7900X Skylake X 10-Core
Motherboard: ASROCK X299 Taichi
Ram: CORSAIR Vengeance LPX 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4 2666
Cooler: Noctua NH-D15
OS Drive: SAMSUNG 960 PRO M.2 512GB NVMe
Media Drive: SAMSUNG 960 PRO M.2 1TB NVMe
Samples Drive: SAMSUNG 960 PRO M.2 2TB NVMe
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GT 1030 2GB Silent Low Profile
Screen: LG - 34UC79G-B 34.0" 2560x1080
Case: be quiet! PURE BASE 600 - Black
Power Supply: be quiet! - Dark Power Pro 11 650W 80+ Platinum
Software: Cubase Pro 9.5, Native Instruments Komplete 11 Ultimate
Audio Interface: RME Fireface UFX+

On initial setup, the Cubase 9.5 demo song was playing with no issues and plenty of headroom down to a buffer of 32 samples. Recording, however, was not working down to 32 samples. Cracks, dropouts, etc. I didn’t change anything else (HT still on) and dropped in the audioengine.properties file with no changes. With that change, recording with a 32 sample buffer was fine. A 64 sample buffer didn’t bother me and I did a jam session with Guitar Rig for over an hour without a single hiccup.

This is going to be a great system, I think!

How much did this machine cost?

Chester.Jankowski · January 22, 2018, 4:39am

Here’s the parts list: 2017 Studio Build - Intel Core i9-7900X, GeForce GT 1030, be quiet! Pure Base 600 ATX Mid Tower - PCPartPicker

ashboe69 · January 22, 2018, 3:28pm

Thats not including the 2200 audio interface!!

Al_Junior · January 23, 2018, 1:54pm

Hi. I tried to repeat your benchmark. In my case, the processors are loaded only by 65%. If I turn off the Hyperthreading, then the processors are loaded by almost 100 percent. But more than 33 Halions do not pull in both cases.

Wepsta · January 23, 2018, 2:41pm

Ok nice to me this looks like the Asio load need more clock speed, the limit is Cubase in this case.
Try it with VEP on same machine your Workstation is much more powerful.

Zerpio · January 24, 2018, 12:16pm

nicoroy123:

I have managed to improve my ASIO performance significantly on a 6 cores CPU so I thought I could share my settings in case it could help someone.

A lot of problems came from some Intel and Win10 features that are always trying down-clock the CPU speed to save power consumption, which is totally an ASIO killer. This was causing my ASIO meter to be very unstable, and was causing ASIO drop outs on heavy load.

CPU is a i7-6850K base clock at 3.6Ghz with a Turbo Boost at 3.8Ghz and a Turbo Max at 4.0Ghz. Max memory speed at 2400Mhz.

The key for me was to figure out how to “lock” the CPU at 4.0Ghz (Turbo Boost Max), all the time, which is the maximum speed of the CPU, without having Win10 or BIOS feature to down-clock the speed of the CPU.

So here all the BIOS settings I had to manually change to make sure the CPU stays at it’s full potential, all the time:

1-Extreme Memory Profile (X.M.P) at Profile 1, to have my RAM running at 2400Mhz instead of the default 2133Mhz
2-Intel Turbo Boost Technology: Enabled, all Default
3-Intel Turbo Boost MAX Technology 3.0: Enabled. (This is what makes my CPU running at the max 4.0Ghz.)
4-Hyper Threading: Enabled. Seems to be ok for me

Now to prevents the CPU to be down clocked or down powered:
5-CPU Enhanced Halt (C1E): Disabled
6-C3 State Support: Disabled
7-C6/C7 State Support: Disabled
8-CPU EIST Function (Enhanced Intel® Speed Step Technology): Disabled
9-In Windows, make sure to use the High Performance Power Plan. In advanced properties, make sure to have all Processor Power settings at 100%.

Now, after a reboot, my CPU is locked 4.0Ghz all the time, with my RAM running at 2400Mhz.

My ASIO meter is now barely going over 20%, even under heavy load instead of moving back and forth and causing ASIO drop outs.

Hope it helps someone.
Nick

This can’t be upvoted enough, thanks Nick you shurely saved my day and the performance on two mashines :

I’m now running 18 synths 64smp buffersize UR44 on Intel Core i7-7800X Skylake-X clocked to 4.5Ghz. I never go above 33% load and I have 2.3ms latency. My system are now rock steady.

J-S-Q · February 6, 2018, 11:31am

This is what I find too. At a buffer of 64 or 32, performance improves when Hyperthreading is disabled but at 128 or above, it’s better with Hyperthreading on. I’m running an AMD 1920x (24 logical cores). Cubase can fully load all 24 cores, given the right type of project.

Sebaduh · February 7, 2018, 11:16pm

Any official news on this?

KeySlinger · February 13, 2018, 3:55pm

Is this still a Thing? I mean it was announced almost a year ago is this even possible to fix by Steinberg/Microsoft?

ntsarb · February 17, 2018, 2:12am

It appears that Windows Pro for Workstations will provide new, kernel-level optimisations for low latency applications.

https://blogs.windows.com/business/2017/08/10/microsoft-announces-windows-10-pro-workstations/#2GGpDlCofiCMEUoz.97

The new, relevant power plan is currently available via the Windows insider programme.

Is Steinberg looking into this? Can we have an update on whether Windows Pro for Workstations will affect the performance of Cubase Pro?

Thank you

ManChicken · February 25, 2018, 2:09am

Something else for consideration…

SuperG · February 26, 2018, 4:32am

I read that - page swapping has been a feature of windows since the 16 bit days and still is, that article is a day late and a dollar short. If you don’t want pages swapped out, you need to tell the OS - it’s always been that way. Most applications, even audio ones don’t lock up a lot of memory as it has other negative consequences. Besides, once you hand off data to the an audio driver driver - it’s out of the applications hand.

vinark · February 26, 2018, 9:52am

Agreed, but…I did their test (not sure what it testes exactly) and indeed as they said, on win 7 I never went above 0.20ms and with my win10 partition on the same system I was at 69ms within a few minutes. So there is a problem there. BTW I don’t use myin10 for production only for some testing so I have no idea what the impact is.

Wepsta · February 26, 2018, 2:25pm

Microsoft have optimize latency in Windows 10 great!

28060849 1646258462110354 2066035503652178780 o — ImgBB now we know the problem

WIN10 RS4 update will fix this (February 2018)
lets hope

Edit: 07.03 The Insider Preview Build 17115 (RS4) never have this problem its better then Win 7.

[Album] imgur.com

Cheers

cinematree · March 21, 2018, 8:14am

Does Windows Insider Preview Build 17115 (RS4) address the issue of limited thread counts? I’ve moved to Windows 7 and it works well, but would like to move back to Windows 10 (UAudio doesn’t officially support thunderbolt on Windows 7).

mart · March 30, 2018, 2:04pm

Feb 2018 has passed. Can anyone confirm that this is fixed and there is no limit to the number of cores on a CPU?

peakae · March 30, 2018, 3:51pm

The first link is about low latency WASAPI, it is irrelevant as we are using ASIO that has lower latency anyway.
The second link is about the memory management that is poorly in the 1709 we hopefully al are running.
This is fixed in the new upcoming win10 release, and very well may be the course of audio interruptions.
This has nothing to do with the limited MMCSS threads that multi-core cpus can handle.
So nothing really indicates that this will ever change, at least MS have not given any statements about it, so this is pure speculation.
So currently there is

MMCSS limit (multi-core dependent)
FLS limit (plugins fail to load)
Memory management latency issue (should be fixed in the next upcoming “big” windows10 update

cinematree · March 30, 2018, 7:39pm

I know that #1 is not a problem in Windows 7. Are #2 and #3?