Rico Belled

You shouldn't be having dropouts. I can run my dual core i5 Surface Pro 3 at 70% CPU at 64 samples. Something is up.... Have you tried a different USB port? Have you tried disabling power management on the USB port? Have you take the machine offline? R

I bought a fairly cheap Asus gaming machine with a 45W Ryzen and a GTX 1050, was easy to add a second SSD and 16GB of ram, the whole thing cost me $700 or so. The thing FLIES and is even reasonably quiet. R

This here is not really good information. You can't compare i7s and i5s across the board like that. Realize that a 65W i3 is faster than a 15W i7, realize that a modern i3 is faster than an i7 from 7 years ago at the same TDP. First off, THE most important part of getting low latency is picking the right interface. The fastest i9 with a USB Focusrite is gonna have worse latency than an i3 Surface Pro with a ZOOM UAC2. Really the only affordable interfaces with truly low latency are MOTUs and the ZOOM UAC series. Secondly, the type of device you get determines the power envelope a processor gets. Ultra Portables have 15W or even lower, gaming laptops are much better for less money. A modern i3 or i5 full size laptop is faster than an ultra portable i7. That said, after disabling ACPI Battery Control Method in Device Manager, my i5 Surface Pro 3 runs amazingly at low latency, even more so while using the built-in sound, but also with my UAC2. I've done many gigs with it running Ableton Live, hosting Addictive Drums 2, Lounge Lizard, Trillian, Kontakt, Dimension, Rapture all running in real time ALL NIGHT at 64 samples buffer size. Just about any computer you're gonna buy today is gonna be substantially faster than that machine. R

Great! It's helped me tremendously! R

So any news on how the system is performing? Did you figure out which of the two fixes did it? R

Have you disabled the ACPI Battery Control Method in Device Manager? On my XPS 18 it makes a huge the difference, and on my Surface Pro 3 it means I'm able to run Soft Synths on it at 64 samples buffer size all night long without a single pop or click. R

I think it's the best, free OR paid. In this here pandemic I decided to expand my horizons, bought a Mac Mini to learn Logic; it does some things great, and the included sound library is on point, but I still prefer Cakewalk overall. Protools is awful, Ableton Live does some things uniquely but has perhaps the worst UI of all. R

What does that even mean? LOL Bottom line is, once you work with full software input monitoring through Cakewalk it's impossible to go back. R

I have! A couple of times now, I'd send three Tom tracks to an Aux, which worked great for a session or two. Then I'd open it up later and no toms. No matter what I tried, of course with all the settings and ins/outs correct they just would not sound. Sends toms directly to mains: sound, make a NEW Aux track and send the toms there: sound. R

Dude, I know you're Polish but you know this application is 100% free, don't you? Just google and download the "Bandlab Assistant" and it will download and install Cakewalk! R

Now I have to take the other side: it's not "extremely unlikely" if, as stated the OP does, one uses large sample libraries. It's almost CERTAIN that more than 8GB will make a big difference. R

But it has "Grammy Winning Presets"! LOL

Well, then you DO fit the profile where a LARGE improvement could be noticed! Please let us know what you find out! R

If I had $1 for every person I know (mostly Mac users of course!) that bought more RAM to "speed up" his computer, only to find out it made ZERO difference, I'd have like 2 or 3 hundred bucks! If I had $1 for everyone that recommended to someone else to buy more RAM to speed up his or her computer I'd have enough to buy a 2010 Prius. I've done seriously big projects for years, with over 100 tracks, Addictive Drums, GPO, Kontakt etc. etc. I don't use a TON of big sample libraries, and as explained, if you DO a lot you're in a different situation, but I've NEVER seen a project on my system use more than 4 GB. I upgraded from 8GB to 16GB of RAM at some point and saw ZERO difference in DAW use. Some games on the other hand did use it so it wasn't a waste of time. Bottom line is this: buying more RAM without first seeing how much you're ACTUALLY using is kind of silly. And the important metric here is the amount CAKEWALK specifically is using in Task Manager, NOT the total RAM used by the system which is not exactly relevant. If you're doing Vienna Symphonic library type stuff, or to RAM video rendering previews, you could use 64GB, but for almost everyone else 8GB is more than likely enough. R

So conform to the robot, that's the best way of making music? I couldn't disagree more. Exactly metronomic music, made by human musicians, is why so much stuff is so lifeless and boring these days. R