Teegarden

Sorry to hear that. Unfortunately, hardware is an expensive hobby that gets outdated quickly...

Hope that despite the suboptimal setup you can make some music😉

1 hour ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

Ironically, my problem is not latency. I can record and do quite a bit on 256 samples but somewhere along the way, CbB starts to struggle rendering some graphical stuff when there's a lot of them on screen. Reaper does the same thing but only the UI becomes slow. No dropouts happen.

Seems like a GPU related problem. I understood that the graphical interface of CbB could be improved with scalable graphics etc. Maybe the current state is heavier on the GPU side, which is too much for some older systems . BTW, sometimes certain graphics processes are done by the CPU. If that's the case I would change those to the GPU if possible.

Did you try changing the GPU? Did you run LatencyMon for a while to check which process could be the culprit? Did you check Windows Reliability Monitor to see what crashed? IRQ sharing of the graphics card with something else? 

Thanks for the explanation. Regarding synths and midi/audio: can't you just replace the synth on an instrument track  while keeping the midi? That would save a track and keeps the overview  simpler? 

In my template (a combination of different tutorials I followed to set up a full template, ready to go for any kind of project except for orchestral works),  I start with an audio repair track, followed by a voice and drum track with looped sound on it so I can quickly check the result of different FX plugins. Then 3 reference tracks where I can put music on the kind of style I would like to reproduce, followed by 3 mockup tracks to sketch a song with rhythm, chords and melody.  These all go to a clearly visible NoMix buss, so I can silence them quickly when recording and mixing the real project. After that I've the usual instrument and voice tracks.

On some tracks I've prepared EQ and routing to reverbs. I was still in the process of deciding which kind of EQ I want to be active from the start. I guess your settings are a good idea!

With the dedicated busses I meant one drum buss for all drums, keys buss for all keys tracks etc.😉

In the buss section I've got ready to go busses for any kind of FX, one for each kind of reverb, one for 1/16 delay, one for 1/4 delay, one for 1/2 delay and so on, all with many plugins already inserted and non-activated so I can try them one by one.

The busses go to the MixBuss and that one goes to the Master which then goes to the hardware output. On each track and buss I've also placed pictures in order to quickly recognise them.

Main disadvantage from my approach is the long template loading time, even on my fast PC. I've archived all tracks hoping that it would make some difference, but no🤨

I think your noise buss is a nice addition to my template. It took a long time to build, now I need to start learning how to use it🥴.
For the rest, any commend on how to improve it is welcome... 

Btw, I tried to attach two picture of my setup, it showed that they were ready for uploading, but they don't appear in the submitted message...

On 1/15/2021 at 4:22 AM, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

With the current setup, I literally have to wait a few seconds before playing back anything after adding an effect or such as that introduces a dropout. Even mundane things, like resetting TBPro's dpMeter cause dropouts. I don't know if it's something with my setup or some configuration in CbB. I don't have those issues in REAPER and Cubase.

Hi, FWIW, I also had an AMD system about 10 years ago and despite latency I did manage to record music with Sonar.  So if you have really strange and long dropouts there could very well be a configuration problem.

After I tried the tips in the links I gave earlier I've noticed a significant improvement, so certainly worth trying. However, there were still some unexplainable latency issues. Once I looked for additional information in order to solve those and tried different suggestions those issues also became acceptable.

Here are the  latency issues + suggestions:

NDIS.SYS:

1. AMD? In the device manager, find "ATA / ATAPI IDE Controllers", select "AMD Sata controller" and disable it.
2. Disable Driver Verifier:
   Open an elevated Command Prompt by right-clicking on CMD.EXE shortcut in your start menu and selecting Run As Administrator from the context menu.
   Type the following command:
   Code:
   VERIFIER /RESET
   Reboot the computer
   Check if the issues still persist and, in case they do, generate a new trace
3. Disable AV or any program that filters internet packets

TCPIP.SYS:

1. Run TCPOptimizer
2. Uninstall Bonjour.
3. If you have a third party AV with firewall: disable "Windows Defender Firewall" service. Even if its turned off in Control Panel, the "Windows Defender Firewall" service (MpsSvc) can still be running in the background and causing issues. Completely disable the service via the registry and reboot.  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MpsSvc
   Change "Start" from "2" to "4"
   Reboot the PC

DXGKRNL.SYS

1. Set NVIDIA Surround, PhysX to GPU, not CPU
2. Check if an IRQ is shared between GPU and something else like USB. Check internet for ways to change IRQs. Tip: If you no longer use legacy ports, disable them in the system BIOS.

Hope this helps

23 hours ago, Glenn Stanton said:

in this case, i focused mainly on the flow from recording -> mix -> export and less on specific effects or track processing since that is really material dependent. the addition of the dedicate "noise output" and a virtual room (monitoring) (or turning it off for speaker monitoring) are a couple of interesting ideas i've picked up - using noise to partially mask the overall mix to see what jumps out or isn't audible, and having a dedicated monitoring output so i can export from the master buss without changing it (like forgetting i have a virtual room enabled or the noise going...)

Interesting approach. I do have some questions:

I don't manage to scroll up to the gain knobs completely on top of the busses.

The flow you use does not allow for separate tracks to be placed in the 3D-field individually with the help of FX, since they all go to one mix buss with the same FX. Do you use dedicated track inserts to do that, which are not routed to an FX buss?

Why do you use audio and midi tracks? I always use instrument inserts, which combine the two. Is there an advantage to do it different?

I don't get how you use the noise buss. I assume you use some kind of noise signal of which you increase the volume until you start missing to hear certain instruments/voices in order to level them up or use FX to improve them and stand out more? What goes in the noise buss?

What is different to the monitoring busses from the hardware outputs (the main faders for monitors/headphones completely on the right - usually hidden-) ?

My routing is  as follows:
tracks -> dedicated instruments busses -> mix buss -> master -> hardware outputs  
FX on tracks -> FX busses -> mix buss -> master -> hardware outputs  
FX on instrument busses -> mix buss -> master -> hardware outputs  
(and some side-chaining)

Any suggestion is welcome if it could/should be improved!

A maybe dumb question: when you start mixing, do you first print stems or do you mix before printing and why?

First I read "cracks" where it's meant to be "tracks" (interesting font!) and thought, Oh, there we go...😉

Nice idea. I've constructed my (very extensive) template according to an old tutorial from Groove3, Building a DAW  Mix Template (highly recommendable). I'm going to study how yours differs and hope to learn something new.

3 hours ago, Olaf said:

The issue with the plugins that make the sound smoother when activated has started relatively recently - with one of the more recent updates, though - don't remember which - probably the one 2 or 3 versions ago, and it's really strange. Makes me think of processing algorithms rather than CPU power, in itself.

I'm gonna look at the links you've posted and see if I can find any optimization I've missed. I've made all the optimizations I've found on the net, but there might be something new.

Weird that it started recently, I didn't get the impression that the bakers changed much in that respect under the hood. The cracks and pops that I have (or better had), were there also a year ago. I followed the instructions of "FULLY Optimize Windows 10 For LATENCY & Low Input Lag" and it definitely improved things.

Make sure to backup the registry and experiment with the different tools provided in the download provided by the  blogger. With some you can eliminate too many Windows items, it appeared I needed several of them so I reversed changes and started all over until I found the optimal tweaks for me. And one of the directories (the one regarding power plan) is not intended for AMD systems, don't use that one (as also advised in the video).
FWIW, I also disconnect internet and switch off my antivirus when using CbB and switch off any at that moment unnecessary process in the background.

3 hours ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

 If your development setup is entirely Intel, there's a 99% chance that you'll end up optmizing for that architecture even without noticing. I understand that is hard to  get out of 20 years of monopoly, but come on.

With the new AMD systems that's all in the past. Just said for many that their old still properly working system is not up to date anymore...and not everyone can afford a new PC just like that. If you can on the other hand, I wouldn't hesitate!

Still I think that with some of the tweaks in the tutorials I mentioned you might get better latency. I did for me anyway.  What also helped me regarding system optimisation was a better understanding of Latencymon thanks to the explanation in "Win A-Z Pt14 ", so I got what I was doing when following the tweaks.

On 1/13/2021 at 3:21 PM, Lord Tim said:

When you do the @ make sure you immediately type their username right after and then wait for a names list to pop up, then click on the username you're wanting to tag. Just typing it doesn't do anything, as you've discovered.

@Teegarden

@Lord Tim, @Colin Nicholls Thank you guys! It works😉

I've tried several ways to quote another forum member or refer to him/her with @ before the forum name. I've copied the hyperlink to their profile with @ added before as well al just plain text with @ before the name. I don't get the black hyperlinked name I'm expecting to see...
I've tried to find it in the Q&A but I can't find any info. 

Any advice how to do it right?

13 hours ago, Olaf said:

@murat k. Thanks for the offer, in theory I agree with you fully, but I don't think this is something that can be mended by settings, adjustments, etc. I've tried many things, and the issues seem to remain constant though the changes. They've always persisted. Things stop working after an update, etc., plugin crashes, CW crashes - which I cannot understand, regardless of plugin behaviors they shouldn't happen, that's a CW philosophy that's mesmerized me - freezes, failures to open, track audio stopping playing - al the same things so many report.

The crackling is not owed to the ASIO settings, it's probably connected - like everything else - to the way CW interacts with Windows and the audio drivers - the reason it reads some 24 bit cards as 16 bit, etc. The behavior I've described to you is not a normal ASIO problem. That when you activate a plugin, the static goes away, and it starts when you deactivate it. It's exactly the opposite of what should normally happen because of CPU load. And it's not even the same plugin, it's different ones at different moments.

Trust me, it's not about the plugins. I've never gotten anything similar in Reason, or Studio One, which I've tried, for instance - or other problems like plugins that fail to load, loaded in there. But beyond that, it's common sense, you can't report hundreds of plugins as flawed, all only in CW, while they work in other DAWs. When you keep blaming a list of hundreds of plugins, that work in other DAWs, for the problems... seriously, who believes that?

Besides, many of the problems are not even plugin related.

Since I've started working with CW, I've changed my mother board, my graphics adapter, installed a new sound interface, changed the RAM modules, changed the Windows version twice, updated, etc. And the problems have always been the same. The only thing I haven't changed is the CPU - that's the only thing that could be personally specific, if CW didn't know how to work with FXs. I was talking to Noel, at some point about that, and he said FX-8350 was 4 core, not 8, although it's 8 with 4 floating points, and every application recognizes it as such, including Windows - even CW's performance meter shows 8 cores - but that's the only constant remaining that could be configuration specific. On the other hand, people have problems on all kinds of configurations, with all kinds of plugins, or not plugin related at all. So... what's the only constant remaining in all this?

When you say you encounter almost no crashes, what crash frequency are you experiencing?

@Bruno de Souza Lino Do you have crashes? If you do, how often?

Hi, I get you frustration. It seems like you've got a relatively old AMD processor. In one of the threads on the forum it was explained that AMD processors suffer from some internal latency that has nothing to do with system latency invoked by power settings, drivers etc. I also found this kind of information on other websites (unfortunately forgot which ones). With the introduction of the new Zen 3 Ryzen 5000 processors this problem appears to have been solved, see these threads: https://discuss.cakewalk.com/index.php?/topic/22465-potential-cpu-otimisation-for-ryzen-cpus/
https://discuss.cakewalk.com/index.php?/topic/23055-ryzen-5000-series-unfreaken-believable-in-cbb/

What surprises me, though, is that you didn't have problems with other DAWs. Maybe there's a also communication problem between AMD processors and CbB. As far as I understood the bakers develop everything on Intel systems, so they might not have experienced AMD related issues and therefor not solved issues related to AMD processors? 

I've got a Threadripper 1950X, 32GB Ram, a PCIe RME card and fast SSDs and despite my hopes at the time that it would solve all potential problems, I still had situations where cracks and pops occur even in simple projects, with e.g. a large sampled grand piano (at 24bit, 96kHz, buffer: 256, effective latency 2.7 ms). 
I never saw the cores in the performance part of the control bar go very high, which always surprised me.
After lots of Windows 10 latency tweaking and improved power settings (some are usually hidden, you can unhide them with a program called PowerSettingsExplorer) like 

o   processor idle demote threshold (changed to 100%)
o   processor idle promote threshold  (changed to 100%)

the latency was getting better, with less annoying cracks.

What helped even more was some overclocking with AMD Ryzen Master which significantly reduced the cracks and pops, without overheating my PC.
There's a lot of info on this YouTube channel regarding latency tweaking:
FR33THY optimization for PC, gaming & Windows!. They also provided the first indepth latencymon explanation I could find, explaining the results and how to improve them: Win A-Z Pt14
There's also another good latency tweak tutorial for the latest Windows update: FULLY Optimize Windows 10 For LATENCY & Low Input Lag 

Maybe this will help you out a bit more.

However, despite an overly large standard template filled with tons of tracks, busses, VST instruments and FX plugins I rarely have instability problems like you mentioned, probably because other than the internal AMD latency issue, the Threadripper is a more modern, fast and stable CPU.

I'm planning to switch to a Ryzen 5000 series processor this year, hoping it will completely eliminate all latency related issues like it did for @Bill Ruys . Maybe switching to ZEN3 would also solve your problems.

3 hours ago, CJ Jacobson said:

The send level controls how much of the signal goes to the bus.

Thanks, this helped me rethink what when wrong.
Half a year ago I finished my template after watching some gain staging videos and reducing gain on all tracks and busses with appr. 18dB.  I had understood from gain staging tips that you should try to get all input levels -18dB (with peaks to -12dB) somewhere in the process, so thought let's start with that on all tracks and busses, not realising that from bus to bus the volume would actually decrease further with each step, leading to no sound at the last ...

Guess gain staging, volume and gain are not my best skill yet🤔

In standard view I didn't see both gain and volume levels next to each other in the track pane. The overpopulated template makes it hard to keep oversight of all settings in all tracks and busses. Thanks to the "send level controls" suggestion I started thinking that maybe choosing only volume and gain related items selected from the track control manager could show clearly where things went wrong.
After doing this I put the track + following bus chain next to each other in one view which showed very clear the output volume and input gain next to each other with a big drop from on bus to the other. Putting all gains back at 0 solved the problem. I have no clue why I didn't see it earlier after wasting several hours. This was certainly not my first recording, so stupid me...

Many thanks to you guys for paying attention to my question!

Thanks for responding!
Yes, and strangely enough when I create new busses in the same template and route the tracks through them the volume is more or less the same level?

Could there be a hidden setting (one of the menus) that could cause a volume drop from a track to a bus and from a bus to another bus?  It makes me crazy🙁

Half a year ago I finished making a huge standard template full with instruments, FX plugins, FX busses etc. with everything ready to go on whatever project I could imagine. Finally found the time for composing and using my precious template.

BIG SURPRISE: when I started with a piano VST track I didn't hear anything (despite active volume meters in the track)... Trying the other instrument busses gave the same result...

After hours checking all settings I couldn't find anything that could have caused this, except that Instrument Track -> Keys Bus -> Mix Bus -> Master Bus -> RME Stereo Out had huge volume drops with every step. When I routed the sound through new busses for every step the volume stayed the same. Comparing the new busses with the old ones does not give me any different setting (as far as I can see). Are there hidden settings I might have overlooked? 

Can anyone please give me a hint where I might have changed a setting in the past that could cause this? I would like to prevent to have to redo many dozens of tracks and busses incl. inserts...

Here are my findings so far:

All volume meters are at 0.
All gain is at 0.

Original problem situation: 

• Instrument track (virtual piano): Meter Peak -1,6dB
• Keys Bus: Meter Peak -19,2dB
• Mix Bus: Meter Peak -17dB
• Master Bus: Meter Peak -30dB
• RME Stereo out: -44dB

Test with one bus replaced:

• Instrument track (virtual piano): Meter Peak -1,6dB
• NEW TEST Keys Bus: Meter Peak -1,6dB
• Mix Bus: Meter Peak -17dB
• Master Bus: Meter Peak -30dB
• RME Stereo out: -26,5dB

Test with two busses replaced:

• Instrument track (virtual piano): Meter Peak -1,6dB
• NEW TEST Keys Bus: Meter Peak -1,6dB
• NEW TEST Mix Bus: Meter Peak -2,6dB
• Master Bus: Meter Peak -16dB
• RME Stereo out: -12,4dB

Test with three busses replaced:

• Instrument track (virtual piano): Meter Peak -1,6dB
• NEW TEST Keys Bus: Meter Peak -1,6dB
• NEW TEST Mix Bus: Meter Peak -2,6dB
• NEW TEST Master Bus: Meter Peak -3,3dB
• RME Stereo out: -6,9,4dB

RME makes very solid professional interfaces which they update regularly during many years. Don't know which of the few PCIe cards you have. I've got the RME PCIe AIO . Model is from 2009 and this year an improved PCIe version was introduced. When looking at the specs and changes I couldn't find any improvement regarding latency/speed, just better audio quality, less potential distortion caused by the environment,  increased signal-to-noise ratio and a lower output impedance at low reference levels etc.  This indicates that the more than 10 year old cards from RME can still be up to the task. There were both a driver and a flash update for my card as recent as this month. 
My PC (AMD Threadripper 1950X, 32GB Ram, SSDs) runs fine with larger projects. I noticed no difference with the latest Windows updates.

Considering you didn't have problems before the recent Windows updates I guess the problem is not the Card.

Just some wild thoughts:

• Maybe some RAM going bad, HD failure, other hardware component failure
• Cables that are not properly plugged
• Another thing: after an update, Windows sometimes has the nasty habit of resetting custom settings, sometimes also re-enabling USB selective suspend... I would definitely double-check those
• Maybe the updates have also introduced incompatibility with some of your FX plugins ( in case those are loaded as well) and they might need to be updated?
• Are the Visual C++ Redistributable Runtimes up to date?
• Did you check processor scheduling in CbB? You could try to play with those settings
• Are sample rate and bit depth the same as Windows?
• Do you use the ASIO driver in CbB?
• Can you recall what you had changed before the issue came back?

 To find out what goes wrong on windows:

• try Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Security and Maintenance\Reliability Monitor => click on the alarm signs to find out the details
• try other tools in the same Security and Maintenance directory like Windows Memory Diagnostics
• try Windows event viewer. Explanations for use are in the hyperlink. This records anything software does on your PC and might pinpoint a problem you have.
• try Whats my computer doing

23 minutes ago, msmcleod said:

I'm not using 32 bit versions - JBridge also supports 64 bit to 64 bit.  Using JBridge just forces it to run in its own separate 64 bit process outside of CbB, which seems to cure it. The UJAM products are the only ones that I have to do this with.

This give me the impression that there's still something that can be significantly improved in CbB regarding latency. It should be possible for the DAW to allocate a separate process for demanding plugins, especially on PCs with many cores (fortunately quite common these days).

Also, it would be nice if CbB could give a clear overview that shows the latency caused by each plugin in a separate latency monitor window, so you can choose to not use that plugin at a given time or replace it with another one that could provide similar use but without the same heavy latency.

8 minutes ago, RexRed said:

Please consider GPU assisting the CPU mostly with the aim at improving latency.

 

I couldn't agree more and have given quite some examples why it could be possible in the topic can cakewalk use a graphics card,  but you're asking in the wrong place, see my previous post: you need to post a feature request in the Feedback Loop subforum...

On 12/9/2020 at 12:48 PM, RexRed said:

When are we getting GPU acceleration?

My Nvidia 3090 is starved for things to do.

 

Very good question. We had a long discussion some time ago:  can cakewalk use a graphics card

You could post a request in Feedback Loop. I'm convinced that CbB could be adapted to benefit from the power of GPUs (but writing the code for it might not be so straight forward...). There was even a guy who had posted some YouTube videos where he showed a DAW running latency-free with the help of a GPU based on software he was developing. Unfortunately, can't find him anymore, but was a great example of the possibilities. Many seem to think that the GPU is just useful for the graphic interface, but GPUs are some much more than graphics accelerators...

Edit: just found one of the examples back: GPU Audio showcase
Proof of technology. 1 ms audio buffer at 96 kHz showcase. Near 0% CPU usage, eGPU support, and some product demonstration.

Reaper with several audio tracks and some FX open on a PC with Tractor Audio 6 USB audio device, running on a GeForce GTX 1080 at 96kHz, 96 samples, 1 ms buffer at as good as 0 % CPU. 

There is more info on the net about, but I lost track

8 minutes ago, Keith Wilby said:

Hi all, this is so infuriating! I can't for the life of me work out how to show the Fx rack/module/whatever it's called on the right hand side of the main window.

Someone help please! 😬

Thanks 🙂

Do you mean the browser on the right? or one of the modules in the browser? 

• to show the Audio FX in the browser: Ctrl + A
• Midi FX: Ctrl + M
• If you don't see the browser window maybe you just need to click the double arrow completely on the right just under the control bar to unfold the browser or use shortcut: B
• When unfolded you see FX on the top of the browser module

If this is not what you need please give more details
 

16 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

We've been close to Microsoft for over 20 years

Great, so that's covered😀.
Exactly at the time of our discussion AnandTech published a test investigating performance of multithreading on zen 3 and amd ryzen 5000/5 . It still confuses me a bit. However, there is some interesting feedback in the comments section that give more info and suggestions.

17 hours ago, Glenn Stanton said:

this is a product i use: Bitsum. Real-time CPU Optimization and Automation https://bitsum.com/ they have a free version with some of the functionality.

I've had the free version of Process Lasso (the Bitsum software you refer to) for a long time, forgot about it and never used it. Maybe this is a good time to start using it... Any recommendations on how to use it to finetune CbB CPU optimization?

I also noticed another program on there website parkcontrol which could be useful too, but its functionality seems also included in Process Lasso. 

" With ParkControl, we revealed hidden CPU settings that control core parking, and wrote about how CPU core parking and frequency scaling can affect performance of real-world CPU loads. Put simply, these power saving technologies come with a performance trade-off, so they should be disabled when maximum performance is desired.

Both ParkControl and Process Lasso offer a power profile, Bitsum Highest Performance, that is pre-configured for ultimate performance. In this power plan, your CPU always remains ready to execute new code. Core parking is disabled and the CPU never drops below its nominal (base) frequency.

Since you probably don’t want to be in this power plan all the time, we include automation to switch the active power plan when specific applications or games are running (Performance Mode), or only when the user is active (IdleSaver).

Process Lasso also allows for specific power profiles to be associated with an application in case you want to use different power plans.

Finally, the IdleSaver feature of Process Lasso will switch to a more conservative power plan when you go idle. Similarly, ParkControl has a function called Dynamic Boost that is essentially the opposite of IdleSaver – it raises to a more aggressive power plan when the system is active."

If it works as advertised it is a very handy addon: I've used Power Buddy to manually switch to max performance when using photo or audio editing software. I regularly forget to switch it on or off...
Now this can be done automatically without having to think about switching to a more efficient power plan when the hard work is done and vice versa! 

26 minutes ago, Noel Borthwick said:

My guess is that with threads on virtual cores  you are at the mercy of the OS implementation, system load and the hyperthreading implementation, since these threads are not truly running on a dedicated core. This old post kind of sums up this behavior. My guess is that when the primary core is really busy due to a heavy load, the virtual core doesnt get a lot of time to run. In a mixing workload with multiple tracks the full cycle cannot complete until all channels are complete so if some cores are starved I can see it having a detrimental effect to simply running without hyperthreading.

I could try and add an experimental mode where we filter out processing workloads on threads assigned to virtual cores. Or perhaps do this dynamically based on the actual CPU workload. i.e. if the workload is lower, then utilize hyperthreaded cores but as it gets closer to 80% or some value dial back to physical cores only. Who knows if that will help

Sounds interesting, I wonder if you can separate the OS cores from the cores used by the DAW, and if you can give certain (hyperthread)cores priority to DAW tasks that have the biggest impact on pops. cracks and dropouts. 
Maybe the others on this thread could give more feedback to your suggestions (I'm a PC hobbyist, but this goes above my head, unfortunately).

I don't know how it works between software developers, but is it not a good idea to try to get in touch with a Windows 10 development team that is concerned with OS-CPU communication development?  That way you will understand better how MS deals with multicores and hyperthreading and they might also be interested understanding the needs from DAW developers/users.

3 hours ago, Will_Kaydo said:

This is lost in argument.

I don't even know what my original question was anymore. 

This was your argument:

"Am I mistakenly to find that Reaper projects the sound differently than Cakewalk? My plugins sounds way fuller in Reaper. I really don't know how to explain it - but have anyone experience something like this? I hear compression better, the plugins are more sensitive there as what it is in CbB. The same with a Reverb - it sounds more true and natural than what it does in CbB. This is the same for every plugin. 

I use the same plugins in both and in CbB and there's a highly noticeable difference."

I merely pointed you to a possible tool that could help you figure out what is really going on i.e. different DAWs have different settings which also goes for the plugins in those DAWs.

Just try a tool like this (there are similar tools as well) and maybe the other DAWs and the plugins in those DAWs don't sound so different after all. And this kind of tool seems to help getting faster and better mixing results.

4 hours ago, Kevin Perry said:

This is a good article (I think) about the why's and wherefore's of SMT/HT: https://bitsum.com/tips-and-tweaks/why-you-should-not-disable-hyper-threading-or-why-you-should/

Scheduler and architecture has changed: previously, Windows had a "habit" of using logical cores on the same physical core rather than spreading threads out over logical cores across physical dies.

This article is from 2017. I read beginning of this year somewhere that Windows 10 since the spring 2020 update has made significant changes under the hood that better support multicore CPUs and more specifically benefit AMD processors.
Here's another article from the February 2020 (before the WIN10 changes) that adds some info to your article: https://www.techjunkie.com/disable-hyperthreading/

From what I understand so far, disabling might be beneficial as long as you have pc tasks that don't exceed the maximum the amount of cores. When you cross that number hyperthreading is probably more beneficial (also according to many benchmarks).   With large projects in CbB I've seen that all my 32 hyperthread cores are being used, so I wonder if disabling hyperthreading would benefit that situation.

On 11/25/2020 at 6:51 PM, Mannymac said:

My Ryzen 3950x has 16 "real" cores/ 32 logical ones.
Go into the config file under settings and set the max thread count to your real cores, in my case 16 and set the thread scheduling model to 2. Et voila!

Interesting finding!
I get that many things could play a part in the code under the hood and that CbB might still not be as efficient as possible with new AMD CPUs.  Apart from that, however, when you use only 16 cores in CbB and have more than 16 processes (CbB + Windows + others) that need CPU at the same time, Windows will still use hyperthread cores because of operating system tasks (and maybe some other software that is running alongside CbB) as long as you have not physically disabled hyperthreading in the BIOS.  Maybe most of the time the non-CbB processes are limited and CbB can still use the majority of the cores without hyperthreading. Or, when you set the amount of cores, they are completely claimed by CbB , but that would mean that the operating system has no cores to run...

Anyway, I would like a scenario where I don't need to switch off hyperthreading and don't need to use only my logical cores in CbB (can't get rid of the gut feeling that more cores is better😵) , considering that I also use the pc for photo/video work, which are known to significantly benefit from hyperthreading.

Hopefully CbB can still be improved regarding multicore use.

1 hour ago, Will_Kaydo said:

The reverb sounded more darker projecting a "fuller" sound - in Cakewalk there's a roll-off in the low end of the reverb and boost in highend giving it a thinner-but-shimmering "aka" gloss/air sound to it. Compression are more sensitive. 

So basically what I'm asking, is - Does this have to do with the headroom differences between the two? Cakewalk db boost goes up to +6db, where reaper is at 12db boost.  

Maybe something like this could provide you with an answer: Gainmatch (I discovered it through a feedback request post from feedback request post from Niko Panunggal)

The website lists several common problems:

• Does It Sound Better, Or Just Louder?
• Have you ever seen a plugin that sounds so much better when you put it on?
  And later discovered that it just adds 1 dB of gain on everything?
• Or maybe a new compressor, that has a fixed 2 dB steps output knob?
  So that comparing before and after is a pain?
• Or maybe a saturation plugin with no output gain, so that it's almost unusable?

   Seems to me that it might address many of the discussed issues in this topic

12 hours ago, Niko Panunggal said:

Is it possible to add a feature (which can be enabled/disabled) to put automatic before/after gain match on plugin window? Like this plugin but I think it should be built-in all fx windows of any DAW. Or.. maybe input/output knobs and meters like most guitar amp sims provided.

Very nice plugin indeed from what I've read and seen in the video. Covers all the goods of the established reference tools with level-matched A/B testing like Perception and Mcompare and adds extra useful functions. Seems like a real time saver.
I would like to know how it compares to ADPTR AUDIO Metric AB.

Would be great to have something similar built in...

1 hour ago, Glenn Stanton said:

it is simply the underlying physical architecture, memory channels, IO channels, inter-core communications, pre-execution queuing etc. so as much as Windows virtualizes  the hardware, there is definitely affinity to the physical cores because at the end of the day the OS and its critical services need it in order to ensure it can do it's job. personally, i have to admit i have not looked too deeply into Windows 10, but i did set up some park control and affinity settings so my quad cores are as optimal as i can get them. perhaps it's not needed although as Noel pointed out they support this in the software...

What I can vaguely remember is that with the introduction of the Windows 10 2020 spring update multicore processing incl. AMD was better supported. I've got no clue if SMT is also better supported from that moment on, but it would surprise me if Microsoft is not working on better ZEN support considering Ryzen's growing market share.
 

On 11/26/2020 at 12:25 AM, Noel Borthwick said:

Historically I've found Intel multicore systems to be more deterministic with realtime apps. But I've been out of the loop with AMD for awhile so don't know much about how they stand up today.

I would highly appreciate if CbB could dive into this in order to assure best possible performance with ZEN architecture. I've been playing around a bit (not enough time to really go deep into it, unfortunately) with the settings and did notice better stability with the latest Thread scheduling model 3 recently, but if it is faster/better performing under demanding workload I can't tell yet (Threadripper 1950x). 
I hope to be able to switch to a Ryzen 9 5950X next year, so any CbB compatibility improvement is welcome.

• I found this article about from May 2020 about how Windows 10 uses multiple CPU cores 
• This article about Windows 10 threat priorities
• And on the Cubase website this tool to test the Multimedia Class Scheduler service (MMCSS). It tests the amount of threads used by your machine/OS.

How to use mmcss-test:

Double-click it to run it (by default, this will test 128 threads)
It is possible to use this tool to test any amount of threads:

Type run in Windows Search
Click on "Browse"
Locate the mmcss-test.exe (e.g. on your desktop)
Add a space character and the amount of threads (e.g. C:\Users\<username>\Desktop\mmcss-test.exe 512)
You can use it to test the limitation as well as to test that limiting the amount of cores used has been applied correctly. The tool will output the amount of MMCSS priority threads and the amount of threads which failed to set MMCSS priority.