AMD RYZEN 9 3900X- with Cakewalk

[MediaGary]

Thanks for your interest in this topic. 

It might be instructive for me to remove the RME MADI PCIe card, leaving only the UAD-2 card in place to see if it's properly detected.  I doubt it would change anything but it is good diagnostic hygiene.   I'll try that tonight.

I know for sure that:

• The UAD-2 card uses only one PCIe lane
• Firewire cards only use one PCIe lane
• The RME MADI card is PCIe 1.1...also uses only one lane; and the other PCIe x1 cards are likely PCIe 2.0 or lower.
• The PCIe x1 slots on the ASRock Creator are PCIe 2.0 specification
• Th e UAD-2 Solo, Duo and Quad cards negotiate addresses differently in the PCIe slot compared to the Octo which reportedly works fine everywhere (AMD+Intel)
• The M.2_2 slot in this board will disappear from the boot menu candidates when Thunderbolt is enabled
• The M.2_2 slot can be concurrently used with the PCIe Slot-6 if Thunderbolt is disabled

As for other factors, I may get to them "soon".  For now the most interesting problem to solve is setting the "Record Latency Adjustment / Manual Offset" value in the Sync and Caching page of Preferences.  The RME MADI card only knows its digital behavior and the driver reports I/O Latency values to CbB . The driver can't see the 44-sample ADA delay through the M32 that I measured using Oblique RTL Utility. 

Since the Reported Input Latency (in samples) is about 1/2 the size of the Reported Output Latency, I'm wondering if I can determine the correct value of Manual Offset   without having to do an experiment with click sounds and a microphone next to my monitor speaker (how crass). 

I'll report back after I do the "UAD-2 only" test.

UPDATE:

The UAD-2 only test showed that the machine would not recognize the card and even the Device Manager refuses to open the dialog window. Moreover, the LG OLED UHD display screen has disturbances and flickers. That implies that something bad is happening on the PCIe buses or within RAM timings that's common to the slot that serves the AMD 5700 XT video card.

I took out the UAD-2, put the RME MADIface ExpressCard back in, and all is well.  The next PCIe card going into the machine will be a Blackmagic Design BMDPCB95.  It's a 2x SDI + 2x HDMI-HD PCIe x1 card for video capture.  The hope/plan is to use it as a two-input 'webcam' card for Zoom sessions, fed by high-grade DSLR cameras  instead of my wimpy Logitech C615C USB webcam. 

UPDATE-2:

The UAD- 2 now works because ASRock issued a new 2.30 BIOS for this X570 Creator motherboard. As of April-17th it's not on any of their webpages, so you have to directly request if from ASRock Tech Support.

As for the timing offset. The correct answer for an RME MADI Expresscard through a Midas M32 is 45 samples.  I recorded a metronome into a CbB track, then played it back through the mixer as an analog input, and checked the offset by zooming into the track level. The 44-sample figure was obtained from a Oblique RTL Utility.  The 45-sample figure is obtained by directly measuring the sample-level alignment of the playback and recorded track.

 

 

Edited April 17, 2020 by MediaGary
added results of UAD-2 only test / recording offset value

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

Got mine up and running now.  My Ryzen system is much more 'budget' than @MediaGary !  😀

So my system is:-

Ryzen 3900x

16gb DDR4 3600

512 Samsung Polaris NVME

1TB Samsung Evo SSD

2 x 2 TB Spinning Rust 7200 Maxtor HDD's

Gigabyte B450M H Mobo

Nvidia Gforce 710 2gb

Windows 10 Home Update : 1909

Audio Interface : Audient ID4  Other : StreamDeck  : Intuos Tablet : MAudio Oxygen 61 : Sonarworks Reference 4 ; Adam A7's : Avantone Mixcube

The PC itself was £800 without an OS from a system builder not far away that sells online a lot. Mainly gaming PCs.  

I upgraded from a 10yr old £600 unbranded PC off Amazon. Intel i5 2500 - 16gb DDR 2100 - 240gb SSD - Old Radeon passive GPU -Plus the same Maxtor Drives that had mostly ran Sonar 8.5 for the majority of it's life until this past year.

I write for Music Libraries in my spare time and I do get royalties off stuff that's been used in TV shows,  mostly reality. So it will get used in a semi-pro capacity but I'm not running huge orchestral set ups or anything. My music is mostly EDM - Future Bass - plus some trailer like stuff that gets used in certain TV shows, hybrid electronic/orchestral.

I mostly use stuff like Massive - Serum - Dune2 - AD2 - Plus a bunch of Kontakt Libraries like most of Output's stuff , Albion One, Damage ..that sort of thing.

A typical track for me would be approx 10 x Kontakt instruments, 5 x synths, some Drums and 10-15 audio tracks containing any live instruments or samples. I use maybe 40-50 FX Plugins for mixing a project of that size.  I don't master in CBB.

So the track I was working on when I swapped machines  was fairly typical, I was able to run it at 128 samples on the Audient's ASIO driver setting. I've not quite finished it but the CPU usage is hovering around the 35-40% on the CBB meters.

It would have been impossible to run barely anything at 128 on my old machine , I was halfway through when I switched and I'd already had to set the old machine at 1024 samples but it was stuttering even at that so all projects used to end up at 2048 samples and lots of track freezing.

It's great for me to still have a responsive system at 128 samples that can cope with a complete session with all the mix plugins.  I can quite happily work at 256 samples and still play all my VSTi's in a way that feels responsive.

So to answer the million dollar question is yes it's way more powerful than my old machine. I can't compare it to another modern PC as I don't have one.

It's snappy to boot up , my old system was no slouch with it's SSD but this is just a few seconds instead 15-20

I am surprised how much I can do at 128 ASIO sample buffer size as that was identified as a weak point Vs the Intel chips in the Dawbench test I saw over at Scan, so I am looking forward to having the option to drop to 256 and have more horsepower to play with on bigger projects

I haven't spent a lot of money but it far exceeds my current needs. No doubt over the years I will double the ram, add more storage etc. I doubt I'll change the motherboard though.

DPC latency performance has been fine as well, much better than my old PC which according to the tests was not suitable for audio !

I ran the test for 5hrs a mix of general use and several hours working on my latest track, as you can see from the attached image it passed the tests with no issues.

Actually it's the first time I've bought a PC that ran Sonar / Cakewalk properly straight outta the box.  Last time i.e. 10 yrs ago  I had to disable a temperature alarm in the Bios that was causing spikes and crackles.     

Overall super happy with it, I have left everything at the settings it came with - It looks like they have set the XMP profile in the BIOS already. It's running with the stock cooler BTW which I plan to leave as it's running at 40-50 degrees in use and I've no plans to overclock it. The ambient temperature in the room is 19-20 degrees usually.

I will say it's not as quiet as my old machine , it's not loud at all and I can't hear it whilst mixing and I'm pretty sure it won't be loud enough to affect recordings which I make 6ft away but if you want something quieter you may have to go to a more specialized DAW bulder and not just off the shelf.  

Hope that helps anyone thinking of getting a Ryzen based machine for CBB

[Sacalait]

3 hours ago, Mark Morgon-Shaw said:

Got mine up and running now.  My Ryzen system is much more 'budget' than @MediaGary !  😀

So my system is:-

Ryzen 3900x

16gb DDR4 3600

512 Samsung Polaris NVME

1TB Samsung Evo SSD

2 x 2 TB Spinning Rust 7200 Maxtor HDD's

Gigabyte B450M H Mobo

Nvidia Gforce 710 2gb

Windows 10 Home Update : 1909

Audio Interface : Audient ID4  Other : StreamDeck  : Intuos Tablet : MAudio Oxygen 61 : Sonarworks Reference 4 ; Adam A7's : Avantone Mixcube

The PC itself was £800 without an OS from a system builder not far away that sells online a lot. Mainly gaming PCs.  

I upgraded from a 10yr old £600 unbranded PC off Amazon. Intel i5 2500 - 16gb DDR 2100 - 240gb SSD - Old Radeon passive GPU -Plus the same Maxtor Drives that had mostly ran Sonar 8.5 for the majority of it's life until this past year.

I write for Music Libraries in my spare time and I do get royalties off stuff that's been used in TV shows,  mostly reality. So it will get used in a semi-pro capacity but I'm not running huge orchestral set ups or anything. My music is mostly EDM - Future Bass - plus some trailer like stuff that gets used in certain TV shows, hybrid electronic/orchestral.

I mostly use stuff like Massive - Serum - Dune2 - AD2 - Plus a bunch of Kontakt Libraries like most of Output's stuff , Albion One, Damage ..that sort of thing.

A typical track for me would be approx 10 x Kontakt instruments, 5 x synths, some Drums and 10-15 audio tracks containing any live instruments or samples. I use maybe 40-50 FX Plugins for mixing a project of that size.  I don't master in CBB.

So the track I was working on when I swapped machines  was fairly typical, I was able to run it at 128 samples on the Audient's ASIO driver setting. I've not quite finished it but the CPU usage is hovering around the 35-40% on the CBB meters.

It would have been impossible to run barely anything at 128 on my old machine , I was halfway through when I switched and I'd already had to set the old machine at 1024 samples but it was stuttering even at that so all projects used to end up at 2048 samples and lots of track freezing.

It's great for me to still have a responsive system at 128 samples that can cope with a complete session with all the mix plugins.  I can quite happily work at 256 samples and still play all my VSTi's in a way that feels responsive.

So to answer the million dollar question is yes it's way more powerful than my old machine. I can't compare it to another modern PC as I don't have one.

It's snappy to boot up , my old system was no slouch with it's SSD but this is just a few seconds instead 15-20

I am surprised how much I can do at 128 ASIO sample buffer size as that was identified as a weak point Vs the Intel chips in the Dawbench test I saw over at Scan, so I am looking forward to having the option to drop to 256 and have more horsepower to play with on bigger projects

I haven't spent a lot of money but it far exceeds my current needs. No doubt over the years I will double the ram, add more storage etc. I doubt I'll change the motherboard though.

DPC latency performance has been fine as well, much better than my old PC which according to the tests was not suitable for audio !

I ran the test for 5hrs a mix of general use and several hours working on my latest track, as you can see from the attached image it passed the tests with no issues.

Actually it's the first time I've bought a PC that ran Sonar / Cakewalk properly straight outta the box.  Last time i.e. 10 yrs ago  I had to disable a temperature alarm in the Bios that was causing spikes and crackles.     

Overall super happy with it, I have left everything at the settings it came with - It looks like they have set the XMP profile in the BIOS already. It's running with the stock cooler BTW which I plan to leave as it's running at 40-50 degrees in use and I've no plans to overclock it. The ambient temperature in the room is 19-20 degrees usually.

I will say it's not as quiet as my old machine , it's not loud at all and I can't hear it whilst mixing and I'm pretty sure it won't be loud enough to affect recordings which I make 6ft away but if you want something quieter you may have to go to a more specialized DAW bulder and not just off the shelf.  

Hope that helps anyone thinking of getting a Ryzen based machine for CBB

Thanks man!  Good report!  Once we get through this virus lockdown here in the States and I'm back to work...  I'll be building a PC based off the new Ryzen CPU's!

 

[MediaGary]

Yesterday, I received the new 2.30 BIOS for my ASRock X570 Creator motherboard.  The 2.30 isn't posted on the ASRock website, so I had to directly request it from ASRock Tech Support.   

The 2.30 BIOS fixed the problem of the UAD-2 PCIe 'Failed to Start (Code 10)' problem.  It's working fine now.   

[Luka Bozic]

On 3/21/2020 at 3:49 AM, Sacalait said:

I've been geeking out on these new CPU's.  Seems like some serious horsepower for a DAW.  So I'm wondering if anyone here has experience with this CPU and Cakewalk?  I've been using a fiver year old build with an Intel i7 4770K (four cores and eight threads).  It's done the gig.  But I'm contemplating building my own DAW machine with the Ryzen 3900x  (freakin' TWELVE cores and TWENTY FOUR threads!)  

Anyone with experience using this CPU commenting is appreciated!

I hope you went for Intel. My 5900x has nothing on 9900K. AMD is 40% slower in Sonar. Less VSTs, Much slower export...

I do not know what is going on. MMCSS is glitching. Load balancing also glitches. If both disabled ok

Thread scsheduling 0-3... tried every combination

Same RAM (NEO Gskill), GA motherboards 12+1 phase (one X570 one Z390), same

[Noel Borthwick]

@Luka Bozic you mention SONAR. Was that an error or are you actually still running that?

The latest cbb release has some mmcss optimizations and fixes so worth trying it.