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Silence / audio freezing and dropping out


Matt Dunn

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Hi,

I'm re-posting this question after posing it in response to another post two days ago—I feel like I kinda hijacked the OP's question, so best to post afresh as my own. I realise this is probably a bit long and somewhat rambling, but I'm trying to be as clear as possible about what's happening; at the same time I'm kinda struggling to describe it, coz I'm not very tech savvy with this stuff so I don't know all the right terminology.

Basically what happens is that I'll go back to listen to the part of a project that I've just recorded and as soon as I start playback there's this kind of 'pop' or 'click' sound, then silence. It's playing on-screen, but the sound doesn't kick in for ages—I guess about 5 seconds on average, maybe longer—and then continues to lag behind the on-screen playback without ever catching up.

Whenever this happens, sometimes I immediately stop playback again until I hear the echo (or whatever it is) of (what I assume to be) either the first or final note in that part of the recording—this is what tells me (sometimes, but not always) that it's good to go again. After that, when I hit play again it sometimes starts playback as normal, but sometimes the silence thing happens multiple times before the sound kicks back in and I can resume playback.

I also notice that when this thing happens, I can't reset the playhead either. I can click and click and click at the point I want it to return to, but it just continues along as if it's actually playing, and only snaps back to where I want it when this silent freeze thing gets over itself and decides to play nicely again.

NOTE: when this happens, it almost never results in an audio dropout dialogue, although I do also experience audio dropouts with dialogue pretty frequently, but these instances are independent of the issue I'm discussing here. And yes, I've often consulted the help codes over the years, with little or no improvement noted from any action I ever felt bold and brave enough to take.

Initially I thought it must've been something to do with my old PC — its age (2011), its RAM (12Gb), its aging processor (whatever i7 was top of the line ten years ago); that said, it's been happening pretty regularly since I started using SONAR in late 2011 when the old PC was close to brand new. Now I'm using a brand new i7 Win 10  laptop with 16Gb RAM and I was told that, as it's a "light gaming" machine, it would be more than sufficient for my purposes. But as soon as I started using Cakewalk on it, the same thing happened with the very first project I opened.

I've tested multiple project content scenarios and have seen the same results with a new project containing about 30 seconds of vox and literally nothing else; also with ~15-30 seconds of recording via multiple different VSTs where there was nothing else present in the project, no changes to default settings and no FX added—in at least one of the VST examples (the project I'm currently working on, although it's definitely happened in the past too) it dropped out the very first time I went to listen to the very first portion of the very first track I recorded on, and it then continued to happen as the project grew—whatever tracks I've muted, replaced or removed altogether, or whatever FX I've bypassed or removed, hasn't made any difference at all because it keeps happening.

I'm using an onboard audio interface (to the extent that I understand what that means — i.e. all I use is an external mic and my MIDI keyboard, both of which are plugged directly into the laptop. Hoping my interpretation is correct!). My driver mode is WASAPI Shared. Sampling rate is 44100 (same for both Cakewalk and Windows). Buffer settings are fixed at Fast, I can't change them (I believe this is due to my soundcard?).

Am I doing something wrong here? Or is it too much of a coincidence that I'm seeing almost identical behaviour on two similarly-specced machines built a decade apart? Is there perhaps some change I can make in the settings that might resolve this?

Any feedback, suggestions or assistance will be hugely appreciated and if you made it this far, thanks for reading to the end :) 

Cheers,
Matt

 

Edited by Matt Dunn
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It sounds like some sort of bug or an error is happening that is not being detected in the WASAPI code. Its hard to say without troubleshooting it.
Does it happen even in projects without plugins? i.e. what if you are just trying to record something from your USB mic or playback a few simple audio tracks.
Also try and isolate whether this is related to playback or recording or both. i.e. eliminate your mic from the equation by deselecting in it preferences. Its possible that there is some error occuring while both audio devices are in use (the mic and the onboard audio device) that we’re not properly handing. If you can try and narrow down the conditions when it occurs it will be helpful since it may be a bug with our WASAPI implementation.

I don’t think buying a new computer will help you here so don’t bother returning it.

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Personally, I would avoid USB mics on Windows, the reasons being:

1. You can't use ASIO, as most USB mic's don't come with an output and Windows only allows one ASIO driver to be open at once.
2. You're stuck with the preamp built in to the mic, which may or may not be a good one... but it's never gonna be a Neve 1073.
3. You can't plug it into anything else but a computer.

Additionally, if you're using it with other audio devices, there's no way of syncing the word clocks. So even using WASAPI Shared to record from multiple audio devices, they're all going to be misaligned and you'll have to deal with any phase issues by aligning the audio yourself afterwards.

An XLR mic gives you way more options, and will be still be useable for decades - way past the point the drivers for your USB mic no longer work on your PC's OS. 

So unless you're ONLY doing pod-casts / voiceover work, I'd stay clear of them.

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I wish I could help you but I don't know what would cause this kind of issue. Some debugging things you could try:

- Try with just an audio track. Does it happen with just an audio track and no VSTi's

- Try with just one VSTi. If it happens try switching the instrument to a different one and se if they changes anything.

- Try switching driver modes to WASAPI exclusive 

 

Just some thoughts.

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Thank you @reginaldStjohn. I'm literally working on a project for work as we speak. It's a vocal only project, running for a grand total of a whopping two minutes and 49 seconds! No FX, no other tracks, just this one. So far, on attempted playback, it'd dropped out three times.  I'll see what happens to the project I mentioned earlier if I remove the MIDI tracks--maybe that's the issue? I'll then try switching driver modes. It's gotta just be a process of elimination, right? :)

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This can be a DPC issue with background applications and interruptions. Down load Latency Monitor

https://www.resplendence.com/latencymon

 

Run it and see if there’s an issue. Sometimes you have to disable useless apps and tidy up a few things. 
It probably would be a good idea to think about getting an audio interface with better drivers. Some on board sound chips just don’t work that good 

Edited by John Vere
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Thank you @John Vere. This has yielded immediate results. It seems to be describing exactly what I'm experiencing ... but my ability to interpret the suggested actions is pretty limited.

CPU throttling in Control Panel??? Looked, but no idea where that is. BIOS Update — don't even know how or what that is, other than knowing it probably shouldn't be played around with by anyone as tech unsavvy as me??

image.thumb.png.0dac34de4752273253db25fba17474ea.png

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It always says that so  pay no attention. But your screen shot shows a medium activity which is fine. How long did it run before you took the picture?  It looks like only 1 minute. Did it go into the red when you run it for about 10 minutes? 
There’s lots of info about optimization of W10 for audio. It’s mostly over my head too😬

The easy things are to go into the windows apps and disable stuff Check task manager to see what’s running 

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Thanks @John Vere. It never went into the red at >10 mins, but it was slightly further along the scale than in that screenshot. I'll do a bit more digging about to see if I can find other tips and hints.  I kinda thought one of the Cakewalk folks might've weighed into this by now, but seems not. Oh well... 😬 

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The best solution in this case would be a proper audio interface. On board audio is very limiting with DAW's. Not only that but if you are recording audio then an proper interface is essential.  You need the better quality A/D convertors etc. 

My computer is very similar to yours. It's an off the shelf HP Pavilion I inherited from my in laws and might just be 2011 too.  i7 , 12 GB RAM. My projects never get crazy big as I use it more like a 16 track tape deck. 

I made a video about interfaces. If your needs are simple it might only cost you under $200. 

 

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@Noel Borthwick - reaching out to you directly as you've been so helpful with a few questions I've posed in the past. Would you mind taking a scroll through this and letting me know if you have any thoughts please? It's really doing my head in but I just don't know where to start. I don't want to spending loads of money on stuff I possibly don't need, nor do I really feeling like taking this brand new laptop back to the shop and telling them it's a dud (although I'm very tempted to do so right now!). Your guidance and insight will be hugely appreciated. 

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On 7/6/2021 at 10:32 PM, Noel Borthwick said:

It sounds like some sort of bug or an error is happening that is not being detected in the WASAPI code. Its hard to say without troubleshooting it.
Does it happen even in projects without plugins? i.e. what if you are just trying to record something from your USB mic or playback a few simple audio tracks.
Also try and isolate whether this is related to playback or recording or both. i.e. eliminate your mic from the equation by deselecting in it preferences. Its possible that there is some error occuring while both audio devices are in use (the mic and the onboard audio device) that we’re not properly handing. If you can try and narrow down the conditions when it occurs it will be helpful since it may be a bug with our WASAPI implementation.

I don’t think buying a new computer will help you here so don’t bother returning it.

@Noel Borthwick, coming back to this after a very long break. Having (eventually) followed your advice, I've been deselecting my mic whenever I'm not recording audio. I don't want to jinx myself here, but the situation has improved. The dropouts only seem to occur now when I forget to deselect the mic. Previously, it consistently happened during both playback and recording—i.e. on pressing either play or record, it would prevent playback and count-in recording in exactly the same way. It also happened even with only a single audio track and no plug-ins.

Assuming you're still interested in this response ten months later... does this help narrow it down? 

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@Noel Borthwick, I get multiple dropout codes. It's almost never the same. Since I've taken to disabling my mic unless I'm actually using it, the dropouts almost never happen any more. When they do, it's almost always when I have the mic enabled, but it's rarely the same code—most often, either 1, 2, 5, 9 or 12. Incidentally, these often point to unattainable resolutions, as they recommend setting changes that are either as per my current settings, or else the setting in questions is greyed out and can't be changed at all. 

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