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Mr. Torture

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I discussed this briefly on another thread concerning sample rates. My computer is over 10 years old, I think it's time for an upgrade. I had it built at PC Audio labs, but am open for suggestions to other places. I have had really good luck with this computer and have no issues going back to them, but I like to keep options open. 

Also, what should I get for a processor? I want something that can keep up with multiple plugs. Thanks!

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36 minutes ago, Mr. Torture said:

My current processor is the 3.50GHZ Intel Core I7-3770k and I run 32 gigs of Ram. 
 

is that an outdated processor?

Yes, it is technically outdated, but FWIW I'm running the i7-3770 @ 3.4GHz with 16Gb or RAM, and it's still more than adequate for me.

You won't be able to upgrade to Windows 11 on this, but there's still a good few years to go before that becomes an issue.

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Thanks, I have experienced a lot of freezing lately running 24bit 48k with minimal instruments. Even with the buffers set pretty high.

the computer was optimized from PC audio labs when I bought it, but went through the windows 10 upgrade and it was never the same.

I went through and made sure all the settings are good and they are, I don’t know.. maybe the old girl is just tired..

computers are running $3K for anything decent, was hoping I could get another year out of mine.

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3 minutes ago, Mr. Torture said:

Thanks, I have experienced a lot of freezing lately running 24bit 48k with minimal instruments. Even with the buffers set pretty high.

the computer was optimized from PC audio labs when I bought it, but went through the windows 10 upgrade and it was never the same.

I went through and made sure all the settings are good and they are, I don’t know.. maybe the old girl is just tired..

computers are running $3K for anything decent, was hoping I could get another year out of mine.

You might find some of those optimizations are the cause of the issues. What may have made sense for Windows 7, might not be appropriate for Windows 10.

My DAW machine has no  special optimizations at all. The only thing I've done is disable OneDrive, and exclude all Cakewalk / Plugin folders from Windows Defender.  I'm able to run most projects at an ASIO buffer size of 64 with my Scarlett interface. 

All of my drives are SSD's though, which does make a difference.

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  Thanks  @msmcleod for mentioning disable One Drive. I never thought about that, I also have Dropbox running> But what if you just disable the Internet? Would that stop them from using DPC ? I have a very similar machine to both of you and sometimes it starts to run slow. First thing I do is disable the LAN adaptor. Seems to perk it back up. 

To the Op- Have you tried running Latency Monitor? They also have a great little tool called WhySo SLow that I ran and it recommended I add more RAM. I only have 12 GB so that made sense. It's free and seems highly recommended. Latency monitor shows I'm on the edge with Internet on but super low with it off. 

https://www.resplendence.com/latencymon

Edited by Jack Cat
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1 hour ago, Mr. Torture said:

Thanks, I have experienced a lot of freezing lately running 24bit 48k with minimal instruments. Even with the buffers set pretty high.

the computer was optimized from PC audio labs when I bought it, but went through the windows 10 upgrade and it was never the same.

I went through and made sure all the settings are good and they are, I don’t know.. maybe the old girl is just tired..

PC Audio Labs is good about support. Give them remote access for a few minutes, and they can probably find out what went wrong between Windows 7 and 10, and fix it. They kept my computer going for 10 years until I got a new one about a year ago.

Jim Roseberry is great as well. Either one will take care of you. 

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55 minutes ago, Jack Cat said:

  Thanks  @msmcleod for mentioning disable One Drive. I never thought about that, I also have Dropbox running> But what if you just disable the Internet? Would that stop them from using DPC ? I have a very similar machine to both of you and sometimes it starts to run slow. First thing I do is disable the LAN adaptor. Seems to perk it back up. 

To the Op- Have you tried running Latency Monitor? They also have a great little tool called WhySo SLow that I ran and it recommended I add more RAM. I only have 12 GB so that made sense. It's free and seems highly recommended. Latency monitor shows I'm on the edge with Internet on but super low with it off. 

https://www.resplendence.com/latencymon

The key thing is to ensure that nothing is watching any of the Cakewalk files/folders when you're using it.  Switching off the internet may help to an extent, but it doesn't stop AV / cloudsync programs trying to access the files - they may give up if there's no connection, but they'll still try - especially if they're changing a lot.

OneDrive should be fine as long as it's not trying to sync Cakewalk files.  Unfortunately by default, it'll sync the %APPDATA% folder, which is why I disabled it - it's a pain to re-configure it.

Dropbox should be fine, as long as you're not syncing any of the Cakewalk files while they're in use... however it could be using up resources in the background, especially if the network adapter & audio device are sharing an IRQ.  FWIW, I have Dropbox as well as Mega running in the background and it doesn't cause me issues.  Neither of them go anywhere near Cakewalk files though - I have batch files to copy my project/config files over to their sync directories when I want stuff backed up to the cloud.

It's worth mentioning that these cloudsync devices work by watching the modified date on the folders. If nothing changes, they'll do nothing.  So making sure they're only watching directories that change when I want them to ensures they don't cause issues.

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17 hours ago, msmcleod said:

OneDrive should be fine as long as it's not trying to sync Cakewalk files.  Unfortunately by default, it'll sync the %APPDATA% folder, which is why I disabled it - it's a pain to re-configure it.

I use OneDrive but it was a struggle to set up, I believe the problem is the user/Documents folder not %APPDATA%. At least that's where I struggled. OneDrive offers to backup Documents. Choosing that option cause performance problems with both CbB and OneDrive because Cakewalk and plugins store lots of information they need in the Documents folder and conflicts quickly arise when both the program and OneDrive are accessing the data at the same time.

To solve that problem I chose to not have OneDrive backup the Documents folder which appears that I was finally successful at but it was very difficult. OneDrive really wants to backup Documents and if you happen to respond positively to one of it's request the SHTF quickly and recovery is very difficult. I can say it's been behaving for months now and I'm very happy having the 1TB free cloud storage for each Office 365 license.

For simplicity and possibility stability. I don't create any folders named "Documents" anywhere and I put nothing in my user/Documents folder. All the folders in the user/Documents folder are placed there by programs and there are a lot of them. My documents folder is 23.4 GB right now. I also keep all of my Office documents on OneDrive and I have a folder named Docs_Bills for my documents on OneDrive. I also have one named Docs_BU that I can copy the user/Documents contents to manually to backup.  OneDrive has it's own Documents folder with shortcuts to documents that I save on OneDrive like OneNote.

Finally, I see lots of potential problems with the way OneDrive works and have been round and round with OneDrive support about them but I get the idea that they understand and are trying to address the problems as they continue their main goal of out Appleing Apple.

18 hours ago, msmcleod said:

 It's worth mentioning that these cloudsync devices work by watching the modified date on the folders. If nothing changes, they'll do nothing.  So making sure they're only watching directories that change when I want them to ensures they don't cause issues.

I really  appreciate that observation. I've came to the same conclusion but been unable to condense it to words. 🤔

I have OneDrive on a separate drive with no other folders on it because I placed a second folder "Cakewalk Projects BU" on the same drive with the idea that I would copy files from Cakewalk Projects to Cakewalk Projects BU and then to another folder with a slightly different name in OneDrive. Before I could do that OneDrive absorbed the Cakewalk Project BU folder.  I still don't have this completely sorted but am backing up Cakewalk Projects folders to OneDrive manually in yet another folder.

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14 hours ago, Milton Sica said:

Could you give a step-by-step guide on how to do this?

1. Open Settings from the Windows Start menu
2. Click "Update & Security"
3. Click "Windows Security" on the left
4. In the main window, click "Virus & threat protection"
5. Under the "Virus & threat protection settings" header, click "Manage settings"
6. Scroll down to "Exclusions" and click "Add or remove exclusions"
7. Click the "+ Add an exclusion" button, selecting folder for each of the following, and any other VST folders/sample directories:
    C:\Cakewalk Content
    C:\Cakewalk Projects
    C:\Program Files\Cakewalk
    C:\Users\[yourusername]\AppData\Roaming\Cakewalk
    C:\Program Files\VstPlugins
    C:\Program Files\Steinberg\vstplugins
    C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3
    C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST2
    C:\Program Files (x86)\VstPlugins
    C:\Program Files (x86)\Steinberg\vstplugins
    C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\VST3
    C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\VST2

If your global audio folder is different from C:\Cakewalk Content, add that too.   You may also want to add any plugin specific directories within your Documents folder.

WARNING - because you're disabling virus protection for VST plugins, you should manually scan any VST plugins / plugin installers before you install them.

If you're using any cloud sync apps (e.g. OneDrive / Dropbox etc), you should either also exclude these directories, or at least make sure those apps are disabled when running Cakewalk.
 

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11 hours ago, msmcleod said:

1. Open Settings from the Windows Start menu
2. Click "Update & Security"
3. Click "Windows Security" on the left
4. In the main window, click "Virus & threat protection"
5. Under the "Virus & threat protection settings" header, click "Manage settings"
6. Scroll down to "Exclusions" and click "Add or remove exclusions"
7. Click the "+ Add an exclusion" button, selecting folder for each of the following, and any other VST folders/sample directories:
    C:\Cakewalk Content
    C:\Cakewalk Projects
    C:\Program Files\Cakewalk
    C:\Users\[yourusername]\AppData\Roaming\Cakewalk
    C:\Program Files\VstPlugins
    C:\Program Files\Steinberg\vstplugins
    C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3
    C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST2
    C:\Program Files (x86)\VstPlugins
    C:\Program Files (x86)\Steinberg\vstplugins
    C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\VST3
    C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\VST2

If your global audio folder is different from C:\Cakewalk Content, add that too.   You may also want to add any plugin specific directories within your Documents folder.

WARNING - because you're disabling virus protection for VST plugins, you should manually scan any VST plugins / plugin installers before you install them.

If you're using any cloud sync apps (e.g. OneDrive / Dropbox etc), you should either also exclude these directories, or at least make sure those apps are disabled when running Cakewalk.
 

I've never excluded any CbB files from "Virus & threat protection" and I'm not aware of any problems it's caused. If Defender is scanning files while they're in use, it doesn't seem to cause any problems. What am I missing?

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Funny this came up as I got the your one drive is almost full warning the other day. I opened the web page folders and the issue was my Document folder on my main DAW had been uploaded complete with  all the Cakewalk and Addictive Drums etc stuff. Thanks for that tip. 

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12 hours ago, John Vere said:

Funny this came up as I got the your one drive is almost full warning the other day. I opened the web page folders and the issue was my Document folder on my main DAW had been uploaded complete with  all the Cakewalk and Addictive Drums etc stuff. Thanks for that tip. 

Is it impacting CbB or instrument performance? If not, maybe it's ok as long as the Documents folder is marked to always on this PC and you don't have more than one PC using the same OneDrive account.

Hopefully by now OneDrive Support has an FAQ for getting Documents backup off of OneDrive. In my case, I think I had to disconnect my PC from OneDrive and reconnect it without Documents backup, but I'm not sure.

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Not sure if it impacts as I generally don’t have issues but you made me realize that I deleted all that on the web site and didn’t change the settings on that computer yet. I have 1 drive synced to 4 devices including my phone. But I have it set to not download unless I open a document. But not sure about uploading so now on my to do list for today. 

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  • 2 months later...
On 11/28/2021 at 7:29 AM, msmcleod said:

1. Open Settings from the Windows Start menu
2. Click "Update & Security"
3. Click "Windows Security" on the left
4. In the main window, click "Virus & threat protection"
5. Under the "Virus & threat protection settings" header, click "Manage settings"
6. Scroll down to "Exclusions" and click "Add or remove exclusions"
7. Click the "+ Add an exclusion" button, selecting folder for each of the following, and any other VST folders/sample directories:
    C:\Cakewalk Content
    C:\Cakewalk Projects
    C:\Program Files\Cakewalk
    C:\Users\[yourusername]\AppData\Roaming\Cakewalk
    C:\Program Files\VstPlugins
    C:\Program Files\Steinberg\vstplugins
    C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3
    C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST2
    C:\Program Files (x86)\VstPlugins
    C:\Program Files (x86)\Steinberg\vstplugins
    C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\VST3
    C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\VST2

If your global audio folder is different from C:\Cakewalk Content, add that too.   You may also want to add any plugin specific directories within your Documents folder.

WARNING - because you're disabling virus protection for VST plugins, you should manually scan any VST plugins / plugin installers before you install them.

If you're using any cloud sync apps (e.g. OneDrive / Dropbox etc), you should either also exclude these directories, or at least make sure those apps are disabled when running Cakewalk.
 

Thank you, I will do this tonight. Seems I cannot record at anything less than 256 on the buffer, I should be able to record at 64, I believe I used to be able to when I was with windows 7.

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256 is what I use. There’s no reason to go lower unless you use real time effects like guitar sims. 
I have a brand new Motu interface and it will start giving me static on playback if I go below 256. And my projects are very simple compared to most. 

I’m also looking at an upgrade but right now is a bad time to buy. You can’t even buy a decent mid priced video card right now. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Mr. Torture, have you checked your CPU temperature? Thermal paste has a finite lifespan, you might be due for a fresh application of it.

 It should be pretty easy to check the temps, if they're high your CPU might be throttling. I'm not sure how likely it is, but I thought it was worth mentioning since it should be pretty easy to check (and rule out) if it's a problem for your system.

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On 3/5/2022 at 11:34 PM, Mike Rainey said:

Mr. Torture, have you checked your CPU temperature? Thermal paste has a finite lifespan, you might be due for a fresh application of it.

 It should be pretty easy to check the temps, if they're high your CPU might be throttling. I'm not sure how likely it is, but I thought it was worth mentioning since it should be pretty easy to check (and rule out) if it's a problem for your system.

Certainly a good idea to check! 

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