Dah Tarel Posted December 12, 2023 Share Posted December 12, 2023 Hello dear Cakewalk users, When starting a new project and adding some VST (maybe 10 or less), the performance indicators (engine load; late buffers) start to be very high and I get many cracks during playback. The memory usage is around 50%. Whatever the plugins I use, it still happens. If I bypass the FX racks, the performance is back down and cracks disappear. The strange thing is that when the projects start to be quite big with a lot of VSTs, the performance indicators go down and the cracks disappear. Would someone have any idea where it comes from and how it can be solved, please? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reginaldStjohn Posted December 12, 2023 Share Posted December 12, 2023 You would have to go through each plug-in one at a time to see if there is one particular one that is causing problems. Bypass each effect and see if it helps. Some plugins take more CPU and RAM then others. Do you have any Virtual Instruments? They can cause issues as well. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Baay Posted December 12, 2023 Share Posted December 12, 2023 Sounds like CPU throttling is lowering performance until the load hits a certain threshold. You'll want to make sure that Speedstep, C-States and other CPU throttling functions are disabled in BIOS and Windows power management is set to High Performance. 1 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steev Posted December 12, 2023 Share Posted December 12, 2023 That usually happens when your "Buffer Size" under "Mixing Latency" pictured below is set too low and or your audio drivers need an update. Don't pay too much attention to the number values in msec the pic below, these are specific to a Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 gen 2. All sound card/interfaces are different, and many work very well and sound fine with no audible artifacts up to around 20-25 msec. Press "P" on your computer keyboard to open the "Preferences" dialog box & select "Driver Settings" (orange) and increase the "Buffer Size" by incrementally a little at a time by clicking on slider (blue) handle and moving it to the right. Then hit the "Apply" button on the bottom and close the dialog box, then hit play & check to see if CPU meter goes down & if clicking & popping goes away. If yes, and you're satisfied and comfortable with recording latency, you're done. If recording latency is too high for comfort, repeat the above process by sliding the Buffer Size as far to the left as you can get without hearing clicks & pops. Sometimes it takes a few tries to get it right. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starship Krupa Posted December 13, 2023 Share Posted December 13, 2023 The fact that disabling all FX cures the symptom is a clue. I'll go with what others have said about trying enabling and disabling individual plug-ins to see if you can find one that is triggering the behavior. And it might not be just one, I've had it happen where it was two specific plug-ins in a specific order that caused trouble. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steev Posted December 13, 2023 Share Posted December 13, 2023 Instead of disabling all plugins I would simply freeze tracks. One at a time and see what happens on the meters. It's always a great idea to freeze tracks you're not working on and safeguard against accidental destructive editing as well as free up unnecessary computer processing, as a very simple logical way to pinpoint which plugins on what track and what fx plugin is causing the problems. IF IN FACT it's even an FX problem. Who knows what Windows is doing, what services are running, or virus scanning is going on in the background that could be hogging resources, bloating the Registry and serial buss and making your DAW work harder than it has to? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
msmcleod Posted December 13, 2023 Share Posted December 13, 2023 My PC has been sluggish all day... then it became apparent why... the latest windows 2023/12 update had been doing it's thing in the background, and when I finished up for the day was telling me to restart to complete the update. I can't count how many times this has caught me out. Before troubleshooting all your audio settings / cakewalk config etc... check Windows update - it could be the cause of the slowdown and memory usage. Some day I'll remember my own advice myself! 2 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Will. Posted December 14, 2023 Share Posted December 14, 2023 7 hours ago, msmcleod said: My PC has been sluggish all day... then it became apparent why... the latest windows 2023/12 update had been doing it's thing in the background, and when I finished up for the day was telling me to restart to complete the update. I can't count how many times this has caught me out. Before troubleshooting all your audio settings / cakewalk config etc... check Windows update - it could be the cause of the slowdown and memory usage. Some day I'll remember my own advice myself! This is true. I even figured out that if I dont have the 3.5 redist NET. Framework. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dah Tarel Posted December 20, 2023 Author Share Posted December 20, 2023 On 12/12/2023 at 8:19 PM, David Baay said: Sounds like CPU throttling is lowering performance until the load hits a certain threshold. Exactly. I will check the CPU options in Bios. I didn't know about Speedstep or C-States. Thank you very much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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