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The DVI adapter won't carry audio, just the video. I used DVI for years between a PC and my living room TV and had to run a separate audio cable to the TV. But in your case not an issue since you probably don't want audio running to your monitor anyway. HDMI is very similar to DVI, but doesn't include audio. For the drives, I wasn't meaning they were actually SCSI drives, but for some reason they are apparently using the ATAPI driver (nothing else on-board seems to be), which I wouldn't expect from a typical IDE drive. (In fact, some early ATAPI devices were simply SCSI devices with an ATA/ATAPI to SCSI protocol converter added on). Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATA_Packet_Interface

After you ruled out the optical drive as using SATA, and from what you said about your older HDD's being connected by PATA (parallel ATA) ribbon cables, I suppose that the HDD's may be the reason that driver is in use. In my experience, have only seen ATAPI used with optical drives, but if those old drives are using internal SCSI, that may be why. ATAPI allows for SCSI commands over ATA.

You can get a DVI to HDMI converter for $4.69 + free shipping from Newegg. https://www.newegg.com/rosewill-ea-ad-dvi2hdmi-mf-dvi-to-hdmi/p/N82E16812119962.

Ampire, Pedalboard, and Fat Channel have all been available as VST3 for some time via PreSonus Hub. The Analog Effects were just added.

Yes that works if you are a Pro user. Add "Analog Effects Collection" to your cart for $79, login to your account, at checkout you will have a coupon added that makes the total $0. Complete the purchase. Then launch PreSonus Hub, and "Analog Effects Collection" will be added as an available install! Make sure to close Studio One before running the install! They are then available as plugins for other DAWs.

I have the A-300PRO, and yes it is a hassle to set up. The A-PRO series was originally produced by Roland back when they owned Cakewalk years ago. But to my knowledge that was the only purpose built keyboard controller series ever made for Cakewalk. There are other keyboards that will work, but all will require some user configuration. In any case, if you are comfortable setting up MIDI CC's, and using MIDI learning, you should be able to get some satisfaction from any generic MIDI keyboard. It seems that generally hardware manufacturers only supply plug and play templates for some major commercial DAWs. Check their specs carefully for compatibility.

No problems here at all with v12. Win 10 Pro 2004, Intel Core i5-9600K, 16 GB DDR4 2666, Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 Gen 3 ASIO, Samsung EVO 860, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650.

Only suggested that as a test. Troubleshooting 101. Gotta rule it in or out somehow. Mine is SATA. His should be too, just by looking at the mobo specs. Mystery is why is the ATAPI driver being loaded. Maybe it's Win 7 thing that needs ATA driver support ? I don't see ATAPI on my Win10 here. Could always rename the driver and reboot, see if the drive still works. https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/890GX Pro3/index.asp

The ASRock site says the 890GX Pro 3 mobo had this for onboard graphics: I would pull the NVIDIA card and try running with the onboard video, at least as a test. You would do better without the DPC numbers shown for that NVIDIA driver. Here is my LatencyMon Driver Report. Notice the NVIDIA Kernel Mode Driver highest execution time is .17ms here:

I spotted that ataport.sys on Michael's screenshot too. The DPC numbers look way too high for audio. ATAPI devices include CD-ROM and DVD-ROM drives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATA_Packet_Interface I would see if there is a way to disable your optical drive in the BIOS, or at least in Windows device manager. Maybe even rename the driver to ataport.bak extension to keep it from loading when Windows boots up.

I used to use WinDirStat, and that gets the job done. But I've switched to TreeSize Free, which does basically the same thing, but scans a lot faster. https://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free I was surprised that I never noticed this big chunk hiding in the 32-bit "C:\Program Files (x86)" path before. Must have assumed that all of my recent additions to Program Files would be in the 64-bit path. Oh well, lesson learned. Just thought I would share.

Free for Everything Bundle users! Otherwise $15. Everything Bundle users can download this bank inside SynthMaster:

SATA SSD should work as long as your PC is designed for SATA. Such as SATA ports on the mobo, and SATA power connectors on your power supply. M.2 requires a special slot that uses internal PCIe on the mobo, and requires a special slot only available on recent boards. NAND is the most common type of flash memory for USB flash drives, memory cards, and SSDs. It uses non-volatile chip-based storage, and unlike DRAM does not require a persistent power source. . I ran SATA III drives on my last mobo that only supported SATA II without any issues, as SATA is backwards compatible. https://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/8142/~/difference-between-sata-i%2C-sata-ii-and-sata-iii Post your screenshot of the LatencyMon drivers tab if you get a chance. Maybe a clue in there somewhere. Not really necessary to run the monitor a long time, because the bad stuff generally shows up right away.

My point was that a large buffering size allows streaming content to continue without noticeable interruption. Of course, newer hardware makes it even less perceptible. But trying to play virtual instruments, or track audio while monitoring requires true real-time audio processing. You need to turn your buffer size as low as possible at these times. That is why you can mix audio tracks with your audio buffers turned up high. Everything still plays back in sync, but the audio paths are delayed by the buffer size so minor hiccups are not perceptible. Also, in a related manner, linear phase plugins will cause issues with real-time audio when they require their "look-ahead" buffers to fill before audio playback is heard. Just try inserting a linear phase plugin on a virtual instrument and you will see what I mean. Lag city! But they are OK with mixing/mastering audio tracks. Running virtual instruments and plug-ins is an intensive real-time activity because the signal paths must be computed by the CPU almost instantly. But playing back audio requires very little actual CPU processing, assuming no plugins in use.

That's really weird. Using an external boot bypasses the hard drive and anything that's on it. Almost sounds like a hardware issue...

You should be able to use a bootable rescue disk that runs WinPE with a portable copy of your backup software. That would bypass whatever 20H2 is installed on your hard drive.

I discovered that the Waves folder on my PC was taking up almost 10GB of space on my system drive. Seems that they accumulate a lot of stuff here. Strangely enough, I found it at "C:\Program Files (x86)\Waves". So I moved the entire folder to my secondary drive, and replaced it with a directory junction at the original location, using an elevated (admin) command prompt: "mklink /J "C:\Program Files (x86)\Waves" D:\Waves". Waves plugins are running normally, and I clawed back 10GB of free space!

No image to fall back to?

Streaming audio or video is not a "real-time" process. But keeping your audio buffers full while using a DAW in "real-time" is. If the CPU cannot keep the audio buffers full while you are performing or recording then you will experience audio breakup. What DPC latency is reporting is the amount of time another driver (non-audio) has your CPU locked up with one call in the DPC queue. So your audio driver is not getting serviced by your CPU during that interruption, so it runs dry, and pops/crackles in audio are the symptoms. Your audio driver is forced to wait. Not good. https://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/articles/solving-dpc-latency-issues/

Michael, you have been living with this problem for a couple of years. It's up to you to decide if you want to fix it once and for all. At this point, "Troubleshooting 101" says to strip the problem down to the bare essentials, and build up and test at each step of the way. Sure you can take a wrench and try this, and try that, based on assumptions and hope to get lucky. But after a couple of years I would be weary of that. If you limit yourself to a methodological process you can assure yourself of nailing down the cause. But you must follow the troubleshooting process exactly in order to succeed. It requires patience, and if you do not skip any steps, it's almost assured of success. And I say this humbly with over 40 years of professional IT experience.

I used to own an M-Audio Delta 44. The PCI card eventually started giving out. Or my motherboard stopped getting along with it, not sure which. So I switched to an M-Audio FireWire 410, but since Win10, started having issues with that. Had to retire it. But I do miss the old M-Audio company, which was originally Midiman. Now loving my 3rd gen Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 USB! Solid, compact, and reliable! A nice piece of audio engineering!

Your VST3 folder is located at "C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3" correct? That is the official location that all DAWs know about, and auto scan by default. Any VST3 files there should be added to the Cakewalk plug-in browser, unless excluded. Your VST2 folder(s) can be anywhere, as long as you tell the DAW to scan them by adding the paths.

Well at least the update is free!

That would give the computer a new lease on life! Plus it would preserve the existing build on the old drive, as a fall back, if needed.