Bill Phillips

Thanks Craig. I was only using the Izotope Production Suite and they're all up to date.

I couldn't agree more. I believe that scook responded to a Cakewalk forum thread on meter options with a proposal similar to yours in final days before Gibson shutdown Cakewalk in November 2017.

BRainbow, Sidney Earl Goodroe, Starship Krupa, thanks for the explanations and suggestions. Though I haven't had a chance to try them yet, I'm sure they will all help. I to use Windows Defender and disable the Network Connection before turning Windows Defender off. I have Windows 10 Pro so have access to policies. Does anyone know if a DirectX execution time of over 0.5 ms is ok? Focusrite tech support thought that might be a problem.

Thanks folks. Looks like we have consensus. I do that too to reduce the popping and crackling; but I don't get dropouts even at 64 samples. Unfortunately the largest ASIO buffer size offered by Focusrite Scarlett 18i8 with it's new driver is 1024 and I still hear pops and clicks at 1024. However, I'm still confused. Aren't the ASIO buffers used to account for I/O processing only not internal processing with the ASIO input buffer provide time for an analog input to be converted to digital, processed by the audio interface and placed into the Cakewalk input buffer, and the ASIO output buffer provide time for a Cakewalk output to be processed by the audio interface and converted to an analog signal? The attached Cakewalk Driver Settings screenshots. ASIO's latency calculations are based only on I/O processing latency and not on Cakewalk project processing including plugin latency. These numbers do not change based on project complexity or plugin selections. So I don't understand why ASIO buffer size increases are required to accommodate plugin processing delay? Don't the Record and Playback Buffers handle Cakewalk processing delays? Mine are set to 512 kB, I think by default. I don't remember changing them. However, after reading the paragraph pasted below from the new PDF documentation. I progressively reduced record and playback buffer sizes to 1 kB. Magically CPU utilization increased a little and the popping and cracking reduced. On initial testing I didn't hear any pops or crackles at an ASIO buffer size or 128 samples. Note to self: I haven't tested the Record I/O buffer size while recording yet. Copied from top of page 1481 in the new PDF documentation (couldn't find in the online help documentation) The “I/O Buffer Size” may not be well matched to your hard disk Cakewalk may be reading and writing audio data to/from your hard disk in chunks that are either too large or too small for your particular hard disk's characteristics. Go to Edit > Preferences > Audio - Sync and Caching and try different values for Playback I/O Buffer Size and Record I/O Buffer Size until you find values that works well for your particular hard disk: The default value is 64. Try reducing this value, to 32, then 16. After each change, close the dialog box (click OK) and re-test your project's recording/playback behavior. If problem(s) persist, try increasing this value, to 128, then 256, then 512. Again, close the dialog box and re-try your project after each change. If you have an older, slower computer or an older, slower hard disk, you should try increasing the buffer size; decreasing is not advised on slower hardware. However, increasing this setting uses more of your computer's RAM. If you have a smaller amount of RAM in your computer, increasing the buffer size may not help. If problem(s) persist, restore this value to its default and continue with the next step.

TVR Productions, I don't have a clue what causes that. I haven't experienced that problem. Sorry.

Thanks razor7music. That's existing post is pretty old, but a lot of the discussion seems relevant. My Record and Playback I/O buffer size is 512 kB by default. I don't recall ever adjusting them. The 64-bit Double Precision Engine on but I don't believe that's a problem. My CPU is idling along at under 10% of capacity.

Thanks CJ. I use the Izotope Production Suite which includes Ozone 8 Advanced, Neutron 2 Advanced, Nectar 3, Insite 2, Trash 2, VocalSynth 2 and RX 7 Standard. I have all but RX 7 in the mix with multiple instances of Neutron 2. I use RX 7 offline only. I know that these plugins use a lot computer power; but as I stated, I have plenty of CPU power and RAM left. I am able to mix with a 64 sample buffer except that the pops and clicks make listening very difficult. What I'm looking for and haven't found is where's the bottle neck causing the pops and clicks? LatencyMon gives it a thumbs up.

What can I do to stop the popping and clicking during playback? I'm using the Izotope Production Suite for mixing and I understand that this suite is CPU intensive but my CPU never breaks a sweat. I'm hearing consistent popping and crackling (sounds like bacon frying in another room) while mixing with sample buffer settings of 64 to 1024 samples on my Focusrite Scarlett 18i8. I updated to the latest 1.10b3 version of the driver which drastically improved performance but not enough to eliminate the popping and clicking. With a sample buffer size of 64 samples, round trip latency is 9.3 ms (412 samples). With a sample buffer size of 1024 samples, round trip latency is 97 ms (4274 samples). The only difference I notice is that there's significantly more popping and clicking at 64 samples than at 1024 samples. At 64 samples, playback sometimes won't start after a mixing change, but pressing play again gets it going. Focusrite tech support, which has been very supportive, have suggested that the problem could be my DirectX Driver which LatencyMon shows to have a highest execution time of 0.52 ms. Other execution times >0.04 ms are Kernal Mode Driver Framework at 0.497 ms, High Definition Audio Bus Driver at 0.32 ms and TCP/IP Driver at 0.24 ms. I used dxdiag to verify that I have the latest DirectX 12 driver. I also have the Intel Driver and Support Assistant which keeps all Intel related drivers up to date. A screenshot of my PC System Info is attached. I have set Page File Size to 0. My reasoning is that I have 32 GB of memory and Cakewalk doesn't us more that 12 GB. I'd set the Page File to 800 MB as recommended by the Page File setting dialog to have enough room for a dump file, but decided to go to 0 MB because LatencyMon was showing Hard Pagefaults and I thought that Windows 10 might be moving memory pages to memory even when there's lots of available memory. Pagefaults did drastically reduce but not to 0. With the Page File set to 0 MB LatencyMon shows 6 Hard Pagefaults. How can that be? I've attached a Memory Resource Monitor screenshot showing memory use during Cakewalk playback. The CPU Resource Monitor and the Cakewalk Performance Monitor that none of my CPU's 12 threads are more that 10% utilized. Basically it looks like my computer is idling along not breaking a sweat while I'm hearing all this popping and clicking. Is there some way to get my computer to take more interest in eliminating popping and clicking? My ASUS X99-Deluxe II Motherboard has 40 PCIe lanes a number of BIOS setting options to to best use those. I've settled on settings that seemed best for me but I'm not sure. My main two drives are M.2 and the third is a SSD. My video card is an AMD R7 250 series. It has an AMD Settings app that is frequently requesting that I update the Radeon driver that I'm not even sure I need because I don't do video games, 3D graphics, or use the HDMI audio output. I also have an Intel Thunderbolt 3 card which I still can't afford a audio interface to use. Any suggestions appreciated.

So, happy to see it. I moved it to OneDrive so I can access from anywhere. The online documentation is very hard to read on my phone which I routinely use for technical reading when I have downtime (doctor's office, waiting for planes, etc.) Hope it can be kept reasonably current.

Sound on Sound Magazine has frequent Cakewalk by Bandlab technique articles by Craig Anderton. You need a subscription. The digital subscriptions are $40-$50/yr I think. The magazine always has a lot of well written product reviews written by experienced contributors along with tutorials, mix reviews, and lots of other recording, mixing and mastering topics.

I have a separate Resources drive and use separate 64-bit & 32-bit 3rd-Party VST folders. Example "3rd-Party VST/64-bit/Sample Tank" for the Sample Tank VSTs.

Me too. I appreciate their service, straight talk and product knowledge. The candy's not bad either.

The documentation at this link may solve my long term intermittent MIDI input problems as well. Thanks abacab.

If I waited till the end of a project to update, I'd never update. ?

Note that this article and others that it links to were posted in 2016.

Woops. I meant WASAPI. Thanks for the correction. I'll try WASAPI if I'm still not happy with Focusrite's 1.10 beta drivers.

Thanks. I'm going to try it. Tomorrow morning.

Are you still happy? I'm happy that they are updating firmware and the drivers. From the release notes, it looks like this update is an attempt to might be what's needed for better performance with Windows 10 version 1809. At least I hope so. But I worry that being an early adopter might cause me more problems. Let me know. I noticed some mention of WDM which also encourages me. Does the new driver allow you to select WDM instead of ASIO drivers? If yes, have you tried them and how do they work? My understanding based on very little information is that WDM audio is Microsoft's attempt to provide low latency native audio drivers. About the time that Gibson was shutting down Cakewalk, I remember reading some encouraging words from Cakewalk folks about achieving very low latencies with WDM drivers, but haven't heard anything since. Thanks.

Please consider adding CD and streaming distribution processing to Cakewalk. I've noticed that audio distribution finalizing products like CD Architect and Sound Forge have been vertically integrated into audio/video production suites that cost $1,000's per year. CD Baby seems to be the only cost effective PC based distribution alternative for indpendant artists. Why not add that meta data integration capabilities to Cakewalk to provide a complete PC based audio production suite.

azslow3, thanks. It would be nice if that information was available when we're making interface buying decisions. However, the tests were done with Windows 7. I would hope that performance with Windows 10, which I think is reported to have better audio performance, and newer more powerful processors. Looks like the successor to my 828 mkII didn't fare very well. My Scarlett 18i8 is probably most similar to the Scarlett 6i6, which didn't do to well either, in the testing. However my 18i8 has a buffer size settings range of 1-20 ms not in samples as shown in the charts. At the 1 ms setting Cakewalk reports 45 samples. At the 20 ms setting 883 samples are reported. Looks like it's about 44 samples/ms.

Thanks Cactus Music. I've verified that I have the latest Focusrite drivers though they appear to have been written back in 2014. It's hard for me to imagine that that driver could be tweaked to improve performance with the Win 10 1809. The drivers I have for my ancient MOTU 828 mkII are newer than that. I use the INTEL Driver Assistant to keep other drivers up to date.

abacab, thanks. I've gone from minimum (1 ms) to maximum (20 ms). I currently have it set at 15 ms because settings below that periodically stop playback. So far I'm avoiding freezing tracks because I bounce around a lot.

Jim this is very useful information for me. I have an ASUS X99 DELUXE II motherboard with the ASUS/INTEL ThunderboltEX 3 PCIe card. It's good to hear that, once the prices drop to within my price range, I'll be able to use a Thunderbolt interface and benefit from the extremely low latencies they are capable of.

This works for me most of the time. I'm usually looking for help using functions that I don't use often and have been available for a long time.

The SONAR PDF was over 2,000 pages and hadn't been available in printed form for years. I doubt that there was ever a more comprehensive DAW reference manual. I still use what I think is the last version ever issued.