Sounds like CPU shortage, but it’s not.

[abacab]

It is most likely #3, if it's not any of the others...

[Mark Bastable]

Actually,  #3 is about the only one I'm pretty sure it's not. I think it's a combination of all the others. Each application of a solution to those improved the situation incrementally.

[abacab]

If you do not yet have a squeaky clean LatencyMon report, you will likely continue to have some issues with DPC latency. It is what it is...

With an off the shelf laptop, you may encounter DPC latency issues unless you have an exceptional unit. An i7 laptop CPU is relatively under powered compared with a similar desktop CPU. Mobile processors have lower clock speeds to lower heat output and power consumption. Off the shelf laptops are typically optimized for uses other than audio production. So laptop choices should be selected from known good audio laptop models (those that others have had a good real-time audio experience with). Gaming or video editing laptops are not going to be guaranteed to work with real-time audio. Those are not real-time activities.

[jackson white]

12 hours ago, Mark Bastable said:

There's a gap in the market here for a comprehensive diagnostic tool

A disciplined toubleshooting quide and compilation of best practices should help, documenting something like this for my own benefit. There are many practical suggestions in this forum from knowledgable users in addition to active engagement from core developers (big plus here) but given the seemingly infinite combination of hw and sw configurations, there's not going to be one definitive solution for every user. My most recent issue 'featured' a new combination of hw and sw issues.

...

You could add CPU intensive / inefficiently coded  VSTs to your list. 

[Mark Bastable]

15 hours ago, abacab said:

If you do not yet have a squeaky clean LatencyMon report, you will likely continue to have some issues with DPC latency. It is what it is...

With an off the shelf laptop, you may encounter DPC latency issues unless you have an exceptional unit. An i7 laptop CPU is relatively under powered compared with a similar desktop CPU. Mobile processors have lower clock speeds to lower heat output and power consumption. Off the shelf laptops are typically optimized for uses other than audio production. So laptop choices should be selected from known good audio laptop models (those that others have had a good real-time audio experience with). Gaming or video editing laptops are not going to be guaranteed to work with real-time audio. Those are not real-time activities.

Yeah, I think I made a fundamental error there, with which I'm going to have to live. I spent ages trying to decide which laptop to buy, and overwhelmed myself with incompatible criteria. In the end I got a Lenovo that seemed to hit most of them, but actually, now I look back on it, one of them was not an explicit recommendation of 'good for audio'.

When I get the 'clicking like a geiger counter'  issue neither the CPU nor the RAM are anywhere near peaking. But that doesn't necessarily mean, I guess, that the machine is doing what Cakewalk is demanding of it.  I mean, demonstrably, it's not.

Edited August 2, 2021 by Mark Bastable

[Mark Bastable]

@jackson white "You could add CPU intensive / inefficiently coded  VSTs to your list. "

Indeed.  Though I doubt that there are many of us who would be able to identify which are troublesome, except by eventually noticing, after a few weeks of tearful frustration, that whenever the whole thing comes to grief, that bloody pan-pipes VST is in there somewhere.

[bitflipper]

OT: I clicked the link in your sig out of curiosity. Mark, that is some good stuff.

[Mark Bastable]

1 hour ago, bitflipper said:

OT: I clicked the link in your sig out of curiosity. Mark, that is some good stuff.

Ah, thank you! I'm delighted. Like all writers, I live for feedback....  You've made my day.

[abacab]

On 8/1/2021 at 4:05 PM, jackson white said:

You could add CPU intensive / inefficiently coded  VSTs to your list.

Good point!

My impression is that many developers are probably building and testing their code on the very latest hardware. So the likelihood of issues with older/lesser capable hardware may be overlooked. by them.

So freezing synth tracks, and selective sends to FX busses (rather than inserting effects on each track) could be a worthwhile effort if you run into issues with performance on your PC .

[Mark Bastable]

On 8/1/2021 at 8:05 AM, Mark Bastable said:

I thought it would be polite, and perhaps useful to future generations, if I just rounded off this thread.

First, there is a ton of evidence out there that apparently-random latency issues are common across DAWs, across PCs and laptops, across computer components - I mean, it's universal.

Second. as you might expect, there are many suggested issues that cause the problem, and they fall into a few categories.

1. It's resource-hugging drivers intermittently stealing resources from your DAW.

2. It's your device driver within the DAW. You've got the wrong one.

3. It's  your machine.  Probably your CPU or your RAM is deficient.

4. It's your Power Settings, or some other operating system set-up parameter.

5. It's a specific component of your machine - NVIDIA graphics card, for instance 

6. It's your WIFI, somehow. It's TCP/IP.  Something to do with that.

7. No, it's something else entirely.

And, as far as I can tell, none of the above is wrong. It could be any of those things.

In my case, rather frustratingly, it doesn't appear to be any single one of them. No - it appears to be most of them.

Each of the possible causes has several possible cures. Over the past couple of months, I've tried most of those that seemed relevant, to the extent that I understood them. I can't say I've really done this in any auditable, controlled way. I tried to, but there's too much of it and it's all too frustrating.

The latency has improved loads. It's not perfect. I mean, sometimes it's really clicky, and I think 'why now? what's your problem?' But generally it's workable with.

There's a gap in the market here for a comprehensive diagnostic tool. LatencyMon isn't really the full deal, though it's a damn sight better than nothing.







 

I'm going to add to this - again for the possible help it may be to future newbies - and I'm going to do it despite being embarrassed at having worked out what (at least part of) the problem was.

Brief re-cap.....

First project ever on CW. Lots of pops and clicks. Tried lots of stuff (see above). Cured it mostly. (Ditching ASIO4ALL seemed to have the greatest effect.) But still got pops and clicks sometimes.

Noticed, over time, that it seemed to happen only on that first project. Thought it must be one of the VSTs or something.

Took them all out. Still happened. And, what's worse, I started to anticipate when it would happen, because it always happened in the same place. 

(Hands up those who are ahead of me.)

This is what I'd done....

I'd recorded two audio tracks of 'real'guitars. Because it was my first digital project, and because I'm used to working with tape, whenever I'd made a mistake, I'd just dropped in using Autopunch. Not in a new lane - just on the track, as you would on tape. And I'd made a lot of mistakes - because I wasn't used to being my own engineer, and I was stressed using the DAW.  I ended up with very many clips of audio guitar on each of the two tracks.

So a lot of the pops I was hearing were 'unblended' joins between clips. All that noise wasn't latency. It was ignorance.

....ah, well, there. I've owned up. I feel cleansed.

 

Edited October 12, 2021 by Mark Bastable

[Gswitz]

other daws create auto fades on clips ...

One of the reasons windows doesn't is so you can split a clip and have it mated with the other and it flows smoothly from one to the other. 

So, I like it this way. I do have quick keys to auto add fades to clips. An example of when I need this is when I create clips around a drum track so the mic is 100% muted except when the drum is hit. After creating the clips I auto add fades to the clips.

Anyway. ?

It's the type of thing that could be in the preferences where you set it to always auto fade clips.