"Upgraded" to Windows 10, Cakewalk performance has suffered greatly

[Bill Phillips]

On 12/29/2018 at 10:37 PM, Craig Anderton said:

Note that it's very important to make sure ANYTHING your system has that uses a driver has the latest driver. The Intel Driver & Support Assistant has been super-helpful in keeping my computers up to date.

Wow, Craig! That things terrific. It produces a detailed report for each and every device attached. So make sure all or your PC connected audio devices are connected. It found that the Intel Memory Manager needed to be updated which may explain why I had what appeared to be a memory leak while I was updating to 1809. It also handled the update process. Really nice. Thanks.,

[Blades]

Just a "way out there" suggestion:  You don't have any plugins that have a lot of latency inherent to them anywhere in the project that just get worse and worse as you add more tracks, do you?  Like a Convolution Reverb somewhere?

[Starship Krupa]

The lag happens even if I click the button to turn off all FX, so it must not be a plug-in, right? And it is happening across multiple projects.

[Starship Krupa]

Thank you ien and Noel for the suggestions. Didn't know about Controlled Folder Access, but it was already turned off. Noel, all of your items were already ticked as well.

I would like to note at this point that projects of similar complexity start right up and go in Mixcraft 8.

Noel, is that palette flash any clue for you as a developer? It's restricted to just the Cakewalk window, not the entire screen. It's brief, and it doesn't happen every time, but I've seen it. It's something I was trained to take notice of when I was a pro QA dude.

[Michael Fogarty]

the palette flash - interesting. I didn’t know how to describe that. I have that as well. And of course it concerns me. I have tried every tweak mentioned here so though I feel so bad for you (you make it even harder because you are so patient) I am thankful for this thread. 

 I’m on Windows 8.1 and get the flashes.

My wife gets flashes too but thats another story.

[Tim Flannagin]

I had a very similar problem recently. I had a project which wasn't all that complex, which suddenly got laggy, the audio was terrible etc. It was so bad that the tempo of the Project would actually slowdown. I started looking at all the usual suspects. HD Audio, video drivers, changes to .ini files, everything. Turns out that for some reason my Overloud Breverb vst had become corrupted since it was buried beneath an FX chain Preset, I didn't see it initially. It didn't help that I wasn't getting any sort of error messages either. What clued me into the issue is a popup window I finally got while re- scanning my vst folders. I deleted and re-installed the offending plug-in and was off to the races.

My machine:

Win 10 Pro 64bit

Dell T5400 x2 Xeon Processors

32gb ram

M-Audio1010 LT Audio Card

HDD: 1TBX2, 950gbx1 , 3TBX1.

Edited January 10, 2019 by Tim Flannagin

[Starship Krupa]

Dang, I've been delving deeply into Windows 10 settings. Buncha new stuff this time around.

Everyone know about Exploit Protection? A whole list of things it wraps each program in to prevent it from being able to launch malware attacks on the system.

Of course I added cakewalk.exe to the exception list and excluded every last one and no help.

[Toddskins]

On 12/30/2018 at 10:46 AM, Jeremy Oakes said:

Personally my upgrade (albeit a long time ago) from 7 to 10 went rather well.

The only hassle i had was drivers.

YMMV but there you go !

jerry

Only thing is drivers -- about the most important thing of all.

[Jeremy Oakes]

16 minutes ago, Toddskins said:

Only thing is drivers -- about the most important thing of all.

Yes that is correct.

Focusrite were on the ball.

But it was my PCR 800 that caused the problems. Luckily there was a hack published on the old Cakewalk forum which solveed that issue.

Plan your upgrade before you do it.

Jerry

[William W. Saunders, Jr.]

I am beginning to hear the inexorable chants of the Cakewalk masses across the globe, rising steadily and surely in the background, as if unable to bear any longer this long and tragic forum post, urging you to end your long-suffering and valiant but vain attempts to avoid the inevitable.

I hear them calling, I hear them now, louder, louder, louder . . .

 

"CLEAN INSTALL, CLEAN INSTALL, CLEAN INSTALL . . . !"

on into the dark of this cold and moonless night.

Edited January 11, 2019 by BRainbow

[scottfa]

As mentioned earlier, is it possible to try a different interface? Maybe you indicated that you tried this but i didn't see it. Even using the on board sound with WDM or Wasapi  drivers might lead to drivers or interface as being the problem. Personally, reinstalling Windows 10 would be my last resort. 

[Lord Tim]

It really comes down to the goal. If you like the challenge of trying to troubleshoot this kind of thing, have at it. It's interesting learning about a new system and trying to overcome issues.

But if the goal is to have a working system where you can just get on with it, and not have to second guess if it's your migration that's causing issues or not, you really need to weigh up how much time you're willing to spend on this.

In the time it's taken to get to this point, a clean Win10 and a complete software reinstall could have been done, with far less chance of some other hidden thing you might have missed popping up later to cause you headaches.

I'm all for fixing problems and understanding my system completely, but there's just a point where it's just better to cut your losses and get on with making music.

[William W. Saunders, Jr.]

<<<It really comes down to the goal. If you like the challenge of trying to troubleshoot this kind of thing, have at it. It's interesting learning about a new system and trying to overcome issues.>>>

You are right, Tim.  There are many times, and over many hours, I have fought frustrating problems and tried to figure things out with Cakewalk, Sonar and my computers in general, just to try to master it all.  That really is part of the fun of home recording with digital audio (for me at least, just a serious hobbyist).  If I hadn't done that over the past many decades, I wouldn't know what I know and be able to do what I can do now.  Trial and error is the greatest teacher and, seriously, I do respect and applaud Dr, Krupa's intense troubleshooting and devotion.  And I've had a similar problem in the past.  I just made the mistake of following this post so I am suffering along with him every time I look at my email and I want him to succeed.

[M@]

Hi,

It might be a hdd/hdd-controller related issue.

Are you running single HDD/SSD or in Raid configuration? Did you install a HDD controller driver? If so you might try using an OLDER controller driver or even deinstall the driver and use the Microsoft stock controller driver. Also check Bios that AHCI or RAID is set as controller type.

For other (general) latency related issues i have experienced that:

* Disabling the CD-Rom drive in Windows

* Disabling power saving features in the Bios (Suspend/C-States/Speedstep)

* Disabling Windows Search from the Windows-services

All notably reduce latency.

 

Finally since your interfaces are connected through firewire, there exists an older 'legacy ieee 1394 driver'. I think you can even find it on Microsoft website,  but i'm not 100% sure. You ca. Google it.  At least on my system (TC Konnekt interface) this driver further reduced the overall latency..

Hope you get it sorted....

 

 

[Steev]

On ‎1‎/‎10‎/‎2019 at 7:38 PM, Starship Krupa said:

Dang, I've been delving deeply into Windows 10 settings. Buncha new stuff this time around.

Everyone know about Exploit Protection? A whole list of things it wraps each program in to prevent it from being able to launch malware attacks on the system.

Of course I added cakewalk.exe to the exception list and excluded every last one and no help.

Ah yes Exploit Protection for the Spectre and Meltdown exploits was pretty much developed by Intel and distrobution handled by Windows Update and it is going to slow all Intel CPUs and some earlier (10 years and older) AMD systems down. This is one of those updates you DO NOT have a choice of getting forced upon you

Check on ZD Net for detailed explanation. But to make a long story short Meltdown, which has so far been relatively directionless and harmless to date, could and might be used for devious and harmful purposes in the future as it exploits the basic  structure of modern CPU Streaming & Threading.

 Unfortunately to date the cure is far worse then the threat of disease but it also a threat that shouldn't be ignored being newer computer system from 6-7 years on up with fast chipsets buss speeds over 2000 m/Hz aren't effected too badly, or even noticeably at all by Ex/Pro fix, but older single and duel-core systems and early generation i7s can easily be plagued by much more severe bog downs.

 

That being said, if you haven't found a cure by now, you might want to roll on back to Win 7 before it's too late. You only have ONE MONTH counting down from day of upgrade before Windows Update deletes your Win 7 rollback "Image File" which will bring your computer back to the exact state it was in before upgrading.

 Perhaps your problems are merely being caused by the changes in the different and improved ways v10 handles audio could be incompatible with the older Firewire 400 card, or maybe even the FirePods themselves, and or all of the above.??????????? 

Just because Windows Update says your computer can run Win 10 doesn't mean you should, and all this might be your early warning signs that you system and it's peripheral components has reached it's limits of being upgraded to run today's more modern software and MUCH faster hardware.

 Firewire 400 is a reasonable equivalent to USB v1, Firewire 800 = USB v2, Thunderbolt = USB v3 and Firewire/Thunderbolt interfacing is an Apple thing and has been known to be very unpredictable as an addon to Windows systems.

 And I believe Win 10 is the first Microsoft OS to offer improved native support for Firewire assuming that you are running at least v800 which you are not, and Apple does not even support v400 interfaces for my Mac anymore, LoL, Apple can be very mean to their users that way with their attitude of, "Oh so you want to run the latest and greatest software do you? Than you need to run it on the latest and greatest Mac on the latest and greatest version of OS-X!" ?

Mac computers are "Simple" can't do nearly as much as Windows computers can do, and simply and certainly can't do it better, but one thing they certainly can do as limited as they are is, they ALWAYS are built with the highest level of quality components so...... "They just simply WORK as good as they can!" Apple doesn't try to please everybody.

But Microsoft does and Windows computers can be built by a variety of vendors, including users like myself who research and learned to build workstations of the highest quality control level of components and configurations.

 But retailers will cut many corners to sell Windows computers very cheap and aren't always built with the highest quality components and more then likely AREN'T found one the shelves at your local "Big Box" discount store.. OEM builders will further enhance profits by adding LOTS of trial versions that fill up and trash Windows Registry even if and when you uninstall them, and very intrusive "Service Center" and other various bloatware packages running 100's or 1000's of extra background services.

That is until you shell out the big bucks for a Windows computer that you would normally pay for an Apple Mac off the shelf at an Apple Store, which are notorious for beating off bargain hunters by never ever giving discounts for anything..

I.E. there really are no bargains for good performance and quality, you get what you pay for.

However, being forced to use a Mac and Pro Tools for music biz work, I learned a long time ago that everything has it's limits, and so my main motto is; "If it ain't broke, don't bother to try and fix it!"

And continuously installing trying different DAWs and plugins and uninstalling, literally eviscerates performance, it trashes up Windows Registry, as does constant tweaking.

 The only way to get a real, fair, and accurate comparison between DAWs is to reboot the system between opening DAWs. For instance, Cakewalk, being a mature and seasoned DAW, doesn't leave much trash like systems settings behind in memory that could effect anything the immature Harrison Mixbuss or Reaper DAWs need, yet both these DAW's will leave MUCH more behind in memory. The first and only time I tried Reaper out on my computer SPLAT wouldn't even open without a fresh reboot.

 Being that I've never used a Harrison mixing console I have absolutely no inclination or incentive to try Mixbuss, which to me seems to be Harrison's painfully obvious way to get old school analog recording engineers interested in computer based  DAW recording outside of Pro Tools.

Mixbuss and Reaper USED to be ridiculously inexpensive, but now it's grossly over priced considering Cakewalk by Bandlab is free..?

The ONLY way to get Windows 10 to smooth out and get speedy is to STOP TWEAKING and trying to reconfigure it, because every time you do it has to rewrite the boot records, then send your new configuration to the Microsoft mothership which analyzes the configuration thru telemetry  may even change something else or change it back if it things you goofed something up.

 

I would HIGHLY advise rolling back to Win 7 before the month is up if you can't find a solution. You can always try again later after making hardware upgrades, but once Windows update deletes the image file you'll need to do a start from scratch manual roll back if there is no solution, and that mean reinstalling EVERYTHING manually.

[mdiemer]

Great discussion, Steev. Your in-depth knowledge of DAWS, Windows and computers in general is very illuminating. I would agree, it may be best to roll back at this time. you can always try W10 again later, when there will be more accumulated wisdom re: making it work right.

[Steev]

@mdiemer Thanks man, I'm never trying to offend anyone, just trying to present simple facts in a humorous way. We all try to get the biggest bang for the buck out our always aging and antiquating hardware and software to save money of course, but there comes a time  (approximately 10 years to be exact) where we reach the tipping point where it gets really expensive to update and upgrade everything at once.

 Which brings me to another point to start "pulling on sleeves" to remind diehard Windows 7 users to start to prepare for the final demise of their beloved OS . I for one certainly have nothing bad to say about Win 7.. It was my first stable introduction into the wonderful, wonder filled world of x64 bit computing and I loved it... I still have an old i7 3rd gen computer that runs Vegas Pro 10 for video editing great, I also use it for audio mastering, but it's days of being hooked up to the Internet have been long over.. And that's a good thing because it never got the security fix for the Spectre and Meltdown exploits which would have punched my video editing power in the gut with a third gen  i7. There's no good reason to sacrifice power for security if you don't hook your computer up to the internet.  And even though 3rd gen i7's aren't weak, they don't really even have the punch of yesterday's 6th gen i5's which don't have nearly as much wallop of today's current 8th gen i5's. And so what I'm getting at here is, a newer much cheaper i5 grade computer is a relatively inexpensive way and most likely actually more powerful then your used to with your old i7...

By this time next year. MICROSOFT WILL BE DROPPING FREE SUPORT OF WINDOWS 7 

Oh my, has it been 10 years already? Yeah well actually it's only been 9, but you might consider upgrading before it becomes a ticking time bomb full of an ever expanding universe of black holes every time you turn into the world wide web.

Actually it kinda is already not having support for Edge, sure you can use another browser for browsing, but you can't stop Internet Explorer 11 from running in the background and from updating a plethora of installed software on your computer, and even upgrading old software on a Win 10 computer will still open IE 11 to upgrade to their current version, and having Firefox, Chrome, or what ever as default browser isn't going to stop it from happening either.

I just upgraded my 3 or 4 year old  "Snagit" screen capture software and was surprised to see it open IE 11 on my Win 10 computer for the download. My first reaction was to shut it down, but I trust Techsmith enough to keep their secure download servers protected from hackers and PC Matic's Supershield to do their jobs.. I hope I'm right...

 Yes, Win 10's free Defender virus protection dose a good job and even has a surprisingly good rating, but still doesn't have the deeper levels of security of Supershield.

 I am a HUGE fan of PC Matic. It's been keeps all my computers tuned up, clean and trouble free and running like new for years now simply by running it once a week, and a true value at $50 per year subscription. That's licensing for 5 computers.

 

[mdiemer]

Steev, I've always wondered about PC Matic. Maybe I'll try it at some point.

As for Windows 7 EOL, my strategy will be to continue using it as long as I can. as a hobbyist who only does midi, where hardware is rarely a concern, I may get away with it. There are various ways to get around this issue. For example, I plan to keep it offline. Actually, I hardly ever have it online anyway. It's off by default; I have to connect it to say check this forum. Right now, I'm on Linux where I do 90% of my web surfing. One strategy for downloading new software or updates is to have a virtual W7 installed inside Linux. It will then be  "sandboxed" and quite safe. you download something, save it to an external drive, then install it from there on your Cakewalk rig. Checking with AV of course somewhere along the way. So it can be doable, at least for a while. I may even some day go for an Apple and use Logic, if I get fed up enough with Windows. If only Linux were capable of doing what we do. Actually, it'd not Linux's fault, but the software makers who don't bother to write drivers for it. In fact, it's possible now to use it, if you can only use software that works on it. That leaves me out as I am dependent on VSTs, orchestra libraries etc that won't run on Linux. someday perhaps, Linux will be workable. That will be the liberation of our computers from the microsoft monopoly and the uber-expensive Apples.

[abacab]

I am only going to comment with my observations and opinions on Windows 10 disk usage vs. earlier versions. DAW and audio tuning are already well covered here, but I suspect there may be a difference in the way Windows uses hard disk for internal processes.

I also agree with earlier comments about clean OS installing vs. upgrading, as that is the biggest way to avoid carrying over any pre-existing issues from an earlier installation. Plus you get to start with a clean slate.    If that is practical for your situation, I would say go for it.

I have a desktop that I use for my main DAW with Windows 10 Pro.    This system uses a Samsung SSD for the OS drive, and the overall performance of Windows and other applications, including DAW software and plugins is very responsive.

My secondary PC is a laptop that came with Windows 8.1 Home, but only a spinning HDD.  It is not intended to be a DAW, but I load my DAW and virtual instruments on it to play with when traveling.  Since I upgraded it to Windows 10, everything, not just audio performance seems sluggish.

I only use the integrated Intel HD graphics on both machines, which are adequate for non gaming use.

I am familiar with Process Explorer, Autoruns, and the Windows Task Scheduler, and I have tried weed whacking my way through Windows 10, but every time I start noticing slow performance on the laptop I see my HDD pegging at 100% usage.  Windows 10 seems to have a mind of it's own, and I did not notice this behavior under Windows 8.1.  Just the expected slower performance of a spinning drive.

I have been mulling over whether to clean install, or upgrade the existing HDD to SSD.  The advantage to swapping drives is that wouldn't require a complete rebuild of the OS and applications in the laptop.

One thing I can observe is that Windows 10 service and task related disk activity that may only take seconds to complete on my desktop with SSD, may take minutes to complete on the laptop with an HDD.  Would a clean install change that?  I dunno, but my bet would probably be on a new SSD.

Bottom line, have Windows developers started assuming that the average baseline PC is now sporting a SSD for the OS drive, and developing the OS accordingly?  If so that would seem to follow along the evolutionary path of system requirements for multi-core CPU's, RAM capacity, etc.

 

[Starship Krupa]

On 1/10/2019 at 9:11 PM, Lord Tim said:

In the time it's taken to get to this point, a clean Win10 and a complete software reinstall could have been done, with far less chance of some other hidden thing you might have missed popping up later to cause you headaches.

Yes, I could have gone into Settings at any point over the last 2 weeks and run Fresh Start; that was the first idea anyone (you) replied with (I am one of the few on the Internet who still possess and wield the mystical power of Reading The Preceding Thread).

It's also much faster and easier to put on a YouTube video of someone playing Joy Division's "Shadowplay" on drums and turn it up really loud than it is to spend two weeks trying to figure out how to do it myself when both will accomplish the same task of annoying my neighbors.

Seriously, if I had a critical path project I would long since have gone down that road. I've just been fiddling with it here and there as I've had time and felt like it. Part of the DAW hobby is messing about with the software and hardware I use.

I used to be a professional Windows server engineer, so it's fun to see what they've been up to with this latest version of Windows. I have used the opportunity to familiarize myself with many Windows 10 settings and options. The aforementioned Fresh Start option, for one. Very interesting.

My apologies if anyone was under the impression that I have been spending all my free time working on my DAW computer terribly frustrated struggling tearing my hair out or something. My original post was intended primarily as a warning. I just figured I would chime in. My system went sluggo, and now I'm having to sort it out.

I was also interested in any Windows 10 tuning tips specific to DAWs in general or Cakewalk in particular. I was not interested in having everyone or even anyone try to remote troubleshoot my specific Windows/Cakewalk installation. Never asked for that. I guess some people just assumed.

Now I suppose, some people are assuming that because I haven't said "Hey guess what? I did X and now everything's great!" that my system was still "broken."

Well, the thing is, it was never "broken." Read the thread title. Performance suffered. My system was running like crap. It needed tuning. I've been tuning it.

There's never been a great "huzzah" moment, probably because that's often how tuning goes. You fire up your tools, see what unnecessary processes are running, find the bad drivers, etc.

Resource Monitor! It is the Windows system tuner/troubleshooter's friend.

From my viewpoint, this is a general thread about Windows 10, not about one guy needing help with a specific computer problem. I've been reading about things here and there and posting about it as it interested me, NOT saying "oh man, I tried this and my system's STILL broken!" Sorry for any confusion. ?

Most of the things I've been messing about with haven't had much effect, but, sorry, that's how it goes with tuning, and it continues to be more so, as it seems that Microsoft and Apple either don't leave much performance on the table or don't give us access any more.

My evaluation of my upgraded-not-fresh started system at the 2 week mark is: while Mixcraft seemed to handle it with equanimity, Cakewalk's performance degraded  to the point where I had to add buffering in a couple of places in its Preferences.

Pulling out my nVidia Quadro Fx 330 and going with the onboard Intel HD4000 graphics seemed to help with the general Windows stuff (not specific to Cakewalk). One of the first things I noticed after the upgrade completed was that while I could plug monitors into both GPU's under Windows 7, Windows 10 couldn't handle having them both enabled. Despite the fact that they are both Dell-approved hardware, I suspect the drivers got too stale for the nVidia.

BTW, steev, in my case at least, it was only 10 days. Microsoft only allowed me 10 days before the door slammed shut on the return to Windows 7. I got my upgrade through the "Assistive Technologies" clause, the one where if you use anything that falls under the banner of Assistive Technologies, you're still entitled to a free upgrade. So I've closed the door on Windows 7.