A dropout has stopped the audio engine

[Harley Dear]

Hi all,

Just started to get this message on a backing track "A dropout has stopped the audio engine"

What causes that and how does one fix it? I noticed a bit of crackling and popping ( drum parts ) just before it happened. This particular track hasn't caused problems in the past and as far as I am aware, nothing has changed in my set up.

Thanks in anticipation.

 

Harley

Edited June 18, 2022 by Harley Dear

[Bristol_Jonesey]

Try raising your buffers

[scook]

Dropouts have an accompanying code in the message ("A" in the image below).

See this (the page linked to the "Help" tab in the bottom right of the message) for more information about what may be causing the dropout and suggested remedies.

[Harley Dear]

Thanks Bristol_Jonesey,

I've increased the buffer size from 1024 to 2048. That's tidied up the pops and crackles. Is there a downside to increasing the buffer size though?

Harley

[Harley Dear]

Thanks scook. Oh, I didn't know to look for that code sorry. That's handy yo know.

 Increasing buffer size has tidied up the pops in this particular track though as suggested by Bristol_Jonesey.

Cheers - Harley

[msmcleod]

48 minutes ago, Harley Dear said:

Thanks Bristol_Jonesey,

I've increased the buffer size from 1024 to 2048. That's tidied up the pops and crackles. Is there a downside to increasing the buffer size though?

Harley

The downside is increased latency - i.e. if you've got a soft synth, and you play a note on the keyboard there will be a noticeable delay between you playing the note and the note sounding.

This isn't really an issue when mixing, but can be an issue during recording.

The pops and crackles are a symptom of your CPU not having enough time to do all the processing of your audio & plugins in time for it to be output to the audio interface.  Increasing the buffer size, gives your CPU more time to do the calculations.

The general advice is:

• For recording:  Use a small to medium buffer size of 64, 128  (or 256 at a push), using a minimum amount of plugins - and certainly no look-ahead plugins.
• For mixing:  Increase the buffer size as needed

Freezing tracks can also help free up CPU cycles, which can be useful if you need to overdub later in the mixing process, or increasing the buffer size no longer helps get rid of pops & crackles.

The other option for recording later in the process, is the FX bypass button on the transport. This disables all fx plugins allowing you to reduce your buffer size for your recording.
 

[Harley Dear]

Thanks Mark,

We hardly ever record on Cakewalk, we just produce MIDI tracks as backing tracks for our band Pepa-Jak. Our live recording is done through our Soundcraft Ui24R.

Having said that we're about to do some recording of backing vocals and percussion. You mentioned the CPU not having enough time to process. Is it time to upgrade perhaps?

Currently ASUS ROG STRIX G15




 

Edited June 18, 2022 by Harley Dear

[msmcleod]

26 minutes ago, Harley Dear said:

Thanks Mark,

We hardly ever record on Cakewalk, we just produce MIDI tracks as backing tracks for our band Pepa-Jak. Our live recording is done through our Soundcraft Ui24R.

Having said that we're about to do some recording of backing vocals and percussion. You mentioned the CPU not having enough time to process. Is it time to upgrade perhaps?

Currently ASUS ROG STRIX G15




 

Your spec is slightly better than my older ASUS ROG laptop, which copes with some quite demanding plugins, so I don't think an upgrade should be necessary.

I take it you're running with your power mode set to high performance mode, and CPU min/max are both set to 100% ?  If not, that could be the cause.

Next,  I would try disabling plugins one by one to see if you can identify if there's one in particular which is causing the issues. I would also recommend downloading and running LatencyMonitor to find out what other things may be taking up CPU cycles.

FWIW I'm able to run my Focusrite interfaces at a buffer of 64 without any issues at all, even with a modest set of plugins.

[rsinger]

The machine seems like it should be OK. Is it optimized for audio? If it's downloading OS or app updates in the background or doing some other background tasks that can cause crackling/popping and drop-outs. If one or more browser windows are open and videos/ads are being updated, and so on.

[Harley Dear]

Hi Mark,

Here are my power settings. I couldn't see where you could manipulate the CPU min/max at 100% though

1 hour ago, rsinger said:

The machine seems like it should be OK. Is it optimized for audio? If it's downloading OS or app updates in the background or doing some other background tasks that can cause crackling/popping and drop-outs. If one or more browser windows are open and videos/ads are being updated, and so on.

Thanks rsinger. I have all other windows turned off....usually, but your point is probably valid as I didn't take any notice of what else was running at the time as we weren't gigging thank goodness. Excuse my lameness here but how do you optimise the machine for audio?

Good point also about app updates in the background. I'll check that out also.

Harley

Edited June 18, 2022 by Harley Dear
Typos

[Harley Dear]

Hi Mark, I ran LatencyMon ( I guess that's what you were referring to ) and here's the screen shot with buffers at 2048. This was with that particular offending track running.



 

[Byron Dickens]

46 minutes ago, Harley Dear said:

Here are my power settings. I couldn't see where you could manipulate the CPU min/max at 100% though

You just set all the settings in the drop down menus to "never."

 

[John Vere]

I use backing tracks. Best to keep them simple and get rid of any unessassary processing. In other words-- commit the tracks-- don't leave them loaded with processors etc. 

I would freeze all the synths. Even a very underpowered laptop can play lots of audio tracks ( like my 2008 Sony) . But effects processing and a lot of soft synths are CPU hogs. I can play 10 tracks of audio at a 256 buffer setting on that old POS Sony no problem,  but I don't have any processing on those tracks as they are all frozen.  Actually I export them as Stems and then create new projects that are 100% audio to use with the playlist.  

[Harley Dear]

1 hour ago, John Vere said:

I would freeze all the synths. Even a very underpowered laptop can play lots of audio tracks ( like my 2008 Sony) . 

Hi John, thanks for that. I will have to learn to 'freeze' tracks - never done that before. This main offending track is mostly drums though. There are guitar, vocal guide and bass tracks, but I have these muted. Does mute have the same effect as Freeze?

I am using Steve Slate SSD-5 Free VST for drums and doubling the drum track so I can use cakewalk's Std Drum set ( with a drum map ) to pick out the percussion.

 

Edited June 19, 2022 by Harley Dear

[Harley Dear]

I checked the same track not using the SSD-5 VST - still got this;

 

[scook]

1 hour ago, Harley Dear said:

Does mute have the same effect as Freeze?

No. mute still streams the data for the track because the track may be unmuted while the transport is running.

After rendering the audio, freeze performs an archive of the original track and if the track uses a synth, disconnects it.

When a track is archived, the project completely ignores the original track data.

Disconnecting a synth, unloads the synth from memory.

[Harley Dear]

Thanks scook. In that case, the track that set this whole post off does not have a synth. I deleted all the tracks we normally mute and just had drums and bass ( all MIDI )  - still got the message from LatencyMon that the system appears to be having trouble.

However where I used to get pops etc, I couldn't hear those any more.

I am inclined to think that my laptop settings/hardware need to be optimised, but I'm a little too scared to go altering things as IT is about as foreign as flying a helicopter to me.

Cheers, Harley

[Harley Dear]

3 hours ago, bdickens said:

You just set all the settings in the drop down menus to "never."

 

Done!  Didn't make any difference however ?

Edited June 19, 2022 by Harley Dear

[Byron Dickens]

Go check out the links in this thread

 

 

[Harley Dear]

Thanks for that link bdickens.