Dropouts/Stuttering (yes, I've tried everything)

[Peter Van Valkenburg]

Since upgrading to 2022.11, I'm getting horrible dropouts with my Asio drivers. Changing the buffer does nothing. Changing the disk I/O buffer does nothing. The same exact project on the same machine plays flawlessly on Sonar X3. Its a beast of a machine : 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-12900K  clocked at 5.2GHz, 128 GB DDR4, Roland Quad-Capture. I uninstalled and reinstalled so I can't roll back. I sent a ticket in to support and they have stopped answering me. Any idea, I'm all ears. Would love to start from the beginning and get back to 2022.09. 

[msmcleod]

Have you tried checking "Enable MCSS for ASIO Driver" in Preferences ?

This was actually introduced in 2022.09, and defaults to unchecked as some drivers got upset when the DAW tried to override their setting.

Prior to 2022.09 it would have been effectively "checked" as long as "Use MMCSS" was checked.



You could also try turning off "Plugin Load Balancing" - as a processor with a high number of threads and using a small buffer size may actually spend far more resources context switching than it saves by balancing the load.

The other thing to check is your ThreadSchedulingModel.  Compare this to what you have set in X3.



 

[Isaiah]

Hi,  just wanted to say that I've also had extremely similar problem. Was using 2022.03 and always had little stutters and glitchy sounding stuff going on. I also have beast computer, 12th gen I5 12600k, 16gb 3600mhz ram, all projects on a WD Black drive (tried on SSD and same stutters).

The glitches would happen no matter what driver mode, WASAPI Shared, MME, Asio etc and I've also fiddled constantly with buffer settings. 

I unchecked MMCSS per your suggestion @msmcleod and suddenly playback is smooth and uninterrupted. 

LatencyMon was detecting high DPC's with my nvidia graphics card and was suggesting that I might experience audio issues (I was), so clearly with MMCSS enabled Cakewalk became victim to high DPC and other buffer slowdowns from other computer processes. 

I've now updated to 2022.11 and with that new checkbox enabled still get stutters so will leave Use MMCSS permanently off. 

[Jean]

On 2/18/2023 at 3:32 PM, Peter Van Valkenburg said:

Since upgrading to 2022.11, I'm getting horrible dropouts with my Asio drivers. Changing the buffer does nothing. Changing the disk I/O buffer does nothing. The same exact project on the same machine plays flawlessly on Sonar X3. Its a beast of a machine : 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-12900K  clocked at 5.2GHz, 128 GB DDR4, Roland Quad-Capture. I uninstalled and reinstalled so I can't roll back. I sent a ticket in to support and they have stopped answering me. Any idea, I'm all ears. Would love to start from the beginning and get back to 2022.09. 

Have you tried removing all plugins, saving then closing CbB completely and reopening the project? (I had an issue with some spiky, troublesome plugins staying active even though the project was closed)

[ant_in_wales]

I had a similar-sounding issue, and went back to a much older driver, and it has completely fixed the problem.

I have a Behringer 404HD and went from v5.x drivers to 4.59.

Does your audio interface maybe need extra power?

Good luck!

[Robin West]

On 2/18/2023 at 9:32 AM, Peter Van Valkenburg said:

Since upgrading to 2022.11, I'm getting horrible dropouts with my Asio drivers. Changing the buffer does nothing. Changing the disk I/O buffer does nothing. The same exact project on the same machine plays flawlessly on Sonar X3. Its a beast of a machine : 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-12900K  clocked at 5.2GHz, 128 GB DDR4, Roland Quad-Capture. I uninstalled and reinstalled so I can't roll back. I sent a ticket in to support and they have stopped answering me. Any idea, I'm all ears. Would love to start from the beginning and get back to 2022.09. 

Your post caught my attention because I have a similar beast machine (but only 64GB DDR4),  and running 2022.11 on Windows 11. So I was thinking my dropouts might be caused by the Roland Quad-Capture. However, after doing all of the recommended changes recommended by MSMCLEOD, and set  "ThreadSchedulingModel" to 3, I think it appears to have solved the problem so far.

[Tom B]

Same here ... after upgrading to 2022.11 (gear specs in my signature), I also experienced some dropouts, late buffers, etc.  Changing the "ThreadSchedulingModel = 3" fixed the issues.  I had it set to 2 for the 2022.06 release, and it ran fine. 

Edited May 5, 2023 by Tom B

[tom muir]

I was having some annoying glitches...Great advice, unchecked MMCSS per  suggestion by @msmcleod and  playback is good. Thanks! It was driving me crazy.

[David Baay]

On 5/4/2023 at 11:36 PM, Tom B said:

Changing the "ThreadSchedulingModel = 3" fixed the issues.

I realize this comment is a year old, but for the benefit of anyone stumbling on this now that it's been bumped, ThreadSchedulingModel = 3 is an experimental "aggressive" thread- scheduling model that I think has been proven to be statistically more likely to cause glitches than to resolve them for most users. SONAR became severely disfunctional on my i7 6700k desktop machine when I tried this non-default setting when it was first introduced. Others reported similar problems, and I know of few who have benefitted long-term. Feel free to try it, but keep an eye out for issues that may not manifest immediately or in all projects, and don't forget that you did it as many did at the time, claiming they hadn't changed anything and that problems were due to the update itself. The default ThreadSchedulingModel = 2 is best for the majority of machines.

[charles kasler]

I used to have it but it would clear up when I disabled plug-ins globally, so I enabled them again one at a time and found it was almost always the same one causing the problem. 

[msmcleod]

1 hour ago, David Baay said:

I realize this comment is a year old, but for the benefit of anyone stumbling on this now that it's been bumped, ThreadSchedulingModel = 3 is an experimental "aggressive" thread- scheduling model that I think has been proven to be statistically more likely to cause glitches than to resolve them for most users. SONAR became severely disfunctional on my i7 6700k desktop machine when I tried this non-default setting when it was first introduced. Others reported similar problems, and I know of few who have benefitted long-term. Feel free to try it, but keep an eye out for issues that may not manifest immediately or in all projects, and don't forget that you did it as many did at the time, claiming they hadn't changed anything and that problems were due to the update itself. The default ThreadSchedulingModel = 2 is best for the majority of machines.

This is highly CPU / OS dependent.   The i7 6700k is a relatively old processor (though much newer than mine!) - newer processors might actually prefer mode 3.  Also Windows 11's thread model is different and may prefer mode 3 too.

Really it's down to the user to try it out and see.

[David Baay]

Thanks, Mark. With that in mind I'm giving it a whirl on my I7 11800H laptop with Win11. It certainly didn't bring Sonar to its knees like it did on the older machine, but I did get one late buffer (heard the pop) about 30 seconds into a very light project that was hardly moving the performance meter. Will run with it for a while and see how it goes with different projects.

[Tom B]

I've also observed the ThreadScheduling is Processor/OS dependent. On my  i7-12700K Win10 system, I experienced dropouts, late buffers, etc.  Changing the "ThreadSchedulingModel = 3" fixed the issues. On my old i7-950 system, ThreadSchedulingModel 3  causes dropouts, and Model 2 works the best.

[Misha]

Hi Peter.

I've likely spent couple of hundred of hours in trying to minimize / eliminate  Dropouts &Stuttering during past decade on several machines. Spoiler* my problem went away completely when I bought new computer. My previous PC was decent enough (i7 9000 series 12 core, nvme, 32 ram, etc) , but still chipset/cpu where causing certain I/O bottleneck scenarios that played badly with DAW + Plugins. 

Biggest offenders in my case were certain VSTs. Especially the ones made by Izotope after about 2015. From EQ to Ozone. I've sent them numerous emails, corresponding with a couple of their coders, etc. They confirmed the problem, but  could not fix it.  Also some plugins from IK and if I use several "look ahead" plugins.   At the end everything was solved by a new computer with different processor & chipset. 

Have you tried pressing FX button on upper bar to temporary disable ALL FX on the project to see if plugins are the cause? If everything runs smoothly, start introducing plugins one by one to find offender.

P.S. Nvidia has a reputation for being a problematic with audio recording. There are a few guides available how to adjust it's specific controls to maximize performance for audio recording.