More stable ASIO for current / future products

[Misha]

If I were to name a single issue that I personally have with Cakewalk, it is stability with ASIO drivers under heavy loads.  Before someone suggests a "solution"... I have tried probably over 100 tweaks tunning PC + various Cakewalk settings like general and "extra" buffers, processor scheduling, load balancing, etc.  Obviously freezing tracks and disabling FX "fixes" issues, but that is not a preferred workflow.  So again, please, I am not looking for tips for optimizing my PC   

My request is for Cakewalk / future Sonar to optimize audio engine to handle heavily VST infested project  mixing. Similar to Cubase "ASIO Guard"... or make it even better, so there is more cushion before "Stopped Audio Engine" occurs.    I am only talking about mixing, not "live" recording. 

[mettelus]

1 hour ago, Misha said:

heavily VST infested project

I like that description! Actually the thread on optimizing CbB going forward to better reflect other DAWs could also use this input. The engine's ability to dynamically adjust to the specific project to keep the engine going is what matters most. Cakewalk has always exposed those in preferences to the user as hard stops (massive hurdle to a new user), when a simple input of "I am tracking" or "I am mixing" would allow Cakewalk to adjust accordingly for the user (most interfaces are exclusively connected to the DAW, or should be, and will let the DAW adjust them as needed).

Unfortunately, threads like this in the past have tended to focus on the user needing to do this or that (same concern as the OP), but the engine can be scripted to make recommendations or even adjust itself to ensure dropout protection for a new user. There have been a LOT of threads on this topic over the years.

[Lord Tim]

I don't particularly find the engine overly inefficient myself, but having something like ASIO Guard would be very welcome for sure, and it's been on my wishlist for quite a while now.

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

But Cakewalk don't write your ASIO drivers. How does your machine fare under a DPC latency test ?

 

[Byron Dickens]

That's what I was thinking. Sounds to me like a computer processing power issue, not an audio device driver issue.

[Misha]

Mark & Byron.

Yes, I don't have top of the line $4k machine.

Mine is i7 (8th gen) / 6 core  8750H with 32ram and 980Pro nvme ssd. Interfaces of choice is Arturia Audiofuse and Apogee One.   It is not a walmart e-machine. I would put it as a "better than average" PC.  Obviously crapware and about 2 dozen "familiar" software suspects had been addressed. DPC checks fine under most circumstances.

What I am saying is that Reaper and Cubase handle larger projects better. (More stable) How they do it? I don't know. Cakewalk is my DAW of choice. I was testing the other two for the sake of testing, curious to see the progress they made. (I usually give them a spin every couple of years).  My take is, Cakewalk by Bandlab and future products are aimed at masses, and most people don't have top of the line computers.  So in my view better effort has to be made aimed at efficiency. 

mettelus above pretty much said most what I didn't.

What I want to add besides dynamic optimization based on a project is perhaps a true resource / performance monitor. Detailed, yet easily understandable. Perhaps one that would separate active project plugins into a neat list and their project loads,  to sort by biggest offenders, pinpoint and address specific items of a particular project, instead of searching for something blindly.  For example, if a user has 30 plugins, there might be only one or two that break audio engine, so an option would be right at performance window to freeze that particular item. 

P.S. I am familiar with a couple of such third party plugin monitors, but fully integrated inhouse tool with tools for doctoring these would (should) obviously work much better.

[Xoo]

This is often/sometimes referred to as ASIO Load,  so it's a nomenclature issue.  CbB does have a reputation for poor performance (in terms of number of plugins that can be run at a given latency) and whilst some of this is down to not measuring like with like, it needs its game to be upped in order to be seen to be competitive (some kind of hybrid audio engine,  which separates non-input monitored tracks to be handled with greater latency and hence better performance than monitored tracks, and which is present in some way in all(?) non-live focused commercial DAW is de rigeur now really - probably my number one missing feature to make it competitive*).

* Yes, more than a built-in sampler which can be worked around to some extent - core engine gaps can't be.

[mettelus]

Another place where this is applicable has also gotten numerous posts over the years (and is addressed in some DAWs). Situation: You are 50% through mixing something and want to either redo a track or add a new one. The DAW can monitor which FX are putting the load on the audio engine, so something like "I am tracking" could either automatically (or, even better, make suggestions) on new buffer size and bypass (only) the CPU-intensive FX at the same time for the user.

The audio engine already has to monitor all of this for reassembly into the buffer, so adding that additional functionality isn't that far-fetched. SONAR is one of the few DAWs that makes almost everything available to user tweaking in preferences, but that can also be a double-edged sword when the user is not clear on what exactly they do or how they interrelate.

[Byron Dickens]

1 hour ago, Misha said:

Mark & Byron.

Yes, I don't have top of the line $4k machine.

Mine is i7 (8th gen) / 6 core  8750H with 32ram and 980Pro nvme ssd. Interfaces of choice is Arturia Audiofuse and Apogee One.   It is not a walmart e-machine. I would put it as a "better than average" PC.  Obviously crapware and about 2 dozen "familiar" software suspects had been addressed. DPC checks fine under most circumstances.

Nor do I. I have half the RAM and all spinner drives on a 6 year old refurbished HP. Yet I don't have the issues you describe. How can that be?

21 hours ago, Misha said:

  I am only talking about mixing, not "live" recording. 

Raise your buffers.

 

21 hours ago, Misha said:

...heavily VST infested project  mixing.

Part of good project hygiene is getting the sound you want at the source so you don't have to do so much processing as well as thinking long and hard about whether or not you really need to add that plugin....

Not saying you are doing this but a lot of people ended up going around and around in circles because they don't know what they are doing and keep adding plugins to try fixing the problems they created with the previous ones.

[Misha]

Byron,

Your suggestions are likely aimed at someone in their 1-3 years into computer recording. I have 2+decades into tinkering with music. The last thing I want to do is: " thinking long and hard about whether or not you really need to add that plugin"  If I think for too long, creativity goes to drain    

"keep adding plugins to try fixing the problems they created with the previous ones."  

I believe you are mainly talking about FX plugins, not VSTi's or combination of both types.  Likely your projects are slim, that is why everything works smoothly for you. I have absolutely no issues of running smaller ~10 track projects with 5-10 FX plugins, even with "Look aheads" and oversampling. 

 

[Byron Dickens]

 

One more time: "not saying you are doing this...."   I don't know; you don't tell us. Some do. And they rapidly run into similar problems.

 

1 hour ago, Misha said:

I have 2+decades into tinkering with music.

Tell me how I'm supposed to know that. Nevermind that those 2+ decades don't matter much if you've been spending all that time with some cockamamie problematic working habits.

Again, I don't know.

 

1 hour ago, Misha said:

.The last thing I want to do is: " thinking long and hard about whether or not you really need to add that plugin" 

What that really sounds like is "the last thing I want to do is consider any changes to my workflow habits that might make things easier."

1 hour ago, Misha said:

I believe you are mainly talking about FX plugins, not VSTi's or combination of both types.

Once again, you've given no information about what you're doing in this regard. But you know, if you are piling on the instances of Kontakt, Spitfire and Amplitube 5 then you're probably gonna need that high end, top of the line $4K machine you accused Mark and me of having.

 

Not that your suggestion doesn't have any merit but maybe, just maybe, there's something else going on besides just "Cakewalk sucks."

[Misha]

Byron,

if everything works great for you,  that's wonderful. Really.  This would be a depressing place if everybody would do nothing  but complain. My  request is based on annoyance, not desperation.  And it's a request, not cry for help

Back to the topic. I never said Cakewalk sucks. Nor I accused anybody of having top of the line computer.  

What I said is that Reaper and Cubase seem to be more stable handling larger projects  than Cakewalk and my suggestion is for Cakewalk to improve on that. 

 

 

[OutrageProductions]

I tried a version of Reaper in 2017 and couldn't stand the UX. I have Cubase 12P and it chokes on my machine at about 80 tracks, but I use it occasionally for specialized projects.
I consistently run CbB on the same machine with 120+ tracks of Spitfire, Kontakt, EW, and UVI plugs... and can't remember the last time that it choked on anything, as long as I didn't try to outrun it.

But as an engineer/mixer/producer with 47 years in the can and I make my living each and every day with audio, and have credentials to prove my success, I know enough to commit something to a less machine stressing format like freezing VST's once the composition of a section is finalized.

The only time that I try to "mix" anything while it is still in liquid form is if it only consists of usually no more than 10 or so tracks.
It could be that you need to think of ways to modify your workflow and engineering skills. Just sayin'...

[Misha]

OutrageProductions,

It seems your computer is slightly faster and obviously has a different chipset. I am just a hobbyist. I am certain that buying a better computer will feduce "stopped engine" issues to something very, very occasional.  I wanted to squeeze couple of years out of it before upgrading, and pretty much I can, if new Sonar will not be more demanding in real life scenarios.

My request of this thread is for Cakewalk to be slightly more forgiving on larger projects. I think it is doable.  Again,  besides optimizing engine, a decent performance monitor with sortable list and options to reduce load of specific items would be perfect.

 

 

Edited June 27, 2023 by Misha

[eezye]

cakewalk is awesome, cool to have for free for so many years as well. that being said, it is the only DAW I've ever used that has stopped recording/playback due to performance errors both on capable and not so capable machines. it is not user error, it is cakewalk itself and how it performs. not a complaint, just an observation... i know of what you speak, Misha

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

On 6/27/2023 at 12:52 AM, Misha said:

DPC checks fine under most circumstances.

How do you mean 'most circumstances' - it usually either passes or fails ( obviously the longer you leave it running the better )

This is after opening CBB and playing this week's project through a coupla times. This PC wasn't alway as well behaved I ended up changing the graphics card to cure some spikes that pushed it into the red and made it "unsuitable". It's go nothing to do with how powerful the PC is.

On my previous i5 PC , from 12/13  years ago there were DPC latency issues and after some exhaustive testing I tracked it down to a sensor built into the case which iirc flagged if the case had been opened.  I disabled it in the BIOS and the problem was gone. This is why it's more worthwhile for some folks to buy audio PC's from specialist manufacturers as all this sorta stuff is tested and sorted in adavance. Personally I like to build my own machines and fine tuning them is half the fun.  

 

Edited June 28, 2023 by Mark Morgon-Shaw

[Misha]

Mark,

I am not looking for ways to hunt down ghosts in my machine. That is not the object of the thread (as it was mentioned in initial post)  I will answer your question, but kindly do not derail this important  topic.

"How do you mean 'most circumstances' - it usually either passes or fails"  That is not true. It depends on the load that computer carries at specific time frame.  That is a variable that can change with some program scheduling or other intermittent processes that could occur within large intervals of time.  It is a useful tool, but not a silver bullet. Having said that,  overall Cakewalk runs just fine on most of my projects.  But on some heavier  it chokes often unless some tracks are frozen and other methods used to alleviate issue . I am not a programmer or mathematician, but on a user level, in my particular case, I feel that Cakewalk and perhaps future Sonar, if it will have identical engine needs 5-10% more tolerance on the top all other existing optimization user settings within Cakewalk to meet my needs under heavy projects.

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A side note for Bakers, if someone from team is reading. Most of consumer and prosumer interfaces have a max buffer limit of 2048. That is usually what I set when mixing.  Fortunately, I have Arturia Audiofuse interface that has buffer option of 4096.  When I select that I don't have issues with "stopped engine".  But couple of other interfaces I have and a couple that I have tried,  with max buffers in the range of 1024 and 2048 would choke on heavier projects. I've tried increasing Cakewalk "additional" buffers  to all kinds of parameters on these lower buffer  interfaces, but it seems that it makes almost no real world difference.  At least nothing close to what I would expect comparing when cranking a buffer  on a device written driver.    

 

 

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

7 hours ago, Misha said:

"How do you mean 'most circumstances' - it usually either passes or fails"  That is not true. It depends on the load that computer carries at specific time frame.  

The load shouldn't make any difference.  It isn't a measurement of how much load the machine can deal with before it craps out. It's basically letting you know if any drivers are causing issues to your audio processing. If they are, then dealing with them will improve the audio performance

I don't find any big difference between CBB & Reaper's audio performance at the same latency. So if you experience that  scenario, it's likely something local.

[azslow3]

On 6/27/2023 at 1:52 AM, Misha said:

What I am saying is that Reaper and Cubase handle larger projects better. (More stable) How they do it?

REAPER has so called "anticipative" processing. During mixing (and on all chains without armed tracks during recording) the processing can be not done in time, it renders ahead 200ms (tunable default). Effectively that means the buffer size is 8820 (at 44.1kHz), independent which buffer setting you have for the audio interface.

Cakewalk is traditionally "real-time only". In mixing and recording it does everything with the buffer size of your audio interface.

Is the first approach definitively better? It depends. There are consequences. F.e. REAPER quantize PDC (plug-ins own "look-ahead" and so latency, not related to performance, driven by algo the plug-in implements) to the audio interface buffer size (previously for each plug-in, in recent versions per track). Depending from the project, the difference can be significant (usable for recording plug-ins normally have tiny look-ahead, way lower then the buffer size). Also general real-time (recording) can be worse with "mixed" engine (several years ago I have tested the limit with one "heavy" plugin on many tracks, Cakewalk won the test). Also unaware GUIs (almost all...) will "lag" behind the audio for the length of ahead processing, 200ms is noticeable. For 2x2 interfaces, so recording just a tiny part of the project per time, and mixing/mastering, rendering ahead is a good idea.

What is the difference when the buffer sizes? Everything still has to be processed "in time", but the computer has more "air". PCs are designed for huge throughput, not for strict real-time. PCs are not DSPs. So without time limit PC can do enormous processing (billions of operations) let say in 1s, but if you want just one arithmetic operation but strictly every 0.1ms, you have to death-optimize the same PC, even so you want "just 10k operations per second".  And depending from the hardware and OS it can happened that can't be done at all.

How that "in time" is defined? So how much time the DAW+plug-ins really have for the processing?
Obviously  the buffer size multiplied by sampling rate gives the "time window". But that is not the whole story. The system latency can "eat" a part of that time. In practice the most significant influence has the quality of the audio interface and its drivers. In my tests on  absolutely the same system and project, RME driver with 48 samples buffer can happily work while (old) M-Audio with 128 samples cracks and (old) Roland with 128 samples sometimes produced "Stopped audio engine".

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How to check the impact of your system latency and audio drivers?

Most traditional methods are indirect and they don't give final and easy to interpret answer. Unfortunately Cakewalk also can't report that.

In REAPER open Performance Meter and enable all RT settings (not default), including "Hold RT" (but set/unset it to have "current" numbers).
Disable anticipative processing.  Try playback a single track project, a bit more heavy project, may be even your current Cakewalk project (ReaCWP allows
open them in REAPER, not perfect but should be sufficient for performance tests).

Is RT longest-block is far from minimum or even over the limit on empty project? There are definitively big problems with system latency, ASIO drivers or both.
RT longest-block is ok but not "stable"? There are problems with the system (not optimized).
Then check RT longest-block stability in projects with plug-ins. Ignore "initial" jumps, many plug-ins (especially VSTi) lagging at startup. But that can uncover problems with disk related system latency, not visible otherwise.

Compare the behavior between different interfaces you have. That can show the "quality" of them (ASIO drivers, not audio...).

[Misha]

azslow3,

You made many valid points.  My main request is to optimize Cakewalk for mixing, just a slightly beyond what is on plate now. As another user mentioned keeping things "liquid".   I can happily mix huge projects with 4096 buffer on my Arturia. The hope is to get somewhat similar result with 2048 buffer, which is common "highest" buffer of many new interfaces.  As I mentioned, I don't see much real world difference when mixing  heavy projects with 2048 buffer + trying  increasing additional buffers in Cakewalks preference sync & caching, load balancing,  aggressive CPU etc.  A different story when compared to 4096 buffer on my second interface with all Cakewalk's internal bells and whistles turned off.  Almost like these Cakewalk settings don't do anything what they where supposed to do.

Again, this is not an issue that prevents me of writing music,  but if it's possible to optimize things within Cakewalk a bit for mixing for the interfaces maxed out at 2048, that would be very much  welcomed.

P.S. When people talk about the "quality" of Asio driver that is only partially true for the test of how frequent "stopped audio engine" occurs.  When mixing at 2048 I get pretty much similar results in about 6 different mainstream interfaces I have tried on two different computers.   I feel there is no need to praise  some over others for that specific issue. Overall they hold up well, but could  hold up slightly better

Edited July 1, 2023 by Misha