OneDrive Syncing Seems To Be Causing Audio Dropouts

[Mike Palmer]

I've been using Cakewalk for years with OneDrive syncing in the background. All of a sudden I'm getting Audio Drop0uts that only seem to be remedied by pausing the OneDrive sync. Has anyone experienced this recently? This occurs both with recording and playback.

I don't recall changing any settings in Preferences though there are so many that anything is possible inadvertently. I have Asio drivers that I've  been using with no problems with a Focusrite Scarlett 18i8 3rd Gen.  I've always had the buffer latency setting at 128 with no problems, I've tried bumping it to 528 and still get dropouts with OneDrive syncing.  I could simply turn it off, but I want to figure out why this is suddenly happening.

My current settings in Cakewalk are attached.

The only other thing I can think of is that some setting in OneDrive changed, maybe after a Windows update but I have no idea what that would be which is why I'm asking if anyone else has experienced a recent similar problem.

 

Thanks

 

[John Vere]

Why do you have ASIO 4all as an output?  I would most certainly remove this from you system completely. You don’t need it at all.  You have Focusrite drivers and WASAPI for Windows. 
My one drive is always on and I’ve never experienced an issue. It only syncs when you first boot up. It shouldn’t be doing anything if no files have changed. 

[scook]

6 minutes ago, JohnnyV said:

Why do you have ASIO 4all as an output?  I would most certainly remove this from you system completely. 

Look again...you know one cannot select different ASIO drivers for input and output, right?

It is a curious choice of names, but I suspect it has something to do with a USB connected amp or similar device.

[Glenn Stanton]

also - generally not a good idea to have the audio files syncing to OneDrive while using them ? best to pause OneDrive syncing until you're done, otherwise you may find the OneDrive aggressive file locking tactics cause corruption in your files. i keep my CW files on their own SSD and use a sync app to copy them into the OneDrive and Google Drive spaces when done. eats up some more disk space until i archive a project, but much better performance and no corruption due to file contentions.

[Mike Palmer]

Yeah thanks Glenn. I do have my CW files on a separate SSD drive. And yes I did figure out that it does seem to work when I pause the sync. But what I didn't understand is why this is a new problem when I've  been running the sync while using CW prior to this. I thought maybe something happened to my HD or I possibly changed some settings. So far my HD checks out fine. The only thing I can think of is some update to windows or OneDrive created this change in behavior.

[Glenn Stanton]

maybe re-run the CW redistributable install as i know some updates (like Edge) mess with the libraries.

[John Vere]

2 hours ago, scook said:

Look again...you know one cannot select different ASIO drivers for input and output, right?

It is a curious choice of names, but I suspect it has something to do with a USB connected amp or similar device.

But that’s why is a red flag to me as it doesn’t seem possible to have that showing as it is. The Focusrite is clearly in ASIO mode and shows correctly in all boxes including the sync and caching but why is asio4all showing as the output device?  

[Xoo]

Because it's a friendly name not the actual driver name.  Weird choice of name but..

[Michael Vogel]

16 hours ago, Xoo said:

Because it's a friendly name not the actual driver name.  Weird choice of name but..

Possibly ASIO4ALL was installed at sometime and was copied into the Friendly Name Field inadvertently.

[Mike Palmer]

I think that's correct.

[Mike Palmer]

Just now, Mike Palmer said:

I think that's correct.

 

9 hours ago, Michael Vogel said:

Possibly ASIO4ALL was installed at sometime and was copied into the Friendly Name Field inadvertently.

 

[Starship Krupa]

@Mike Palmer: please change the friendly output name so as not to give us would-be helpful forum people hissy fits about ASIO4ALL. ?

Who knows if Microsoft changed something about OneDrive that boogered it up? It's best practice to pause operations like OneDrive and other file sync while you're doing DAW and NLE and other demanding work anyway.

Run checkups on any associated drive(s), set OneDrive not to sync while you're mixing.

[A Tolerable Quietude]

For what it's worth, I recently upgraded from my trusty Windows 10 machine to a new one with Windows 11 and much better specs, expecting to get much better performance in Cakewalk.  I didn't, until I removed all traces of OneDrive and some other default cruft.  I don't even use OneDrive, so I was rather surprised to find that Windows 11 default behavior is to make the local Documents folder on the account a OneDrive folder, and just start sending/syncing all my files to Microsoft in the background!  I found this link from Focusrite helpful in optimizing the PC for audio production.

Edited July 13, 2023 by A Tolerable Quietude

[bvideo]

If it's onedrive, your network connection is important. Wifi? Some wifi hardware can need too much CPU at times. The latency monitor tool might be able to help zero in on the problem.