Pending new releases and existing issues. RESOLVED

[Chris Ward]

Hi all,

I spent Christmas and Boxing Day on these forums (because I'm single and have no friends ?) trying to find good advice on curing Late Buffers from causing audio glitches on playback of my latest project. I have a Win 10, i7 @3.7GHz PC with 32GB RAM with Steinberg UR44 interface and NVidia GeForce RTX2070. I have been using Sonar since its V6 or V7 versions and on lesser computers and don't recall ever having such glitches after quickly setting my ASIO parameters and forgetting about them.

Years went by and I was a happy music maker although I admit to not making music every day. Last year I finished a 12x song CD of covers where I either played live instruments or VSTs or Band in a Box and all without glitches. Now I'm starting on my next CD and on the 2nd song. All of a sudden I'm getting audio glitches on playback despite the instruments being no more demanding than my previous recordings. So this is where it led me to being on these forums on the 2x days of the year when I should have been collapsed on my armchair with a bottle of Scotch and falling asleep in front of the TV.

I also watched lengthy videos on YouTube and between the 2x sources of information went about adjusting everything that might ease the strain on my CPU. What I'm left with is the realisation that big compromise is needed and changes to ASIO buffers and Sample Rates needing to be changed every time I go from recording to playback. Like I said earlier, I never remember having to do that in the past 15x years or more. SO WHY NOW ??

I came back to these forums this evening and noticed some threads I hadn't noticed before - the pending release of Cakewalk Sonar with an all refreshed GUI etc. etc. I continued to read through 5x pages of the 32x page thread and was amazed at what the members were voicing. Topics about cost and subscription and whether or not old projects could be loaded into the shiny new release. The list went on until somehow members started attacking each other and the thread shut down. Hence why I'm starting a new thread.

To my mind, ANY new release of a piece of software, whether music or imaging (which I use heavily) should FIRST & FOREMOST address any and all issues to do with PERFORMANCE. Forget the flashy new GUI or the swapping around of control knobs and sliders "to make things more logical" etc. etc. If a piece of software has been designed to 'throw in the kitchen sink' at the expense of fast performance, then it's simply not worth the expense of the upgrade !!  We have all experienced it with Windows, Photoshop and a plethora of other major software packages. In the music world, this also includes VSTs and plugins. SIMPLY PUT - MORE IS HARDLY EVER BETTER".  Unless it's more performance. NO-ONE adding to that thread thought to ask the question BEFORE all others - has the impending new Cakewalk Sonar been designed to be LIGHTER on our CPUs. Or is it to be the case that if we pay for the new release, do we also have to shell out on an i9 PC with 128Gb RAM and a Thunderbolt interface and the fastest Graphics Card on the planet, which would amount to something like £5,000 Sterling. And if we did, would we find that in 2-3 years time, the latest round of software releases have bloated out and completely negated the benefits of our new but expensive computer.

Please DO NOT THINK THAT I'M WHINGING !!! We all welcome progress PROVIDED that it gives us IMPROVEMENT. To me, improvement is smoother, more reliable operation - FULLSTOP. And in the case of music making it SHOULD be possible (or at least made to be possible) on a mid-level computer. And so I come to my closure - I openly ask the team of developers to answer honestly this one huge and only important question which you don't seem to have mentioned in your announcements - will we find the new Cakewalk Sonar a faster, less CPU-intensive, more reliable operator than our existing Cakewalk by Bandlab ???          And please don't ask me to try out the BETA to find out for myself.     I'm now going to take a walk to try and make a friend ? whilst I wait for members and developers to respond.  ??

T-Break

 

Edited January 24 by Chris Ward
Resolved

[Craig Anderton]

Regarding latency...I had extreme problems with one particular graphics card that installed an audio driver. The card was designed for gaming, so its audio driver took priority over everything else that had anything to do with audio. It also sent audio to TVs or some such silliness. Getting rid of the graphics card driver cut latency issues by half, IIRC.

Your system seems like it should be decent enough to do what you, but if you've had Windows update, who knows whether Microsoft was trying to be "helpful" and install new graphic drivers or whatever. I don't have to deal with this foolishness anymore because I bought a custom PC Audio Labs optimized for music, but if I were you I'd see if you could find a local PC integrator who knows about these things and can find that one weird little thing that's screwing up your system.

[Chris Ward]

Well, Craig. I'm humbled that YOU found time to respond, let alone be the first one. Thankyou. I shall fully take on board your past experience with a graphics card and shall start looking around for the 'right' sort of guy to come and have a look around my PC. You're a gent. If you have any later thoughts, I would be pleased if you were to reach out again. Happy New Year !!!  ?️

[Craig Anderton]

Hey, no problem, always glad to help! I'm not sure if this is a thing anymore, but when I posted a thread about it, quite a few users said disabling strategic drivers made a major improvement. Others didn't experience any improvement...you're at the mercy of the drivers. But if it works, hey, it's free and non-invasive.

I can't find the original thread about this, but here's an excerpt from The Huge Book of Sonar Tips and Tricks:

Some graphics cards install a special audio driver, typically with a name like “High Definition” or
“HD.” This handles functions that are not needed to operate a DAW (like sending audio out to a
TV), and if poorly written, can impact audio interface latency and sometimes even a DAW’s
overall stability.

Disabling this driver can improve performance in some cases, depending on the driver. In fact
when this tip was first posted in the SONAR forum, several people confirmed disabling the type
of driver specified in this tip can indeed make for a major improvement, especially with ATI
cards. There’s no harm in disabling this driver, because if you run into problems, you can always
re-enable it.

To disable this driver:

1. Open the Windows Control Panel, then open Device Manager.
2. Unfold the Sound, Video, and Game Controllers section. You should see entries for the audio
and MIDI interface (if present) you use with your DAW.
3. Right-click on any audio driver that does not relate to your interface. From the context
menu, choose Disable. You can always Enable an entry later if needed.
4. Re-boot your computer for these changes to take effect.

However, sometimes these drivers do not have an option to disable, only uninstall. Some users
have reported successfully disabling these drivers with the following procedure.

1. Open the Windows Control Panel, then open Device Manager.
2. Open the System Devices section.
3. Temporarily disable anything labeled HD Audio Host Controller (or something similar). This
may make the driver in Sound, Video, and Game Controllers disappear, but we’re not done yet.
4. Re-boot the computer.
5. Open the Windows Control Panel, then open Device Manager.
6. Unfold the Sound, Video, and Game Controllers section. You should see entries for the audio
and MIDI interface (if present) you use with Cakewalk by BandLab.
7. Right-click on any audio driver that does not relate to your interface. The driver(s) may now
include the option to disable. If so, disable by right-clicking on the driver and choosing Disable.
If not, you will not be able to disable this driver easily, but please continue through step 10.
8. Open the System Devices section.
9. Re-enable the HD Audio Host Controller devices you disabled in step 3.
10. Re-boot the computer.
11. Open the Windows Control Panel, then open Device Manager.
12. Unfold the Sound, Video, and Game Controllers section. Verify that the High Definition
driver remains disabled.

This tip is presented “as-is,” so use it at your own risk. However, because you’re disabling
functions, you should be able to return to a previous state by re-enabling anything you had
disabled previously.

 

[Chris Ward]

I say again - you're a gent !!!  Looking for and trying out right now.

Cheers ?

[Byron Dickens]

It really pisses me off that Big Tech thinks they are so much smarter than we are.

I just wasted my whole day helping sort s**t out for my panicking wife because Google won't quit f***ing around with her g-d- photos.!

I should send them an invoice.

Edited December 28, 2023 by Byron Dickens

[Starship Krupa]

Dang, you attracted some heavy hitters to this topic. Mark is a Cakewalk developer and Craig needs no introduction.

It does sound like there might be some driver or other messing things up. Your system is a generation or three further along than mine, and I'm not seeing any performance issues. If you look in Mark's sig, he is a Cakewalk developer and his daily driver studio PC is an i7-3770. So the specs of your system are not the issue at all. You have plenty of horsepower for anything. nVidia's products seem to be the choice for DAW work, so likely no problem there. Yes, do as Craig says and disable the nVidia HD audio driver in Device Manager. Steinberg's audio interfaces and drivers are also excellent.

The Cakewalk audio engine is the baby of the head developer, and he has given it many tweaks to increase the performance. The difference between what it was 6 years ago and now is stunning. I can't remember the last time the audio engine stopped for me. And buffer underruns seem to be mostly down to what plug-ins I have loaded up.

So how to find what's bogging it down? The favorite tool for doing this is LatencyMon. You run it for a period of time (I usually just do a few minutes) and it will tell you what processes are having the biggest impact on latency performance.

Then once you've found what process it is, or are, you can go from there. Years ago I was having glitching issues and it turned out to be my network card driver. I had gone to Intel's web site and downloaded the very latest driver, and it turned out that the (older) Dell driver worked much better.

No doubt when you were searching, you came across various recommendations about BIOS settings and power plans, those are good to investigate as well.

Pete Brown, Microsoft developer and Cakewalk user, has an excellent guide for tuning Windows for DAW use.

As for the future, I've tried the Sonar beta, and saw no difference in performance whatsoever. Chances are by the time of release performance will have gotten even better. That's usually the way it goes for betas vs. releases. The biggest difference is that the UI looks slicker and more contemporary.

[John Vere]

It’s always a plug in. 

Edited January 10 by John Vere

[Chris Ward]

Gentlemen (Starship K and John Vere),

I have indeed come accross many of your messages of assistance in so many threads here on the forums - your responses here are therefore as much appreciated as Craig's. However Starship, you make reference to Mark, but I see no comment in this thread from Mark. Thankyou for your wisdom and what appears to be positive vibes for the pending Cakewalk Sonar. Reading between your lines, it suggests that I have a personal issue with CfB and drivers on my capable PC. As I read your previous responses to others with the same issues over my Christmas/Boxing days, I did pick up on your advice regarding Resplendent Latency Monitor which I rushed to download. Being a pensioner, I opted for the free version. I hope this will be sufficient to give me the answers ??

I powered up my 'Music' PC just now after seeing your responses and opened my latest project (which has revealed my current Late Buffer issues). I moved my cursor onto the 'Performance' window and let it rest there. WITHOUT hitting the 'Play' button, my Late Buffers were shooting up in multiples of 20 - 25 and reached into the hundreds within seconds !!! That was with my Samples left at 96 from last night whilst I continued to investigate different settings and the 'Audio Processing' reading 10-11% and 'Engine Load' around 50%.

I then altered my ASIO to the max 2048 Samples and then hit the 'Play' button. Today, at that sample setting, the meter recorded 2x Late Buffers whereas during the course of yesterday, the count was zero at that setting, with 'Audio Processing' down to around 7% and 'Engine Load' between 30-45%. But there was also something else that struck me - the 2x Late Buffers DID NOT result in any audible glitches as I played through. So, in all, 3x strange behaviours. Do any of them narrow down the possibilities of whatever is causing my issue ??  The soaring Late Buffer count BEFORE hitting the 'Play' button on this project is to me, the weirdest. What would make it behave like this every time I drop my Sample Rate below 128 ?? And now, as I'm writing this response and having played my track through at 2048 Samples and getting 2x INAUDIBLE Late Buffers, I look accross to my music PC and see that the Late Buffer count has now risen to 7x over a period of 30mins or so.

I will admit that I haven't crawled under the desk to disconnect my modem. I have no other programmes open such as Photoshop or Painter or Xara etc. None. I took Craig's advice straight away and disabled the audio engines other than my Steinberg interface and I painstakingly went through all my Win 10 Preferences to switch off as many unwanted background apps without crashing Windows. If any of this extra info triggers a thought with you, I would very much appreciate any further suggestions. In the meantime, whilst I really should be scrubbing the kitchen floor, I will see what LatencyMon might say and try and decipher its findings. If I don't hear further from you before 31 Dec then may I wish you a very Happy (Cakewalk Sonar) New Year.

P.S. I'm truly grateful for such 'heavyweight' interest in my post (which was never meant to be antagonistic).

Cheers !!

[John Vere]

It is always a plug in 

But SSD drives are also worth checking using things like the Samsung Magician 

Edited January 10 by John Vere

[Mr No Name]

I have noticed the same thing with cakewalk "crapping out" with vst's and some soft synths, I have read that NVIDIA graphics card drivers are a cause of problems in this regard. The only makeshift solution I have discovered to help with this problem by a process of trial and error is putting an instance of Waves Studiorack Mono/Stereo as the first plug in the chain, this is designed to contain plug ins, (plug in chainer) although I leave it empty and have the plug in's after it in the channel.  This only seems to work with the mono/stereo version for some reason, the separate mono or stereo versions don't have the same effect?  DDMF have a very good plug in chainer but it cost about £60,  Waves one is free. It also works on softsynths on an instrument track but attenuates the output volume of them by a few db.

[Mr No Name]

Obviously cakewalk has it's own plug in fx chainer by right clicking on the channel, which may do a similar job, but I haven't tested it out relating to this specific problem, might work just as well ?

[Chris Ward]

Thanks Mr. I shall check this option out. Good of you to join in.

All the best.

[Sal Sorice]

Chris, @Jim Roseberry is another very knowledgeable forum member - he has helped me (and many others). Hopefully he will impart a few nuggets of wisdom upon this thread! Best of luck - and Happy New Year to all!

[Chris Ward]

Thanks for the 'heads up' Sal.  I'm doing a whole lot of on-line reading at the moment !!  I will certainly read all previous threads on this issue and update this thread regularly with my findings.

Thanks again ?

[Craig Anderton]

I can also vouch for Jim Roseberry, he's one of the best. BTW don't forget that some plugins contribute massive amounts of latency. I'm not sure this applies to your situation, but you may encounter this issue in the future. If a project suddenly seems to "slow down," open it in safe mode and don't load any plugins. If the response improves, go through your plugins and find which ones cause the most problems.

[msmcleod]

Some general tips to avoid unexpected dropouts (in addition to the ones mentioned above):

Outside of Cakewalk:

1. Ensure all of your Cakewalk project directories, and any "content" directories (e.g. where plugins load their samples from) are excluded from virus checkers.
2. Turn off any cloud-sync applications/services while Cakewalk is running.
3. Make sure Windows is up to date before you run Cakewalk.  If Windows starts downloading/preparing updates in the background it'll kill your audio performance. It's not always obvious Windows is doing this, so I still get caught out by this one, wasting hours troubleshooting!  The best thing to do is check for updates and allow them to finish before you open Cakewalk.
4. If you're using a laptop, consider disabling your WiFi adapter - some are known to interfere with audio performance.  You can always turn it on momentarily to allow plugins to "phone home" if necessary.

Within your project:

1. Avoid using lookahead plugins (e.g. linear phase) during tracking.  Some linear phase plugins have an option to switch the linear phase part off - do this while tracking, and don't turn it back on until mixing time.
2. Consider sharing high CPU plugins such as reverbs by putting them on a bus
3. Some plugins, especially mastering plugins really eat up CPU.  Consider creating a new project for mastering with just the stereo mixdown in it, and only use the mastering plugins there rather than on your "mix" project.
4. Either commit changes regularly (i.e. bounce to clips) and/or freeze tracks when you think they're in a stable state.  If bouncing regularly, bounce without effects - but freeze with effects to free up resources.

 

[Chris Ward]

In order of latest responses -

Thanks again Craig for coming in once more. I did notice yesterday that as I played this current project through with my cursor resting over the 'Performance' window and changing Sample Rates, I noted that of the 3x plugins I had on my vocal track (Nectar 4, Waves Silk Vocal and Soundtoys Superplate) that Superplate eased the drain on my CPU most when disabled. I was expecting Nectar 4 to be the hungriest. I'm writing down all suggestions and will be going through them each in turn whilst making notes. The least I can do is give as much feedback to help others in the future. ?

And to Mark, I've only just received your response which Starship Krupa 'saw' ages ago. Thank YOU for wading in !!  Your pointers and suggestions within and outside of CfB are now written to my list of 'To Dos'.  I thought I had disabled automatic Windows updates a long time ago, but will double check. I'll also double check my AntiVirus state. I was never 'professional' enough to route to plugins on a Bus and as I mentioned in my opening post, never had problems with a reverb on almost every track. However, I will, of course, move to 'best practice'. And an often unconsidered strategy to Master in a new project window. My 4x VST instruments have all been frozen for the moment, and when I've tracked guitar and mouth organ, I shall unfreeze one by one to make final tweaks before bouncing down.

My current plan over the next 24 - 48hrs is to check that my Data and Sample files are where they should be; that they are excluded from antivirus scrutiny; make sure Windows auto update is off and manually check for updates; uninstall any unnecessary software that might have crept onboard; check for software and driver updates as well as firmware and then try and decipher what LatencyMon is telling me. It's current report states that "my system appears to be suitable for handling real-time audio and other tasks". My fingers will be crossed all the way.

One last thing for this post before I 'go to it'. My Performance window is reading Audio Processing 8.3% average, Engine Load 29-45% and Late Buffers 7 whilst play is STOPPED. (So Late Buffers slowly climbing when CfB not in motion). If any of you kind folk can relate to these figures, I would be interested to know (i.e. those figures sound average for a system like this).

Oh, no-one had any thoughts why my Late Buffer count was skyrocketing into the thousands the very second I opened CfB today ???

Thank goodness I'm used to late nights - now where's that bottle of Scotch...........                      

Sincere thanks to you all so far. ?️

[Starship Krupa]

8 hours ago, Chris Ward said:

My Performance window is reading Audio Processing 8.3% average, Engine Load 29-45% and Late Buffers 7 whilst play is STOPPED. (So Late Buffers slowly climbing when CfB not in motion). If any of you kind folk can relate to these figures, I would be interested to know (i.e. those figures sound average for a system like this).

There's definitely something off about that.

Now I'm vaguely remembering an issue with plug-ins that continuously report to the host that their settings have changed....

I had autosave set up to save after 10 changes, and these plug-ins were blasting out 10 changes in a matter of seconds, so the project was constantly saving.

I don't remember what the fix was, I thought the devs came up with something.

Bypassing plug-ins one by one will often flush out one that isn't playing nice with Cakewalk. If it's narrowed down in that way, you can start to figure out how to get them to cooperate.

[Chris Ward]

Thanks Starship K.    I shall go about doing as you suggest. My only new plugins are Soundtoys Superplate and an upgraded Izotope Nectar 3 to 4. I shall pay special attention to those.

All the best.?️