Computer upgrade seems useless

[Bristol_Jonesey]

I would have thought 32Gb of RAM woul be enough to absolutely EAT any project.

This is exactly what I've got and my CPU barely shows anything even when running a fully loaded 135 track Orchestral project.

[Helios.G]

30 minutes ago, Bristol_Jonesey said:

I would have thought 32Gb of RAM woul be enough to absolutely EAT any project.

This is exactly what I've got and my CPU barely shows anything even when running a fully loaded 135 track Orchestral project.

I think it has more to do with cpu, motherboard, storage, ram combo than people realize.  Everyone thinks that high ram and cores is always better, but you have to know if your components work together.  I recently got rid of my previous rig, that had 64gb of ram.  In theory, it should have handled whatever I threw at it, but it couldn't.  Now my system, like yours, has 32gb of ram, and it breezes through everything, even though my core count is the same (4) and the ram is half as much.  Most of it though has to do that I did my research on what I needed and tried to pair everything so it worked well together.  I'm happy with my current setup.

[John Vere]

You are not in proper ASIO mode. Either that or the Real Tech driver is interfering. You need to remove it in the Reg Edit app. I can tell this because you should not see the Real Tech as an option in the sync and caching. I also don't see the "use ASIO reported Latency" And another thing is you sometimes can have audio issues if you use way to high a buffer setting like you are. 

The first step is to get a good report from Latency Monitor. Get that puppy in the green before you continue. 

Watch this video and report back. https://youtu.be/y5bQhQuZEPQ

 

Edited Tuesday at 05:07 AM by John Vere

[Helios.G]

29 minutes ago, John Vere said:

You are not in proper ASIO mode. Either that or the Real Tech driver is interfering. You need to remove it in the Reg Edit app. I can tell this because you should not see the Real Tech as an option in the sync and caching. I also don't see the "use ASIO reported Latency" And another thing is you sometimes can have audio issues if you use way to high a buffer setting like you are. 

The first step is to get a good report from Latency Monitor. Get that puppy in the green before you continue. 

Watch this video and report back. 

Good catch John, I delete all audio drivers that aren't going to be used for my work.  That would definitely interfere, especially if you don't choose asio off the bat. 

[John Vere]

The oddest thing I’ve had was in the sync and caching my old Tascam interface was showing there instead of the Zoom. I had no problem in the past with having 2 or 3 ASIO drivers for my different interfaces co-existing together. I was flipping between te Motu and the Zoom just about daily for a while. Never had issues. 

I don’t use the Tascam anymore so I removed it. But that box is very important to stability of your audio engine. It has to match what you are using. 

And Cakewalk staff highly recommended you remove the Real Tech ASIO driver from your system. 

[Cobus Prinsloo]

10 hours ago, Jim Roseberry said:

You don't want more cores at the expense of significant clock-speed.  That's why Xeon processors are typically not great choices for a DAW.

In a perfect scenario, you want highest possible clock-speed... AND maximum number of cores. 

If it's a choice between fewer cores at much higher clock-speed (vs more cores at much lower clock-speed), go with the higher clock-speed.

Thanks Jim, for clarifying this.

[Cobus Prinsloo]

On 6/22/2024 at 5:05 AM, reginaldStjohn said:

Have you run Resplendence LatencyMon to check what processes or drivers might be causing the delays? Even the faster computer system can have glitches if there is some other software or driver hogging the CPU.  I had a machine with a specific graphics card that would cause pops and clicks anytime a plugins UI was showing. I used latency mon to track it down to the video driver. Switched video cards and no more clicks.

https://www.resplendence.com/latencymon

Hi, where should I check in LatencyMon for identified issues, such as a video card driver? See my snapshot after I ran a test:

[Mr No Name]

13 hours ago, Cobus Prinsloo said:

That's astounding, that a video card could have any effect on audio performance!

you've obviously never heard of Nvidia.

[Cobus Prinsloo]

4 hours ago, Helios.G said:

Good catch John, I delete all audio drivers that aren't going to be used for my work.  That would definitely interfere, especially if you don't choose asio off the bat. 

To delete the Realtec drivers in Reg edit, is it as simple as just deleting them?

[John Vere]

Holy cow That’s a huge mess. You have somehow installed a whole lot of potential trouble! 
For troubleshooting purposes delete all but the Audio Box driver. I don’t see that any of those are going to be important and especially to using Cakewalk. 
And yes just click and delete each folder. 
Some people like to backup the registry first but I never do. 
Those all look like garbage that gets installed with certain audio apps.
You only need you audio interface for sound. Windows will use its own driver which is not ASIO so it’s not on that list. 
The only other one that looks like it might have been legit it the Presonus Studio 192 but do you own that? 
 

There’s hundreds of you tubes and documentation on the internet about optimization for audio so I won’t repeat what is easily found. 

[mettelus]

PreSonus's Universal Control has an option to install all potential hardware drivers during installation. You really only need the ones for hardware you own, but as long as you open Universal Control first (prior to opening any DAW), you shouldn't have any issues.

Your LatencyMon picture isn't viewable to me. You can click on the headers of columns in LatencyMon to sort them from highest to lowest value (need to click two times as it initially sorts them lowest to highest). Without being able to see that picture, the #1 latency offender in my experience has always been Windows Automatic Network Discovery (can search for how to turn that off). That pings for potential connections every 3-4 seconds and causes the system to hiccup while doing so. You really want that disabled, both for that reason and you really do not want your computer trying to connect to everything in range willy nilly for security issues anyway.

Quick Edit: I couldn't recall that driver for Network Discovery off the top of my head, but I believe it is "Wdf01000.sys" or similar... if that is enabled, it will show up as your top latency offender.

Edited June 23 by mettelus

[Cobus Prinsloo]

11 hours ago, Misha said:

Did you try clicking a single magical FX button in Cakewalk I suggested?  

 

Cores and ram has little to do with your issues. Seems your specs are sufficient. My new computer has same amount of Ram (32), but less cores as previous. Runs much, much better. Processor, different chipset architecture and I/O bottlenecks mainly are causes of issues you are describing. 

In my view, #1 thing that gets overlooked is you have to set your power scheme to High Performance. Even if you have crapware installed, it should make a difference how Cakewalk runs. Usually it is set to "balanced" by default. 

 

 

Thank you, I'll look into it.

[Cobus Prinsloo]

11 hours ago, Misha said:

Did you try clicking a single magical FX button in Cakewalk I suggested?  

 

Cores and ram has little to do with your issues. Seems your specs are sufficient. My new computer has same amount of Ram (32), but less cores as previous. Runs much, much better. Processor, different chipset architecture and I/O bottlenecks mainly are causes of issues you are describing. 

In my view, #1 thing that gets overlooked is you have to set your power scheme to High Performance. Even if you have crapware installed, it should make a difference how Cakewalk runs. Usually it is set to "balanced" by default. 

 

 

I'm running Win 11, and the only power options I see are Screen and Sleep, and Energy Recommendations, which are all non-active.

[mettelus]

Win11 has sort of hidden the Power Options, but you can still drill into it via the Control Panel (I am not sure if DELL has this disabled, but it should be accessible). This video shows how to do that, and the Options window you want to focus on is at the 1:30 mark. There are a lot of options in that Options window to disable things going idle, keep things powered on, disable core parking, etc., so is good to run down that entire list. Having a monitor go to sleep is fine, but you do not want the computer to sleep/hibernate when working in DAW-mode, since that tends to be problematic.

 

[Misha]

On 6/23/2024 at 12:19 AM, Cobus Prinsloo said:

Thank you, I'll look into it.

 

Seems like pressing a single button in Cakewalk to see if works with basic/core project items is easier than editing values in regedit, but hey it's your time and your computer. Hope something will work for you. 

[CSistine]

On 6/23/2024 at 9:59 AM, mettelus said:

Win11 has sort of hidden the Power Options,

It's Microsoft's hobby to hide things and downgrade things! 👎

I've been fighting with W11 on a new pc lately! IMO it's the worst Windows since a long time! So far I've found only one minor improvement compared to a couple of worsenings. But YMMV!

[Misha]

5 hours ago, CSistine said:

I've been fighting with W11 on a new pc lately! IMO it's the worst Windows since a long time! So far I've found only one minor improvement compared to a couple of worsenings. But YMMV!

Did you forget Windows 2000 or 8?  Never ending BSOD's  

11 is OK, once you disable all the nonsense and figure out particular settings. At least... once you do, you can be confident it will last a few good years... unlike the future uncertainty of the  DAW that most of us enjoy.

[Starship Krupa]

On 6/20/2024 at 10:47 PM, Cobus Prinsloo said:

My audio interface hasn't changed -- it's a Presonus Audiobox USB 96. The same Asio drivers. 

OLD SYSTEM:

Dell T7910 E5-2640v3 8C 2,60Ghz / 128GB DDR4 Ram with 512GB SSD.

NEW SYSTEM:

Dell Precision 5820 W-2145 8C16T 3,7Ghz / 32GB Ram with 1TB SSD. (this system supposedly has a faster bus speed, and this should have reflected in performance).

Your new system is indeed a war machine, but your original system has high enough specs to run audio at low latency and no dropouts. Even using the term "enough" in this context feels odd. These Dell Precisions are built to be workstations for scientists and the like. They are deliberately integrated to the highest level.

I suggest running HWinfo64 to get a complete picture of what processor(s), video card, RAM, etc. it has installed. If it's all stock, then it will be an nVidia Quadro.

I can't see your screenshots from LatencyMon, so I can't comment on that except to say that what you're looking for is the driver that's causing it to go into the red.

Go into Device Manager and disable your onboard Realtek sound CODEC as well as the nVidia HDMI sound device if you're not using them.

Pete Brown is a Microsoft engineer and Cakewalk user. He maintains a guide to tuning Windows systems for DAW use:

https://aka.ms/Win10AudioTweakGuide

In your Windows Defender settings, be sure to exclude from realtime scanning any folders having to do with Cakewalk, plug-ins, and sample libraries. That would be the Cakewalk program folder, projects folder, VST3 folder, and wherever you're storing your VST2's.

One favorite of mine is using MSI Tool to set as many IRQ's as possible to use Message Signaled Interrupts. In the process of using it, also check to see if any of your PCIe devices are sharing an IRQ. I found out that my GPU and Firewire card were sharing one(!), and moving the FW card to the next slot down helped with glitches and pops at lower latency settings. Even though IRQ issues are supposed to be a thing of the past, it's still best they not be shared if possible.

On most systems, you'll want to pay attention to the USB controller, but on mine, since I use Firewire, that's the most important.

Another one of my favorites is using PowerSettingsExplorer to adjust Processor Performance Time Check Interval. I think I'm currently using 1500mS whereas the stock setting is 15mS. Many go as high as 5000mS, but I figure that cranking it up to 100X the stock interval is enough.

The last time I tuned my systems I sorted out both of those things and saw a noticeable performance improvement in Cakewalk in regard to latency, etc.

On 6/21/2024 at 7:06 AM, John Vere said:

Presonus interfaces often install a invasive ASIO driver that is different from the real ASIO driver.

Where are you getting that information? I've owned multiple PreSonus interfaces and their driver installers have never installed anything other than their own ASIO and WASAPI drivers. As mentioned earlier, for some oddball reason they will allow you to install drivers for PreSonus interfaces you don't own, but that's never caused an issue that I'm aware of.

[John Vere]

1 hour ago, Starship Krupa said:

Where are you getting that information? I've owned multiple PreSonus interfaces and their driver installers have never installed anything other than their own ASIO and WASAPI drivers. As mentioned earlier, for some oddball reason they will allow you to install drivers for PreSonus interfaces you don't own, but that's never caused an issue that I'm aware of.

A while ago I installed the demo of Studio one and I ended up with some generic driver. I saw his list and just assumed those were very oddball drivers. Now I see that they have a complicated driver installer and that caused unnecessary confusion.  I would still uninstall them while troubleshooting audio issues. But it's seems pretty obvious the Real Tech is involved as well as as from the screenshots I'm not seeing a proper ASIO driver happening. 

And then Latency Monitor is telling a story as well. 

[Starship Krupa]

8 hours ago, John Vere said:

But it's seems pretty obvious the Real Tech is involved as well as as from the screenshots I'm not seeing a proper ASIO driver happening. 

And then Latency Monitor is telling a story as well. 

I've not had the Realtek ASIO driver cause trouble just by being installed, as long as I don't try to use it in Cakewalk.

Unfortunately I can't read the story that Latency Monitor is telling because I can't see the screen clip Cobus posted.

They've got plenty to chew on with all the info I posted anyway. Those Dells are battlecruisers compared to any computer I've ever owned. On my i7-6950X system, Sonar's Performance Monitor shows one tiny blip every now and then.