[Solved] Salvaging a new "glitchy" project

[mark skinner]

 Hello , I've started a new project and only about a 1/3 rd of the way thru it.  Glitching pretty bad and after a few S.O.S. deletes and retakes the timing is getting behind on my latest take. Pretty lean project with a drum synth with seperate outputs and 5 guitar tracks 3 of them with amp sim. (TH3). I Rarely Ever get a glitch or drop out on my lean projects with my Lenovo SSD / I5 /16 gig ram, Tascam interface with ASIO.  I've Never checked my cpu usage or adjusted buffer settings. No need to..

I opened the task manager and saw the cpu at 100% with the project open and idle. I bypassed All fx with little or no change. Froze all the tracks with no change. I don't have any new plugins that haven't been tested or used on other projects. I opened an older Large project and my cpu was sitting around 20%. Did a "save as" with the same results. I'm afraid I won't be able to complete this one and there is no way I can start over. 

Any suggestions or trouble shooting ideas to complete this one would be nice..    Thanks ..    mark    

This reminds me of recording in XP.         Thanks ..  mark

 

Edited Wednesday at 12:26 AM by mark skinner

[mettelus]

Just to be sure, did you check that the CPU hit is coming from the DAW and not another app running on the machine? Two apps fighting over an ASIO interface can cause such it the settings are not matched.

The only thing that comes to mind with TH3 is that in the Master Controls, IIRC, it defaults to "Stereo" In Source, and needs to be set to Left or it starts doing additional processing under the hood on you for no reason. I seem to recall that causing performance issues, but not sure if that is what is going on. The issue being triggered by deletes and retakes isn't something I have seen before, so not sure what is really going on there, but the above might help.

[mark skinner]

@mettelus , I've got the "offline" pc pretty well optomized for daw use. Before Cakewalk is opened , cpu is reporting 1 to 2% usage. Opening the project in question ,  I monitored the cpu turning off each plugin and amp sim one at a time with no good results. There is something happening under the hood on this one. I'll give it another go this morning. I believe the takes getting out of time is the main clue. I have not checked plugin compensation yet.     ms

[Sidney Earl Goodroe]

I would suggest checking your task manager and what processes are running!!

I woke up last week to CbB maxing out the cpu meters at 100% across the board!!

It turned out that after checking the task manager, I found that somehow , Windows had installed an update for a Hewlett-Packard printer that was eating my cpu alive. I had not used the printer in several years, but somehow the HP update was installed and was creating all kinds of chaos!!

I deleted the printer software and everything returned to normal!!! Never saw anything like it and can't understand how that update got in there!

[mark skinner]

@Sidney Earl Goodroe Thanks , Yes I've checked running background processes several times. Nothing looks excessive. I've even turned off windows defender and have no other virus protection installed. My plugin delay compensation was not enabled. I turned it on and did a little tracking this morning. Short takes stayed in time but , still glitching some and slow about starting and stopping playback. 

I saved as a bundle file to a new location and opened it up in a new project. Same 100% cpu usage. Cakewalk itself is showing 98 to 99% usage. 

 I think I am going to export one dry track at a time and import them into a New project. I'll rebuild my FX as I go and see when or if the excessive cpu usage changes.  I exported my frozen drum tracks this morning and deleted the synth CPU did not change. It took awhile to even get the export page to come up. I don't know anything else to try at this point.    Thanks ..  mark

Edited Tuesday at 12:10 AM by mark skinner

[mettelus]

I am assuming you do not have a dedicated GPU (?), so also wondering if you have any graphics scaling active on your machine. It would be really nice if one could drill into plugins by CPU usage, but if graphics is being processed by the CPU that might also be a factor in things.

Have you tried setting up a new project similarly to see if it repeats (i.e., global issue vs project corruption)? I am thinking based on the OP title that you may have already tried that and it is isolated to just this one. One thing I have never tried (so no clue the results) is dragging a potentially corrupted project from the Browser into a new project... I always was curious if that can salvage a corrupted project or if it copies over the same issues doing that.

The more painful workaround is to save track templates and rebuild the project that way.

[mark skinner]

5 hours ago, mettelus said:

One thing I have never tried (so no clue the results) is dragging a potentially corrupted project from the Browser into a new project... I always was curious if that can salvage a corrupted project or if it copies over the same issues doing that.

@mettelus, Aparrently the corruption follows it , (at least on this one). I tried that a couple of different ways with no good results.

I exported an acoustic dry track and rebuilt the FX chain this morning. It was one that I had concearns with because of a send to an Aux track with channel tools on it. Also bounced down the drums and brought that into the new project. CPU monitoring is showing Cakewalk at only 6 to7 % with just these two tracks imported. I'm closely monitoring CPU at every step. One thing that I haven't researched yet is "system interrupts" that is showing up in task manager, it's pretty low but everyting is getting my attention at this point.  

I seem to remember adding a new track in an older project that just acted like it was corrupted. Seems the only way to heal it was dragging the file to a different new track. Perhaps that's happening here.. ??       ms

[noynekker]

Mark, seems you've already tried a lot of things. How old is your SSD drive ?

If one of the tracks you've recorded is corrupted, it won't reach out and tell you . . . only way might be to run "chkdsk /f" from the command line to try a repair.

Do you have any external devices plugged in to the laptop, like a USB back up drive, which may cause system interrupts ?

Even possible one of your drivers might have a problem. Look in Device Manager for yellow caution signs, or Event Viewer system logs for driver related errors.

Hope you get it sorted, want to hear this new tune soon !

Edited Tuesday at 04:26 AM by noynekker
typo

[mark skinner]

Thanks @noynekker , Nope nothing connected to my desktop via USB. SSD is pretty dated but checked out OK. Thanks Bruce for the suggestions.                        [Problem Solved]

I managed to import my dry tracks into a new project. While rebuilding my FX I added "Space Blender" by "SoundToys" to one of the tracks and my cpu usage jumped Way up. I had 4 instances of the plugin in the original project. I've used one instances of it on busses  in 2 different projects without issue. 

I Love the swelling effect of the reverb but .. It does not play well with Cakewalk on my system. I brought up my original project and deleted 3 of the 4 instances of the plugin. The 4th was on a crash cymbol on a frozen drum synth. The CPU usage dropped from 98% in Cakewalk to 40%. When Cakewalk reached 98% it would glitch and cause all kinds of weird problems. Turning off SB, disable all FX or freezing the track made No difference. Deleting the plugin was the only cure. I learned a few things during this fiasco.  Glad it happened ..    Thanks ..  mark