VST "Popping and Crackling" During more complex parts

[theEmbark]

Have you tried the Asio4all driver? - often times worked better than factory drivers for me.

Are your samples installed to a SSD? If not it might be a failing HDD.

WIndows 10 can work fine but if you want to get the most out of whatever hardware you have then a stripped Windows7 is going to be better.

For comparison:

DPC.PNG

I also have a xeon - make sure all power saving features are turned off in the Bios and it is manually set to it's max clock speed.
Unplug everything else that is connected via usb/firewire etc and rerun your tests/project.

I have been working @ 96k for years without issues as have many others.

This will be very helpful,

I'm mobile now and out until tomorrow but looking forward to trying this.

Hard drives are setup as followed:
250gb SSD Boot Drive
1tb SSD Samples (at least my everyday samples)
4tb HDD for applications photos etc
8 x 500gb HDD in RAID 10 that is over flow for my sample libraries
24TB HDD NAS for project storage
6 x 3tb glyph rackmounted drives for travel

I have a lot of USB/fire equipment plugged in so eliminating all that will and adding things back in 1 at a time would be a benefit.

I need to comb the BIOS and make sure I don't have anything set up or default to power management.

Sounds like tomorrow's project,

Thanks,
Kevin

[ErikH]

First of all: some processes make use of the number of cores in the cpu and some only use one core and rely on its speed.

Second: what is your graphics card? You do not mention one. If you use built-in graphics, it takes a lot of calculating power from your cpu's.

[theEmbark]

First of all: some processes make use of the number of cores in the cpu and some only use one core and rely on its speed.

Second: what is your graphics card? You do not mention one. If you use built-in graphics, it takes a lot of calculating power from your cpu's.

Thanks for the reply,

You are defenitly right about some processes being single core. I keep a CPU monitor open that shows all 24 threads to monitor this.

Oops my GPU is a GTX 660. No onboard video with the SR-2.

So I backed down to win 7 and instantly my latency is down to about where chickenmans is. I need to install Cubase again and update drivers before I can test it in a project but maybe that was the whole issue.

Thanks,
Kevin

[theEmbark]

So far so good,

basically all I did was roll back to win 7 lol



Downloading Cubase again as we speak but I don't think I will have any issues. Win 10 should be classified as a virus.... it's a mess...

Thanks,
Kevin

[Guenon]

basically all I did was roll back to win 7 lol

As this screenshot shows the readings on Windows 7, and the previous ones were on Windows 10, it's important to note that this DPC latency checker does not work correctly on anything newer than Windows 7 . So those other screenshots of this tool aren't accurate info of your system.

However, the other tool you're using, latencymon ( http://www.resplendence.com/latencymon ) supports newer Windows versions. As the highest DPC times it showed - although not quite as scary as those other ones , but still bad - on your system were nvidia graphics adapter related, it's quite probable the combination of those nvidia drivers and Windows 10 were the cause. Nvidia has had absolutely terrible problems with dpc lately, google nvidia and dpc and see what's been going on.

Second: what is your graphics card? You do not mention one. If you use built-in graphics, it takes a lot of calculating power from your cpu's.

His system uses Xeon X5680s which don't have built-in GPUs at all. However, if one is using an i7 system with a modern dedicated graphics processor integrated in the same package as the main processor, that's actually a very good option for a DAW machine. It doesn't draw calculating power from the actual CPU, as it's a dedicated unit.

Given that there have been so severe problems with separate graphics cards lately, the integrated solution would even be my personal preference for a solid system.

Edit: and hey, theEmbark, great that you got your system running cleanly again ... I've decided to stay on Windows 7 for now too, hah.

[theEmbark]

Thank you everyone for the help !

I moved over from Mac and decided to roll the dice on win 10 with the free trial.... what a bad idea haha. Lesson learned. Win 7 is still honestly solid as a rock I moved over to Mac right as it rolled out. With DAWs really all you want is a stable platform. So I should be happy for a while here.

Thanks again,
Kevin

[t3toooo]

What do you mean with lesson learned?

The majority is happy with Windows 10 and 10 utilizes the cores much better than Win 7.


Actually there are some known problems with platforms like my 3930k and the new rolled out Windows 10 anniversary update that's why my computer isn't going online for an update until they fixed it (which they will do)

Wait for the next update and then try again,imo.

But this should not happen anyway.

[theEmbark]

What do you mean with lesson learned?

The majority is happy with Windows 10 and 10 utilizes the cores much better than Win 7.


Actually there are some known problems with platforms like my 3930k and the new rolled out Windows 10 anniversary update that's why my computer isn't going online for an update until they fixed it (which they will do)

Wait for the next update and then try again,imo.

But this should not happen anyway.

Honestly I like the win 10 interface and some of the features that's why I gave it a shot.

However as far as performance goes - all around - I saw an increase when I went to win 7. My hardware is older I guess so maybe it's just better supported. Either way - with my machine Win 7 is the way to go for now.

Not wanting to start a windows debate haha just happy I did what i did and that everything is working smoothly for now.

Thanks,
Kevin

[Chickenman]

No matter what the cause Win7 is the fix, at least for now with us people still running gen1/2/3 cpus and Nvidia

I have a stripped install that uses 6gb once installed and 800mb of ram, it's probably ludicrously unsafe on the internet but hey, that's what the laptop is for.

I can post it on Mega if anyone wants, it's not cracked at all so would still need a legit licence key for Windows Ultimate.

[Astralp]

I'm in this situation too and have spent many many hours trying to solve it, this is on a fresh install of windows 10 Pro, the same machine had no issues on W7. I think in my case it is motherboard related, and primarily down to the USB drivers. It's not bad until after several hours and a few sleeps and it just deteriorates solved only by a reboot. It's a very common issue and yet there seems to be no solid solution. I'm contemplating a new motherboard or like the OP going back to W7. I would prefer to stay on 10 having forked out for the license, but it's looking unlikely that a windows update will fix it.

[t3toooo]

Just to write some upgrade experiences.

Windows 10 is still "young",i upgraded several computers and the upgrade process changed every time.One year ago it was painfully slow,then sometimes using a USB DVD burner wouldn't work and i had to go internally (if possible) this always worked.

Last year two times after some days i lost my activation when going online because i immediately did a fresh Win 10 install and i had to do the upgrade again.Should have waited for the "windows old" folder to be removed automatically.
A couple of things have changed now upgrading is a much easier and faster process.


I upgraded a older 2010 1005PE Asus netbook and did not install any drivers for it.I tried to use the Win 10 drivers and it is performing very well.

My 3930k is from 2012 but i had to install the chipset and LAN drivers,This machine is also working perfectly.
I couldn't say when to install a driver or not on a older computer and i guess this is the puzzling part.


The August anniversary update introduced a performance hit for some older chipsets but i'm positive Microsoft is going to fix it soon.

The free upgrade process is still possible after the 29th of July,My guess,Microsoft is still working for compatibility of older hardware,surely they want to go rid of Windows 7 and probably 8 too.
I've also read that a warezed Windows 7 installation got automatically a free legal upgrade.

If anyone is still interested and using an older computer i would recommend to follow some computer news and see how their chipset performs with the upcoming updates.
Nevertheless i always prefer to upgrade from a fresh installation.

[Kaine]

I am going to look and see if there are any fixes out there and/or if a different GPU would fix the problem.

Reinstall current (or newer driver), this time click "clean install" followed by "Customer install" and remove everything that isn't the core driver. You can leave Physix if you want/need it normally without issue, but the experience updater it installs is a DPC headache at times.

[UltraJv]

RAID of any sort will usually mess up low latency audio. The chipsets and drivers do it.

[theEmbark]

RAID of any sort will usually mess up low latency audio. The chipsets and drivers do it.

That's interesting I haven't personally had any issues with RAID. However the machines I build usually take that into consideration when choosing things like CPU.

Also most of the RAIDs are networks so that shouldn't be an issue. They just connect via Ethernet. I'd love to go to 10gbe but I can't justify the cost for my hobby studio. However some of the studios I've worked in with 10gbe and all SSD raids transfer at speeds I don't think I'll see on a personal machine in my lifetime