Tracktion Software

Badanovski · Post by **Badanovski** » Thu Feb 11, 2016 2:47 am

I have an Intel i5 cpu, 6 gigs of ram & running Windows 10 64 bit. I'm using T-6.3.0 . Most of the time when I open a project the CPU use meter goes into the red & won't play. I close T-6 & reopen the same project & it plays fine. After making adjustments ( the number will vary) the cpu meter goes into the red & the project stops working. Sometimes T-6 will just crash. The log file shows nothing unusual. When the cpu goes into the red, I have tried freezing the tracks & the cpu meter will show file reader at over 100%. This behaviour is not limited to any specific plugin. Just making volume adjustments with the traction volume plugin can cause the problem. Tried running T-6 as administrator, no difference. Is there some setting change I need to make to windows or T-6?

jabe · Post by **jabe** » Thu Feb 11, 2016 11:24 am

If you click on the CPU thingy at the top right, it will give you a breakdown of all the things running under Tracktion and tell you how much CPU they're each using. See if there's one hogging the CPU.

Peter Widdicombe · Post by **Peter Widdicombe** » Thu Feb 11, 2016 12:32 pm

It's also quite possible there are OTHER things running periodically that can really keep your system busy - both disk and CPU related. I have been leery of updating W8.1 to W10 for that reason; but even Windows 8.1 will go through massive disk IO periodically (looks like it's Anti-Virus related, and heaviest for about 5 minutes after startup).

Run Task Manager (assuming it's similar to 8.1 (?)) and under the performance tab, note the memory, CPU, and disk sections. If any of those "max out" (once running, it keeps a short history). Run Tracktion, and then when you experience issues, flip back to that page and see which gets loaded, and what task is doing it.

The other "trick" of course, is to have minimal stuff other than Tracktion running. Do you really want the Windows system to be updating weather, checking mail, stock prices, facebook, etc. while sequencing?

steff3 · Post by **steff3** » Thu Feb 11, 2016 7:05 pm

My experience as well - Tracktion on Windows 10 is not really ready for medium processing load - in rare cases it works fine, most of the time it is spiking, stuttering, whatever. Worked fine under Win8.1. For other software (e.g. Pianoteq) I did not really experience such a difference after switching to Win10.

Hope that T7 will have optimisations ...

Best

Badanovski · Post by **Badanovski** » Thu Feb 11, 2016 9:59 pm

Because I didn't mention it before I'm using the 64 bit version of T-6. I opened windows task manager then opened T-6. The T-6 cpu meter was in the red. Task manager showed nothing unusual. There was hardly any cpu being used. The graph showed there had been an initial spike then hardly any usage following that. It's odd even if I freeze the tracks or disable the plugins the cpu meter stays in the red. I guess it's time to go back to T-5.

jabe · Post by **jabe** » Thu Feb 11, 2016 10:36 pm

Did you click the CPU Usage item near the upper right corner as I suggested? I'm playing "Synthetique", a demo track downloaded from the Tracktion site, and it's registering 2% of the CPU (W10, 64-bit, i7 8GB). If I click on the icon, it shows how that 2% is divided up. If you take a look, it will tell you how much CPU each process and plug-ins is using. There might be one plug-in causing your problem.

Ben di Arrows · Post by **Ben di Arrows** » Fri Feb 12, 2016 12:10 am

I usually see this when I'm pushing the latency too low on dodgy Tascam drivers.
Try increasing the latency and see if it goes away. Maybe try non ASIO windows driver or ASIO4All?

Badanovski · Post by **Badanovski** » Fri Feb 12, 2016 12:49 am

Interestingly the cpu meter in T-6 (upper right hand corner) will show say 96% & in the red. If you click on the icon as was suggested, the individual plugin usage is less than the total shown. If you close out plugins, the total of the rest increases. After all the plugins have been closed out, it's still in the red. At this point file reading appears on the list using well over 100% ( varies between 100 & 400% depending on the edit). Meanwhile windows task manager shows hardly any cpu usage. While the task manager shows a lot of processes open, they don't appear to be using many resources. I am using a Tascam US-1641 audio interface. Will try other drivers. & again oddly, the interface seems to work perfectly in normal computer operation & with Cool edit Pro (which I use for file editing).

Badanovski · Post by **Badanovski** » Fri Feb 12, 2016 1:59 am

Well it seems ASIO drivers are the only ones available that give my 1641 full functionality. On a good note. T-5 seems to work as it always did, in windows 10. I had some issues in windows 7 that I still have in windows 10, still nothing like the problems with T-6, which seems to be almost useless.

jabe · Post by **jabe** » Fri Feb 12, 2016 7:09 am

Badanovski wrote:Interestingly the cpu meter in T-6 (upper right hand corner) will show say 96% & in the red. If you click on the icon as was suggested, the individual plugin usage is less than the total shown. If you close out plugins, the total of the rest increases. After all the plugins have been closed out, it's still in the red. At this point file reading appears on the list using well over 100% ( varies between 100 & 400% depending on the edit). Meanwhile windows task manager shows hardly any cpu usage. While the task manager shows a lot of processes open, they don't appear to be using many resources. I am using a Tascam US-1641 audio interface. Will try other drivers. & again oddly, the interface seems to work perfectly in normal computer operation & with Cool edit Pro (which I use for file editing).

So as far as the individual totals go, it sounds like the total percentage adds up to 100 times the number of cores all the time, no matter what the headline CPU figure. So it's 100% (0r 200/300/400) of your 96%. That seems fair enough. If there are no badly-performing tasks or plug-ins listed, it does sound like you're right to look at drivers.

steff3 · Post by **steff3** » Sat Feb 13, 2016 6:10 am

>> T-5 seems to work as it always did, in windows 10.

so if T5 works, why can't they get T6 to operate properly?

best

Fartgum · Post by **Fartgum** » Sun Feb 14, 2016 10:19 pm

I've had T6 running on Win10 for a couple of months and everything was fine up until yesterday when all of a sudden (and after a couple of hours of flawless performance) the audio playback began glitching (intermittent pops, transient distortions and a bit of stuttering). I automatically checked to see if all the commonly recommended audio optimization settings were still in order and they were. I, however, was bummed.

But then I suddenly had the idea to open up the project I'd been working on in my old version of Tracktion (T4 64 bit, as opposed to T6 32bit) and "hallelujah": NO GLITCHING, EVERYTHING PLAYED BACK JUST FINE!

So, therefore it seems to me that the problem with playback is specific to T6 and the latest Windows 10 update?
{By the way, is this forum the best way of getting Tracktion engineers to look into and work out whatever bug it is that's causing all this mayhem and whatnot?}

Tracktion Software

KVR Audio

Is T-6 compatible with windows 10?